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Why "Irrelevant Comics"?

Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85

The title of this blog is a play on the idea of "relevant comics" which gained popularity in the early 1970s, when writers started to make an effort to address serious and mature topics in their stories. The most iconic example of this trend was the issue of Green Lantern/Green Arrow pictured here on the right.

Here's a quote from historian Ron Goulard (found on Wikipedia):

These angry issues deal with racism, overpopulation, pollution, and drug addiction. The drug abuse problem was dramatized in an unusual and unprecedented way by showing Green Arrow's heretofore clean-cut boy companion Speedy turning into a heroin addict. All this endeared DC to the dedicated college readers of the period and won awards for both artist and writer. Sales, however, weren't especially influenced by the praise, and by 1973 the crusading had ceased. I remember dropping in on [editor] Julius Schwartz about this time and asking him how relevance was doing. "Relevance is dead," he informed me, not too cheerfully.

Irrelevant Comics is meant to be a humourous reversal of that concept. It is not meant to imply that the comics reviewed here are insignificant or worthless. I wouldn't be putting all this effort into it if I didn't love these comics as much as I do.

About the author

Yan Basque is a writer and a musician. He lives in Montreal. You can should follow him on Twitter.

Contact

For information on where to submit review copies or any other inquiries, please e-mail againstlanguage@gmail.com.