Graphic novels are rife with good ideas. Take autobiographical stories that are morphed into fiction. Good idea if interesting. Or the “what if” kind of tales that show us what it would be like to have the prince of darkness own a nightclub and a world where everyone had a super power. These are ideas that have made authors legends. But there are certainly things in the genre that this critic could live without, five of them always being the first choice in my mind.

1. Disney Press: Disney, which started out with providing family fun and good movies has sunk to a new low with their manga style graphic novel publishing. They attempt to squeeze every last penny out of franchises that have already earned them millions of dollars, sacrificing artistic integrity and destroying the original vision of the master work. While the Kingdom Hearts novelizations were kind of cute, when Disney Press began making graphic novels based on their classic movies, that’s where I draw the line.

2. Scantily-Clad Heroines: There must be a rule somewhere that says heroines in any graphic novel must be so scantily clad that it would make Bill Clinton blush. Aside from not providing any practical protection for the female hero, it also panders to the idiotic side of the male brain that sitcom writers want to make the world believe exists solely on breasts and shapely legs. For once I’d like to see a full-figured nun kicking some rear and taking names.

3. Vampires: With the popularity of True Blood and the Twilight series, obviously there’s a demand for graphic novels that center around these demons of the night. But enough already. It’s bad enough that I have to spend my time in a bookstore next to a forty year old man in a Twilight t-shirt, I shouldn’t have to pick through a hundred different graphic novels about these charming and downright boring blood-suckers to find something good to read.

4. Wangst – Yes, I used the Internet term that is the equivalent of the depressed, emotional, tortured state in which we’re finding most heroes and heroines these days. Whiny anxiety just isn’t edgy any more, and more often than not, many authors see the line of downright annoying and hop over it as if they were clearing a bunny with a monster truck. Give me a hero with a sunshiny outlook on life any day. This means you, Gerry Conway.

5. Flavor Of The Month: They are everywhere. As bad as mayflies, but far more annoying are the flavor of the month graphic novels. Something gets popular, and one, maybe two graphic novels are produced for it. But then the series is pre-empted by something even more popular and you never know how your flavor of the month graphic novel is supposed to end. Aside from being downright rude, hastily churned out, and usually based for a very broad demographic with marketing research attached, flavor of the month graphic novels just leave a bad taste in your mouth. Don’t be enablers folks.

Who knows, perhaps this editor is too picky for her own good. But should I never see these five things again in the graphic novel genre, I don’t think I would be too sad. In fact, I might actually go searching them out again, because they would become interesting again.