Dennis O’Neil: Complexly Evolving A Bible
Settle down, now. Sure, the Oscars have got you all excited, but for heaven’s sake, try to relax. Take some deep breaths while we return to where we left off last week.
The subject, a week ago, was how mythology and religion had more or less parallel evolutions… Well, not exactly that: more how what could be a subhead in the mythology section evolved in parallel with another such subhead, comic books.
Both began as technology-spawned mutations of forms that already existed: (drama>movies; comic strips>comic books.) Both began with stories that were simple, plot driven and self-contained – “this episode” was all there was to this particular narrative. And, over decades, both changed, in storytelling technique, in the kinds of stories told, and, finally, in the content of those stories. Heroes became flawed, villains became motivated, plots became complex and, finally, in comic books, the complete-in-one-episode paradigm started fraying at the edges, becoming almost anachronistic. (I’ve edited comic book continuities that ran about 2000 pages, and I doubt that I’ve got the record.)
In movies, you left the theater having seen a complete story, with beginning, middle, and end, and such niceties. But if the flick was of the action/melodrama ilk, or was a comedy, and it earned its way, you could bet the mortgage money that the characters, setting, and maybe milieu would return in sequel after sequel. (I saw the first James Bond entertainment, Dr. No, in 1962.) The episodes are separate, but there is a rough continuity between them and if the screenwriters are on their game, the whole will eventually be greater than the sum of its interrelated parts.
What I will call, for want of a better term, the “serial mentality” didn’t stop with comics and films. Some years ago a book agent told me that if I wanted to sell a private eye novel I’d have to do the book but submit it with plots/outlines for two or three others featuring the same protagonist. Publishers, it seems, want franchises, not merely stories. I’m told that much the same is true in the science fiction world.
Some experts tell us that time has direction and it points toward complexity. The longer something exists, the more complicated it becomes. For the science-minded among you, let this explain what I’ve been blathering about. The rest of us can search for more prosaic explanations.
Or just go to the movies and watch a superhero adventure. Squint hard and maybe you can see that, in terms of content and narrative structure, film and print are becoming different iterations of the same stuff. The two largest comic book publishers are now officially subsidiaries of movie studios and one of them, Disney’s stepchild Marvel, is doing with movies what Marvel’s founding guru, Stan Lee, did with comics a half-century ago: creating a synergy in which everything is germane to and supportive of everything else. DC, Marvel’s arch-rival, seems to be moving in the same direction, especially in the television arena. And cinematic technology has overtaken the superhero trope; the movie guys can deliver virtually anything the scripters can deliver.
Okay, you can get excited again.