In last Monday’s New York Times Media Watch columns, they ran a list of the ten films released this year that had the highest box office ion their opening weekends. What’s amazing to me is that the top five (Marvel’s The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Hunger Games, Amazing Spider-Man and Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 2) can all be classified in the fantasy genre, or, as I like to call it, nerd stuff.
Of the next five (Skyfall, Brave, Ted, Madagascar 3 and Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax), three are aimed primarily at children, and one is a James Bond film, which has its own separate but overlapping geek audience. Only Ted could be considered a movie aimed at what was once the wide, mainstream audience, and even then, because it is an R-rated comedy, that limits the wideness.
When did our beloved nerd culture become so dominant? I was certainly the only girl in my high school (which was all girls) who read superhero comics, and if anyone else read science fiction or fantasy, they were in the closet about it.
Even in the 1980s, when Frank Miller and Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman were publishing work that attracted mainstream media attention, there wasn’t much spillover to the medium of graphic storytelling.
When I first went to work for DC, the most common reaction I encountered when people learned what I did was, “Do they still publish those?”
For that matter, even today, the success of the movies listed above doesn’t do much for comics. There’s a history of tie-in films boosting the sale of books (for example, Gone With the Wind), but that doesn’t always overlap to your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, or comic book store.
Still, I don’t think fans like us can claim to be outsiders anymore. We might not be the cool kids, but we aren’t unwanted loners, either. What are today’s nerds about?
Is it Steampunk? Is it libertarian politics? Are there still obscure rock bands to follow, or has everything been American Idol’d to a bland pap. What distinguishes the kids getting beat up and/or ostracized today?
This morning a li’l post by Jim Zub, the author of the indie book Skullkickers, hit the viral airwaves. His post entitled “The Reality of Mainstream Creator-Owned Comics” set a plethora of shared Facebook posts ablaze in ‘likes’ and comments. Even my close and personal friend Gene Ha placed it on his wall with a very nice send up. By the way, when I say Gene and I are “close and personal friends,” I mean to say that he recognized me at Baltimore Comic-Con, actually talked to me for more than 10 minutes, and we once had pizza at Matt Wright’s (my Unshaven cohort) house. The article in question laid out in basic math how a comic on the rack of your favorite pulp store breaks down. It’s a sobering, but near perfect (as far as I can tell) account on how we little folk of Artist Alley aren’t in the business for the piles and piles of cash.
I won’t waste your time recanting the article verbatim. Go ahead and read it. I’ll wait. Back so soon? Great. I’d simply like to take up my little corner of the Internet this morning to add to Jim’s ending thoughts. He retorts “Skullkickers is the most expensive hobby I’ve ever had :D” Truer words, my friend, truer words. I decided to do some math myself. When you look at our meager books, you’ll see that things are actually looking up for us. After a year toiling on the con trail we have enough money in our little cash box to afford being able to register for the 16 conventions we wish to attend next year. And that’s it. It doesn’t cover the hotel rooms we’ll have to stay in. It doesn’t cover the gas to drive to them. It doesn’t cover the food we’ll eat. It doesn’t even cover the cost of printing the books we actually sell at the table. And we’re doing awesome. Not even kidding, kiddos.
When we started in the business, Kickstarter was just an incubating idea in some hipster’s noodle. Our lucky break, The March: Crossing Bridges In America netted us a whopping $500; it took us the better part of a year to complete. Mind you, we were as green as they came, and worked only on nights and weekends. And with many of those nights and weekends, we watched tons of cartoons, ate terrible food, and played Versus CCG until we fell asleep on the couch. But, if you distilled the man hours – from outlining the script, to taking the reference photos, to penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, and laying out the 54 page book? Easily 150 man hours. Simple math then dictates each of we three Unshavenauts earned a whopping $1.12 an hour to create the book. Take away from that total the $350 it cost us to buy our table at Wizard World Chicago? Well, I think you’re starting to get the picture.
They say the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting different results. And for five years, we have toiled mercilessly over our own books, driven halfway across the country to sit in convention centers 10 hours at a time, and pumped hundreds of thousands of unpaid hours of labor all to sell a whopping 1,408 copies of our wares in 2012 alone. But the kicker is we’re not insane. We never expected different results. Zub said it best – this is the most expensive hobby we could have ever had.
But unlike building model trains, collecting stamps, or memorizing the IMDB in hopes of crushing people at “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”… making comic books has produced something no other hobby could. The fact that I say without a quiver to my lip that “I Make Comics” is a badge of pride. Even ten years ago, when going to conventions as a fan became part of my vernacular, I didn’t honestly think I’d have it in me to sit on the other side of the aisle.
Now, it’s part of my identity. With Unshaven Comics, I have rubbed elbows and broke bread with industry legends. I have had some of the best meals with some of the greatest conversations I’ve been privy to in cities I would have never thought twice to visit. And most important … I’ve sold books (I dare not say thousands lest I make it sound better than it actually is) to complete strangers who then have returned to my table the following year to ask me “what’s next?” It’s a feeling I assure you no model train ride could touch.
And yes, there’s no smoke-screen to be had here. We indie folk all (probably) share that pipe-dream that our books will be noticed by some muckity-muck who will Pretty Woman us out of the Artist Alley and into the hearts of America. For those really daring, making comics is even a full time job (a luxury I could not afford, nor fathom). The reality of the numbers though prove what a zero-sum game it all is. Through the Image channel as Zub is doing, or the “out of our cars with a wish and a dream” as Unshaven Comics… being in the industry (if only on the very outer most ring of it) is a costly endeavor we do not for the bling. We do it for the love of the medium. We do it for the rush of having a fan. We do it because the movies and cartoons that play in our heads when we close our eyes can’t be turned off – they can only be crudely captured and splattered on a page. It may never pay our bills… but it fills our soul.
Simply put, this is an industry unlike most others. This is an industry being held together by duct tape, dreams, and desire. For those lucky few who are making the big bucks, we in the gutter don’t wish them ill will. We celebrate their successes as our successes. It’s a community. To be on the other side of that aisle – be you a long-time veteran, or a first time ash-can publisher… it’s a collected universe unto itself. One well worth the toil, the long drives, the longer conversations… and yes, the debt.
By the way, if you’d like to fill my soul, or any of the other starving souls here at ComicMix, do us a solid, and check out our holiday gift guide and spread the love.
This may surprise you. Here I am, a well-educated woman in the media capitol of the universe, someone who reads a few dozen comics every week, who goes to the movies when she can and stays in watching movies when she can’t.
And yet, I spend an inordinate amount of time playing fetch with my cat, and, when she lets me, knitting. So, on weeks such as this, when no news story catches my attention, I’m stuck treading water.
Which I will do now, with the following random observations:
• The ongoing debate about “fake” geek girls continues, with this, which is hilarious mostly because of the comments. Some boys get really really scared when girls do their own thing, and I find it even more amusing when they try to sound reasonable about their castration fears.
• As nearly as I can tell, the most famous knitter in comics is Martha Kent, who unravelled the blankets she found in Kal-El’s rocketship to make his costume. Since The New 52, I haven’t seen this story, so perhaps it is no longer canon. In any case, it’s a lot of work to knit a costume like that, presumably on rather small needles, and in the round, since we never see any seams. Is that why we don’t see her knitting again very often?
• When my cat permits, I’ve been watching the revamped Doctor Who on Netflix. I’m late to this party, and I’m only halfway through Season 4, so I have nothing particularly new to say. It’s a fun show, but I don’t entirely feel the fanaticism that so many of my friends enjoy. To me, the best part (aside from the cheesy special effects, which are one of my favorite things about British television) is the sheer glee the characters have about being alive.
• I hate the hype around the holidays, and therefore don’t pay much attention to Black Friday and the attendant promotions. Still, I’m rather encouraged that comic book publishers and retailers are getting on the bandwagon. It suggests that comics are mainstream enough to make the “fake geek girls” meme even more irrelevant.
• The season finale of NBC’s Revolution had the homoerotic undertones of a bowdlerized 1950s Tennessee Williams movie. The hero and the villain were friends since childhood, but now they are separated. The villain wants the hero back, and there are many long, smoldering looks between them. These looks last so long, in fact, that I started to notice that, in a society that has no power, and everyday living is a struggle for survival, these men have time to color their hair. The women not only color their hair, but also pluck their eyebrows. Even the fat guy, the shameful nerd, has highlights. If the revolution ends up being televised, at least they’ll be ready for their close-ups.
Ye Editor apologizes for the late posting of today’s column. He was probably drunk or something.
As I write this, my Bears are presently phoning in a performance so bad I’m opting to write my article instead. The game is on, yes. But, frankly, I’m not even paying attention. I guess I owe my bad-news-Bears a debt of gratitude, though. They are giving me the inspiration for a column this week.
Nothing grinds my gears more than a weak start. And this week past, a comic that should have been a touchdown upon reception was a weak three-and-out worthy of the finger wagging like no other. Matt Fraction and Mark Bagley’s relaunched Marvel Now Fantastic Four #1 was a let down of mammoth proportions. And it warrants a bit of a rant.
Generally speaking I like to keep my reviews (chock full of piss and vinegar) over at Michael Davis World. But I was too elated by Gail Simone’s Batgirl this week past to waste time setting fire the ‘Four. To be honest? I read the book, said “Meh,” and figured that I owed it to Fraction to give him some time to warm up. As I took a long and angry trip to my can in between botched Bear’s offensive drives, I flipped through the book once more. Maybe it’s the fact that my team is 20 points down and can’t move the ball more than my infant son. Maybe it’s the few pages I flipped to with glaringly awful moments that caused the rise in blood pressure. Either way, this book is bad.
Giving a favorite writer a pass because they’ve delivered solid performances in books prior is something I’ve done all the time. Hell, it’s the entire reason I still read Green Lantern. But it hit me; these are the pros. They are being given an opportunity I would literally kill for. Who or what would I kill? I dunno. An editor, probably. But I digress. Matt Fraction has written some amazing issue 1’s. His Invincible Iron Man, Defenders, and The Order all jump to mind. In each, Fraction is able to introduce his characters, set the tone of the book, and build a considerable world rich with continuity, but wholly original. In Fantastic Four #1, his dialogue is sloppy, his plotting predictable, and his tone is somewhere between “kiddie cocktail” and “phoning it in.”
For a man who likes the long game? Here he’s nearly parodying himself. Twenty pages of content, of which only two move the story in any direction forward. The rest? A wink, nod, and circle-jerk of continuity-heavy references and in-jokes. Number one indeed.
In The Order and The Defenders, Fraction proved to me he knew how to handle a team book. Moments are given to all the players, and in each tight scene he’s able to interject depth and clarity. He gave us a recovering alcoholic in Henry Hellrung. The other side of the coin to Tony Stark. He gave us a Steven Strange who was coherent of his foibles, but decidedly stubborn enough to ignore them. The key here was Fraction showing how he could take continuity and reshape it to match a new direction. That all being said… in a single issue of his Fantastic Four, he’s only able to deliver a single cliched plot direction, and a handful of watered down scenes built from scraps of Jonathan Hickman.
One of the few problems I had with Hickman’s run concerned the usage of ole’ blue eyes himself. The Thing was mainly sidelined due to the lack of punchable things in the very science-heavy arch. Given the pedigree of Red She-Hulk’s depiction in The Defenders gave me hope to see a Thing with a bit more depth, verve, and humor. Instead, Fraction warms up the tuba for a Yancy Street Gang joke on Ben Grimm. And when the Thing speaks? We get line after hackney’d line suitable only if he were being written for an SNL skit.
In other plot lines, we get yet-another scene of Johnny Storm showing that he’s the cocky brash ass we all know and love, and the totally mature death-defying wunderkind. He gives his cellphone number out to the gal he loves. Yippee. Sue gets to be the same invisible-to-the-fans mother role she was written to play. For a women I expect to be one of the smartest in the 616, she seems awfully daft here… not being able to read her rubber husband’s transparent motivations. And to round out the book? Franklin “Deus Ex Machina” Richards foretells of eeeeeevil afoot. It’s plot-by-the-numbers, and we deserve better.
Over in the art department, we get Mark Bagely. There was a time when I was truly enamored by his work. His work-horse attitude, and nuanced designs helped cement Ultimate Spider-Man’s first six arcs wonderfully. He was eventually poached by DC, where he was given Trinity – a series most of us would care to forget about, art included. Now back at the House of Mouse, he’s firing on all-cylanders… as a watered down John Romita Jr., delivering no memorable visual save for perhaps the last splash page.
Suffice to say, the Bears laid down and took it up the tail pipe tonight. After rereading Fantastic Four #1, I am clear in thinking Matt Fraction did much of the same. He came into the game with a crowd hungry for the next chapter. Instead, he spins his wheels, sputters trying to pick up pieces that were already left put back on the shelf neatly enough. This is not a new beginning. This is not Now. This is the a waste of my money and one I’m not likely to forget. I know the book will bounce back. But a loss is a loss. And this loss hurt something fierce.
Feminist fan-girls have long lamented the unreal, impossible physiques presented in modern comics. The long-legged, slim-hipped, big-breasted figures, women with heads bigger than their waists, are enraging to all human who possess legs, hips, breasts, heads and waists.
It’s not new, and it’s not a concern limited to graphic storytelling. The fashion industry, for example, delights in sending pre-pubescent girls on the runway, as an ideal to which real, adult women should aspire, because that’s what moves the merchandise. And the accompanying insecurity sells make-up, hair color, plastic surgery and diet pills.
Everybody wins – except real, adult (and adolescent) women. Many of whom develop crippling self-loathiing which sometimes leads to unnecessary surgery, eating disorders, and death.
And now, according to The New York Times, it seems that boys are at risk for the same thing. Unreal expectations about how they should look cause them to take up exercise regimens inappropriate to their still-developing bodies, and to eat a diet that will put their body-fat at dangerously low levels. Some take dangerous steroids
Should we blame comics?
Well, no, not entirely. But comics don’t help.
When I was a young fan-girl, the comics I read didn’t seem unreasonable to me. I mean, sure, characters were flying through airless space, or traveling through time, and some of them were green or orange, but they didn’t seem out of proportion to me. Supergirl was trim and fit, not stacked. Superboy had muscles, but his build was slimmer than Superman’s.
These days, not so much. When DC introduced Tim Drake as the new Robin in 1990, we built a costume and had to find an adult model. There were practical reasons for this (an adult fit-model wouldn’t outgrow the costume), but DC also wanted someone with a muscular build. They wanted someone with muscles to represent a high school student.
And now, Damien Wayne is Robin. He’s supposed to be 10 years old. And, while the artists generally draw him short and slight, his pecs and thigh muscles suggest he’s already juicing.
In my experience, all these insecurities we have about our appearance have relatively little to do as far as the sexual opportunities of our choice. I’ve been fat, and I’ve been skinny, and it made no difference in the quantity nor quality of men who hit on me. I’m willing to bet that the bulked-up muscle man is not the physical ideal of most heterosexual women (and, probably, not a majority of gay men).
I don’t think we obsess over our bodies because of sexual insecurities, or rather, not only because of sexual insecurities. I think it goes deeper than that. Our images of ourselves as women and men are defined by these societal ideals, and how well we meet them. When the ideals are polarized so sharply, it can throw us into a panic.
And when the ideals can’t exist in real life, but only be drawn on paper (or rendered on a computer screen), we are doomed to failure.
The only sane response is to refuse to accept these ideals, and refrain from supporting them financially. So far, I can live without fashion magazines. Can I live without comics? Can you?
As a rule of thumb (the very same thumb I referenced not seven days ago), I stay away from licensed books. How did I come to that rule? It’s one engrained in my loathing of fan-fiction. Gasp! I’ve never, ever, (ever-ever) appreciated the world of fan-fiction. The whole notion that one’s love of a property goes so far they must appropriate the universe another writer created for their own nefarious purposes seems weak to me. Why limit oneself to the rules of another’s whims when the post-modern world allows for infinite homage, pastiche, and appropriation? Given the pre-sales of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (go Katie Cook!), I’m obviously in the wrong.
But Marc, you fickle bastard, you’ve just argued yourself into a corner! You, who have lamented on countless occasions how you’d love to write for Marvel and DC… don’t you realize if you were given a run on Green Lantern, Batman, or the Slingers, you would in essence be “limiting oneself to the rules of someone else’s whims?” Too true.
And when DC and Marvel hire me, you’re welcome to call me a hypocrite.
There’s nuance to this argument, and my greater point stands true. Writing for mainstream comics is its own beast, one I’m sure to tackle soon. For the time being, stay with me.
The fact is that amongst the small presses (still large enough to get rack space) are almost entirely engrained with this unyielding genre, save perhaps for Image or Valiant. Certainly we know why: licensed properties bring with them a given fan-base. For much of Dark Horse, IDW, Boom, and Dynamite’s catalogs are siphoning life-force from the lost and misspent youth of their target demographic. And since I’m no Bob Wayne, I simply don’t know how well it’s boding for any of them. The ideology that the comic buying audience at large is desperate to read more tales set inside the Hellraiser, Battlestar: Galatica, and the Ghostbusters seems legitimate, if only on paper (heh). But when I see the book on the shelf, it is truly taxing to find reason to open the gates again on properties built elsewhere.
Perhaps it’s my fear that licensed comics seem far from canon (that is to say that their contributions will hold true forever). Perhaps it’s my fear that adding to existing canon makes it harder to enjoy. I can’t tell you how many times my unshaven cohort Matt has given me the verbal Wikipedia entry on all that has gone down in Transformers extended properties (novels, comics, soft-core porn). And every time? My eyes glaze over, and I’m immediately reminded that I’m happy to have the G1 box set and Beast Wars and call it a day. It’s this fear of the overwrought rules and backstory one needs to know that stifles any anticipated joy in reading a licensed book.
But what if the teams involved are at the top of their game? Creative teams be damned. Truly, if you told me Alex Ross would paint over a Mark Waid script of G.I. Joe… and that it was the best work ever put out by either one of them… I’d still sooner spend my paycheck on a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol graphic novel or maybe some new socks.
Lest you think I’ve never even given a book like this a chance, allow me a simple anecdote. An amazing columnist for the Chicago Daily Red Eye (think hipster news for the daily commuter) Elliot Serrano had been given the opportunity to write a new Army of Darkness comic. Given that it was a slow week, I decided I should support my fellow indie creator (and he was nice enough to interview me for his blog twice) and give it a chance. I’d never purchased an Army of Darkness comic in the past. My knowledge of the source material was limited to the handful of viewings I’d had of Raimi’s film. And to his credit, Serrano’s pen wasn’t weighed down too heavily by the yoke of backstory that came with the property.
That being said, the book suffered terribly from Serrano having to forcefully hit the beats the license (and, no doubt, the legion of deadite fans) demanded. What we were left with? I quote myself from my MichaelDavisWorld review:
“The book has moments of clarity, but they are dragged down by the wishy-washy plot and cardboard cutout of a protagonist. I think I’ll go put on my copy of the movie, and bury this necronomicon deep in a long box… in hopes that the evil spirits lurking within don’t wreck havoc on my soul.”
Given that I thought Elliot’s writing was better than what he’d showed on page only proved to me that the book was not intended for me. While fans of the AoD universe were heralding it as a success, I was left back in the starting blocks wondering why the book shifted tone more than Mitt Romney (ooooh, semi-late reference burn!).
Suffice to say, licensed books have their place. There’s been great examples of those who made great leaps of fiction balancing the properties’ beats while adding to the canon. John Ostrander’s run on Star Wars is still sold out at my local shop. And Joss Whedon’s continuation of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer into a “9th season” via comics helped fans continue their love affair with the series. There is a place for these books, indeed. The fact is unless you yourself are a die-hard lover of the property in question, the book is wasted space on the rack. And for someone who is now actively seeking originality at the shop… no amount of lightsaber fun will turn me toward the dark side. Simply put? A licensed book is a license to limit your sales to those who are familiar. Everyone else? Find some place else to read.
I would like to note that if the powers that be would like to license Exo-Squad to Unshaven Comics, I will voluntarily lop off my left leg, and then proceed to write and draw the best damned Exo-Squad comic is history. And I can guarantee that it’ll be a top seller… to the 40 or so people who still love the property.
Like so much of the world, I went to see Skyfall this weekend. I went with my friend Karen, who hadn’t seen a James Bond movie in a few decades. We both had a fantastic time, and if you haven’t already gone and you like action movies, you should go, right now. This column will still be here when you get back. And, if you can’t go right this second, I shall do my best to avoid spoilers.
There are all kinds of reasons to enjoy this movie: Daniel Craig is a terrific Bond; the locations are exotic and beautiful; the set pieces, including the opening scene and the fight in the glass building, are inventive and exciting; the cinematography is glorious.
For the purposes of this column, I want to talk about a feminist reason to like it: M. Or rather, Judi Dench. Dame Judi is 78 years old, and, in this movie, she looks it. Her hair is gray, almost white. Her face is wrinkled. Her body, at least as it appears in the wardrobe assigned to her, is slack.
None of this makes any difference, because she is not a “Bond girl.” She is M. She is the head of MI6, and she is determined to do the best possible job she can. Her dedication is to her mission and her country. Because this is a James Bond movie, the emphasis is on her relationship with James Bond. However, this relationship, while cordial, is never less than professional, even when both of their lives are at stake. And it is the most compelling relationship in the whole movie.
Have we seen a female character less sexualized in a modern mass movie? The closest I can remember is Helen Mirren in the comic book-inspired movie Red (and also probably everything else she has done for the last decade). And even she is as famous for how she looks in a bikini (and at her age!) as for her formidable talent.
Both Skyfall and Red fail the Bechdel test because neither film has enough fully-realized female characters for either actress to have a significant conversation with another woman. Still, I think the success of both films bodes well for the acceptance of complicated, adult women in pop culture.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about comics. For the most part, older female characters at the Big Two, like Aunt May or Martha Kent, are mothers or mother-figures. Heavy women like Etta Candy are comic sidekicks.
The worst travesty is what has happened to my pal John Ostrander’s creation, Amanda Waller. Originally a tough, no-nonsense,solidly professional woman (see M, above), she was re-cast in The New 52 as a babe. Instead of wearing sensible suits appropriate to her job, she is no flaunting the tits and ass, with high heels that accentuate her long legs, which look even longer in her short, short skirts.
I suppose it’s possible this re-design was planned in advance of the Green Lantern movie, in which Angela Bassett played Waller in a role that was clearly supposed to mimic Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. However, Angela Bassett is in her mid-50s. Amanda Waller in the DC books? Not that I can tell.
There are lots of reasons that movies make more money than comics. There are a lot more places to see them, for one thing. We would do well to remember that another reason is that they portray a much broader perspective on reality, one which attracts more fans.
No sane person would claim that Hollywood isn’t a sexist, patriarchal boys’ club. The difference is that it’s a sexist, patriarchal boys’ club that wants to make a profit, and they are smart enough to know the best way to do that is to sell more tickets.
I admit it readers! I done ran outta things to complain about. So, like any amazing editor would, Mike Gold set forth a challenge. A simple one at that. “How about something(s) you really look forward to that aren’t DC or Marvel?” See? Simple! What a great excuse to highlight all those little known indie projects I dive into… like all the time. What better place to pimp the wares and projects that aren’t draped in NOWs or New52s. Where else could I wax poetic about those “next big things” all of you are fretting over!
And here comes the shocking truth. When it came to comics? Nothing came to mind.
Sure, there’s a litany of TV shows, movies, and music all coming out that I’d love to waste time discussing. Hell, I have a few seconds, so why not. I’m loving the last season of The Office. Parks and Recreation continues to be the funniest / sweetest show on TV. Since House ended though, I’m just out of the drama verve.
It doesn’t help that I don’t watch TV until midnight, and barely last until half-past. Having a day job, making comic books at night, and being a freelancer adds up. In movieville… I know I have to catch Wreck-It-Ralph. Flight looked good too. Add in Lincoln and The Hobbit? And my dance card is plenty full. And in music? Robbie Williams just served up a huge slice of BritPop that I can’t get enough of. Seriously, watch the video for “Candy” and try not to get a little wiggle in your tuchas. But I digress.
When it comes to the world of comics, my “have to have it meter” is so very mainstream. This week, I came very close to buying some Image books that had cool covers… but I was lured away by my staples, Green Lantern, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and the newly NOW’ed Iron Man. I’m not ashamed to admit what a mainstream whore I’ve been lately. But consider this article my wake up call. There’s too much good stuff out there for me to miss. And as an indie creator in the trenches too? It should absolutely be my duty to explore the lesser-knowns.
But where to start? With con season over, my “indie channel” is pretty much cut off until March 2013. This will mean, to me at least, my exploration of the unknown will be largely relegated to the independent rack space of my local comic shop (which is one third a s’mores in Chicagoland, if you get-the-drift). This means my attention will turn towards Dark Horse, Image, Boom!, Dynamite, IDW, and their brethren. And let’s just make it a hard and fast rule – no licensed comics. Sorry to be mean, but frankly every time I’ve tried one, it comes across more as fan-service than an original leap of interest. I know that’s bull-headed, so I welcome your flaming comments below.
I guess somewhere in between these random thoughts lay the issue so many of the smaller publishers and true indie creators are suffering through these days. With CBR, Bleeding Cool, and Newsarama covering the Big Two (and A Half if we count “everything else”), there’s few hubs that I know of online that really explores the other side of the forest. And let us not fool ourselves. Marvel and DC dominate the ‘cape’ market. Boom! had a hit with Irredeemable/Incorruptible, but that ship has sailed. And try as hard as they might, Dynamite’s ‘Let Alex Ross Do Whatever He Wants’ business model burned me one time too many. Hand to Buddha? Image is my last bastion of street cred these days. Doesn’t hurt that Revival is one of the best books being produced today. The key then is to find more like it.
Suffice to say, I’m truly not picky. Prior to picking up Revival because I actually know the creators… I wasn’t one for horror or zombie books. Now? Paint me grey and call me Charlie. The clear ideology of numbers would tell me that the indie scene is rife with genres I’m not presently enjoying. Is there an amazing western, sci-fi, comedy, romance, or mutt of a comic series I can jump into? There’s one place I know instantly to turn to – you.
I throw myself on the mercy of you, the nerd court. I beg of you to pelt me with suggestions of books I’m missing. And then you can follow my thoughts, good or bad, over at Michael Davis World. Shameless cross-promotion? You bet your sweet bippy.
The electricity, heat, hot water, Internet and phone service all work today. Even my elevator works. Doing without is last week’s news.
This week’s news is the election. As I write this, people are voting. We won’t have results until tonight at the earliest. Since I’ve voted already, I’m going to try to ignore the media until the polls close. There’s nothing more I can do, and that is frustrating. I want to do everything, and I can’t. If you are a spiritual person, pray for me.
For the last few years, my Republican brother-in-law has been telling me that the problem with the economy (and Obama’s presidency) is “uncertainty.” Because job-creators don’t know what Obama will do, they hesitate to expand, to hire more people, because what if they make the wrong choice? As someone who started a business (albeit in 1979), I can report that I never knew what was going to happen, nor did I expect to. It was my responsibility to make things happen.
According to Aaron Ross Sorkin in The New York Times, the election won’t make any difference in solving this problem, even if things go my brother-in-law’s way.
What will the future bring? We don’t know. When I was a kid, I thought the future meant I’d have a jetpack, or a flying (electric) car, and my clothes would have those pads on the shoulders like everyone wore on Krypton and the Legion of Super-Heroes. My apartment would clean itself. I thought we’d get our meals in pill form. I thought we’d wear Dick Tracy two-way radios.
Instead, we’re still dependent on fossil fuels. That’s bad. We don’t have pills for dinner. That’s good. I couldn’t have predicted the local food movement, but I’m really happy because now I can tell the difference among 15 different kinds of apples.
Then there are the things I didn’t even think about to form a prediction. Gay marriage became legal instead of marriage fading away as an institution. Instead of working a George Jetson three-hour work week, we expect employees to put in 50 hours or more. I don’t have a robot maid, but I could have a robot vacuum cleaner if I wanted. I could have a robot dog. I carry around more computing power in my pocket than there was on the entire Star Ship Enterprise. That’s dazzling, even if I use a lot of it to send photos of my cat.
We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That’s what makes life interesting.
The notion is simple and appealing. The more the merrier. When DC launched “The Justice Society of America” back in 1940, the ideology was clear. Put more heroes into the book, and children would be more likely to buy it. And the children flocked to it for 57 issues. The rest, they say, is history. Lately, team books have been on my mind. What better way for a company to showcase many of their stars in a single place? And better than that? Where better to shove barely loved tertiary characters for the sake of filling a roster!
But with this notion comes obvious shortcomings, the biggest of which is what I plan on pissing and moaning about for a few paragraphs. Simply put? There’s too many teams, and too many shifts in the rosters for team books to be more than big distractions… and it’s starting to get under my skin.
So let’s start at the top. Too. Many. Teams. In a few months time, we’ll be privy to three Justice Leagues (and one alternate Earth Society), four (or more, it’s hard to say) Avengers teams, five X-Teams, Team Seven, Teen Titans, The Ravagers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a new batch of Thunderbolts. How does a fan even begin? The problem is clear to me. While the appeal of jamming every available hero into a team is palpable for the sheer marketing of it all… all it’s doing is lowering the property values neighborhood wide.
One thing about team books is that they are truly hard to pull off well. Solo adventure books have a freedom to explore and expound. The plots can expand lengths of time, and space, or be confined to a single room and altercation. In team books, the ease with which one can be lazy is palpable. It’s simply par for the course to check in on all the pieces of your puzzle… advance the villains scheme a half step… rinse and repeat until the climax. Bring together the whole team. The McGuffin is found / the super-move is unleashed / the villain makes a crucial mistake. The day is won. Then end with some witty banter, make a few people kiss, and call it a day. I know I’m making sweeping and irrational generalizations here… but as I looked over the last batch of team-based books I’d read? This is exactly what they boiled down to. It’s also why the mainstay of my pull list are solo-outings, and indie books.
Let’s be clear, there have been (and will certainly continue to be) great assembling of teams. Joss Whedon, long before his box-office behemoth days, penned the single greatest X-Book I’ve ever been privy to. His Astonishing X-Men was layered, nuanced, and so beautifully written that it made me believe I could like the X-Men.
And I tried. One arc post-Whedon and I was back out. Why? Because of this modern mentality of the ever-changing team. It’s not enough that both the Big Boys churn out dozens of teams, but now each of those teams changes membership like I change ironic tee-shirts. I recall, in the late eighties, Marvel used to put the heads of the team members in the upper right corner… so you could tell the teams apart. Nowadays, they might as well link to the Wikipedia page of the comic on the inside front cover. Maybe they could text you mid-issue as the team roster changes.
What happens when you continually shift a team based on the needs of your arc, as a writer, I believe it shows your hand. Like the always-entertaining Justice League Unlimited cartoon where the League expanded to such depth that each episode could only follow a handful of heroes (something Jonathan Hickman is obviously turned on by), the team was obviously selected for very specific moments. It lessoned the impact when it came down to brass-tacks. And when a new writer picks up a team book and gets free reign to recruit, it’s becomes painfully obvious where the book will head. Whedon stuck to a core group of five muties, and only added one additional when it made complete sense to the narrative he was exploring. By limiting his team across four volumes of stories, he was able to truly explore the dynamics across the board, and present a total package. It was a time where in fact, the book was better because of the sum of its parts. This is in direct opposition today, where the Justice League, X-Men, and Avengers titles play Russian roulette with their ranks every six issues.
In essence, when you change the guard, you give away the ending. After the first arc of Astonishing, all the cards had been played, so-to-speak. By sticking to that roster? Whedon showed (like in the best ensemble sit-coms) the pudding is in the cracks. It’s not enough to use, abuse, and move on. When you’re stuck with one cast, you’re forced to explore relationships. When you can change stars on the fly? You’re telegraphing everything you plan on doing. And if you dare not use one of those shiny new toys from off the shelf? You’ve angered the fans who signed up in the first place. I can’t wait for my best friend to curse the heavens when Darkhawk is wasted in the upcoming Avengers: The Hunger Games in a few months. But I digress…
Is it too bold to ask for a great disbanding? Would sales truly plummet if Vibe doesn’t get to be in a book? And would Marvel simply cease to profit if Wolverine had only a solo title and a single X-Book? I tend to believe that in the world of team fiction… less is always more. Grant Morrison’s Justice League followed the Magnificent Seven ideology and lasted damn near four years. Try keeping the same smattering of supes for that long today and people might just get antsy. But then again, neither Marvel or DC will be happy to maintain a status quo for four months, let alone four years. Call me cranky, but the seams are starting to unravel a bit. It took five feeder movies to assemble a team worth two billion dollars.
Perhaps the powers-that-be should get the hint. A championship team takes time to build. Keeping them together is what makes a dynasty.
In last Monday’s New York Times Media Watch columns, they ran a list of the ten films released this year that had the highest box office ion their opening weekends. What’s amazing to me is that the top five (Marvel’s The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Hunger Games, Amazing Spider-Man and Twilight: Breaking Dawn: Part 2) can all be classified in the fantasy genre, or, as I like to call it, nerd stuff.
