Aldous writes:An interesting post, Julian. I would just like to add that the situation now (as I see it) is somewhat different (but not entirely different). I am not disagreeing with you; just throwing my two cents in, that now you have a situation in which anybody and his dog can have an opinion and publish it (Yours Truly is guilty as charged), whereas in the old days all of the letters were read by an editor or assistant editor, judged worthy or unworthy in some way, and then published or not published according to (A) the letter's merits, and (B) the mood of the editor in question. (In my defence, I have had letters to the editor published in comics pre-Internet.)
Yes, but isn't it interesting to see which letters did see print? If you go back to the 60s and 70s, a letter writer with a negative opinion about a story was just as likely to see print as one who liked the tale...provided they could assemble a well-worded and intelligent missive. Sometimes it's amazing to read some of those letters which, as Julian says, tear into the editors and writers mercilessly. In some cases, the editor doesn't respond, in other cases he may offer a defense, but either way, he printed the letter and that speaks volumes.
By the 90s the lettercols had degenerated into mindless suck-up sessions where everything printed gushed praise, deserved or not. Was this because editors had developed a thinner skin and tossed the negative letters in the trash? Or because the people still reading comics by that point were no longer the discerning type, just zombie fanboys? Or perhaps because the REAL debates, the most interesting discussions had already moved to listserves, usenet and the web, where feedback could be more immediate and putting in your two cents didn't cost you another 33 cents in postage?
Anyway, Julian, I appreciate your perspective and of course you're right that the most devoted comics fans have always been prone to heated rhetoric. But I would argue it's worse now because (1) the internet makes it easier to split off into "camps" of opposing fans that can yell at each other, not just an editor, (2) the immediacy of the 'net also means the battle of words can escalate quickly, passionately and with no editor to moderate the exchange or enfore civility and (3) the audience for comics is no longer as broad-based and diverse as it once was, being composed now almost entirely of "hard-core" fans. Where before you had people who might have only a casual interest in the books, or be "just passing through," these days I think the folks still reading comics are the kind of intense, obsessed fanatics who used to account for a lot smaller segment of the total audience. In other words, these days if you don't take comics really seriously and have a lot of deeply-felt opinions about and personal history with them, you're probably not reading them anyway.
Man, in that letters page, those guys used emotions and invectives that would make the angriest and most illiterate internet goon look like a piker. "Do you think you can apply 'the Avengers' name to just about any team you like?" Is just an example of the sort of things they said.
Well, with due respect to Clint, Wanda and Pietro, who as you say have a long and valorous history with the Avengers, you have to admit that team was a MAJOR come-down from the likes of Iron Man, Thor and even Giant-Man. Even that early on, the Avengers were supposed to be the "heavy hitters" of the Marvelverse, and giving the name to this collection of lightweights was quite a shocker. In fact, though I suspect you'll disagree with me, I think it's on par with reforming the Justice League with the likes of Vibe, Vixen and Gypsy. When you pay for (and in those days, subscribe to) a book about one thing, you're likely to be ticked off when it suddenly becomes a book about something else altogether.
On the other hand, I've seen people get into barfights and lose teeth in arguments over Sean Connery and Roger Moore, a changeover which happened quite some time AFTER AVENGERS #16! The reason is that you can still see Bond movies, on cable or on DVD. On the other hand, it's harder to read back issues, especially of less popular magazines; not everything's going to get an ESSENTIAL or SHOWCASE.
You mean to say people have actually come to blows defending Roger against Sean? Good for them! I love Roger as much as anybody, but I don't think even I would take it that far.
People tried everything. They first tried replacing the artists: there are rumors they tried to attract John Buscema away from Marvel, but they settled on the incredible Garcia-Lopez and Ross Andru (just back from Marvel). They tried to get "cool" Marvel guys to do the writing, like Len Wein, Gerry Conway, and Marv Wolfman. They tried a brief return to the Weisenger age, with multiple stories in a single issue...
No, they didn't try everything. They didn't try moving Julie to another book and letting a new editor try his hand. They didn't try moving Curt Swan to another book and making Garcia-Lopez (or Perez, or Dave Gibbons, or some other young gun) the main artist. And lord knows whoever was in charge of covers was asleep at the switch...it's hard to imagine any covers that were less enticing than those 80s creations by Buckler, Andru and the like.
You can put whatever "cool" Marvel writer you want on the stories, but in order for that to make a difference, somebody has to actually READ the story. That's not going to happen if the cover is too boring to pick the book up and thumb through it, or if, upon doing so, the pictures inside look the same as they did five, ten, twenty years before.
Anyone who knows my history here knows I adore Curt Swan and Julie Schwartz, but honestly if DC dropped the ball anywhere it was in keeping these guys on the books out of loyalty or tradition or whatever long after they lost their sales appeal. They should have been allowed to do other things instead. Look at that great fill-in issue of Teen Titans (was it #4?) and tell me Curt Swan couldn't still make magic when presented with a challenge. For their own good as well as Superman's, there should have been a shake-up in personnel about 1981 or so, maybe earlier.
Was Supes in a rut circa 1985? Sure. Did DC "try everything" to fix it? Not even close.
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