New Mark Waid interview

[JulianPerez]

Not everything of Warren Ellis is my cup of tea. But what I've seen recently of his Superman hits the mark. I wish that all of the Superman writers would take Ellis' essay on "Why They'll Never Let Me Write Superman" to heart.

This reminds me of the time that Mark Waid wrote an article explaining "Why I am not Allowed to Touch Superman."

Because he insists on dinner and movie first?  :lol:

Ooooh!

This is almost too easy. You know what? Insert your own joke here, folks.

Do you have a link to that essay, or remember what Warren Ellis talked about? I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm betting it involved using lots and lots of profanity.

[Super Monkey]

since  you can't find it anymore, I will post it here:

WHY THEY'LL NEVER LET ME WRITE SUPERMAN
Brief, Disconnected Notes On An American Mythology

I'm not a superhero fan. I had to learn the subgenre when I began writing for the States. I've had to learn to read them. Now, I can appreciate some of them. Not many, it has to be said... but some. The one I always wanted to like was Superman.

Superman is a uniquely American icon, and the first true myth of the electronic age. One special facet to it is that it began as a myth told to children by children. Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster were youths when they created Superman, a far cry from today's handful of twentysomethings and carloads of middle-aged men who give today's children their superheroes.

(Perhaps this is why, to me, a strong adult atory told with Superman would seem curiously inappropriate -- and, conversely, the 20th Century social nightmare given inky form that is The Batman seems to me strangely inappropriate as figure of children's tales.)

Superman, then, is the agent of modern fable -- the most compelling fable the 20th Century gave us. Soap opera is unworthy of him, and, as has been proved many times, is not big enough to contain him and the central concepts of his story. At the heart of myth and legend is Romance. That is not the same as the weak, whiny demands of soap opera that begin with "characterisation" and crap on with demands for ever more levels of "conflict", "jeopardy", "ensemble writing", "tight continuity" and all the rest of that bollocks. These things are unimportant. Many of them just completely get in the way of the job at hand. SUPERMAN requires only the sweep and invention and vision that myth demands, and the artistry and directness and clean hands that Romance requires.

SUPERMAN is about someone trying their best to save the world, one day at a time; and it's about that person's love for that one whose intellect and emotion and sheer bloody humanity completes him. It's about Superman, and it's about Lois and Clark. And that's all there is. That's the spine. That must be protected to the death, not lost in a cannonade succession of continuing stories.

That's what, in the continuing rush to top the last plotline, I see getting lost.

I understand, accept and even to an extent agree with what's going on; The SUPERMAN creators are trying to keep the books vital, keep them moving, keep those sales spikes coming. But they seem to me to be getting away from the sheer wonder of the Superman myth.

(The single title that does seem to be hewing to the line I've just scratched in the sand is Mark Millar's charming and energetic SUPERMAN ADVENTURES.)

What SUPERMAN must avoid is genericism. It must live up to its billing. The comics must crackle with invention and mythic power. They must always resolutely be of Now, be utterly modern -- if not utterly of Tomorrow. They must thrill and frighten and inspire and give us furiously to think.

Crucially, they must not simply offer us a parade of costumes and odd single name/titles. There must be stories where something important is at stake. Something worth saving, be it the life of a human, the soul of a city, the fate of a world, or the future of a child.

Mike Carlin always characterises the ongoing thrust of the Superman titles as the "Never-Ending Battle". Those battles must have stakes beyond those of smacking about this month's new costume with an odd name.

(Superman tackles natural disaster and human crime. It's his belief that nothing else falls within his purview. War and the politics of famine, he feels, are part of human government, and so not his place. He will not interfere in the growth of the human race, as much as it sometimes breaks his heart.

He merely, obliviously, shows the human race, by example, how to be great.)


Warren Ellis
Southend
11 August 1998

[JulianPerez]

Thanks, Super Monkey.

Ask any five year old about what Superman does, they say "he saves people." This essay is basically saying that in 200 words. Michael Chabon said that the most interesting thing about Superman is his pre-modern origins; Alan Moore said that it was his acid-trip oddity. These are interesting perspectives unique to the men that hold them. On the other hand, I almost dozed off while reading this essay looking for an original idea. Superman's stories must be filled with imaginativeness and global menace, Superman shows us all to be great... show of hands - does anybody really disagree with all that?

To make matters worse, Warren, that incessant tease, doesn't really answer the question the title of the essay poses - why WON'T they let him write Superman? Ellis is the comic book equivalent of Howard Stern, a person who is raging and anti-authority...in a corporate approved kind of way. Nowhere is his Madonna-like insincerity more obvious than in this essay, where he puts forth an EDGY question that THEY don't want you to ask, that implies that THE MAN is out to get him...and then, when pressed, doesn't give names, doesn't even point out mistakes in the approach the writers are currently taking, but babbles something or other about Romance and Mythic Fable. In other words, he doesn't find fault with anything or anyone (who is in a position of authority, that is). And uses an opportunity to give an inoffensive perspective so generalized it could mean anything.

Perhaps I am inclined to think ill of Warren Ellis because I loathe him, but this whole essay feels like a not so subtle hint that he really, really wants work. Who knows? Maybe essays like this are required for getting a job at a comics company, sort of like how some companies make you write papers that start with "I am good for this Customer Service position because..."

[Uncle Mxy]

Ask any five year old about what Superman does, they say "he saves people."

Bah!  It's more like "he flies", not "he saves people".  Today's 5 year old sees Superman beating up bad guys far more often than saving someone or something in particular, especially if the first exposure is by way of a video game.

To make matters worse, Warren, that incessant tease, doesn't really answer the question the title of the essay poses - why WON'T they let him write Superman?

His answer was essentially: Because they wouldn't let me write Superman the way I think he ought to be written, then he gave numerous examples of what's important in writing Superman which just wasn't happening.  What did you want him to do...  prove a negative?  Prove the lifelessness  that most every reader of 1998 knew to be true?  All you had to do was look at Electric Superman to know what was wrong.  

I could criticize various Superman writers on non-Superman work until I'm red, yellow, and blue in the face.  But frankly, this is a Superman board.  So, I have to ask -- what's wrong with Ellis' Superman?  Check out Ellis' non-elseworlds Superman, the nice dialogue between Lois & Clark in the current JLA: Classified run.  Tell me what he does wrong, here.

[Captain Kal]

A couple of things I missed earlier ...

Martin Pasko was known as Pesky Pasko when he was a fan nitpicking about stories in the lettercols.  He certainly turned out to be a decent comics writer.

Levitz introduced the great Encyclopedia Galactica amongst other fictional reference works for the 30th century.  While it's clearly derivative of Frank Herbert's similar fictional references in his SF books like the Dune series, it added that scope and realism to the LSH that even the Weisinger era lacked.

Waid has done exceptional work such as Kingdom Come and his Flash stories.  I see the direction he, Morrison, Johns, and the others taking DC as being positive.  Or, at least, not as bad in comparison with what's recently gone on before.

[nightwing]

Let me back up for a moment and respond to Captain Kal's defense of fans turned pro.

I didn't mean to suggest that things immediately went into the crapper once this crowd showed up, but I do think that what we saw over time was a shift from stories crafted in the traditional mold to ones that are more self-referential, more derivative and less accessible.

This is true, incidentally, of movies and TV as well.  When these media started out, creators came from all walks of life with all sorts of interesting personal histories; they had been through Depressions, wars, etc.  Most of them dreamed of being the next Ernest Hemingway or Norman Rockwell.  They invented comics; the pacing, the layouts, the story structures, but beyond that they also brought their life experiences and knowledge of things outside the world of comics.  They had one foot in the real world and given half a chance, they'd have bolted from comics to find their fortunes in that real world.

Over time, a new generation of creators grew up; their experiences, on the whole, were more limited, more insular.  The youths of the late 40s and early 50s were the first to have popular entertainment geared directly to them, the first to enjoy the mass marketing of toys and licensed characters, the first to have American culture devoted to prolonging their childhood instead of being encourage to grow up quick and start supporting the family.  They were bombarded with cartoons, kid's shows and comic books and those influences shaped their imaginations and united them in a common, shared mythology.

By the time these guys and gals grew up, they had definite ideas of how their favorite characters should act, what they should do and what they wished they'd done but for whatever reason never had.  And once they got the reigns, they made those things happen. They weren't frustrated novelists and would-be magazine illustrators "slumming" with comics work; they were people who grew up with a comics job as their goal. Same with movies and TV; the people making them now grew up on them and their lives have been focused on getting to Hollywood.  They know everything about lighting and editing and scoring, and they sure know the formula for big box office.  But do they really have any stories to tell?  In my experience, usually not.

Here's an example for you.  Read this 10-page Batman story from 1954 (http://batman.superman.nu/bat-comics/divermystery/) and see how many facts are crammed in, how many visual references to real-world architecture, how many plausible (if unlikely) dangers and escapes. Then tell me the last time you saw any of that in modern comics.  A 40s or 50s Batman comic was about solving a crime; a modern one is about Batman butting heads with Robin, or Nightwing, or Superman or whoever.  Modern heroes are totally focused on intrigues and frictions among their little cast of characters and whenever they do get around to facing some threat, it's probably some villain with just as complex a back story, preferrably a former ally.  Even now the "big event" in the back titles is the return of Jason Todd, a character who last figured in the comics 20 years ago.  The 1954 story is accessible to anyone who can read; a modern comic requires a degree in Pop Culture history to decipher.

Anyway, I guess my point is that while there are certainly a lot of talented fans turned pros out there, the net result over the decades has been to create a medium that is self-absorbed and unwelcoming to new readers.  The first generation of fan-creators got to do things with the icons that had never been done.  By now they are expected to do whatever new crazy thing the shifting winds says is "kewl."  Today's fan is tomorrow's writer or artist, so the publishers pretty much let fan opinion, or their perception of fan tastes, take precedence over things like fidelity to a character's core values or any sense of continuity of theme.  (Is Batman a hero or a nutjob?  Well, what do the Wizard polls say we should have him be this month?)

[Captain Kal]

Well said, Nightwing.  I have to agree with you on all points and kick myself for not realizing some of them independently (e.g. prolonging childhood remark heh heh).

Julian, Levitz didn't fail and even excelled for characterization on some fronts.  The original Computo story just had Luornu lose a body so the only consequence was she changed her name to Duo Damsel (lost a body, so what?).  Levitz noted the trauma of losing 1/3 of yourself and how Luornu was so traumatized ("It felt like dying, Chuck!") that she couldn't face a resurrected Computo.  We had Chemical King struggling with his sense of inadequacy when he gave up his life to prevent WW VII.

[MatterEaterLad]

I never get hugely enthusiastic on the internet, but that was a "hell" of a post, nightwing...

Oh, and another classic Bats strip in Batman Through the Ages that I missed...