Mike Gold: Old Farts Are The Best Farts
In this space last Saturday, my dear friend and adoptive bastard son Marc Alan Fishman stated “modern comics are writing rings around previous generations. We’re in a renaissance of story structure, characterization, and depth… I’d like to think we the people might defend the quality of today’s comics as being leaps and bounds better than books of yesteryear.”
Simply put, the dear boy and my close pal and our valued ComicMix contributor is full of it.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a hell of a lot of great writing out there today, and I agree with his opinions about most if not all of the young’un’s he cites. Today’s American comics reach a much wider range of readers. There’s also a hell of a lot more comics being published today – although those comics are being read by a much smaller audience in the aggregate – and I take no comfort in saying there’s more crap being published today as well: Sturgeon’s Law is akin to gravity. Marc’s comparison to the comics of the 1960s and 1970s is an apples-and-oranges argument: the comics of the pre-direct sales era, defining that as the point when most comics publishers virtually abandoned newsstand sales, were geared to a much younger audience. Even so, a lot of sophisticated stories squeaked through under the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” technique of writing on two levels simultaneously.
As I said, there are a lot of great writers practicing their craft today. Are they better than Carl Barks, John Broome, Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Archie Goodwin, Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman and Jim Steranko … to name but a very few (and alphabetically at that)? Did Roy Thomas, Louise Simonson and Steve Englehart serve their audience in a manner inferior to the way Jonathan Hickman, Gail Simone and Brian Bendis serve theirs today? Most certainly not.
Then again, some of the writers he cites are hardly young’un’s. Kurt Busiek has been at it since Marc was still in diapers. Grant Morrison? He started before Marc’s parents enjoyed creating his very own secret origin.
Marc goes on to state that John Ostrander and Dennis O’Neil would say that the scripts they write today are leaps and bounds better than their earlier work. I don’t know; I haven’t asked them. But I can offer my opinion. Neither John nor Denny are writing as much as they could or should today because they, like the others of their age, they are perceived as too old to address the desires of today’s audience – which, by the way, is hardly a young audience. I wonder where this attitude comes from?
But let’s look at the works of these two fine authors from those thrilling days of yesteryear. John’s Wasteland, GrimJack, Suicide Squad, and The Kents stand in line behind nothing. As for Denny, well, bandwidth limitations prohibit even a representative listing of his meritorious works, and I’ll only note Batman once. Let’s look at The Question. A great series, and he wrote that while holding down a full-time job and while sharing an office with a complete lunatic. Then there’s Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Iron Man, The Shadow… hokey smokes, I wake up each Thursday morning (in the afternoon) blessing Odin’s Bejeweled Eye-patch that Denny is writing his ComicMix column instead of spending that time doing socially respectable work.
I am proud of this medium and its continued growth – particularly as its growth had been stunted for so long. And I’m proud of my own service to this medium. But, as John of Salisbury said 953 years ago, we are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.
And, standing on those shoulders, we swat at gnats.
THURSDAY: The Aforementioned Mr. O’Neil!
One factor that helps the quality of graphic story-telling today is the wider variety of publishers. Abrams. Houghton-Mifflin. Even University of Alabama Press. These companies (or their equivalents) would never have published comics in the 1960s and 1970s. DC and Marvel would never publish today what these companies publish today.
Which I guess is saying, apples and oranges.
The question is, should they? I can argue both sides of this one, and I guess DC sorta tried on a couple occasions.
GrimJack is my favorite comic and I’d gladly read more of John’s stuff any day than virtually any new writer.
Not to say I don’t love some of the newer writers, but they aren’t superior by a long shot…
Well said, Brandon.
Maybe this is just my fault as a young reader, but I’ve read collections of Grim Jack, I own John’s whole run on Suicide Squad but when I read something like Jonathan Hickman’s run on Secret Warriors or his Fantastic Four run, I just think he’s hit some high notes I’ve never seen before.
Hickman’s one of the most talented writers out there today, and nothing takes anything away from that. I’m actually sad he’s leaving the Fantastic Four (I mean, it hasn’t affected by sleep, but still) and I look forward to his taking over The Avengers this fall.
And if I did my year-end Top 11 list right now, I strongly suspect his MANHATTAN PROJECTS would be number one.
With a bullet.
Mike…”Stay thirsty, my friend.”
You are one of the most interesting men in the world.
Well, I’d like to address all your points here… but I don’t necessarily disagree with any one of them per say. Your laundry list of talent and mine can’t really face off in a “writer’s bowl” to see who is the best. Nor can one really determine who could write better than someone else. Barring the fact that my son could out-write Rob Liefeld.
I guess my over-arching point to my last article though was in response to Marchman. Do you believe that the quality of scripts being published today are responsible for the decline of sales throughout the industry?
You postulate (I think) that because the writers of yesteryear were “writing on two levels” and somehow that might make their contributions more valuable then a modern day writer. But if you think for a second a book like All-Star Super Man, Y: The Last Man, or the current run of Animal Man/Swamp Thing aren’t aiming at a few demographics at once? Well, you better go take some fiber and take a few more books into the “library”.
It might very well be an apples-to-oranges comparison though. As you said… there’d be no today if not for yesterday.
Beyond that though? Modern writers are far prettier.
If you’re going to mention Grimjack, I’d like to point out that most (if not all) of the comics made by First back in the 80s were great reads.
My personal favorite was Whisper. To this day, I can’t think of a better-written female protagonist.
Thank you, Adam, on behalf of everybody on the original First Comics crew.
I, too, liked Whisper. Steve’s been asked many times about reprint opportunities, but he’s not interested. I think he would like to re-do the series, a start-over more than a reboot. That would probably inure to the long-term viability of the property better than a stand-alone reprint. Either way, it would be great to see her return.
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t realize who you were until now!
First was my favorite comic company back in the 80s! Most everything I do now is inspired by Whisper, Jon Sable, and all the rest.
Must. Not. Fanboy. Out…