CBR: When Words Collide - Apr 25, 2011

[CBR News]

Tim avoids talking directly about 'Secret Warriors' by digressing on early issues of 'The Comics Journal,' back in the days when creators spoke their minds, even when that lead to kicking and screaming.


Full article here (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=32024).

[maniacmatt]

So we've gone from being creatively worthless but financially strong to being financially on the brink but creatively superior to most mediums out there. It's a hard thing to take an opinion on, because I love comics for the artform they are, but I know they have to sell. How do we raise revenue and readership, but keep the quality where it is?

It's a huge question facing the industry that needs to be answered very soon.

[ian33407]

I discovered the Comics Journal while Ted Mc Keever was starting to work onto DOOM PATROL.

Believe me or not, for me it already looked like a kind of achievment for comics. A friend of mine let me read all the previous issues he got. I was just discovering the pre-Vertigo era, Dave Mc Kean and Neil Gaiman were blasting everything. I was in Art-School, and I can say today that Mr Moore, Morrison, Gaiman and Milligan gave me the lessons I needed better than a lot of my teachers.

I'm in script-writing now and 50% of the people I know who want to break trough don't know the difference between the purpose and the plot ( when they think about it) while the others 50%, the professionals, are trying to sound like story-telling gurus, by making you touch differents objects blindfold, and claim " to remain optimistic : if somebody stole your script, then it was a good script" when they aren't bleeding you to death themselves. But I disgress. Just remember if you see a producer or an editor, beware that your project doesn't happen without you, see if you really want to work with these guys.

Some learned well the lesson, thanks to these wonderful CI interviews, when comics was about to really become an Art-Form (officially, which mean right in time for the next century) and if you look at today' interviews, they "all put things in a very organic process" and so on, even if they're doing soap (except for the ones who're really doing their jobs creatively speaking, and you can read it, see it in their books, without having the thrillings opinions putted in your mouth), because everything had become just evenmential.

So you'll hear Tom B and Matt F intellectualizing for hours they had to scheduled the differents agendas of all the protagonists for any-given event...This is creation today. A writer who is actually just doing the job is now ALMOST A GENIUS, when what he's doing was the syndicated-minimum at a different epoch.

That's all I had to say.

[RJT]

I'm not going to defend Bagley, as I'm going to guess that my opinion of his art is similar to yours. I do take issue with your assumption that Bendis feels the same way about Bagley's art as we do. I think it's a big leap to assume that Bendis is lauding Bagley's efficiency because he finished three pages in a day, when I read it that he was pointing out Bagley's enthusiasm for the new material.
Bagley's art is not something that I enjoy at all, but many people do, including Bendis. If he only got hired because he was "able to get these things out monthly" then you'd imagine guys like Al Milgrom would still have regular assignments. It's a weird leap to make that Bagley's only currency is his efficiency and then to build an entire column around it. Especially if you're trying to contrast it with Secret Warriors, a book that has had several different artists, often changing mid-arc. In fact, I'm not really sure what anything in this potpourri of observations has to do with each other.

[ScotsScribbler]

I really miss TCJ. I am patiently waiting for 301.

Towards the end it just wasn't as good, but they had a fantastic run where they were interviewing, Gail Simone, Alison Bechdel, Darwyn Cooke, Keith Knight and all sorts of feature length interviews with some of the most interesting people in the business.

[DarkBeast]

Really great column, Tim. So many interesting ideas and comparisons between then and now.

There's no doubt that comics have improved in quality tremendously, but the non-stop "rah-rah promotion engines" have worn out their welcome, for me at least. I have to question these creators' mental state, if not their honesty. There's something psychologically bizarre about a group of people who fall all over themselves praising each other. Is there an opposite of the sadomasochistic dynamic? Because if there is, that's what these creators have contracted. What is with their seemingly insatiable need for humbling themselves and praising to the heavens everyone else? I also think it's kind of ridiculous that these guys not only work together, but socialize together all the time, AND seem to spend all of their alone-time bantering back and forth on twitter. I heard one interview with Hickman where he talked about all these little shopping expeditions to used video stores that he takes with Bendis and Brubaker, when he doesn't even really like movies the way they do. So why would he even DO that??? It's almost like when you go to work for Marvel (DC less so) you sign yourself up for some type of life-style cult or something, where you have to constantly be thinking of everyone else in the cult and earn points for saying nice things about them. It's like these creators have to throw away most of their other social contacts and now have to be friends mostly with these other creators who work at the same company they do.

A few weeks ago I listened to an interview with Matt Fraction on iFanboy. It got to the point where he was literally praising Stuart Immonen for like a half-hour straight. Everytime the interviewer would try to get Fraction back on track, try to chuckle it off and say that the writing was pretty good too, Fraction would instantly react to that by making a self-deprecating comment and then go back to praising Immonen...and his editors...and Ed Brubaker...and Marvel as a whole. THIS WENT ON FOR LIKE HALF AN HOUR. Has this guy been through Pavlovian conditioning to humble himself and praise other people everytime someone asks him a question?? I mean, Alan Moore for example has always given his artists a lot of credit, but you didn't hear Moore or any of the writers from his generation CONSTANTLY selling themselves short and then telling you that their artists deserve all the credit and were perfect gods on earth. To the older generation, that kind of pandering would have been embarrassing, and annoying, and kind of insulting to their artists in a way. Because, yeah, Alan Moore will tell you that his artists are great, but he's not going to belabor the point, because he understands after a certain point good art speaks for itself. Art that really is THAT GOOD doesn't need so much advertising.

I really think these current writers have self-esteem issues or something. They probably got this way because OTHER PEOPLE started calling them "geniuses" all the time, when they're not really geniuses. They're good writers, a lot of them, but...c'mon. "Genius" is a big word and shouldn't be thrown around so much, especially since it comes from a Latin stem having to do with "generation". How are you going to call a current creator a "genius" when he hasn't influenced/created the next "generation" yet?

I think this constant praise-circle is really a vicious cycle. Each creator hears himself praised so damn much, praised to ridiculous extents, so when it's their turn to talk they have to try to do psychological damage control by selling themselves (too) short and then praising everyone else. It really is bizarre to watch this unfold. Before "social networking" things were a lot saner.



Other than Frank Miller on "Daredevil," there was practically nothing of interest coming out of either Marvel or DC at the time

I have to smile that this. I agree with you completely. (Although what about the Claremont/Byrne X-Men stuff? Personally, I think the Byrne issues have been far overrated compared to the Cockrum and Paul Smith issues. So I'm fine with X-Men being ignored here, if only to not give the Byrne issues any more props.) I agree that compared to all the other corporate comics at the time, Miller's Daredevil was so far ahead of everything else that nothing else is really worth mentioning in a positive light. Sometimes I listen to comics podcasts and I hear these hosts speaking in hushed tones about random things like late '70s Iron Fist comics, and I just have to shake my head. People seem to confuse childhood fancy with quality and importance.

Thirty years later, Frank Miller's surprisingly short run on Daredevil is still the raison d'etre for so many comics in existence. Just look at Punisher MAX, to take one example. Without Frank Miller's Daredevil, that comic doesn't even happen. Today's supposed "A"-list writers are STILL playing around with the characters, moods and archetypes that he gave out on a monthly basis back them. No one even knew how to use Bullseye effectively before Frank Miller instantly figured the character out. Basically every comic with a Bullseye appearance since owes its existence to Frank Miller's Daredevil.

I'm rambling too long here, but I think something has to be said about CREATION. The comics today are way better on average, but do they really create anything that a next generation can build upon, the way the current generation builds on the past? What sort of INFLUENCE will something like Bendis's Avengers work have? It's sold a lot of copies, but so did Peter Frampton's albums, and they didn't really influence anybody. I'm not sure the "good" comics today really serve as a solid or unique enough foundation to build anything on, assuming that there will be any readership left to speak of anyway. Secret Warriors is a good book, but what kind of real, almost "material" inspiration could it provide for following generations? Even my favorite mainstream comics of the last 5 years, Morrison's Batman--I'm not sure they really inspire or set the groundwork for future creators, or that the great concepts are things that can lend themselves to any future. Sure, there are a lot of "futurist" ideas in mainstream comics now. But that's not the same as something that actually inspires the future. What inspires the future is often something simple (maybe even banal) but original, whereas what we've got now in comics are a lot of incredibly complex works...that are incredibly derivative. Was Miller's Daredevil derivative? Not to anywhere near the extent that comics today are derivative. Miller simply blended a couple unique influences and added his own flavor. Today all the creators have SO MANY influences that they're trying to blend--and they're often the same influences, so their flavors are all similar.

[NickFury90]

^And its kinda funny that looking back on them, they don't even read that well. Gone back to the Dark Phoenix Saga lately? It somehow manages to be bloated AND too condensed at the same time, with more purple prose than 3 Geoff Johns-written events combined. And yet its had a huge impact on readers and creators alike, showcasing a lot of the possibilities of the comic book medium.

Is all the innovation just mined out? Are we just gonna keep building on styles and stories from years gone by? Is the biggest innovation of the decade really that "coffee table talk" popularized by Bendis?

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, my favorite ongoing right now is Uncanny X-Force, which builds on the superhero soap opera style Claremont made in the 1980s, but it does it in a fun and fresh manner.'

Still, I do wonder about that sometimes, that maybe the future is just gonna be refinement.

[TimothyCallahan]

Yeah, RTJ, if I didn't articulate it in the column, I do believe that Bendis genuinely likes Bagley's art, but my point was that he (and almost every other Bagley supporter) emphasize his speed above any other attribute. I certainly didn't base this column around Bagley, it was just something that popped up as I was writing it.

You really don't see what any of these observations have to do with each other? Um, they're all about comic books?

DarkBeast, I do have a fondness for Claremont/Byrne X-Men comics (and I'm pretty sure my first ever comic was an issue of their run, though my memory of that changes sometimes), but that stuff certainly wasn't of much interest to TCJ at the time, beyond a single seemingly out-of-place article and a weird interview with Byrne where he shows his prickly homophobia (which Howard Cruse totally calls him on in a letter in an issue after that).

[TimothyCallahan]

Oh, and one thing I COMPLETELY forgot to mention in the column. Speaking your mind had its price back then. Harlan Ellison and Gary Groth were sued for $2,000,000 for speaking honestly and FAVORABLE about Michael Fleisher.

And the Ellison counter-suit against TCJ lingered even longer, I believe.

[bmontclare]

This was a great article. Weird to mash in TCJ with a look at Secret Warriors... But it all works. And those old issues of TCJ are really a goldmine. It was mostly before my time as a reader, but the depth of articles and interviews in a pre-world wide web is pretty astounding. From the persepctive of a reader discovering these old mags today, my favorite was a British mag called ARK. It has a ton of Grant in his shit-talking phase ('It's tragically easy to write a better comic than Tony Isabella' &c). Grant is now much more inclusive and supportive of fellow creators--a more mature stance, of course... But it speaks to other points regarding creator fellowship which you raised.

Speaking of Grant...I hate to quibble, but saying he brings 30 to 40,000 readers to a title is astronmically generous. Don't get me wrong, there aren't many bigger fans of his work than me (although you're probably one of them!). But he has current books that don't sell 20,000. And on flagships like Batman and X-Men he didn't bump them nearly as high. That's one of the most frustrating things about this business: you have one of the best talents, and he's promoted well, and he has the cred... But the sales still don't soar.

[TimothyCallahan]

I just made up the 30 to 40,000 readers thing (like I do with so many of my facts!), but I checked the numbers a minute ago, and when he took over Batman, the sales jumped from 76,000 to 113,000. And the drop in readers for Batman and Robin from the end of his run to the beginning of Tomasi's run was close to 30,000.

So, yeah, my numbers were made up, but not totally out of whack with reality, even if Joe the Barbarian has to be excluded from any and all calculations.

[RJT]

Yeah, RTJ, if I didn't articulate it in the column, I do believe that Bendis genuinely likes Bagley's art, but my point was that he (and almost every other Bagley supporter) emphasize his speed above any other attribute. I certainly didn't base this column around Bagley, it was just something that popped up as I was writing it.

You really don't see what any of these observations have to do with each other? Um, they're all about comic books?



But if that was your point about Bagley, it's totally contradicted by what you say later on about efficiency being the coin of the comic realm. Because the reason Bagley gets so much attention for being so reliable and steady is because most big name artists working in comics today aren't. But that isn't even what makes Bagley popular. Because there are plenty of artists who are capable of a similar monthly output (Mike Norton, for example, is someone who always seems to get a book out a month, and has on a few occasions produced more than one title a month, or old school guys like Al Milgrom) who aren't big name stars. So whatever fans see in Bagley's artwork, I don't think his ability to meet deadlines is it, because I don't think people really care if somebody can draw 30 pages a month if they think those pages look like shit.

Tie it in with the fact that you were comparing Jim Shooter dissing George Tuska with Bendis praising Bagley to make a point about how the atmosphere around comics has changed. The only way that the connection makes any sense is if Bendis doesn't like Bagley's artwork and is only feigning his enthusiasm for it. Otherwise, you're just pointing out that Shooter didn't like Tuska's art and said so, and that Bendis DOES like Bagley's artwork and says so. It just seems like you went out of your way just to throw in a dig at Bagley for no reason. Like I said, I'm no Bagley fan, but you don't really seem to make any "point" about the changing comic industry, just that you don't like Mark Bagley and don't see how anybody could as anything other than a workhorse.

I don't know if I'm being clear, but despite your "um, they're all about comics" defense, you do seem to be trying to tie all of these observations together ("I'm pretty sure we can look at these topics through the lens of 2009-2011") and I don't think they hold together. Dazzler sells more than Secret Warriors? Hickman's subversive because he doesn't mention Nick Fury's in the book's title? Shooter thinks Tuska sucks, Bendis thinks Bagely is great? Something about how today's creators are more concerned with pushing product than creating art? Isn't it more likely that the creators of the 70s and 80s had more of a malaise than creators of today, because things are actually a lot better for today's creator instead of surmising that they don't care about the health of the medium as much? I mean, Marv Wolfman is never going to see a dime of Blade movie money, and Bendis is having a pilot shot of his creator-owned Powers. I think that might be a bigger factor in the difference between their attitudes than some kind of fundamental switch to the "Jeph Loeb axiom of comics achievement."

[TimothyCallahan]

Right. You got it.

[nyrdyv]

Though all of the conclusions you come to may be debated, the content and form of your article today was truly great!

[bmontclare]

I read loud and clear on your qualifications regarding sales numbers. But still I'll point out that Batman went from 76,000 to 113,000 with a heavily publicized start. It was down to 93,000 after two issues. And by the start of the second arc it was at 83,000. And the core numbers have been sliding ever since...

But my point: everything is lined-up for Batman to succeed. There's no more marketable and popular character. An ace writer, ace "regular" artist. A much-hyped premiere issue (and two subsquent re-launches in "& Robin and Inc.). Retailers were behind it (ordering more than it would appears to have sold). It was and has since been critically well-received. A huge blockbuster movie followed by the hugest blockbuster movie to drive new customers. ...but where are the readers?

Sometimes it feels like the greater "profession" is also the biggest part of our readership. Other creators, the bloggers &c, and the retailers--it makes sense that these are the people paying the most attention to our stuff. But at the same time, it feels off... And bringing this full circle to TCJ: maybe that's how it's always been. Reading those fanzines--seeing the old relationship between creators and readers, and everything else--our world really hasn't changes that much. But with the internet and social media, one would think the world should be getting bigger--but the numbers tell a different story.

[djm72]

Comics are suppose to be cheap, easy to read entertainment. Yeah the comics of the Bronze age have a lot of story packed into a very small number of issues, the art isn't very detailed and the dialogue is often silly, but who cares? They were a fun read.
Creators today are recycling the characters and ideas from the bronze age (and occasionally the silver age) but trying to present it as new and innovative. Really it's not. What we get today is a story in six-issues it used to take two to present in the bronze age (and it now takes five minutes to read a comic instead of 20 minutes). And every story arc is an event until a full-line event comes. There's no downtime. There is no getting to know the characters. It's just big crisis after another. You can't even jump on until after a six issue arc is complete and you have to get the first issue of the next big arc.
But hey, the art is detailed and the dialogue is sophisticated and stories feel important. And fans are abandoning the medium in droves. Which is why everyone is holding hands and praising each other's work. Cause it's all about being on board promoting comics and saying how great they are. Except the really aren't. The average comic on the rack is beautiful to look at but basically devoid of any character development and presents a story that is a razor thin chapter of a six part book that will take you six months to read and cost you $25.

[Robert_Loss]

Tim and others, you might find my review of Hickman's SHIELD over at The Panelists to be of interest. Or not! I just registered and I'm not sure if I can include links, and since I also don't want to be a total shill on my first visit, I'll leave it at that.

djm72, I agree with a lot of what you're saying except that first paragraph. I don't think comics are supposed to be anything...not in the strictest sense, anyway. Yeah, I'd like them to be good, and I think there's something worthwhile about quality, but in the big picture, no art form is supposed to be anything. Apply that line of thinking to any other art form and it seems odd. Are movies supposed to be cheap giddy fun for an hour and a half? Do prose novels have to be ponderous explorations of the modern psyche? Two different arguments, perhaps, but I thought I'd pitch in on that.

Part of the problem today was surprisingly similar back in the early 1980s, when my comic book reading, including random TCJ issues, was taking off: the Big Two still dominate the public discussion. In no other creative industry do you have two major companies controlling some 85% of the market. Granted, in the early 1980s, it was probably 95%. There are more independent presses today, but a number of them follow the same models of storytelling: all plot, little character development, strong artwork, etc. So much of this still comes from the view of comics as a genre rather than a form.

As for TCJ and bickering, I'll say this: there's a way to be critical without being a snarky jagweed. That Grant Morrison comment about it being "tragically easy to write better than Tony Isabella" just drips with hyperbole. But a sense of competition among writers, artists, and editors can get everyone off their behind and create. In music, we call it going back "to the woodshed". Someone ups you and you figure out how to outdo them. It's healthy, and some of what I remember from TCJ was healthy. All of that was going on, coincidentally, just BEFORE the seismic boom of Moore/Miller/Maus. I don't think that really is a coincidence.

[DMK]

There are more independent presses today, but a number of them follow the same models of storytelling: all plot, little character development, strong artwork, etc. So much of this still comes from the view of comics as a genre rather than a form.


And that's the most depressing part. In the early '80s there were few independent publishers, but at least, with some notable exceptions (DNAgents, Star Slayer) they tried branching out away from the majors into either territory that had been abandoned (Pacific's Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds) or into something entirely new (Love & Rockets, Cerebus). There was some experimentation going on in those golden days of yore, but the experiment has seemingly been abandoned in favor of the "tried & true"...which, in truth, is itself in critical condition and failing fast.

[bluetyson]

Comics are suppose to be cheap, easy to read entertainment. Yeah the comics of the Bronze age have a lot of story packed into a very small number of issues, the art isn't very detailed and the dialogue is often silly, but who cares? They were a fun read.
Creators today are recycling the characters and ideas from the bronze age (and occasionally the silver age) but trying to present it as new and innovative. Really it's not. What we get today is a story in six-issues it used to take two to present in the bronze age (and it now takes five minutes to read a comic instead of 20 minutes). And every story arc is an event until a full-line event comes. There's no downtime. There is no getting to know the characters. It's just big crisis after another. You can't even jump on until after a six issue arc is complete and you have to get the first issue of the next big arc.
But hey, the art is detailed and the dialogue is sophisticated and stories feel important. And fans are abandoning the medium in droves. Which is why everyone is holding hands and praising each other's work. Cause it's all about being on board promoting comics and saying how great they are. Except the really aren't. The average comic on the rack is beautiful to look at but basically devoid of any character development and presents a story that is a razor thin chapter of a six part book that will take you six months to read and cost you $25.

Yeah. Colouring is what has quantum leaped - and wretchedly thin padded story is no fault of the colourist. :)

[Spiros]

Why do these discussions always degrade into "in my day ________ were better"