Superman Through the Ages! Forum

http://www.monitorduty.com/mdarchives/2005/09/alan_kistlers_i.shtml

lots of Superman talk

I pray Rao this is true.

If so, I'm about to become a very, very happy comic geek again.

Thanks for sharing that, SM.

I've been saying the same thing as Waid for a while now (but no one believed it). Infinite Crisis is poised to change the DCU as much as its predecessor. Like the saying goes, "it's always darkest before the dawn."

It's important to note that Mark Waid isn't the only one saying things like this--Dan Didio and Gail Simone are as well.

I sure hope that Infinite Crisis will spell the end of the Iron Age.. FINALLY!

Same here.

I'm crossing my fingers...

I could care less if the Silver Age came back, it won't...

But spare us the last almost 20 years...

The Sliver Age can't come back, it is only a time period from the late 1950's to late 1960's, so unless DC has invented a time machine, it will never happen. Hopefully, the Iron Age will finally come to an end, allowing a new age that is worth reading to be born.

Yep, a hero that reacts to the time...

Mark Waid is one of the writers I don't generally like, but who in interviews - despite my best instincts - I nod my head vigorously and say, "hey, you PREACH it, Mark!" I admire his energy and I almost never disagree with his point of view as expressed in this form.

Grant Morrison's interviews generally make him sound like a pompous twit, and I've never agreed with a single thing that Warren Ellis has ever said in his entire career, almost to the point where when he says "Hello, my name is Warren Ellis" I find myself doubting this on general principle. John Byrne's points sound reasonable on a light reading until one thinks it over and the hideous flaws and lack of logic come to the fore. Mark Waid, though, interviews well.



You TELL it, Mark! People that say that the love of the Silver Age is based on nostalgia haven't read a Silver Age comic. We love the Silver Age because of the imaginative power of the concepts and the talent of writers and artists that worked in that period.



Well, I'm glad SOMEBODY's telling it like it is about the jerkish Batman we've seen since Morrison's League. It's an unintentionally funny act of titanic hypocrisy, though, that it should be Mark Waid, whose Batman characterization in JLA was easily the low nadir watermark for paranoid, "jerk" Batman: plotting, making traps and games to KILL HIS FRIENDS. Wow.  Mark Waid coming out against "jerk" Batman is sort of like Stalin saying, "you know, I'm really against genocide."

As to his larger point, my instinct is to agree with the point Mark is making here. But I think Mark is confusing a tree for a forest, a train car for a whole train.

I've never bought the concept of the "dark/light" duality that fans talk about, with the 80s being a "dark" time and the 50s-70s being "light." The problem with things like (and let's get specific here) the Miller Batman, cyberpunk dystopia HAWKWORLD, and cyberpunk dystopia Giffen Legion, is not that it is "dark" or dealing with themes of fear and corruption. It's because they're wildly off the mark with what the comic is supposed to be about. The Legion isn't about rebel fighters using their real names in a 1984-esque totalitarian regime. The DC Heroes are not sleazy sex friends, as they were made out to be in Howard Chaykin's miniseries. Green Arrow uses those boxing glove arrows - period, Grell, so quit whining. The problem with these stories is not that they were "dark," but that they were stories done in a dark style wildly at odds with what the comic is supposed to be about.The problem with Superman killing is not that such a story is dark. The problem with such a story is that a concept like that is so totally divorced from who Superman is supposed to be.

If someone did a story where James Bond became a pacifist and refused to commit murder, I would be equally outraged. Sure, it would be more "moral" than just using his Walther PPK to blow the bad guys to Kingdom Come, but it just wouldn't be our mayhem-loving macho man, Bond.

So saying "the darkness is over" is missing the point of what it was that was really wrong with comics in the first place.

And also, it's probably totally not true - what they call "darkness," I call "out of character behavior and concepts divorced from what the comic is supposed to be about." And last time I checked, these are still present in abundance in Modern Age comics, we're not going to see an end to the Modern Age anytime soon.

I really, really hate to play Cassandra here, especially in the face of such optimism, but INFINITE CRISIS will not ignite a new age of anything, simply because the "talent" involved in its production isn't that talented - or at least they're competent and uninspired. We can't expect them to provide a vision. There are certainly enough examples in comics history - indeed, the history of creativity in general - to say that "Committee thinking" is an oxymoron.



Different people place the Silver Age at different times. I for one, think the Silver Age only really BEGAN in 1971-1974, when we had Englehart writing all those brilliant Marvel titles and Schwartz brought in two genius kids to write Superman: Maggin and Bates.

My officially brief stance: Cautiously optimistic.

IMO, Batman and the JLA _should_ have an "edgy" relationship.  Baman isn't the best team player, and only works alone or with those "Batman family" partners who understand him better than most of the JLA (which isn't the JLA's fault).  The JLA should always have less-proven people who won't engender Batman's trust.  Batman should have some contingency plans for dealing with cohorts run amok.  Note that "deal with" doesn't mean kill -- the Red K was designed to incapacitate, not kill Superman.  But he should also look into ideas and technologies to make heroes less vulnerable to some forms of compromise in the first place.  


They referred to it as yet another "crisis", which gives you a strong sense of just how original the event will be.  I'm not terribly hopeful about it.  As for the reboot of Superman in particular, I'm expecting him to be far more influenced by the media (the Smallville TV series and the upcoming movie) to its detriment.


I think of those things as among the best of the Bronze Age.

no, just you.

I never knew it was up for debate.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rls=RNWE%2CRNWE%3A2004-11%2CRNWE%3Aen&q=Silver+Age+of+Comics&btnG=Search

now try to find me a site which says it started in the 1970's or that it didn't start with the the New Flash (Showcase No. 4,  Sep 1956)

You have 1,640,000 hits I doubt any of them would claim such a thing.

Yowsa, the Silver Age so decidedly ended for me in the early 70s that I stopped reading comics...

Straw man, Super Monkey.

Just because we can all pretty much agree the Silver Age started with the debut of Flash doesn’t mean there’s some unanimity about when it ended. Some people place the end of the Silver Age with GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW (as it gave us the concept of the “superstar artist”) others place it at the introduction of the “all new, all different X-Men” in 1975 as the moment that the characteristics of the Modern Age (style over substance) first became truly apparent. Others, like Kurt Busiek, define comics history by periods of experimentation, and so the Silver Age ended when Roy Thomas did CONAN THE BARBARIAN for Marvel, creating the trend for humor and sword and sorcery comics. The only reason I can think of for ending the Silver Age at 1970 is that it’s a big, round number.

If the Silver Age is defined as a high point of the convergence of creative talent followed by a trough of style over substance, it’s a disservice to exclude the period that included works like Englehart’s AVENGERS, DOCTOR STRANGE, SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP, and DEFENDERS, Doug Moenich’s MASTER OF KUNG FU, anything by Bill Mantlo, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics, and the flowering of the Schwartz Superman writers.

Personally, I think the Silver Age started not with Flash, but in 1951 with the introdution of Captain Comet in STRANGE ADVENTURES #9. Here we had all the qualities that defined the Silver Age at DC:

1) Talent. It was written by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. If ages are defined by their respective talents, surely their is no weak case.

2) Science Fiction emphasis. There was an emphasis on pulp-style science fact, the Gernsback-style concept of an “atomic future superman.” Comet wears Flash Gordon clothing with fins at the shoulders instead of spandex. His plots included space travel (with his Batmobile-like Cometeer ship), aliens, mental powers, and yes - GORILLAS. This science fiction emphasis defines the Silver Age from the Golden Age; Silver Age Flash can travel through time and other dimensions. Golden Age Flash could not.

3) He was the first original superhero (along with the Martian Manhunter) to emerge in the 1950s at DC.

Julian Perez writes:




But it isn't defined that way.

Basically the Silver Age is the period in which super-heroes returned from limbo to reclaim the comics medium.  That's why the starting point is usually given as Showcase #4, which gave us a new Flash and proved to the powers-that-be that audiences were ready to try the concept again after years of romances, funny animals and westerns.

Certainly I'd credit the early days of Marvel as SA, plus all the Schwartz-led revivals of GA characters in modified form, but as early as '67 or so a lot of those concepts were already starting to run in circles.  I agree the early 70s brought some cool new ideas, but the direction they took was different enough from the Silver Age to make it a new age in itself.

I think the problem comes in when people think of it like Olympic medals. This is one case where Silver and Bronze aren't necessarily less worthy than Gold.  In fact, it's quite the reverse in many cases.

I have to agree with Julian that the beginning and end dates of the Silver Age have been interpreted differently depending on who is doing the interpreting.  It's not much different than real world archeological dating or other historical periods with various 'experts' disagreeing on the actual criteria to be used.

In this case, I've heard the most commonly used definition was the appearance of the Martian Manhunter in 1955 as the true start of the Silver Age.  The Golden Age was more marked by fantasy and magic while the Silver Age had a decidely stronger S.F. streak to it which is why J'Onn J'Onnz is perhaps most representative of this era.  The Bronze Age seems to be more character/theme driven while still retaining elements of its past eras.

The end of the SA is far more nebulous though I'd place it in different years for different companies.  Marvel left their SA in the early 1970s.  DC did so in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

IMHO

Interesting way of defining it. Consistent with Busiek's view, that ages only happen after periods of experimentation stop and a status quo sets in.



While we're on the topic, what themes and concepts would you point to as being the breaking point between the "true" Silver Age and what came after it?

Well, first let me say we're in general agreement that the "Ages" don't start and stop as neatly as some would like to believe.  The debut of Superman in Action #1 is the only really clear starting point for any age, and the endings are way too nebulous to figure out more often than not.

That said, I think the accent on "relevance" in GL/GA, Spider-Man and elsewhere, the proliferation of minority heroes (coincident with the explosion of "blaxploitation" films), the streamlining of both Batman (who lost the cave, Robin and briefly the Rogue's Gallery) and Superman (who lost, for a bit longer, many trappings of the Weisinger era), the arrival of the Punisher, Wolverine, Deathlok, Jonah Hex, Manhunter, Friedrich's vengeful Spectre and other "anti-heroes"... these are just some clear mileposts that indicated the arrival of the Bronze Age.

I think the Bronze Age was marked by a retreat from the "clutter" of the Silver Age, a move to social relevance from science (or what passed for science in comics), and the first few heroes who muddied the line between good and evil (Punisher...was he good guy or villain?  Did I just see Manhunter stab a guy with a dirk?  Dracula's got his own comic? How many people did Conan behead with that wacky battle ax?).

But as with all ages, it wasn't a case of a clear, overnight stop and start.  Some characters hung unto their Silver Age mentality for a while yet, and others had made the transition early.

And for the record, I love much of the Bronze Age.  It's the age I discovered comics.

Allow me to summarize the discussion thus far: Captain Kal makes the point that it is THEMES that distinguish various ages: that is, the Silver Age had a greater science fiction emphasis than the Golden Age did, and the Silver Age ended when the dominant themes switched from this to characterization-centered stories. When science fiction and science plausibility shows up, we can say that in comes the Silver Age and out goes the Golden. Nightwing follows the Busiek model: the Silver Age begins when superheroes rose to dominance in the wake of competing genres.

My point, though, was that it is TALENT that is the distinguishing definition of what ages are what, that comics can be defined into periods as to when talent converges, when lots of creative people are doing work at the same time, and when it relaxes – sort of like models of history where they break up history between years of war and years of peace. That is, the Silver Age was the Silver Age because (in the early years) they had Gardner Fox and John Broome and later, Stan Lee, Englehart, Gerber, Bates, and Mantlo.  

Thus, the end of Marvel’s Silver Age, if you go by talent, is when Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber left Marvel comics with the ascension of Gerry Conway to the EiC post. This might be followed by a “Baby Silver Age,” where nonetheless good works are produced at the House of Ideas by Kirby in his Marvel Second Coming, Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo, Doug Moenich, Don MacGregor. One good point as any to define the ending of the Marvel “Baby Silver Age” is John Byrne’s FANTASTIC FOUR, which was the first to evidence the Modern Age’s most sociopathic instinct, to destroy fictional worlds instead of creating them.

When did the DC Silver Age end? Well, I guess it happened when all the mediocre, average people started coming in; there was a point between 1975-1982 when every single DC Comic was written by either Gerry Conway or Marv Wolfman. Or at least, it sure did feel that way, didn’t it? The definitive end of the DC Silver Age had to be CRISIS, not just because of the break with DC’s storied history, but more significantly, it was followed by a nadir of talent where comics were given to artists not qualified to write.

I'm not sure I buy into your theory, though it's interesting.

This is about as far as I'm willing to go: I believe end of the Silver Age is clearly coincident with the first large inpouring of fan-creators, a generation of budding pros who had grown up as fans.  And I agree in general that once they outnumbered the old guard, the end of greatness was inescapable.

That's an interesting position considering the likes of E. Nelson Bridwell, Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, and Cary Bates were former fans writing in just as lettercol fans themselves before.

I think you're overgeneralizing about fan-creators.  Some of the best writers were former fans themselves.

Incidentally, the “Baby Silver Age” for Marvel between 1975-1983 is the closest I’ve come to saying that there was something not unlike what this website calls a “Bronze Age.”

Tying all this back into the discussion on Mark Waid’s comments, he says that the darkness is over and we’re headed into a new age. I disagree with Waid’s statement; themes may be on their way out but themes are cosmetic; the more important factor, talent, certainly is not on the way in. With the exception of wonderful new writer Dan Slott, I have yet to encounter any truly wonderful new writers to emerge in the past 3 years. The crucial element to the creation of a better age than the trough we’ve been in, namely, writers that can write, is missing.

The one thing that has happened recently that does reassure me that a new age is coming is the crash and failure of Byrne’s DOOM PATROL, a sales failure on the level of BATTLEFIELD: EARTH. It shows people have gotten exhausted with Byrne, who personifies the flash over substance mentality, arrogant, toxic contempt for history, and writer/artist singularity all in one individual. And for the most part, comics are being written by writers and drawn by artists who are two different people. The one change I have been able to detect is that instead of artists who can’t write, there are now more than ever, writers that can’t write: witness Warren Ellis and Brad Meltzer, who have probably never touched a brush in their whole lives but who nonetheless manage to be as godawful as any of the Image writer-artist founders.

Yes, there are average, even decent writers around: Millar is good when he wants to be, and Geoff Johns is overrated but still worth reading. But the thing is, average scribes have always been around; this does not define an age.

Saying that the Golden age started with Action Comics #1 is easy.
Saying that the Sliver Age Started with Showcase #4 is easy. Well, for most people anyway ;)

Saying when one age finished is not so easy.

The Golden Age finished for me when all the Superhero comics got cancelled, with only Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman running around at DC. If that doesn't mark the end of the Golden Age of hero comics, I don't know what would.

Yet, what the heck is that period during the 1950's? Where horror, true Crime, Sci-Fi, western, romance, etc ruled the day?
No one can agree as to what to call it.

When did the Bronze Age begin? For Superman that's easy, when Morty retired. For me and most, Mort as Editor IS the Sliver Age Superman, without him there is no Sliver Age Superman. Once Julie took over things change, the comic format change from 2 to 3 short stories per issue to one long story per issue. Also the artwork became more dramatic in that Kirby way (not art style, but in storytelling). Compare Swan's artwork in the Superman in the 60's to Superman in the 70's to see what I mean. The stories also started to get into the whole "relevance" movement. Jack Kirby leaving Marvel pretty much ends the Marvel Sliver Age. But, doesn't mean that Bronze Age comics are not as good as the Sliver Age, they are just different.



This is what Julian Perez is doing, one Age is not automatically better than another.

I respect the Golden, Sliver, and Bronze age equally.

It's only the Iron and Dark Ages that came later that I have a problem with, and even they were not ALL bad, just mostly bad, IMHO ;)

The ages can be summed up in one sentence.

The heroes were born during the Golden Age, grew during the Sliver Age, matured during the Bronze age, and died during the Iron Age.

Well, I just disagree about the Bronze Age... 8)

But the categories are fairly fuzzy and its always going to be subjective...in a way, an arbitrary year seems just as well since no one will really agree on writing quality, introduction of sci fi (in what amount) et...

New?  Stott's been around in comics for quite awhile, just not doing the superhero genre for the most part.  

As for truly "new" comic writers, I'm a fan of Aguirre-Sacasa, Waid's one-time "replacement" on the Fantastic Four.  He took a bad editorial decision to make the FF poor and make good stories out of it in MK4.

Poor Dan Slott, people still think he is a newbie after about 14 years working in comics! He started doing Superhero stuff then got into cartoon stuff then back to hero stuff. That's a lot of stuff :)

I've said on other threads that there is an essential difference between the mind of the fan and the mind of the professional.

There's something about fans-turned-writers though, that drives them to be perfectly average in some way. Not BAD, mind you, but...sufficient. They have tremendous enthusiasm and moderate talent. They often write insightful articles and overall are actually more interesting in the lettercolumn of their comic than in the writing of the comic itself. I'm talking, of course, about Roy Thomas, Paul Levitz, and Mark Gruenwald being the better examples of this phenomenon, with less talented ones being Mark Waid, Brian Bendis and Gerry Conway. Still, I'd rather have a thousand Gruenwalds or Thomases writing comics than a single Warren Ellis, who quite clearly loathes superheroes and everything about them, and that enthusiasm is projected into his abysmal work.



Dang! This is news to me. Here I was overjoyed at the discovery of a new talent.

I heard somewhere that Kurt Busiek's first work in comics was a Kool-Aid Man comic.

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.

As I said above to Nightwing, and I'm now saying to you, Julian, you're overgeneralizing about fan-creators.

E. Nelson Bridwell, Jim Shooter, and -- your documented personal fave! -- Cary Bates are all former fans turned writers.

You've been spending too much time with Darren Madigan's tripe.  He talks like that about 'fans vs creators'.  I've seen his site and his various articles.

Bad writers don't necessarily have to be or not be fans.  I think what really distinguishes them is their lack of love for the characters that leads to them totally missing the point; that and lack of talent, of course.

For the record, Levitz isn't as bad as you make him out to be.  His era and concepts were at least as influential and compelling as anything from the Weisinger era.  Certainly he didn't suffer from 'failure of imagination' when he upgraded the LSH tech and surroundings to include transuits & telepathic plugs (which are far more credible 30th century advances than bulky spacesuits and radios of the Weisinger era), transphasic door portals, and holographic communicators.  Yeah, Dawnstar and just about any Legionnaire created on his watch sucked.  But they were daring and did challenge the 'humanoids' only mindset of the galaxy-spanning LSH.  And The Great Darkness and the Earthwar certainly rank up there with the greatest of Legion epics.  Levitz is not to be trifled with.  Levitz certainly gave a scope and vision to the 30th century that at least rivals the Weisinger era's and certainly was absent from the Bates stories.

There are absolutely many exceptions to the rule that fans generally are average, just as there are many exceptions to the rule that artists that write are totally lousy. The greatest examples I can list off the top of my head are Kurt Busiek, and don't forget Julie Schwartz himself, who was a fan before comics fandom existed.

As for the people you specifically mention:

I'm conflicted about Jim Shooter. Cute little Jimmy Shooter wrote the greatest Legion stories ever, bar none; his characterizations for them are their defining personalities, and his creation, Karate Kid, was possibly the first DC hero to have a personality. I'm still wowed by Mantis Morlo's artificial sun and blowing up the wrong earth. Jimbo's Superman stories were just as sharp, and he gave us the gift of the Parasite. But, like most members of Menudo, the moment Jimmy started to shave is when things started to go downhill.

Specifically, I mean his AVENGERS run, which had Hank Pym behave in a totally out of character manner: downright villainous and psychotic, constructing a robot to attack his friends and even striking his wife, the Wasp, at one point. As a result of Shooter's decisions, all the writers that work on the character had to run around and play damage control in order to allow Hank Pym to function as a superhero.

By that same note, I also wasn't a fan of "Korvac Saga." Sure, it had some funny moments, particularly with Beast and his bottles and bottles of shampoo. But Korvac lacked personality, meandered around picking up supermodels with all the desperation of a country gentleman on a constitutional stopping to sniff daisies, and his murder of the entire Avengers was a gigantic 12-page ode to viciousness, the daydream of a man forced into comics that wanted to write for THE NEW YORKER. The ending was the most profoundly unsatisfying ever, because the story was resolved without any action on the part of the characters, whose decisions and actions are supposed to drive the story. The Avengers were essentially forced into a futile battle they could not win which further they LOST, and that's not the Avengers I know, doing no credit to their resourcefulness or bravery. What, did somebody else have the Ultimate Nullifier that week? :D  

True, how could anyone really triumph against a foe as powerful as Korvac? That isn't the point, though: the point is, this situation of helplessness and impotence exists only because Jim Shooter created it.

Oh, and it turns out Korvac was actually a good guy all along, adding to the senselessness and pointlessness of this entire story. Jimmy probably meant the whole Moondragon ending to be tragic and poignant...really, when I saw her with a little vaseline tear in her eye, thinking "But I will know..." the hysterical melodrama of it all made me burst out laughing.

To be fair to Jimmy's run on that book, though, Jimmy did introduce the wonderful Ms. Marvel into the Avengers, and she has remained a great character since. Ditto for the wonderful Jocasta.

As for Levitz, I never said I disliked him. I don't like Levitz, I don't hate Levitz. I nothing Levitz. In Levitz's defense, he was good at certain aspects of worldbuilding: the cute little details like Legion H.Q. being based in "Weisenger Plaza" (classy) and the fascinating tunnel system based at the center of the earth. Though generally his Legionnaires were rather dull, as you pointed out, Quislet was wonderfully gossipy and egotistical, and it saddens me that no one has thought to return him to the Legion in some form.

I am not willing to forgive Levitz, however, for invalidating the Adult Legion story and stating it never happened and further, that it never could. While the story's exection was centered on an unsatisfying Deux Ex Machina, I'm talking about the concept. We could see, ahead of time, what happens to our own Legionnaires - even some that hadn't even joined yet! It was absolutely mindblowing. It was a wonderful framework to hang and build to future stories.

Incidentally, Great Rao, how about that one for a future scan for the site? I'll do it and send it to you if your scanning hand is cramped up.

I could continue here about characters whose deaths Levitz carried out that I think was rather unnecessary and wasteful, or decisions about the Legion setting he made that were not consistent with the spirit of previous writers, but it occurs to me that all of it really is atomic hairsplitting. Levitz didn't really do anything, apart from the Adult Legion, that really bugs me. Like I said - he was an alright writer.

As for Levitz's two famous stories, I always preferred "Earthwar" to "Great Darkness." Darkness was interesting, but it didn't feel like a Legion story - more like a story that incidentally featured the Legion. "Earthwar" on the other hand, played with all the Legion toys in the toybox.

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.

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

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..."

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.


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.

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.

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?)

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.

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... :D

I can't stand people that subscribe to the "fans vs. creators" view. It's one of those things that makes you sad to be a fan sometimes.

To be a little fair here... Dick Sprang had been working on Batman for 13 years at that point.  Who's the last penciller that worked on the same DCU or Marvel book for 10+ years?

(http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/141/400/141_4_0000056.jpg)

Well, he penciled this one in 1949 and it was an excellent mystery travel piece, the Bat Hombre trained by Batman in a fictitious South American country was given away as the plant of a local criminal by two backward facing marks of a parrot claw on his uniform...

What's that got to do with anything?   Whether an artist works on one character for 13 years or 13 characters in the same span, he either knows how to draw recognizable vehicles, buildings, clothing, animals, etc or he does not.  Modern artists are great with muscles and capes, but they often don't draw anything else that looks even remotely accurate (including guns, a surprise since they're an obsession).

My point was that the older stories happened in something at least close to the real world.  And so a writer had to know how things worked in order to tell the story correctly, and the artist had to know how to draw them.  Many times as a kid I came away from a Batman story (especially one written by Bill Finger) having learned something new about mechanics, chemistry, electronics, spectrometry, architecture, wildlife, you name it.  When was the last time you read a modern age comic and learned anything about the real world?

The funny thing is modern comics are passed off as "more realistic."  On the assumption, naturally, that horrific violence, cruelty and despair constitute "reality."  Sorry, no matter how many friends and family Bruce Wayne sees die, he's still a guy who dresses like a bat, so reality is out.  Too many comics are written by guys who wouldn't know reality if it bit them and artists who couldn't draw it if asked.

Another palpable hit, Nightwing.  I do miss the tidbits of real world facts the Silver Age and even the Bronze Age occasionally fed us.  That was one of Julie's gifts to us back then.  It is a shame that no one sees fit to bless us with those anymore in the books, so we have to get our fixes on forums like this one.

Part of my love for science came from those little SA/BA tidbits in the comics.

The line I was specifically referring to was "visual references to real-world architecture", not any of your other points.  My thinking is -- after 13 years on the same book, any good artist will have their characters, writers, publishing processes, etc. all down pat, and can focus on building rich world(s) surrounding their characters.  AFAICT, it's not as simple as "an artist knows how to draw 'recognizable' reality or he doesn't".  There's the monthly schedule and business aspects.  

An artist acquaintance of mine is a pro animator, formerly of Disney for years until they closed their U.S. feature animation studios.  He's about as far from "real world" as it ever gets, never having wanted to be anything but an artist, never having a job that didn't involve comic art even as a teen.  Nonethless, he's capable of taking words off a page and breathing superb "real life" into it if that's his goal -- just not fast.  He's superlative in a "movie" context, but by his own admission and from what I've seen, it'd take him years to be able to make his style work in a monthly comic book schedule and produce consistently good stuff.  For awhile, until he landed with another feature animation house, he was switching gears from big budget Disney to crap that aspired to be Saturday morning TV fare (do they even show cartoons on Saturday mornings anymore?), and was not loving life.

Uncle Mxy:

I hadn't intended this to veer off into a criticism of modern artists (that's a whole other rant!).  My point was that Sprang HAD to know how to draw all those real-life things because a writer expected him to month after month.  In contrast, it is now possible for an artist to have an entire career -- and a successful one -- without ever drawing a real-world automobile, a man in a suit and tie, or even a background. (Are you listening, Rob Liefeld?)

The older comics took place in the same world as TV detective shows.  Every kid knew what a car looked like, so you better not screw it up.  Since Kirby came along (god love him) and proved it was okay, even thrilling, to invent your own hardware, architecture and fabric, legions of second and third-generation artists have felt free to create their own version of reality and jump straight into comics without stopping at art school.  

I'm just saying that while it's fun sometimes to hang out in a world where everyone wears spandex and manipulates sci-fi hardware, eventually the whole scene becomes so divorced from reality that a new reader is bound to think, "What the heck is going on here?  Ah, forget it!"

As for your friend, I dare say a lot of comic artists would find it hard to do animation well.  One pretty much trains for what one wants to do.  And there is some precedent for animation artists making the leap to comics, including some true greats.  Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke spring to mind.  Also even Jack Kirby himself started out as an "in-betweener" for the Fleischer Studios.  

Captain Kal writes:



We still have reprints.  I don't know about you, but I missed tons of Atomic and Silver Age stuff and I'm enjoying filling in the blanks with Archives (and soon the Showcase volumes).  Just last night I was reading the Robin Archives; in the space of one ten-pager ("Robin Crusoe"), I learned how to start a fire with sticks, climb a coconut tree using my belt, build a burmese tiger trap, make a fish hook from a stick of wood, survive being thrown into a pool of quicksand and use a metal swastika as a boomerang.  (Okay so maybe the last one wouldn't really work!).

Sorry...  the "art" bit just struck a personal chord, because I know the guy who always wanted to be an artist and never lived in the real world.  (Not even really a 'friend' -- everyone who knows him would tell you that his best friend is his sketchbook, and he's pretty nearly non-social.)  He can draw "real world" just fine, but no way could he put that in the context of a "real world"-flavored comic on a monthly basis, the way a seasoned comic book pro should.  I suspect that any number of comic book artists that we think are "bad" in that regard may be good.

Well, except for Liefeld.  

Good god is his art totally disgusting!!  He can get capes right, but not muscles, faces, or much of anything else.  Ugh.  When his art works, it's strictly by accident.  

Most of your other points are well-taken.  Carry on...

While I agree with the basic point, that comics stories should not be inaccessible, my problem with what it is you’re saying is that it denies the value of lesser known but interesting comics elements. It views research into the topic as a weakness, because it brings up things that are not the most visible, famous elements of a comic book, and denies that there is future story possibility in overlooked stories, characters and elements because if you whip out a wonderful but underused character like Son of Satan or N’Kantu the Living Mummy, the response is not  “hey, how cool, they’re using Son of Satan,” it is “Man, how lame is it that they’re using an obscure guy like Son of Satan?” If Superman fought ONLY Luthor and Brainiac and all his famous enemies, it denies there is story possibility in the Galactic Golem and the Flame Dragon “just because” they appeared only in a few stories decades ago. This perspective makes a virtue out of familiarity and a vice out of research.

Comics tapping into their dense lore isn’t a new phenomenon. Comics fans whining about it IS new, however; nothing tires me out faster than some fan moaning about how they’re bringing back Kandor. Can you imagine what comics would have been like if this mentality was in play in the 1970s? Steve Englehart would have been CRUCIFIED for his wonderful use in SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM UP of the Doomsman character that Roy Thomas created in the Dr. Doom story in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES. “He’s such an obscure character,” they would say. “It’s so self-referential that they’d tredge him out again. Everything that’s wrong with modern comics these days.” Or when Englehart brought out and made wonderful use of Quasimodo, the Living Computer in AVENGERS or the Valkyrie (who previously was a minor, one shot personaliy) in his DEFENDERS run. Or when Englehart brought out the Deadshot in his BATMAN run (“WHO the HELL?” I can hear them say), or when Busiek made use of Moses Magnum and the Construct, or yes, even when my boyfriend Paul Levitz returned the minor character of Cosmic Boy’s brother and made him a full-fledged Legionnaire.

To be fair, I don't think the issue is reality per se, but having events follow realistically and believably from the initial premise, even if that premise is totally unrealistic. For example, compare Alan Moore's Marvelman (aka Miracleman) with the stuff that inspired it. Both of them feature body-switching flying super-strong heroes, but I think we'd all agree Moore's take scores much higher in the "realism" department because his characters react more realistically to the premise.

I think Nightwing addressed this in another post on another thread.

The issue is accessibility.

Sure, we can have obscure characters and concepts creep up in a story, no problem.  But knowing those obscure trivia bits shouldn't be mandatory towards enjoying the book right in your hands.  If one already knew those bits, great, then you get more out of the story.  Or maybe you'd be intrigued enough by those ideas to dig into the past to find out the backstory on those bits.  Again, knowing those past bits must not be a prerequisite to enjoying the story you're reading right at that moment.

I certainly have no problem with bringing in an obscure character in the course of a good story.  Take the example I pointed to, the 1954 Batman story.  If for some reason Robin was sidelined and Batman had to team with Rex Raymond or King Faraday, it still would have worked.  Because the focus of the story would have been the same: solve the freaking mystery. In 1954 we would not have gotten 20 pages of Batman and Rex arguing over whose methods are best, or making oblique references like, "Don't touch that! Remember what happened to Angel O'Day..." "Hrmm...yes, I see your point."

It just seems to me too many titles today are about heroes hanging out with other heroes and whining, arguing or pining about one stupid thing or another that (a) doesn't matter to anyone but them and (b) you have to have been around for awhile to even understand.  If a character from 20 years ago suddenly popped up in a Batman story today and the dialog was something like, "Haven't seen you since the case of the Mongoose Tail!  You're looking good.  Now, let's get to business..."  then I would be okay.  This is how I first met the JSA, after all...a big bunch of characters I'd never seen before their visits with the JLA.  It didn't matter whether I knew their origins, or even their real identities.  It certainly didn't matter whether I knew what case they were working on in March 1943. The point was they showed up to help and they stuck to business.  That meant I could read the story and be satisfied with it on it's own merits.  And I might add that in the end, it made me want to go back and find out more about them anyway.  So it was the best of both worlds.

I say again -- and sorry to keep picking on Batman, but -- if you look at the Bat-books now, they are primarily about Bruce's fractious relationships with Tim, Barbara, Helena, Leslie, Cassie, Jim Gordon, Sasha, etc.  Maybe I'm way out of the loop but I'm not at all interested in Bruce Wayne's social inadequacies or emotional disconnects, I care not a whit for his opinions on other superheroes.  I would like to see him solve a crime now and then, but I suppose there are only so many hours in the day.  

In my opinion -- and that's all it is -- it took more talent for the old guys to come up, month after month, with an ingenious mystery or a novel sci-fi concept than it does for today's "superstars" to pen months-long sagas of soap-opera arguments, "crushing personal losses," betrayals, and etc.  The latter tales, in my opinion, pretty much write themselves.  The former takes inventiveness and, importantly, an understanding of how the real world works.  I honestly believe I could hammer out for you right now a story where Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson come to blows over some stupid misunderstanding or other, but for the life of me I couldn't write a story about how printing presses work in a newspaper office, how to escape an elevator shaft with a car coming down at me, what bird makes a sound like a rattlesnake, etc.  I love that old stuff and I miss it.

No argument here.

However, there is a mentality amongst a portion of comics fans (not held by YOU, of course, but by others) that seek to reassure their insecurities about being teens and adults that read children's superhero comics by excoriating fascination with minutiae, by condemning anything that has not known or familiar to the general public at large. Just like homophobes are likely to be latent homosexuals, comics fans enmeshed in love of comics lore are likely to be the most strident enemies of use of comics history. For instance, those that attack AVENGERS FOREVER not because of its great worth as a wonderful well-written work, but because...uh...Busiek talks alot about all these things that happened before 1990.

This usually manifests as bludgeoning and attacking anything that shows anything more than a shallow familiarity with the characters and concepts. Kurt Busiek was flayed alive by many fanboys for not using the big Avengers villains right off the bat and instead giving use to cool and interesting foes like Moses Magnum, Kulan Gath and for the Love of Pete, the Corruptor!

Why is this obvious attempt to soothe fanboy insecurity given ANY credence at all by anyone? Firstly because it gives an excuse to lazy creators to not do their homework; of COURSE they can't be bothered to make characters behave consistently with how they have been shown previously, because "history doesn't matter." It's the excuse used by lazy students with a "D" on their history tests: "Aw, who CARES about Robert E. Lee?"

Secondly, because it fits the agenda and priorities of businesspeople who view comics not as an end in and of themselves, but as a means to keep the copyright going on bankable characters. If fanboys believe anyone in the Justice League who isn't an action figure a thousand times over is a worthless dead weight character that adds nothing, who are the businessmen to really disagree, right?

I don't know, I think younger fans are just like young people in general; they tend not to care about anything that happened before they were born.  If they don't like Moses Magnum, for example, it'd be because he's from the 70s, when comics had a different sensibility.  To them, letting Moses into a modern Avengers comic would be like wearing platform shoes and a perm to an Eminem concert.

Basically I think any character who stays in constant print is going to get a free pass; he can change with the breeze.  But a character who gets sidelined for 10 years or more will have to spend the first half of his "comeback" story assuring us that he is, indeed, in tune with the times and not tied to an earlier age.  In the case of some character who were obviously created to capatilize on some brief fad way back when, that's fair.  In a lot of other cases, it isn't.

I'd say you're right, if it was JUST younger comics fans saying this. They DO, though, and probably for the reasons you describe, so at least I "get" where they're coming from even if I don't share their view.

My point though, is that just as racism is an expression of economic anxieties, anti-history and anti-continuity whiners very often tend to be the people most enmeshed in comics past. It's a mentality I do not understand, so I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how it works.

I just had an epiphany when driving back home from work:

Anti-continuity is at its heart, nerd self-hatred.

Allow me to illustrate this phenomenon.

Telle, I apologize for this in advance, but I'm using your statements to prove a point. No offense meant, okay? :D

A while back, the topic of discussion turned to AVENGERS FOREVER. You had this to say:



I don't know you personally, Telle. But on one occasion, you said one of your favorite superhero movies is - of all the things in the world - ULTRAMAN. What's a guy who loves 60s Japanese rubber guy shows DOING restraining their enthusiasm and saying something doesn't work because it's geeky? It boggles the mind.

Later on in that post, you had this to say:



Oh, perish forbid. :D



I'd say something about the cataclysmic irony of - IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH - you thank a fictional supercomic deity known only to %.5 of the population, and then talk about how we've been saved from "the death grip of the direct market" to go into "a golden age of adult graphic novels."

On the other end of the spectrum from forum regular Telle, we have Darren A. Madigan, fanfic writer supreme, continuity's greatest defender, who David Fiore once called "the fanboy's fanboy." He has many, MANY flaws as a human being (pettiness, hysterical paranoia and casual cruelty number among them) but self-delusion is not one of them. He KNOWS what he is. He revels in his nerdom and is proud (at least to the extent one can be proud of having memorized BUCKAROO BANZAI) and apart from the occasional mope about how he can't get laid*, he regrets nothing.

Every embarassing trend embraced by comics in the past three decades have been a transparent manifestation of nerd self-hatred, able to play on the anxieties of adults and especially teenagers, who are much more insecure and less certain of their identity. From "relevance" in the 70s, to the "grim and gritty' (TM) trend of the eighties, the desire has been for comics to be taken seriously by others with all the insistence and maturity of a child having a temper tantrum jumping up and down. To get more "new readers," to have comics "taken seriously," to have comic book readers finally get to sit at the Cool Kids' Table in the cafeteria. Comics readers feel they have to prove something, to our mothers and fathers and that blonde in Geometry class that turned us down for a soda and movie. SEE? Comics CAN be relevant or for adults! Anti-continuity sentiment is nothing more than the most recent and most nonsensical manifestation of this.

Another very recent manifestation of this phenomenon, one that I suspect will become the klarion call for everybody with neuroses that need coddling who are insecure and need to prove themselves, is the desire for "other genres to be represented in the comics industry." This is a position that is very hard to argue with; I for one, miss HOUSE OF MYSTERY and SCALPHUNTER very, very much. But it isn't that the position is right or wrong, it's the REASON it is becoming such a talking point. Do you really think the teenage boys in Reeboks and Metallica shirts on Warren Ellis's forums that demand Westerns are so vocal about it because they really, really want to read a cowboy comic? I doubt it. When they say "they want other genres represented," they mean "other genres" for OTHERS to buy - just like how, in the words of the Onion, "Americans favor public transportation for others." They want to point to a Romance comic on a comic book store shelf and say, "See, Susie Q, you DIDN'T make a mistake dating me instead of the Prom King. Look! There's a comic JUST FOR YOU!"

"But Julian," I hear you say. "I'm a successful professional GQ model who enjoys having champagne with supermodels on my private yacht when I'm not going to parties hosted by P. Diddy on South Beach. I'm no geek. What are you implying here, sah?" The problem isn't geekiness (on the contrary, geekiness is GOOD), the problem is insecurity and neurosis - and that can happen to anybody, no matter how many beautiful women you've slept with and how many Ferraris you drive. Look at all the unhappy movie stars and millionaires that commit suicide.

The moment I realized that anti-continuity detraction and whining was irrational in nature was when I realized that their objections were not concrete. They were not specific but spoke in vague, nebulous generalities, never mentioning a specific story that didn't work or specific instances. No one single enemy of continuity, not Warren Ellis, not Grant Morrison, not anybody, has ever been able to point out what would be the most damning proof of continuity's evil: namely, a terrible story that if it was done without the "restrictions" of continuity (REAL continuity), would have been great or even good. I can't think of a single one, and I challenge anyone to find it.



* For the life of me I can't imagine why. There's no greater aphrodisiac than a fifteen minute harangue about the writing on THE WEST WING.

This thread has gotten so long and rambly that I have a hard time following it.  So, just some random thoughts:

- What makes Japan's manga work?  >1 out of 3 printed publications is manga, to the tune of $5+ billion (sales are slightly down from last year, because of a growing rental market).  Weekly Shonen Jump sells 3.5+ million copies/week, probably more than all the Super-titles sell in a year.  Rather than fixate on  what went wrong and nerds and stuff, why not look at something going right and figure out how it may make sense to factor that in?  Hell, to bring this back full circle...  Waid said something about no more dick heroes, right?  Some dicks sell like hotcakes in the Asian and other markets.  Why fight what some audiences want?

- Does the form factor matter?  IMO, most of these 12+ issue story arcs aren't suited for serial comic books, unless you think you can get enough in 20-odd pages to make the overall arc go forward and be entertaining on its own.  I'd argue that the likes of Bendis and Loeb should simply write graphic novels and not make any pretense at long bouts of serialization.  

- Does never-ending matter?  Should books have a finite beginning, middle, and end to them?  Do you even want publishers to publish if the best thing they can come up with is a prolonged dose of long-haired Superman or Electric Superman?  Part of me would love it if some good comic just "stopped" before it became bad.  

- Are comic book shared universes doomed to failure?  Rather than have a "book" editor, does it make sense to have a "universe" editor and plotter?  I look at George R.R. Martin's role in Wild Cards, and no one really does that sort of thing at DC.  The "universe editor"'s job is to make some new crisis or crossover event, as near as I can tell.

Ok, I'm getting long and rambly myself.  Back to work...

Wow this thread filled up fast. I'll just post a couple of my thoughts.

On the comment about moving away from darkness and getting away from the Dark Prick characterzation of Batman, as much as I am proud of Mark Waid for having the guts to say it, I'll believe it when I see it. A thousand times bitten, a thousand times shy. If All Star Batman and Robin is their idea of fixing I would dare say retarted monkeys run DC Comics.

The time for talk and promises has long since passed. DC, if you have the guts to get out of the Iron Age then show me the proof. Now.

One other thing is that I wanted to comment on is what Waid said about Birthright and it being like playing Carnegie Hall with no one showing up. At the risk of over extending his metaphor I would say it was because while Waids a excellent conductor he picked a unappealing orchestra.

I still say that more than anything else that you could pin it on wether it be the non-promotion of it, DC waffling on wether or not it was the new origin, pacing of the story, hate from Byrneouts etc. The reason Birthright didn't hit the way it should have is the same thing that I think is gonna end up hurting Grants All-Star run. The choices of artist.

Art is a subjective thing and in the eye of the beholder yes, but while Grant and Waids writing may be more accessible Linil Yus and Frank Quietlys art just isn't. I'm not going to knock the talent or skill of either man but theres an asthetic quality to their work that is just plain ugly looking. It creates a barrier between the reader and their writing.

I have to agree with you on the art.  It's true you can't have a good comic without good writing, but when so many pages today are down to four, two or even one panel, the art darn well better knock your socks off...and Quitely's especially just does not for me.

It'd be different if there were six or more panels per page and the story moved like gangbusters.  But so many comics now plod along at a snail's pace to give us time to admire huge splashes in detail. I'm against that in principle no matter who's drawing, but I might soften my resistance if there was anybody out there who could really draw well enough to justify it.

Bottom line is people trying to make up their minds about a book with pick it up and thumb through it, and if they're not impressed with the visuals they'll put it down and keep going.  Maybe you can afford assigning guys with oddball, avant-garde or just plain weak styles to the monthlies (which some fans will buy regardless) but the special projects need special art...they're a hard enough sell as it is.

As many us us older fans in the real world can attest to, presentation is everything.  Artwork is the opening salvo for comics to hook fans into a book.  Once that's achieved, then they can feast on the actual content.

It's one reason why Byrne's crap is so often overlooked in his stories.  His great pencilling just puts you in a good state of mind.  But imagine some guy like Pacheco pencilling Byrne's Superman stories and you couldn't avoid noticing the glaring plotholes now that the artwork isn't mesmerizing you anymore.

Actually it's almost the opposite for me.  Byrne's art gets worse all the time, or at the very least it never offers anything new. He has about three stock faces and only a few more poses that get used over and over again, to the point where there doesn't seem much reason to buy new Byrne books if you've ever bought one before.  I remember thinking he was fantastic with Terry Austin's inks on X-Men but looking back even that stuff doesn't hold up for me so well, mostly because I see that same limited bag of tricks already in play.

Of course you could say this about a lot of artists...Kirby, for all his inventiveness, was always unmistakably Kirby, Curt Swan's figures got repetitive, etc.  But I find that if the artist is good enough, I either don't notice or don't care.  When I do start noticing, and get annoyed, its pretty much the end of the road for that artist in my affections.  (The only one it's worked in reverse for is Wayne Boring, whose repetitive poses and lookalike faces were poison to me as a kid but whom I now rather like.  Well, sometimes)

Even if you paired him with the best writer in the business, I'd have a hard time buying a book drawn by John Byrne at this stage of the game.

I remember really liking John Byrnes art at first because at least at the time and being a little kid it reminded me more of the Neal Adams and Garcia Lopez stuff you'd see on covers and even in those POWER! Book and Record Sets which always struck me as much more dynamic than the Swan type stuff I was seeing in the main comics. So I wanted to see something like that on the main book and I thought having this guy do it would finally be it.

But I got progressively more dissapointed with his work the longer he was on Superman not to mention that the changes they were making began to make less and less sense. I think the first straw for me was Krypton and Laras stupid "He will rule them and shape them to proper Kryptonian ways" characterzation and the last was the shapeshifting jellomold version of Supergirl. As I've tried to look back on those issues I only find more flaws in the artwork, the story, the take on the concept and the characters.