I just went to visit my brother, and was able to read all the comics he buys that I’m too cheap to get. Among those are All Star Batman, All Star Superman, and Grant Morrison’s Batman run. These varied a good bit in quality — Frank Miller’s All Star Batman is a completely embarrassing self-parody; All Star Superman is a workmanlike nostalgia exercise which has been denuded of the ambivalence towards super-heroics which characterizes Morrison’s most interesting efforts; Morrison’s Batman is quite entertaining, despite the obligatory and atrocious grand crossover efforts.
But, whatever their merits or demerits, finishing the pile I was struck by (A) how completely uninterested I am in spending my own money on any of them and, (B) how thoroughly repetitive and kind of pointless they all seem. Miller isn’t just rewriting Dark Knight; he’s rewriting his own rewrites of Dark Knight (like Batman: Year One and Dark Knight Returns 2) and his own oeuvre in general (Wonder Woman’s characterization is particuarly painful, not so much because he reflexively dumps the pacifism and wisdom which is a big part of the character, as because his decision to turn her into a ball-busting fetishized dominatrix with a thing for strong men is at this point such a cliche in his own writing, from Sin City on down.) Morrison isn’t just rewriting the Weisinger era Superman; he’s rewriting Alan Moore rewriting Weisinger, and, indeed, 15 years or so of hip fetishization of the goofiness of old Superman stories. And Morrison’s Batman stories — obsessed as they are with the replication of Batman and alternate possibile Batman — seem to just be reworking, with a good deal less zip, similar concerns in the Animal Man stories that Morrison put out there twenty years ago.
Of course, any genre thrives on repetition — but you also need variation, and while American mainstream comics are good at the first, they haven’t been able to deliver consistently on the second in quite a while. Many people blame super-heroes themselves, but I don’t really think that’s the problem. For example, Cardcaptor Sakura combines Judy-Bloomesque girl Bildungsroman with a video-game fantasy tropes and comes up with something which, while not necessarily great art, is certainly a fresh, and even bizarre, take on super-heroics.
So personally, I don’t think it’s the super-hero genre that’s the problem, but rather that, in American comics, the super-hero genre has largely degenerated into fan fiction. Though, really, that’s kind of unfair to fan fiction, which, is usually motivated by real love for the material and a willingness to do all sorts of ridiculous and counter-intuitive things with it (see this sex-changing slash effort by Vom Marlowe for example.) Mainstream comics are actually the worst of all worlds — corporate fan fiction. Often, there’s little love or respect for the original vision and, conversely, a whole set of arbitrary rules in place about what can and can’t be done with them. The result has been a shrinking of the comic audience (fan fiction is always going to have a fairly limited appeal, whatever its virtues) and a stifling of creativity.
Grant Morrison’s one of the genres great writers — why put him on Superman, a character in which, as far as I can tell, he has little interest? And yes, I enjoyed his runs on X-Men and JLA, but wouldn’t it make sense, if you have a talent like that, to give him a chance to create something new? Wouldn’t that, if promoted correctly, create the possibility of new marketing possibilities, new movie tie-ins, and so forth? Similarly, why make Frank Miller go back again and again to the Batman when he’s clearly said all he has to say about him? Wouldn’t it be better to get him to do something new? I mean, it’s not like Sin City and 300 weren’t successful. Surely he could make up a marketable super-hero if he tried.
But, of course, forty or fifty years of this fannish, clannish, corporate bullshit has taken its toll. Super-hero comics are now hopelessly uninteresting to everybody outside of the tiny fan community. Distribution and marketing is aimed at this insular group who wants the same thing over and over, and the opportunities for new creations which might appeal to a broader audience are limited indeed — you can be successful with a television show like Hero, but it’s really unclear how something similar could work with comics. Still, I think that maybe the best thing the big companies could do for themselves is just stop with the endless Superman, Batman, Hulk, Spider-Man, ad nauseum. If people want to read that stuff (as they will), look at reprints of the stories that made them famous. Start investing instead in new creations…and for god’s sake, give the creators ownership, so somebody has some interest in quality control.
Update: Jason points out in the comments that Morrison is in fact interested in Superman, and hand-picked the project.
I’m mostly sympathetic to your points and in agreement with your essay, but you’re off the tracks a little bit when you say things like this:
“Grant Morrison’s one of the genres great writers — why put him on Superman, a character in which, as far as I can tell, he has little interest?”
If you’ve ever heard Morrison speak about Superman, he is rabidly interested in the character. All-Star Superman is the end result of a long process in which Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Mark Waid all pitched to write Superman regularly around the turn of the century and were all told they would never be allowed to do so. Some kind of internal DC sea change allowed Morrison to bring out All-Star, which is truly a pet project of his. While this may or may not impact anyone’s view of the final product, I don’t believe that there’s any argument to be made that Morrison didn’t hand-pick the project.
(And I doubt that, at this point, anyone is making Frank Miller do anything he doesn’t want to do. It’s not like he needs the money.)
Great post.
Also, I like to keep in mind that, at this point, Marvel and DC’s comics are simply, transparently, marketing tools to prop up their corporate properties (the characters) for Hollywood. Comics like this do not evolve, they are forced to remain “true”fan fiction and insular —
Noah,
Thank you. I’ve been wanting to have an intelligent discussion on the corporate fan-fiction aspect of Marvel and DC for awhile.
(Though I agree with Jason. Morrison and Miller both still have strong affection for Batman/Superman.)
Like you, I have no problem with super-heroes as a genre. But I feel weird when I see intelligent people praising Geoff Johns for extrapolating Alan Moore ideas from 20 years ago and “exploring” something every child who has ever read a Green Lantern comic has thought, “Hrm…why aren’t there Blue Lanterns?”
I also can’t fathom why Marvel/DC insist on keeping 40 year old franchises alive instead of creating new ones. I like the manga model. Shueisha is STILL getting money from Dragon Ball licensing even though the manga ended 13 years ago. Plus now they’ve also got Bleach, Naruto and One Piece.
Brex,
Part of the reason Marvel and DC don’t put more into developing new characters is that enough good, creative people are twitched to the way the business works to know that if they’re going to create something original, they’re better off taking it to Image or Fantagraphics or some other company at which the copyright will rest with the creator instead of the company.
Marvel and DC have also had a pretty horrible track record when it comes to new characters. Post-Kirby, I can only think of a handful that have had any real staying power. When thirty years of business produces just one Punisher and a whole lot of Night Thrashers (along with the odd Howard the Duck, which can’t successfully exist without its unique creator and thus is no real use to Marvel), I could see why a company would wish to retreat to their tried-and-true internationally-known trademarks.
On a completely other note, I’m no Geoff Johns fan and haven’t read the story you’re referencing, but “Why aren’t there Blue Lanterns?” seems to me to be exactly the kind of child-logic story question that superhero comics SHOULD be asking. It strikes me as completely charming (though I’m sure the execution was very grim-faced and serious).
Noah, let me know when my cumulative comments word count exceeds the word count of your original post, because at that point I should probably go sit down somewhere not near a computer.
It’s funny that Noah says “among these” to refer to the comics I buy that he read…In fact, these are the only titles I buy…and (other than Miller) I still think they’re pretty good (All-Star Superman esp. is better than Noah gives it credit for).
Certainly being married to these characters is a problem for “mainstream” comics, but to say that Noah himself (and many others) doesn’t/don’t still have some attraction to/for them is undermined a bit by his voracious consumption of them over a 2-3 day period.
Sure…the connection to these characters is largely nostalgic…and the incapacity to move to something less nostalgic is a long-standing and long-term problem for the industry (since it only appeals to older guys who like looking back at their youth) …but “nostalgia” itself isn’t necessarily the horror Noah might claim. All-Star Supes (and Batman in Morrison’s hands) is an entertaining romp through the past (nostalgia) that is explicitly asking the question at hand here. “If Superman (or Batman) dies (the character goes), what happens next?”…Is there any way for people/the industry to replace them and go in a new direction? Both titles are explicitly “training” successors to Supes and Batman (although it keeps going horribly awry) because both are condemned to die (in some sense) in the book. Obviously, DC/Morrison will wimp out (we know this) and Bruce Wayne/Batman will remain in place (and All-Star is “non-continuity” anyway), but Morrison is raising the same issues (in entertaining fashion) in both titles that Noah brings up here…while still delivering entertaining superhero stories. Creating new “superheroes” isn’t as easy at is sounds either, since the archetypes are so firmly established. Most frequently, “new” characters come off as imitations of these archetypes. The key is unique and original stories (about new characters or old ones)…and of course the industry is less interested in unique and original stories for bankable old properties.
Hey Eric! (That’s my brother, for those not in the know.) The nostalgia of super-hero comics is indeed my nostalgia — but my interest in those books was more about the authors than the characters, I think. In any case, appealing to a super-hero geek like me is hardly the issue for the industry. I didn’t say fan fiction had *no* audience; I said the audience was limited. And winking pomo nudges about how cute it is to be mired in nostalgia aren’t necessarily going to help things. I mean, don’ t you think that 10 little Indians batman story would have been better if Batman wasn’t a character? *Everyone* should have been a suspect, and there shouldn’t have been a comforting savior to make everything work out — but there is, and there was, and it wasn’t as good as it could have been.
Also, it’s the fan fiction aspect, and I think, as Jason mentions, the rights issues, which makes new super-heroes hard to come by. In other media and other contexts, popular super-hero properties are pretty easy to find. Buffy is surely a super-hero (crossed with horror and teen drama); Cardcaptor Sakura is a super-hero. Parasyte is as much super-hero as horror. And so forth. Criss-crossing genres like that is how pulp flourishes, but it’s hard to see these variation *as* super-heroes precisely because super-hero comics are so limited to a few iconic characters.
Sorry for implying you read more than you do; I somehow thought there might be another comic I missed in there….
(This is “Brex” I started to feel a bit of the jackass posting under that name.)
Jason and Noah are both totally right correct that a lot of creators save their best stuff for themselves. But doesn’t that beg the question: Why don’t Marvel and DC loosen up a bit? Even if they don’t control the licenscing for new properties, they will still be making some money as the publisher, right?
Of course, they both know that there are enough fanboys-turned-writers (or Warren Ellises, who seems to do it basically as commercal work) that are are willing to polish their copyrights for them. Some comics writers seem to seriously have no interest in writing their own characters, which is odd to me, but if they can make a living of it, more power to them.
Hey Bradley. I think the issue is that DC/Marvel have a particular kind of business plan, and changing something like that is really difficult. It takes a certain kind of vision and a willingness to commit resources which just doesn’t seem to be there. As a for instance: both companies make a lot of their money through these hideous crossovers. If they start giving creators control, the crossovers become less doable. And then where are they?
They’ve got a system that works — in the sense that they seem to be able to make money. The fact that their marketing and aesthetic possibilities are extremely limited, or that they may well run into trouble down the road, isn’t necessarily all that visible in the near term to the people making the decisions, I guess. And, honestly, while it’s easy to kibbitz from the sidelines, it’s hard to see how the big two could really retool themselves in any useful way. Their advantages are all in their properties, and in a fan community that is interested in those properties. People are always saying that maybe manga will lead people to “real” alternative comics — not going to happen. But neither are people who want to read nostalgic Batman stories going to move on to new heroes — which is why creating new viable heroes is so difficult.
If super-hero comics are going to have a financial/aesthetic future, they’ve basically got to find new audiences and ditch the fan-fiction distribution and audience ghetto. DC/Marvel just aren’t going to do that. Which is why it’s something of an open question, I think, as to whether either company will be producing any comics at all in, say, 30 years.
Good points, Noah. I agree that it’s highly unlikely to expect Batman fans to embrace a new character. I have a friend who seems to have a hard time fathoming that there are comics that aren’t Marvel or DC. Though what would it take for there to be another Image/Valiant kind of revolution?
I started reading comics around that time (Death of Superman) so I’m not totally sure what the landscape was before that. Was there audience all former DC/Marvel fans? They sold so many books that there had to be some new people coming in to stores right? I know speculation had something to do with that, but they had to convince people that these books were important somehow. And even though they were read horrible, myself and other kids really dug those Image characters.