CBI Archive
A Friday Looking Back on Year Two (a sort of ‘Four Decades’ footnote)
Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 11:59 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:22 PM EST
Everyone has been very flattering about the last month’s worth of reminiscing, for which I thank you all. But people keep asking me, “Well, what about the 2000’s? Aren’t you going to say anything about them?” Even my wife was wondering why I left that decade off. (Well, I know why Julie was wondering. She was hoping to see the story about how we met at the art studio. But there’s not very much of a comics hook to hang that one on.)
The answer is, essentially, that I do this decade the rest of the time. I get all sorts of column fodder out of tracing the arc from yesterday to today on any given project or character.
However, since Fred Van Lente Day has come and gone, it means that I’ve been doing this weekly column thing for a whole ‘nother year. So I suppose a quick look back wouldn’t be completely out of place.
The one thing I notice about these first years of the 21st century, as far as superhero comics are concerned, is that it’s when this guy completely took over the industry.
Marvel and DC aren’t even pretending to do their superhero comics for anyone else any more as far as their main lines are concerned: it’s all fan service, all the time.
I would go so far as to say that doing fan fiction is the bread-and-butter industry at Marvel and DC these days. We are in a climate now where DC Comics can market a book based on setting up a ‘new’ DC universe a year in the future and people BUY it. It boggles my mind that Countdown is a series that tells you right up front that it is setting up something fifty-two weeks away, the important stuff isn’t going to be happening till then — and fans say okay. All the complaints I’ve seen about Countdown are in the execution. Nobody had any trouble with the concept of a comic book series consisting of fifty-two issues of exposition and setup. That is a pure fan fiction reason for doing a story — to EXPLAIN something.
So on the one hand we have companies putting out a line of comics where the story comes second to setting up the history of the fictional universe the characters inhabit, and on the other we have all these stunt-casting books where a Big Name Writer is lured in from some other area — novels, or TV, or movies – and what does the Big Name do upon arrival?
Write fan fiction.
Certainly, the concept of Joss Whedon writing the X-Men sounds like a natural fit — the guy absolutely nailed teen-angst superheroics on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show, after all — but in practice? The book isn’t about stories so much as it is a collection of Greatest Hits X-Moments, where somebody gets off a zinger of a line or a really kewl punch. Let’s not even get into how much time the book spent on Kitty and Peter finally Doing It, something that has been a slash fanfic staple for as long as those characters have been around, practically.
Or take Kevin Smith on Green Arrow, another example of a big-name Hollywood guy coming to comics and getting his geek on.
“Quiver,” the storyline, managed to address all the common fanfic obsessions in twelve issues — the desperate need to Explain Every Seeming Contradiction, the Gratuitous Interaction With Other Favorite Characters, the Hardcore Realistic Violence and the Explicit Sex Scene, the Casually-Inserted In-Jokes (The big villain turns out to be the kid from Stanley and his Monster, all grown up? Come on.) and the Ending With A Return To A Favorite Era. THIS stuff is the great talent coup? If it had been submitted as an outline by a novice writer trying to break in, it would have been laughed out of the DC offices. At least, I’d hope so.
And yet these kinds of books are the big sellers and the Eisner Winners, most of the time.
I mean, they can be good. Done well, you get All-Star Superman or Astro City.
Done badly, you get Ultimates 3 or the Meltzer version of the JLA.
But the bottom line? At the end of the day, it’s all pastiche. Homage. Fanfic. It’s silly to pretend it’s anything else. It’s by aficionados, for aficionados.
Every time I say this, people throw a fit, and I fully expect to be yelled at again. I have to add that I say this as a fan; I’m not jeering or being malicious, just stating a fact. Hell, I love all that stuff too, I’ve written fan fiction of my own for God’s sake. (After the last month of reminiscing I’d think my nerd credentials are pretty much fully on display.)
But as much as I enjoy seeing Grant Morrison riffing on Mort Weisinger in All-Star Superman, I have no illusions about what that book is doing. It’s pastiche. All of you who come by to bellow at me, ”But it’s really AWESOME!” — sorry, but that does not make the book somehow less of a pastiche. Look, I like pastiches, I have bookshelves filled with the things — but it is what it is.
In recent months we’ve seen another kind of fan service story getting a lot of play — the “I always wanted to see this!” comic. The kind of bridge-burning premise that you normally would end a long-standing series on. Jameson finally finds out that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and they have it out once and for all. (I didn’t actually see this one — I heard Peter David did a nice job on it — but however you slice it, that’s a total fanfic premise.) Kitty Pryde and Peter Rasputin finally getting together. Black Canary marrying Green Arrow. And so on. Never mind what these stories do to your long-term plotting possibilities or how they stretch your established characters completely out of shape; this is Giving Fans What They’ve Waited Years For.
Again, some of these could be good — but are they really necessary or good for the series overall? My sense is that the answer is “probably not,” and so they are often done with the implied understanding that it’s not REALLY happening, they’ll doubletalk themselves out of it a year or two down the road. There’s actually a good reason why Marvel and DC used to only do these kinds of plots as Imaginary Stories or What If?’s. They tend to paint your characters into a corner.
Those are just the obvious examples. I could go on and on. And if I sound a bit crabby about such nakedly fan-oriented efforts dominating modern superhero comics, it’s only because it seems to me that a lot of it is unneccesary and overly pedantic (I really don’t care about how all the magic users in the DCU access their powers or which deities are responsible for them. I just want them to, y’know, have magical adventures.) And also because the way this equation usually goes is, as the level of fan service goes up, the level of basic storytelling craft proportionately drops. If I have to choose, I’d rather have the well-crafted piece than the one with the bulletproof continuity. But I see a lot more of the latter than the former.
*
All of this is not to say I didn’t have great fun doing this column all last year. I got lots of interesting mail, for one thing.
The column on paperback cover artists, especially, continues to generate all sorts of fun feedback. I have to say I find it a bit appalling that the mere writing of it made me a sort of de facto authority on the subject for anyone doing internet searches on paperback illustrators. I often get inquiries asking me to authenticate this or that, or asking me for further info on one illustrator or another. I always feel ridiculously abashed and guilty when I have to write back that what I put in the column was pretty much what I know. I shot the works.
Several people have asked me about Fred Pfeiffer, in particular, and confessing my ignorance there really gravels me because I would love to know more about him. He is one of my very favorite illustrators.
There is hope, though. A gentleman named Courtney and I have been corresponding and he is preparing an article about Fred Pfeiffer and his work. He tells me, “I am making some progress on Pfeiffer. I have two solid contacts including his old art director and his 1st cousin! But he is still a mystery.
“Also, I have been spending lots of time in used bookstores looking at all the Bantams, and have had luck finding various Pfeiffer covers! In fact today, I found the book that has that wonderful framed painting that you sent me!”
He means this one.
“It is on a Bantam Sci-fi book by Fritz Leiber called A Specter is Haunting Texas. It would be great if you ever found out who owns it and he could send us a better picture of the original art.”
Alas, I haven’t even been able to do that. I stole it off a message board somewhere and I’m damned if I can find it again. I Google for it using all sorts of keywords and only seem to get my own articles, which is kind of annoying. Although now that I know the actual title of the book I can take another swing at it, maybe. (If you’re out there, sir, drop me a line, okay?)
Courtney also kindly sent a scan of a Pfeiffer original piece used to illustrate Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, which is really too cool not to share. Check it out:
Here’s how it printed. It’s a goddamned crime they reduced it so far down. Pfeiffer deserves better.
Anyway. I should add that there’s still no answer on the mystery George Wilson painting, though I was eventually able to put the owner in touch with Wilson’s widow a couple of weeks ago. At that point I felt a bit silly being a middleman and bowed out, figuring they might just as well e-mail each other directly, and I haven’t heard back from either one. It may be that the secret died with George. I still cruise the vintage paperback listings on BookScans.com every once in a while, seeing if maybe I’ll luck into it, but so far nothing. If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know.
This was also the year that people started sending me review copies of things. That really ramped up after I did the column kidding about how I never get stuff, so I guess I should be careful what I ask for. Chip Mosher at Boom! Studios, especially, is the Hardest Working Man in Show Business — not a week goes by that he’s not sending us SOMETHING. If more publishers had that kind of marketing hustle there’d be a lot less bitching on the internet about the death of comics, I bet. I feel bad because there’s no way I’ll get to review it all, but fortunately there always seems to be one of us here at CSBG that picks up the slack.
There were a couple that I did want to call to your attention, though. My favorite things from Boom always seem to be the action/suspense books, and the latest one I thought was really cool was Hunter’s Moon.
The story is about Lincoln Greer, a father trying to find his son who was kidnapped while they were on a hunting trip together. It really is a remarkable piece of work. The suspense builds relentlessly as, one by one, conventional options (like police help, etc.) are closed off for Linc, until finally he has to strike out on his own, hoping his own skills as a hunter will carry him as he tracks the kidnappers.
What I liked about it was the way the plot is layered on top of character bits in such a way that each amplifies the other — the isolation the father feels from his son in the beginning gets turned up to eleven when the boy is taken. Thus the suspense isn’t coming just from the fact that Linc’s son is in danger of dying, but that the boy’s in danger of dying before Linc can FIX things with him. That kind of thing. For a strict constructionist like me who was taught that plot comes from character and character should be amplified through the plot, it’s nice to see something so well put-together.
The art is very nice too, and I wasn’t so lost in my admiration of the story’s structure that I didn’t notice. Sebastian Cardoso has a solid grasp of storytelling and a look that’s stylish without being show-offy, and the covers from Dalibor Talajic are emotional and impressionistic in a low-key way that reminds me of 70’s underground guys like Sheridan.
I wish they’d chosen a cover format that gave him a little more room, but whatever, that’s probably just being nitpicky.
This book strikes me as an obvious movie deal waiting to happen, and considering that James White writes movies, I wonder if the story didn’t start life as a screenplay. Oh well – Hollywood’s loss is comics’ gain. My only caveat (and this is going to be the common thread for most of my Boom reviews, I fear) is that $3.99 an issue just seems too high for me. I know they want to put out a nice package but I think the economics of single issues are such that they probably are taking a hit on it. It might be worth trying to downgrade the paper or go with a duotone or some other cost-saving measure to get the single-issue price down. Granted, I’m just kibitzing and for all I know their single issues sell like gangbusters. But $3.99 an issue seems like way too intimidating a price point for a new company doing non-superhero stuff, and I really want these guys to last.
Anyway, as it stands, I’d recommend getting this in trade– Boom does nice trade collections, and they are much more reasonably priced– and I really hope Hunter’s Moon gets one.
Speaking of trade collections, Chip also let us have an advance copy of the trade collection of Talent, from Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski and Paul Azaceta.
I quite like Golden’s novels and I was interested to see what his comics read like — I know, he’s been doing them for years, but this is the first time I’ve run across one. My first impression, reading this, without knowing who did what, is that it felt like another adapted screenplay. Only this one wasn’t for a movie but for a television series pilot. I hasten to add, that’s not a BAD thing, but it is what the book felt like.
It’s an interesting premise: the lone survivor of a plane crash mysteriously inherits all the talents and abilities of everyone else who died on the plane, and he is also compelled to somehow complete all their unfinished business, whether it’s a final farewell to a loved one or straightening out a boxer’s crooked deal with a mobster. The story mostly moves along at a nice clip, but in places it felt a little padded. This strikes me as something that would work better in a format like Global Frequency was, a series of one-off adventures with an overarcing premise. Paul Azaceta does nice work as always but it’s a little murky and hard to follow in places. Story first, Mr. Azaceta, then atmosphere, please.
Still, I did enjoy this, and I appreciated getting a look at the script and the thumbnail drawings for issue #1 in the appendix, as well — in fact, I took them to class to show my cartooning students, who sometimes have a hard time getting their heads wrapped around the concept of a thumbnail rough versus a finished page.
Another review copy I’d been putting off discussing wasn’t a comic, technically, but it is great fun.
This is probably because of Bill Reed. Now, our commenters lined up to beat poor Bill like a pinata when he said Dilbert was a reason to love comics, but nevertheless, that expression of affection apparently got us the attention of Penguin Books’ marketing diva, who kindly offered us a copy of Adams new non-Dilbert essay collection.
I was holding out, thinking Bill should be the guy to talk about it here, but maybe he’s still smarting from last time. I’ll take the bullet this time, though, because I gotta tell you, the book is great fun, and I’m not a Dilbert fan.
Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! is a collection of one-page mini-essays culled from the last few years of Scott Adams’ blog, and it’s hysterical. The subjects range all over the place, from politics to airport annoyances to handyman woes — the idea behind the book is to show Adams doing non-office humor. The key to this sort of stream-of-consciousness essay is remembering to keep it funny, and Adams certainly does that.
Comics fans beat up on Scott Adams and Dilbert a lot as being the perfect example of the modern badly-drawn targeted-demographic comic strip. I wouldn’t go that far, but I admit I don’t think he’s much of a cartoonist either. What struck me reading this book, though, is that Adams really is working the same basic territory as the late James Thurber.
Thurber switched from humorous essayist to cartoonist and back again without missing a step, and his humor is in much the same style. Think “21st Century Thurber” when you encounter Adams and I think you’ll be inclined to give him more of a break, comics fans. (If you don’t know Thurber’s work, you really should check that out, as well.) At any rate, Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! is a delightful book and I recommend it to Dilbert and non-Dilbert fans alike.
*
This year the column’s lucky streak continued, as far as the trend of writing about stuff/said stuff coming back into print was concerned. I was delighted to see DVD issues of the original Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, the Filmation Superman and Aquaman cartoons, and new trade paperback collections of stuff like Bob Haney’s World’s Finest Super Sons stories. There was even a re-issue of one of the original Ka-Zar pulp novels from Adventure House; there had to be only about eight of us in the country interested in THAT one.
Anyway, in an effort to consciously invoke this phenomenon, I wanted to suggest a new candidate for a DVD collection.
Thinking of James Thurber reminded me of a television classic that really NEEDS the archival DVD treatment.
My World And Welcome To It was a brilliant effort in 1969 that was loosely based on the life and work of James Thurber. William Windom starred as a Thurber-like cartoonist who was often exasperated by his wife and daughter. The great thing, though, was the way the show combined animation and live-action — at any moment Windom might drift into a fantasy cartoon exaggeration of whatever was annoying him at the moment, or get into an argument with one of his characters, or whatever. And the animation sequences were all lovingly crafted in the Thurber style.
Naturally, this innovative and utterly charming show was so far ahead of its time that it was canceled after a single season, but it was a terrific season. In a world where Firefly, Sports Night, and other noble TV failures are DVD sales perennials, I think the time might be right for My World And Welcome To It.
The above picture is from an illegal bootleg, but it was the best and biggest shot I could find that combined the live actor with a cartoon drawing the way the show itself did. But I don’t want a bootleg. Let’s have a real set while the people involved in it are still around to do commentaries and so forth, huh?
*
And that’s all I’ve got this time out. See you here next week for the start of Year Three!
35 Comments
Bat2supe
December 15, 2007 at 3:40 am
hey, Greg !!
I understand what you mean when you talk about fan-fic.
I think you that you wrote what alot of comic readers think. I enjoy Whedon X-Men but I don’t understand why it stands so high in readers hearts.
I guess that in fact it’s good writing so that makes all the rest easier to swallow.
Countdown is a train wreck i’ll never say it enough, but taking 52 weeks to make things happen that will lead to a great tale isn’t odd to me if there are actually things happening but like u said it’s usually exposition.
I’ll conclude by saying that i can’t agree more by saying that it’s odd that an industry supposed to be ruled by professionnals & be mastering in the art of making comics always falls for easy marketable stuffs without questions about the future.
mrjayberry
December 15, 2007 at 6:29 am
a link to this mystery george wilson paperback could solve the riddle i never read the orginal post but I could have told you about “A Spectre is Haunting Texas” its sitting on my shelf
Rohan Williams
December 15, 2007 at 7:04 am
As always, I really enjoyed the stuff about the old paperback artists- it’s cool that you’re becoming an authority on the subject, even if, like you say, it’s not what you were going for.
As far as the superhero comics thing goes, I think the reason you get ‘yelled at’ for your stance is that it’s not really a very strong criticism, IMO (of course, it’s not worth getting upset over, either). Yeah, it’s all pastiche, but that alone doesn’t make the work any less valid. I mean, Star Wars is pastiche. Indiana Jones is pastiche. Kill Bill is pastiche. They’re all still pretty strong works, and there’s room for the same thing in comics, as long as there’s a market eating it up and helping to subsidise things like the Marvel Adventures, Johnny DC and Vertigo lines, all of which are published by the Big Two and not aimed exclusively at the Comic Book Guy.
Best of luck finding more info Pfeiffer and Wilson!
comb & razor
December 15, 2007 at 7:18 am
i think the difference between Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Kill Bill and what’s going on in comics is that the former are all pastiches of other things. films that are pastiches of other films. there’s still an externalization of the homage. in comics, we have books that are pastiches of themselves.
i believe that makes a bit of a difference: it’s one thing when you have The Authority which is a patriche of JLA or Invincible homaging Amazing Spider-Man, but when you have, say, Meltzler’s Justice League of America, which is a pastiche of… Justice League of America?
well, then the serpent is swallowing its own tail.
Rohan Williams
December 15, 2007 at 7:30 am
Sure, but after seventy years of publication, of course superhero comics are going to start referencing themselves. That, in itself, isn’t a bad thing. I thought Meltzer’s JLA, for example, was bad because of the writing’s technical aspects, but not because Meltzer was a fan of the JLA. Anyway, that’s enough from me on that here- the last thing a good-natured column like this needs is a superhero fan flame-war.
Jacob T. Levy
December 15, 2007 at 7:34 am
FWIW, I think there are a couple of different fan-service and fan-fiction genres that Greg’s muddying together a bit. Nostalgia porn isn’t continuity porn. Continuity porn requires, y’know, continuity.
“If I have to choose, I’d rather have the well-crafted piece than the one with the bulletproof continuity. But I see a lot more of the latter than the former.”
I’m guessing you don’t– because what’s had bulletproof continuity from the Big Two in the past couple of years? Meltzer’s JLA is exhibit A. It’s dripping in nostalgia for the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Super-Friends. But excessively concerned with continuity (issue-to-issue or across the DC line) it certainly ain’t.
For every high-profile continuity patch allowing Colossus or Green Arrow to come back from the dead, one gets many Superboy-punches that declare that continuity doesn’t matter anymore and everyone’s looking forward to bright shiny new day and no we don’t know which version of Wonder Woman we’re looking at now shuddup kid you bother me. DC’s obviously the greater offender here. Starting with Birthright there’s been long, slow-motion soft reboot (justified in-story by by Superboy punches, followed by Alex Luthor mucking around, followed by Mr. Mind mucking around, etc.) Now Superman, Wonder Woman, and the JLA, at a minimum, have to have pastiches *in place of* continuity.
Marvel’s better about the long-term sequence of stuff-that-happened. But simultaneous continuity across books (how did the Civil War fight between Spidey and Iron Man happen, again?) and “does that make any sense” continuity (consistent personalities, say), not so much.
It’s not an accident that nostalgia porn is so heavily represented in out-of-continuity material like All-Star Superman or Justice. Continuity is the enemy of keeping stuff perpetually in the Bronze Age, because, after all, thirty years worth of stuff has happened since then.
Greg Hatcher
December 15, 2007 at 8:22 am
Jacob’s right that I don’t really draw a distinction between obsessive nostalgia and obsessive continuity. My bad. But really, I don’t see much of a difference in terms of a publisher’s marketing stance. Whichever one you’re talking about, it still means you’re only going after the hardcore, every-Wednesday comics fans; the people who’ve been steeped in the stuff for decades.
I would (amiably) disagree somewhat with Rohan. We’re not talking about seventy years. We’re talking twenty or twenty-five years at most — when the audience stopped turning over, in other words, when readers pretty much came and stayed put. It can be argued when this became a trend — most of us date it from when comics shops became the primary retail outlet for superheroes — but that’s when fan service comics really took hold, I think.
It’s no coincidence that era is also when a great many of today’s professionals got into reading comics in the first place. It’s why we keep getting callbacks to crap like Challenge of the Super Friends, which by any measure was a truly awful cartoon.
Aler
December 15, 2007 at 8:36 am
I never read comics as a kid, or since then, but lately I’ve been reading a lot ABOUT comics. I find them fascinating, and I’d love to start reading.
What you discuss is what’s always put me off from doing so. With decades long back stories, and hundreds of in-jokes, are there any comics I could read as a newcomer? Or at this point am I destined to always be an outsider?
Rebis
December 15, 2007 at 10:23 am
Hey Greg. Great column, as always.
I dunno that the idea of Kitty & Colossus or Canary & Arrow is a bad thing. After all, that’s progress, in a way, although I understand why some decry it as moving backward. Yet people do return to old relationships after they’ve grown and changed, and sometimes that pairing is finally, really right. As with so many life-changing character-development arcs, it all depends on how the writers handle it. Considering that most super-hero characters are single, I’d rather also see some get married (or shack up long-term or whatever).
(Of course, in the case of Ollie & Dinah, a large part of what would make this new phase of their lives really NEW — as opposed to a throwback to the ’70s and ’80s when they were a long-term couple who just hadn’t bothered to tie the knot — is the idea that now they have some sort of family. You know, kids, in several senses of the word: Biological offspring and “adopted”; adult, adolescent and grammar-school-age. But the DCU architects seem hell-bent on destroying “the Arrow family”: They took away Dinah’s adopted daughter, and now they’ve apparently killed Connor. So that seems like poor execution to me, a waste of what should have been an interesting new phase in these characters’ existence.)
In other matters … Is there more than one definition of “pastiche” going on here? I always understood it as a hodgepodge, a mix of different (often disparate) elements. That kind of stew is very hard to blend together well, but when it’s done JUST SO, well, it’s great. Hmmm … I’m trying to think of a good example. Perhaps the best one I can come up with right now is “Twin Peaks” — at least its first 15-20 episodes — part murder-mystery, part soapy melodrama, part absurdist comedy, part horror film. Later on, as it got wacky for wacky’s sake and pulled in yet other influences, the pastiche didn’t taste so good.
But it seems like you, Greg, and many commenters mean pastiche not so much as a medley of influences, but as an homage/rip-off of one particular source. Is that right? I mean, is All-Star Superman lifting from anything but the zany Silver Age comics? (Well, I suppose so — there are dashes of the Reeve films, particularly in Quitely’s art — but other than that?) I’m not saying that’s not also pastiche; perhaps the word has evolved. I’m just tying to get a handle on the parameters of your topic.
Anyway. Thanks for all the great Friday reads, whenever they actually get posted ;-), and here’s to another year!
Cei-U!
December 15, 2007 at 10:31 am
I loved “My World and Welcome to It” and would buy a DVD collection in a heartbeat. I’ve never forgotten William Windom’s scathing acceptance speech when he won an Emmy for the show *after* it had been cancelled.
Oh, and good column, Greg!
Dean
December 15, 2007 at 10:37 am
I started reading comics in the Bronze Age, but have not been an ‘every Wednesday’ fan for 20 years.
I’d never dream of picking up 52, or Countdown, or Civil War, or anything that I thought might cross-over into any one of those things. Therefore, the mainstream DC and Marvel universes have almost nothing for me anymore. However, I still LIKE comics.
All-Star Superman is perfect for me, since I can pick it up and read a good Superman story. I suppose Ultimate Spider-Man would’ve been the same experience, but at over 100 issues it is daunting. I liked the Kevin Smith ‘Green Arrow’, but the Whedon X-Men left me cold.
Except for All-Star Superman, I read almost everything in trade. So, continuity outside a given trade (or story) could not possibly mean less to me. I read ‘New Frontier’, ‘Kingdom Come’ and ‘Identity Crisis’ like books. If a character dies in one and pops up in another by a different creative team, then I just assume it is a different version. On those terms, I liked all three of those JLA stories. It is exactly how I read ‘Sandman’, “League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen’, ‘Marvels’, ‘Ultimates’ and everything else I have enjoyed.
I picked up a couple issues of the Meltzer “Justice League of America”, but it was unreadable. That is not a slam, since most issues of on-going series are at least semi-unreadable to me. I loved the Loeb/Sale Superman and Batman stories, but could not follow monthly stuff Jeph Loeb produced either. It just seems like monthly comics are produced for people who are willing to devote a lot more time to them than I am.
Joe Casey
December 15, 2007 at 10:56 am
Actually, the whole fanfic thing has been happening in comics for the past 40 years. I could argue that X-MEN comics have been fanfic ever since the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run (and certainly since Claremont/Byrne). When has the FF ever been anything *but* fanfic since Kirby’s final issue?
If anything, the climate of modern fandom tends to demand pastiche, otherwise it wouldn’t sell like it does. I think the fascination with writers from other mediums providing that pastiche is the unfortunate need — on the general comicbook fan’s part — of outside validation. A confirmation that other people — FAMOUS people — are just as into all the minute details, the Marvel Universe Handbook stats, the Who’s Who entries, etc., that we are.
Actually, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. We’re all geeks, aren’t we? And we’re *this close* from taking over the world entirely.
Joe
(the guy who’s bringing back the Defenders)
Chip Mosher
December 15, 2007 at 11:20 am
Greg - thanks for the kudos on the marketing end. I aim to be the PT Barnum of comics… or as a person that straddles business and the creative end with my writing… maybe the Wallace Stevens of comics is more apt?
Hey Joe — from the post above! You missed a great party at Meltdown. Looks like we are going to have another one to bring in the New Year… hope to see you there!
Best,
Chip Mosher
Marketing and Sales Director
BOOM! Studios
comb & razor
December 15, 2007 at 12:02 pm
i pretty much agree with Joe. as much as people bitch about comics becoming too self-referntial –and i do a good amount of this myself–at this point, it’s pretty much inevitable. that is, when you’re dealing with longstanding, established properties, anyway… continuity and nostalgia are the Devil and the deep blue sea.
Bill Reed
December 15, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Strangely enough, this is the second or third mention of My World and Welcome to It I’ve seen on the comics blogosphere in the last couple months. Hah!
You’ve really nailed it on the head as far as the current comics industry goes.
And Chip Mosher really does deserve our thanks and praise.
John Trumbull
December 15, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Greg, this is the best thing I’ve read in months about the current state of mainstream comics. You hit the nail on the frickin’ head.
Apodaca
December 15, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Unless they’re not. All it takes to not write stuff like that is to just not do it. There’s no law that any Batman story has to correlate with any other. That’s a self-imposed burden.
comb & razor
December 15, 2007 at 5:20 pm
no, it’s a burden imposed by Comic Book Guy, who is ready to scoff and dismiss it as crappy writing or fanfic if its correlation to previous Batman stories (or even concurrent stories running in the 42 other comics Batman appears in that month).
or you hear comments like “it’s a nice little continuity-free/standalone story, but i feel like it lacked weight…”
Apodaca
December 15, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I don’t think you understand the Comic Book Guy character. He wouldn’t dismiss something for matching up continuity.
I don’t hear those comments about “lacking weight”. I see lots of people talking about how refreshing it is to see done-in-ones. Maybe I’ve just been talking to the right people.
comb & razor
December 15, 2007 at 6:48 pm
it looks like part of my sentence dropped out… i meant to say that Comic Book Guy (the primary audience) would scoff and dismiss it if its correlation could NOT be established.
Ian Astheimer
December 15, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Greg, have you and your fellow cover artist researchers considered contacting Leif Peng of Today’s Inspiration?
His site deals mainly with advertising artists from the 40s and 50s, but he may be able to shed some light on a few of the more mysterious artists you’ve spotlighted. Or, he may be able to point you in the direction of someone with more information.
Lucion
December 15, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Just to make sure Chip Mosher keeps sending you the free stuff, I found myself intrigued by your short description of “Talent” and plan to buy a copy of the trade. I really like the quality of the BOOM! trades I own.
Apodaca
December 15, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Ah. That makes more sense, comb & razor. Sorry about that.
Gareth Wilson
December 16, 2007 at 12:09 am
I’m not very familiar with the comics Whedon is referencing in his X-Men run - I didn’t know Colossus was supposed to be dead, for example. But I’m enjoying it on its own terms. I imagine someone with no knowledge of the X-Men, perhaps a Buffy fan brought in through name recognition, would be able to appreciate it too. So does it really matter that it’s a pastiche? It would be useful to think of a contrast - a recent major superhero title that was explicitly not a pastiche and went out of its way to break new ground. Morrison’s X-Men is an example. It was critically praised but I have no idea how well it did commercially. Marvel certainly covered the new ground back up in a hurry.
Lothor
December 16, 2007 at 2:31 am
Way back at comment 9, Rebis said
According to Wikipedia it means both. It says the hodgepodge definition came first, but I’ve always only heard it in the context of imitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche
Greg Hatcher
December 16, 2007 at 8:53 am
It would, wouldn’t it? The trouble is, I got as far as, “Morrison’s X-Men,” and then ran out of gas. And even that was a conscious effort to evoke the feel of the movies and return to the excitement of Claremont/Byrne — he said so in his proposal. When you limit yourself to Marvel and DC superhero books and ask yourself, what are they trying, what’s coming out new? — well, there just isn’t a lot going on that’s not a revival, or an edgy new retelling of an old 60’s story, or a “return to earlier glories.” Welcome to Tranquility, maybe Blue Beetle — that’s about it. And the big sellers are the crossover event books. Innovation in comics is really not to be found in superheroes. You have to look elsewhere, and look HARD if you’re in a comics shop and not a bookstore.
The reason I usually expect to get yelled at when I write these assessments is because everyone wants me to conclude with something like “Companies need to stop giving us crap!” and make the publishers the villains, when the real answer is, we need to stop demanding it. This is all market-driven, they do it because it sells. Apodaca and comb&razor, between them, nailed it. Yes, it’s a self-imposed burden, but it’s there because of what the sales figures are telling them — that’s what creates the fear that Comic Book Guys will shun them if they don’t go that direction. Hence, Comic Book Guy is driving the industry. QED.
Greg Hatcher
December 16, 2007 at 9:23 am
Also, just to clarify a couple of things –
* When I say “pastiche,” I mean it in the sense of derivative work meant to invoke the memory of a familiar original. The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Alan Moore’s Supreme and Morrison’s All-Star Superman are Weisinger-era Superman pastiches. I’m talking about a conscious, deliberate homage that everyone is MEANT to see (as opposed to imitation or plagiarism, which an author hopes no one will notice.)
* When I say “fanfic,” mostly I mean it in the sense of the stuff that is absolutely catering to fan obsessions — who’s hooking up with who, ramping up the violence to ridiculous levels, how the continuity is matching up, referencing favorite old stories. This isn’t to say it can’t be done WELL — certainly Joss Whedon brings more craft to it than some guy running a slash webring — but still, let’s not kid ourselves about what he’s doing there.
* Ian, I certainly will investigate that avenue, thanks. The mystery George Wilson painting is posted here. What makes it difficult is that it turns out there were TWO George Wilsons working in paperback illustration in the 50’s and 60’s — the first is the fellow I wrote about who did all the work for Gold Key and Avon, and the second is a gentleman named George R. Wilson who did a lot of Spillane covers. A friend of George R’s thinks this mystery cover is his, not Gold Key George’s, and she was the one that put us in touch with his widow. But it’s still unresolved, she couldn’t say for sure. So the contest mentioned in that previous column is still on.
* Chip and the other marketing guys aren’t actually showering us with free books — though that would be awesome! — rather, they send us password-protected links to PDF’s of the books we’re asked to look at. It’s really very clever and cost-effective for them, and still timely for us. And it works, because if Boom! sends me one I think is really cool, I’ll end up going out and buying it. I do sometimes print bits of the PDF out if I think it’s something I can use for school, like the thumbnail pages in Talent.
* Is anyone going to answer the guy looking for starter books? Sir, are you interested in trade paperbacks or the standard monthly comics? For trades I might have some suggestions… monthly books, not really. Most superhero books are damnably hard to jump on to in that format, any more, and if you just want to sample things as opposed to jumping on the train for years to come, it gets harder. (One of my big complaints with superhero monthly books is the assumption that readers will blindly commit to six months or a year just to get one story. Decompression works with manga because that comes in digest size, people.)
Louis Bright-Raven
December 16, 2007 at 2:22 pm
As usual, Greg, an insightful and intelligent discourse.
Gareth wrote:
“I’m not very familiar with the comics Whedon is referencing in his X-Men run - I didn’t know Colossus was supposed to be dead, for example. But I’m enjoying it on its own terms. I imagine someone with no knowledge of the X-Men, perhaps a Buffy fan brought in through name recognition, would be able to appreciate it too. So does it really matter that it’s a pastiche?”
The answer to that question is yes, Gareth.
Not so much that it is a pastiche, but that is recognizably so in that those who are knowledgeable see it for what it is. The trick in writing homages or pastiches is to do it well enough to be uniquely your own and not have it be obvious what your source materials are.
However, today’s fandom is so vastly more knowledgeable than they were decades past that we recognize things much more quickly for what they are. We are also overexposed to the same writers constantly across the entertainment spectrum, which only serves to create even more familiarity with a given writer’s work and makes it all that much easier to spot the ‘inferior’ effort.
As the saying goes, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. There’s a lot of contempt in fandom today, and sadly it fuels much of the direction the industry is headed currently. Companies claim they don’t have a clue what to do about it. Creators compromise themselves by producing tons of work for short term gains because they’re fearful of becoming the next “has been” that fandom got bored with and now “hates” (yet by overexposing themselves they walk right into such status all that much more quickly…).
Is there a viable solution to this problem? Yes. And I and many other creators have told the publishers what said solution is. They don’t want to do it, and retailers and fandom don’t seem to want to support us when we attempt to implement the process on our own as self-publishers. So, fandom is stuck with what it has, for better or worse.
Louis Bright-Raven
December 16, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Aler:
My advice in terms of finding comics to read would depend on what types of fiction you read elsewhere. I would not really have you pursue superheroes, per se. So it would depend on what genres you enjoy in books and films before I could make any reasonable recommendations.
Chip Mosher
December 16, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Hey Lucion,
What about the BOOM! trades do you like specifically? I have some ideas of what I think we are doing right with the trades, but certainly would like to hear from you!
Chip Mosher
Marketing and Sales Director
BOOM! Studios
Dan (other Dan)
December 17, 2007 at 12:27 pm
“It would be useful to think of a contrast - a recent major superhero title that was explicitly not a pastiche and went out of its way to break new ground.”
Wildcats 3.0 & Automatic Kafka, maybe? It felt new, at least. (I was really just going to say Automatic Kafka, but added 3.0 to satisfy the ‘major’ qualification.)
I don’t buy Boom studios stuff because it’s 3.99. If they were 3.50 I’d be all over them, but I can’t get over the hump to four dollars. It’s mostly perception that I’m paying too much for a comic, but that’s true for the 3 dollars for most other books. I may get over it at some point. Chip–were the #1 issues of Boom series $3, with subsequent issues back to 3.99, it would make a big difference in my becoming invested in your titles. I know this is a strech (and would be costly!), but it would be worth looking into as a loss leader.
Dan (other Dan)
December 17, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Oh, man, I didn’t notice Joe Casey posting here–that wasn’t supposed to be sycophantic!
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Courtney Rogers
January 11, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Greg-
Thanks for all the Pfeiffer press. I am currently working on all sorts of leads to help unravel the mystery of him. I hope to have some really concrete info soon.
I purchased the Advise and Consent illustration and am very proud to have it! An orginal Pfeiffer in my possesion. how cool is that?
Again, thanks for the great Pfeiffer plug. I only had one small objection to your report: I am a male Courtney! But I forgives ya!
Keep up the great work.
Greg Hatcher
January 15, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Oooops. Fixed now. And my apologies!