Steven Grant (who guest blogged here last week) declares the super-hero dead dead dead:
it’s patently clear to anyone studying market history that the fans are disinterested too. They don’t buy new superheroes. They don’t want them. Maybe it’s economics, maybe they’ve been burned too many times to come back for what might be more, maybe they’re waiting for Something Truly Different and don’t feel like spending more on what are basically variations on themes they already buy, but reasons don’t much matter. They do not buy them, and haven’t for a long, long time.
So even logical ways of introducing new superheroes are right out the window. Theoretically (and ignoring all issues of creator rights for the moment) the best way to intro a character would be in an existing top character’s book. Let the readers get to know the new superhero that way, then spin him into his own book. That should work. It doesn’t, even with characters readers respond well to, like The Silver Surfer….
The superhero genre may not be the Titanic, no icebergs in sight, but everyone’s still just rearranging deck chairs now. That’s how the companies want it, because they’re no longer marketing creations. They’re peddling brands. Branding is everything now, and it’s almost always more profitable to cash in on a long-established brand than to create, develop and market a new one. The superhero as brand name might be with us until the end of time, now, but the superhero as expression of genuine creativity is pretty much dead.
Steven’s argument is fun both because it’s so devastatingly true…and because it’s completely wrong. Yes, yes, Marvel and D.C. and the handful of smaller comics companies peddling traditional super-heroes are so creatively bankrupt that you wonder how it’s possible that the “creatively” doesn’t just disappear from that formulation. Neither of them has had any success introducing new characters in forever, and it’s equally clear that the don’t have any idea what to do with the ones they’ve got other than continue an unending soap-opera playing to fewer and fewer true-believers. That’s absolutely right.
But the reason it’s right isn’t because nobody likes super-heroes. People love super-heroes. Here, for example, is a partial list of some of the most successful super-heroes introduced in the past twenty odd years.
Ben 10
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Neo (from the Matrix)
all those folks on Heroes
You get the idea. The concept of a character with some combination of unusual powers and abilities and/or a secret identity and/or a costume, maybe, is hardly dead. On the contrary, it’s been essential to some of the most successful media properties of the last couple of decades
So the question then becomes, not why are super-heroes unpopular, but why are the super-heroes parlayed by Marvel and DC so darn unpopular? Why can everybody and their idiot cousin create successful super-heroes except for the companies that spend all their time, 24-7, writing about super-heroes?
Well, when you look at the successful super-heroes above, you notice a couple of things:
1. Almost all of them are genre blends. That is, they’re super-heroes and something else — fantasy in Sailor Moon, sci-fi in Ben 10, satire in Captain Underpants, goth horror in Buffy and Twilight. That doesn’t make them less about super-heroes — pulp genres cross-hybridize all the time (detective and romance, for example, mix so often it’s become positively indecent.) But what it does do is make them more creative. Steven says:
Don’t forget, the original context of the superhero was a poverty-stricken America heading into World War II. Superheroes were basically a big pep talk, later a big jingoistic pep talk as the country went to war. The earliest superheroes, cats like Superman and Batman, were hardly law-abiding citizens, but the ’30s weren’t a great time for staunch belief in the law. The notion that anyone could stand against presumed widespread corruption, could stand for a higher, nobler morality, that was heady stuff, especially at a time when whole nations seemed to be going nuts. Didn’t last long; before long, and once war was declared, superheroes were mostly chatting up the policeman as Our Friend and how all good Americans should follow the rules, take their vitamins, say their prayers, collect tin and aluminum and buy war bonds and that was a message the time was ready for, but it was no coincidence that the end of the war was almost an end of the superhero. It was the end of any semblance of relevance for the superhero.
And yes, sure, there’s something to that: superheroes started in a certain time and place, and they had to change to continue to be relevant. But…that’s how genres work. Tolkien started modern epic fantasy as a response to WW II. When WWII was over, fantasy was less relevant…so folks like Ursula K. Le Guin came along and did something else with it that made it speak to changing gender roles and race and other stuff that made sense to the people of the time. That’s how genres work; they’re not carved in stone. You pick them up and do something new with them that’s grounded in tradition but makes sense for a different time and place.
And that’s what folks do with super-heroes too. Buffy shows how to use super-hero stories to talk about contemporary high-school and girls coming of age. Captain Underpants shows how to use super-hero stories to talk (or at least snicker) about contemporary elementary schools. The Matrix uses super-heroes to talk (dumbly but popularly) about modern paranoia around technology, among other issues.
The only ones who can’t figure out how to gracefully use super-heroes to talk about anything that matters is the big two. And maybe, you know, that does in fact have something to do with the fact that they’re using the same damn heroes from 40 to 70 years ago. Though, on the other hand, Smallville manages to update Superman effectively, and the Batman cartoons are fine…. I don’t know. Maybe, on second thought, DC and Marvel are just catastrophically stupid.
2. The other thing about all of the most popular super-heroes is that they come complete with their own worlds. That is, the super-heroes aren’t just random folks who happened to gain super-powers and then go off to fight random evil stuff. Rather, the super-hero’s powers, their missions, and their enemies are all part of a single story and a single world. One of the most satisfying parts of Twilight is the geekily thorough way in which Stephanie Meyer apportions powers and weaknesses to her vampires and werewolves and such, and then has those powers drive the plot in particular ways (there are always incredibly intricate plans to stop the mind-reading Edward from picking up thoughts he shouldn’t hear, for example.) I don’t know much about Ben 10, but I do know that his powers and the DNAliens he fights are all tied together in a single backstory.
All of which suggests that people do like reading super-hero stories…but they most of all like reading stories. Folks are willing to suspend their disbelief if you give them a reason to — but DC and Marvel don’t even bother. Their titles just assume, pretty much, that all these various randomly powered, disconnected super-folk are running around, fighting similarly disconnected super-villains. In some ways, the lust for crossover that we’ve seen in recent years is an effort to get around this — to provide the narrative and the rationale that most people reading a story naturally want. But it’s too much of a mess, and mired in too much backstory, to actually be all that interesting to anyone beyond the small core of true believers.
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On the one hand, you might argue I guess that Steven’s tendency not to see the super-heroes all around him is of a piece with the status quo among the big two; that is, if they could only start to think about super-hero stories in different ways, maybe they wouldn’t be so perpetually shitty. Perhaps they could finally start telling stories somebody cared about, and maybe even come up with some new heroes that were different from the old heroes in ways which would allow them to appeal to a broader audience.
But really, I think that’s too harsh on Steven and not sufficiently harsh on DC and Marvel. The truth is, DC and Marvel seem pretty thoroughly irredeemable. Steven was right; they’re creatively D.O.A. They’re going nowhere and changing nothing, and the chances of either of them ever coming up with an exciting, marketable new concepts is roughly the same as the chances of a monkey crawling out of my butt and handing me a power ring. So, yeah, I think it’s important to recognize that super-heroes are still popular, but not because doing so will help DC and Marvel. On the contrary, I think it’s important because, until you realize that super-heroes are doing just fine, you can’t really understand how truly lame Marvel and DC are.
I think the biggest reason that superheroes do well as produced by non-Marvel and DC these days is id.
Say what you like about Twilight or Buffy, but they've got pots of id. Id pours out of the early Marvel/DC comics, too.
Nothing says id quite like manga, which is why, I'm certain, there's so many people queing up to read it. (Do you know about the raised by pigeons manga? She knows *pigeon karate*. Fist of the pigeon strike!)
I think the reason so many of the DC/Marvel comics are failing is because they're boring. Course, I say this as someone who hasn't read that many of them, but I do frequently try to find ones that look good, and so often I get distracted by other shiny stories instead.
My latest theory upon spending a small amount of time in a comic book store is that Marvel and Dc are selling an experience.
If you want to chat with other comic fans, you need to be reading the same stuff they are. And, increasingly, that seems to mean buying something like hundreds of "event" titles.
A new series just isn't going to do that event thing if it has any hope of coherence, and comic fans are already stressed for cash by the gazillion event books, that they probably aren't going to try new stuff.
There's other problems too though. I'd quibble at the idea that the Batman cartoon is necessarily any better than the better batman comics. Generally, I find the Superhero cartoons to be rather bland, safe, unthreatening, perfect corporate properties, really.
Why does the Dr. Who show get incredible ratings while the Dr. Who comics gets bland sales? I think its partially because a CGI explosion resonates with audiences far more than a cartoon drawing of an explosion.
The Spider-man films, the Transformers, X-men, even Superman movies, are like attending a fireworks show.
Any idiot can hire an artist to depict a UFO blowing up the white house. When a studio has a CGI team spend 20 million dollars depicting a UFO blowing up the white house, BAZAAAM! Now that's art!
Yes, some books make it without CGI promotion (though many of the things you cite, the matrix, even sailor moon, are tv/film originations or popularized by tv/film)
Yes, Marvel and DC don't have to run things the way they do, and yes, they could invest in developing new properties (actually, DC does have a development division, the not creator rights friendly Zuda, we'll see how that plays out over the years)
It probably costs more, in terms of labor, to make a comic than a book, though. Comics have a greater skillset involved, between writing, drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering. An aspiring author can write a book on spec and send it in without coordinating between a team, or learning multiple skills.
Super heroes aren't dead. The three Spiderman movies are in the top 25 grossing movies of all time. DC and Marvels ability to produce superheroes is dead. They have no clue how to produce anything that is accessable to anyone who hasn't read comics for the last twenty years.
Look at "Superman" right now. (The comic not the character) Superman isn't appearing in a comic book called "Superman". Mon-el is the star. WTF is Mon-el??
Marvel has a huge hit with "Iron Man" so what do they do. They publish a comic that in no way shape or form looks like the movie and they do a cartoon that features Tony and Rhodey as teenagers in a futuristic city. WAAAAY to strike while the iron (man) is hot!
Kids line up at midnight for Harry Potter but Marvel can't give Spider-man away? The problem isn't superheroes…
I noticed another common feature of all your successful superheroes: they were all introduced outside the Direct Market. The markets for manga, novels, TV, and film are big enough to support new ideas, as long as those new ideas are competently presented and advertised.
The DM is too small and too conservative for new ideas in ANY genre to have much of a chance. There may be some decent superhero stuff out there, but I don't know where to find it because the publishers don't have the money to advertise and just assume (or hope) that readers will somehow find them.
Of course, there's more to the story otherwise Marvel/DC would just be introducing new characters in other media. They don't, and that's probably due to the fact that nobody gives away their best ideas to corporate IP-holders anymore.
The "single story" aspect is my biggest pet peeve. I can watch *Heroes* without having seen any other NBC show, and I can rely on the show to continue to be self-contained.
I really enjoy superheroes, but I'm not a shared universe fan. So I've gotten burnt when I start to read an acclaimed book, enjoy it for a while, and then get frustrated as it eventually becomes "Adventures of these other guys you don't care about, otherwise you'd actually be buying their books" or "Apologies and explanations for events that didn't happen in the book you're reading."
Sometimes guest stars are written in an uncomplicated way to keep the story self-contained, but even then, my reaction is usually "I bought the book to read about the lead guy! Who cares about this random other guy who I'll never even see again in this story?"
I think all these comments are right. Inability to find the id; poor marketing; the poor IP situation for creators; no self-contained stories, etc. etc. The problems are legion…which is why it's so hard to see DC or Marvel ever solving them.
"Tolkien started modern epic fantasy as a response to WW II."
Er, no he didn't. He began work on Lord Of The Rings in the mid-Thirties, well before the war had started. He also strongly denied that the finished book contained any relation whatever to the course of events in the real war.
Nor did he "start" – i.e. plan, design or deliberately launch – any literary genre. He just wrote a book, which ten or fifteen years after its publication happened to fit the atmosphere of changing times. (Personally I think one reason for LOTR's popularity in the early Seventies, in Britain at least, is that a lot of urban-bred young people took to wandering around the countryside in search of experience. When you've recently walked up a mountain for the first time in your life, Tolkien's urge to describe every stone and leaf of a journey seems natural.)
Tolkien can deny whatever he wants; it's pretty hard not to see the finished product as having to do with war, both the first and second world ones to be precise. The shell shock connotations of the final scenes with Frodo are pretty insistent, as just one example. And, yes, the Hobbit was started in the mid-30s — but the bulk of the following trilogy was written during WW II, and has pretty obvious relevance to that conflict. Suggesting that that is the case is hardly a controversial statement among Tolkien commentators — which is why you have your ax out and ready to grind, presumably.
Also, "start" means "start"; I wasn't suggesting that he planned or designed anything (except his own much-imitated books, of course.)
Noah, I would add the main characters from "Dragon Ball Z" to your list of popular super heroes. They're probably the most popular ones of all from recent times, when you get right down to it.
I think all in all DC/Marvel's approach to superheroes is too dumb for the general reader. They're still using the same good vs. evil approach from the forties. Fight scenes still have to occur on a regular basis. Secret identities have to be maintained. Costumes have to be dry cleaned and worn at all times. And real bona fide humor is pretty much verboten.
Vom is right in that the big two fail in the "id" department. Characters written by anybody other than the original creator are always going to be lacking that.
Your list of successful recent superheroes all have at least one thing in common. Their respective superpowers are at best secondary concern to character and plot. Neo's flying skills are not what he's about. From what I gather about Buffy, she is a person first, then a vampire slayer.
By contrast, where would Superman be without his costume? The DC/Marvel archetypes are more about brand names than anything else.
One more thing- I agree that super heroes aren't dead. They fill a fantasy gap that no other genre can supply. It's just that if increasing the comics reading audience is desired, then the companies are going to have to break out of their dead end template to create something real people would want to read.
" I think the biggest reason that superheroes do well as produced by non-Marvel and DC these days is id.
"
What do you mean by id Vom?
I think she means there's not a lot of psychosexual oomph.
Thanks Noah. Very interesting discussion.