COMIC BOOKS AREN'T JUST FOR KIDS; BOOKS OFFER ESCAPE FROM THE MUNDANE

Southeast Missouri State University student John Foster browsed through comic books on the day they are distributed. Foster said he spends about $10 a week on comic books.

A foldout of the inside back cover of the latest issue of DC Comic's Superman comic book features Superman's marriage to Lois Lane.

Zap! Pow! Ka-blam! Comic book lingo, right?

Not anymore.

Comic book readers have changed, the average reader is now well into his teens or early 20s. With the changing reader, so have the books changed, a simple case of cause and effect.

This is nothing new; most comic-book buyers and sellers have been emphasizing it for years: Comic books aren't just for kids anymore.

"That's certainly true," said Andrew Johnson, owner of Mo' Better Comics on Broadway. "They tend to be more for older readers."

Johnson has about 100 regular, weekly customers who tend to be males over the age of 18 who collect at least six books a month.

Some serious readers don't even call them comic books anymore, opting instead for "graphic stories" or even "graphic literature."

"Batman," "Superman" the "X-Men" may be familiar names, and they are still best-sellers, Johnson said, but the stories have matured.

Batman's kid sidekick, Robin, was viciously killed with a crow-bar by an insane Joker, Superman was horribly killed at the hands of an alien monster and some X-Man is constantly being brutally killed by some evil villain or another.

Not to worry, things seldom change for very long in comics. Robin was replaced, Superman was re-born (just in time to marry Lois Lane last week), and the X-Men mourn their fallen comrades until another steps in to take their places.

"Comics aren't for little kids," said Ben Berg, comic collector. "Some of them are dark and depressing and nothing good happens to anybody."

Berg, a junior at Southeast Missouri State University, has been collecting comics for three years and he said he wouldn't give some of the comics he reads to people below the age of 16.

Berg doesn't read the most popular books. He prefers reading about demon-possessed preachers and the like. He was regularly buying Spawn, the story of a government agent who was killed and re-born as a demon bent on revenge.

"He was on his way to Hell but I quit before he got there," Berg said.

Michael Yaremko has been collecting comics for about 12 years and he still remembers the first one he bought: "Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spiderman #94."

He collected these kinds of "super hero" books for a couple of years before moving on to books with more serious themes.

"I became disinterested," Yaremko said of the mainstream books. "They were always the same thing, the good guys beating up the bad guys from issue to issue."

So he made the conscious choice of looking for comics that dealt with other things. "Not necessarily adult books," he said. "Just things that weren't super hero books. I wanted more realism, not just the same old things."

So it is adults who are reading comics these days and they seem to agree as to why they read them.

"It's a way out," said John Foster, an 18-year-old student at Southeast Missouri State University. "It takes you away from reality for a while."

He mostly reads the X-Men comic books, the tales of a band of mutant human beings, genetically endowed with special powers.

"It'd be awesome to have some kind of mutant power," Foster said.

Jeff Stricker, 25, has been collecting comics for seven years and he agreed.

"I enjoy the adventure," he said. He collects all the Superman titles (there are four) and he has 3,000 comics at home.

"Who wouldn't want to be Superman?" Stricker asked.

Berg likes that some comic books are well-researched and said that they are just as much "literature" as anything else.

"I just really like comics," Berg said. "I just can't wait to get another."