MIKE GOLD: These Comics Really Suck Because…
Wow. I’m sure gonna piss a lot of my friends off. Please don’t take this personally. It has nothing to do with your skill, your judgment, or your personal predilections. It’s just my opinion, one that is somewhat contradicted (only somewhat) by sales figures. Here it comes, folks.
When it comes to comics, licensed property tie-ins suck.
Okay, this isn’t an across-the-board opinion. There are exceptions. Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson’s adaptation of Alien comes to mind. That was, let’s see, back in 1979. Remember Sturgeon’s Law? Ninety percent of everything Ted Sturgeon wrote is crap? Or something like that. My rule of thumb regarding entire genres is this: if you’re doing about five points worse than Ted Sturgeon’s Law, you suck.
There are solid reasons behind this blather. First, any group of talented creators – say, roughly, enough to fill Yankee Stadium – would not create what you see in a tie-in comic book if left on their own. Characters, concepts, designs, interrelationships, plots – they all would likely be… original.
Second, the characters, concepts, designs, interrelationships, and plots created for movies or teevee or toys were created for that particular medium. Transferring them to another medium requires sacrificing a degree of nuance that makes the source material unique. The timing of an actor’s performance that is used to establish character does not come across in comics; the artist is likely to get that bit across visually, but in the process he or she is changing the character.
Third, you can’t change the direction of anything. In a medium that for 25 years has been nothing other than constant change, the concepts of the licensed comic book are set in stone. The reader quickly realizes that any original character that might be introduced is likely to be killed off, and killed off in realistic terms – as opposed to the “death is completely meaningless” approach used in comics. Worse still, if the character works the licensor is likely to take it and use it in their own movies, shows, merchandising and whathaveyou – and the comics creators who thunk it all up ain’t gonna see a penny.
Finally, creators work with editors, some of whom are great (hiya, folks!), some less than great, and others couldn’t sort out a pack of Necco wafers if the candy was numbered. Editors work with editorial directors and editors-in-chief and publishers and if they’re any good they fight with the marketing department or at least try to wake them up. But when it comes to licensed properties, you’ve got the owners licensed products people to deal with. Not only do they not know comics, they usually do not know the properties they administrator. Case in point:
The idiot who passed judgment on DC’s Star Trek titles was so bad, if writer Peter David and editor Bob Greenberger flew out to Los Angeles and murdered the son of a bitch, I would have gone to great lengths to establish a solid alibi for them. Probably one involving a Mets game… but I digress. Here’s another.
Writer Joey Cavalieri plotted a Bugs Bunny mini-series that was, in my opinion as editor, as brilliant as it was hilarious. Stunningly brilliant. We sent it to the West Coast for the Warner Bros. studio approval. They hated it so much their Grand Imperial Klingon in charge of toothbrush licenses flew out to New York to cut me a new asshole. Unfortunately for editorial coordinator Terri Cunningham, this nuclear holocaust happened in her office.
The Mistress of All Things Looney started pointing out the good stuff we couldn’t do. Daffy Duck couldn’t issue spittle. Porky Pig couldn’t stutter. Tweety Bird couldn’t be a host on BTV, the all-bird watching network. Foghorn Leghorn couldn’t own a fast-food franchise. Bugs couldn’t be so manipulative. Hello? Anybody home? This is Looney Tunes we’re talking here!
I politely pointed out these were either long established character bits that started in the theaters in 1940 and continued on television to that very day. I said the Tweety and Foghorn bits were satire.
“Looney Tunes are not about satire!,” she screamed.
I saw poor Terri Cunningham in my peripheral vision. She looked like she was desperately trying to gnaw her way out of her own office. I said “Answer me this one question. Have you ever actually seen any of the Looney Tunes cartoons? Ever?” I turned on my heel and walked back to my office.
Here’s the worst part. My story is not in the least bit atypical. Not at all. It’s not even the worst I can tell you.
So when it comes to comic books, there’s a creative challenge to doing licensed properties and I’d take on some of those challengers as long as the licensor knows the property, but personally, I’d rather read something original.
THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil
Looney Tunes are not about satire? That’s just flat out astonishing. This is a business I truely want to be in the depths of someday, but moments like this sound down right terrifying.
A friend used to write for Disney’s Danish licensee.
Got along fine with them, was allowed to use old and obscure characters and write fairly edgy stories.
He had, OTOH, tales to recount of trying to deal with the US operation.
Somebody, I don’t remember who, once asked when the Looney Tunes characters all stopped being iconoclastic smartasses and became cuddly marketing icons. I think that happened somwhere around the mid-Eighties, when Warner realized the had a goldmine they were sitting on, and since none of the original Termite Terrace guys still worked there, no one could bitch about their work being ruined. I figure that all of our energy needs could be solved if we ran wires down into the graves of Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones, since they’re probably spinning at about ten million RPMs right now.
Not satire, my ass. Everything Chuck did was satire, and the material he did while Eddie Selzer ran Warner Animation is as pointed as it gets. And sorry, Mike, I’m preaching at the choir again.
Not withstanding your great Looney Tunes story, there are places where you’re just WRONG, Mike. I’ve worked on STAR WARS properties for the past ten years and my own experience is that it was harder and more constrictive working on X-Men properties than it has been on SW properties. I have also created new characters and settings. No, i don’t get an extra penny for it but i didn’t get any money extra for Oracle from DC because Barbara Gordon already existed although NOT in the form we gave her. I knew the deal with Lucas Film Licensing going in and signed the contracts. When you get right down to it, Superman and Batman are licensed properties and plenty restrictive. I personally feel that the work I’ve done on SW is as good as anything else I’ve ever done. And I’ve had a good relationship with the people at LFL. I’m certainly not saying that the dopes such as you mentioned don’t exist; of course they do. And, yes, it’s another level of approval for the story that has to pass scrutiny. There are idiots everywhere and life is spent negotiating with, past, or against them. But not every licensed product has to suck.
The problem can often be summed up by the observation of occasional ComicMix contributor Kim Kindya, who noted \”Nobody ever went to Hollywood to become a mid-level licensor approval executive.\”
Looney Toons were never satire???
Leaving aside the multitudinous counter-examples (most of their cartoons, in point of fact – they’re aired for an hour a day on Cartoon Network, to promote CN’s current attempt at reworking the characters), there’s an example so subtle, I didn’t notice it until about a week ago.
In the Road Runner cartoons, the Road Runner and the Coyote were labeled with mock-scientific names at the start of each one. One particular cartoon gave the Coyote the “scientific” name of Hard-headipus oedipus. And I sat up and asked aloud, “Did they just call the Coyote a hard-headed motherfrakker in dog Latin??”
I wonder if the ‘bitch who shall not be named’ had ever seen a Looney Toons cartoon?
Maybe someone should show her those Looney Toons cartoons from the 40’s that were none to kind to people of color and get her reaction to them.
No?
Here is something else to consider is that some of licensors appear not to know which company is publishing a pair of perfect examples: Flash Gordan and John Carter of Mars Dynamite is publishing at least 4 John Carter titles and Marvel is publishing at least 2! Now Dynamite’s John Carter core title is almost a year old, now I know that Disney has a major John Carter film and it makes sense for Marvel, a Disney company, to publish a comic book about it.
Now Flash Gordan has a mini-series from Ardden Entertainment, an upcoming mini-series from Dynamite, a hardcover from Dark Horse reprinting comics from Gold Key (or Dell Comics) and another hardcover reprinting newspaper strips from Hermes Press. Now the former two I understand since DH reprints a lot of classic comic, and the same with Hermes Press. But according to head Ardden if he had knew that Dynamite had already the license he wouldn’t have bother to do it.
I don’t who owns Flash Gordan but either they don’t pay attention to know what is going on or they don’t care, but if I was running a comic book publishing company that I don’t think that I would want to business do with them.