Mainstream media interest in comics has always come at a rather lamentable cost. When alternative comics started to garner attention from the press in the eighties, it was next to impossible to find an article that wasn't prefaced with some variation of the "Zap! Pow! Kabam! Comics grow up!" heading that seems all too familiar.

The comic industry had somehow become the equivalent of a middle-aged man managing to tie his own shoelaces, and receiving a mocking chorus of half-hearted applause for doing so. Twenty years on and it would appear very little has changed. The New York Times ran a piece about the sexuality of DC's Batwoman character ("Straight (and not) out of the closet") leading to various newspapers revelling in the chance to out the "lipstick lesbian" with colourful and predictably exclamation-mark-heavy headlines ("Kerpow! Batwoman is back - and gay", "Batgirl kerpow-t of the closet", and my personal favourite: "Batwoman is back, and she’s gayer than Robin!"). The recent 'X-Men' and 'Superman' movies also led to their fair share of the now seemingly annual "Oh look at that darling, Hollywood's lack of original ideas has led to them successfully mining the world of comics. Perhaps we should re-evaluate this medium in the most condescending way possible?" features on daytime TV and in broadsheet supplements.

But is this pernicious drivel indicative of the general population's inherent snobbishness about comics or rather a result of rushed editors and journalists flailing around in a desperate search for the ever-elusive "angle" with which to hang their story on? Ultimately, I'd imagine the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly, the prevalence of decent alternative comics making their way to the silver screen ('Ghostworld', 'American Splendour', 'Crumb', and the disappointing 'Art School Confidential'...), and style magazines such as 'Vice' running a dedicated comics issue suggest that mainstream acceptance of the medium isn't an impossibility. The very fact that this is failing to be mirrored in the more visible press attention is what's so frustrating.

Perhaps it's for the best that comics will forever be seen as that juvenile, four colour, bastardised melding of literature and art. There's an attractive, almost subversive charm to creating and consuming these intensely personal and inventive pieces of outsider art while the rest of the world isn't watching. Just be sure to keep outside a 10 mile radius of me the next time a newspaper runs a column stating "Holy piss flaps Batman! Comics are like, for adults and stuff too! Who would've thought? I mean, y'know... comics?!".

Tom Humberstone has been writing and drawing comics under the alias of VentedSpleen since 2004. He is the creator of Art School Scum and the Eagle Award nominated How to Date a Girl in 10 Days. Check out his work at www.ventedspleen.com