Books Had, Of Course, Often Featured Illustrations In The Past, But They Were

Books had, of course, often featured illustrations in the past, but they were only to provide occasional support and dimensionalization of the narrative, as opposed to being as important a component of the medium as the narrative itself. The fantastical and stylized nature of many of the illustrations featured in comic books were often postmodern artistic explorations in their own right, seeking to push the boundaries of conventional illustrations. Their explorations of anti-heroes helped deconstruct the notion of simple constructs of good and evil.
American consumer capitalism, which is inherently (though not necessarily benignly) postmodern in its relentless desire to commodify anything and everything, particularly that which can be packaged as new, hip, and edgy and thus desirable has hungrily devoured comic books and the films which come from them. In doing so, the artistic and societal merit of comic books, in particular their subversive characteristics, have become themselves subverted by the deity of consumer capitalist commodification. The ultimate dream, for example, of fans of the X-Men comic books, that their beloved misfit characters would reach movie theatres and therefore a larger audience for their collective angst, has come true -- but that dream has also become a nightmare for some fans, as these same subversive misfit X-Men have also become action figures, clothing lines, cartoons on the side of fast food lunch bags and boxes -- all mass marketed to mass audiences in order to maximize profits for corporations that are more interested in shareholder earnings than they are the artistic merit of airing the collective voices of disaffected teen angst. If the phenomenology of disaffected teen angst can be appropriated to make a profit from teenagers, then corporations will be chasing the teens and their money incessantly. However, corporate interest in teenagers as a demographic generally has little to do with sociocultural altruism. In fact, cultural observers should take heed ventilation of genuinely alternative social visions collide directly with the underpinnings of power in the economy at large." (Schiller, 1986, p. 152) The trade-off is as follows: as long as such ventilation of alternative social visions makes a profit, it will be tolerated. But in the consumer capitalist corporate universe of today, art for art's sake, particularly if the art does not reinforce the machinery of consumer capitalism, will never generate much more than limited enthusiasm, and is more likely to meet with insidious hostility.
The primary perpetrators in this arena are the behemoth corporate conglomerates that own the media, and the acquisitive way in which they manage their film and television divisions.