I think that's against the new owners' business model.

Same as the old business model.

The NYT now has a Graphic Books bestseller list.

You know, the first sentence of the blurb preceding the list pretty much illustrates (see what I did there?) why the NYT is becoming really, really irrelevant. News/finance articles, fine. But when it comes to their Life/Society/Fashion pieces, they are so out of touch that it's mindboggling.

First sentence:

Comics have finally joined the mainstream.

I won't argue that comics haven't always been "mainstream." Certainly they were long considered the domain of kids and geeks. (And probably still are, really. Comic *books,* that is.)

But I'd say that the first Spider-Man movie yanked comics -- in the sense of the stories they tell, and how those stories are a part of pop culture -- firmly into the mainstream. Or the first X-Men movie, whichever came first. And that was close to 10 years ago.

t edit And really, do they not remember the Superman movies of the 80s? (Was it 70s?) Pretty popular.

t /cranky comics geek

Superman had his own TV show in the 50s. Before that he was on the radio.

Uh, I know. I don't think that proves that comics were "mainstream" back then, though.

Comics have finally joined the mainstream.

Comics have always been mainstream in one form or another. Being taken seriously as an artform is a whole other kettle of kippers.

Comics have always been mainstream in one form or another. Being taken seriously as an artform is a whole other kettle of kippers.

You know, that's more what I was thinking and obviously couldn't articulate.

Though I'm reading "mainstream" as "pop culture commonly consumed by people other than niche markets." Comics have long been considered the realm of kids and geeks.

Wikipedia tells me that in fiction mainstream is the opposite of genre. I think comics will always be genre. Now I'm confusing myself.

Though I'm reading "mainstream" as "pop culture commonly consumed by people other than niche markets." Comics have long been considered the realm of kids and geeks.

It also gets confusing if you throw comic strips into the mix. That was where comic books evolved from, but they took different paths.

I also think the horror comics freak-out in the 50s made comic books (as opposed to strips) a pariah form of entertainment for a long time. But everyone still knows who Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc. are.

And, hilariously, my spell check just flagged the latter two as mistakes but left Superman as is.

Spellcheck was right on the second of the two; it's Spider-Man. t /pedant

Batman, on the other hand, is never wrong.