As you may or may not know, Clark Kent apparently quit his job to become a blogger. It’s gotten a lot of mainstream media play (because the media likes to talk about the death of media, and bloggers like to talk about the rise of bloggers, natch.) Tim Hodler at TCJ is less impressed:
—Apparently Clark Kent quit his job or something? I’m not going to link to them (such behavior should not be rewarded), but newspapers are actually reporting on this comic-book plot point as if it is news. This continual urge on the part of the media to treat fictional events as newsworthy developments is the one thing comics as an art form has going for it that no other American art form seems to, but boy does it seem dumb.
Like Tim, I’m not going to read this comic. But I think most of his other comments here are kind of confused. First of all, other media get treated as newsworthy all the time. Movie releases are huge, high profile news events with no small frequency. Many media outlets (the Atlantic, for example) regularly devote space to episode recaps of television shows; the twist on Homeland was big enough news that I know there was a twist on Homeland even though I actually know just about literally nothing about Homeland. That stupid Aaron Sorkin show (the “Newsroom” right?) was reported on in much the same way the Superman-leaving-news is being reported on; that is, it was a media-enthusiastically-covering-the-media story. In fact, from the one page Andrew Sullivan is reproducing, the media reporting on entertainment is actually the reason Clark is leaving the Daily Planet — a nicely incestuous meta-twist to the nicely incestuous meta-memeness of it all.
In fact, I’d say that comics is actually far less likely to get these kinds of stories into mainstream outlets than other mass-entertainment — for the very logical reason that comics is a lot less popular than television or film or (for that matter) sports. It’s because having a story like this in the mainstream is novel that it’s noticeable.
Moreover, I’d say that getting media attention is a sign that DC is doing something right. Pulp entertainment is supposed to slavishly and shamelessly follow the zeitgeist; it’s supposed to be about whatever stupid shiny thing happens to be in the news. Mainstream comics are actually pretty bad at doing this, partly because they’re built around 40-70 year old characters, and mostly because their fanbase is incredibly hermetic and insular.
So a storyline like this — which effectively panders to a great big audience rather than to the same old tiny audience — seems like a step forward, to me. Someday, maybe, in some golden dawn, mainstream pulp comics can rise out of their subterranean level of shittiness, and attain the relatively elevated mediocre shittiness of 24 or Homeland or Breaking Bad. Dare to dream.
Update: Tim has interesting clarifications in comments, as do several other folks, so please be sure to scroll down.
It doesn’t seem like any step forward to me. They’re just trying to make the character seem more in tune with the times, like when they made him a TV-news anchor in the ’70s, or gave him a mullet in the ’90s.
Sure. But my point is, they don’t generally seem able to even do that. They’re just not very good at keeping up to date in the shallow, stupid way pop culture is supposed to keep up to date.
And about Tim’s “This continual urge on the part of the media to treat fictional events as newsworthy developments is the one thing comics as an art form has going for it that no other American art form seems to…,” my oh my, that’s fatuous. When have Superman stories ever been considered part of the aesthetic vanguard of the field? I mean, I could accept this, depending on the creative personnel, with Batman, Swamp Thing, and some of the Marvel characters, but Superman?
Noah–
Superman with a mullet is probably the best example of what you’re talking about. It was at least five years behind the times.
I’m pretty sure Tim’s being ironic there. He thinks the Superman story is idiotic (which it is.)
I just don’t think he’s thinking through the extent to which entertainment is newsworthy; it’s not a special thing to comics (and in fact happens less often with comics than with other media.)
Right…and this jumping on the blogger bandwagon is pretty old too at this point.
Maybe the thing that Tim’s right about is that the media attention tends to focus on plot points rather than on high concept…which is because comics don’t really do high concept, because all their eggs are in these decades-old properties where the concepts are mostly already long-settled.
I think the kind of reporting behind “Clark Kent quits Daily Planet” is a little different than reporting on movies or tv… possibly because it displaces the comics. I think Clark Kent and Superman are treated more as a franchise or character– while the story is a covert advertisement to read the issue, for most, I think this news is more synonymous with “Barbie Breaks Up With Ken” as brought to us by the illustrious Fox News. On the other hand, a really great episode of… (I don’t want any of these, so) TV Show X will inspire news of– “Wow! What a crazy episode! This is a cultural flashpoint!” Not news of “Character Y breaks up with Character Z.” On the other hand, very few comics are blessed with “Wow! What an amazing comic book! This is a cultural flashpoint!” — at least as reportage, not just a review.
Typo– By ‘want’ I meant ‘watch’… Sorry!
Yes…there’s some difference, I’d agree, though the entertainment-as-news is consistent.
I wonder how much this sort of thing affects sales? I know the Death of Superman story way back when helped that issue sell. Are people going to pick up Superman who didn’t before? Surely it’ll give the issue at least a bit of a boost?
Hey Noah —
I don’t doubt that the paragraph you quote is confused, as well as confusing, but I am not talking about recaps or reviews or critical discussions — rather, I am referring to the way things like Batman’s “death” or Superman’s “wedding” are reported in places like the New York Times and USA Today as actual news stories, as if they are events happening in the world instead of plot developments. (Imagine a 1960s newspaper article reporting that the Joker has robbed another bank or that Jimmy Olsen has been turned into a giant turtle.) I can’t think of any parallels in other media, but am willing to believe I am missing something. Or many things. That was a pretty casual aside.
(And this hardly needs saying probably, but of course you are right that I was being sarcastic when I said comics has this “going for it.”)
I only skimmed this post, but have you seen this?
http://www.theonion.com/articles/economically-healthy-daily-planet-now-most-unreali,28718/
Thanks Tim! I knew it was casual; I just thought it raised some interesting questions and so thought I’d try to tease them out. (It’s a fairly casual post too!)
I see the point you’re making now. I wonder if it’s in fact partially because comics just don’t have regular coverage in the papers? That is, usually a story like that would be in entertainment, but entertainment doesn’t do much comics coverage…so it ends up in “other”, which is the news, more or less.
I think television is getting close to this sort of coverage at times…you see things like, “this is what happened last night on program x,” which is basically a news story reporting on a plot line, it seems like….
Kailyn’s point about Barbie Breaks Up With Ken seems analogous. Wasn’t Snuffleupagus’ outing also news? And of course Ellen’s outing was…and the thing where James Bond only slept with one woman in that one movie…I think it definitely happens for other media on occasion.
Are you sure that’s Clark Kent, and not Superman wearing glasses? He’s looking rather filled out in that hoodie sweater.
Anyway, I figured it would be a matter of time before the good folks DC felt the need to use Clark Kent to provide “relevant social commentary” on the state of newsprint media. Which is fine; that’s what superbooks increasingly do these days. The external media coverage of these kinds of stories by, say, The Atlantic or the LA Times in the name of pandering to pop-culture frivolity, however, is a little baffling. Mutual masturbation mixed with incestuous zeitgeist, I suppose.
But I think what Tim Hodler was getting at is that, yeah, movies and TV episodes will be covered and reviewed in the entertainment sections. But that’s different from taking a plot point from a 70-year old character’s “life” as though it were a news development we should be aware of, such as when Superman renounced his citizenship, or he and Wonder Woman hooking up, or this. I don’t see these publications doing the same thing for the life and times of Jack Bauer or Ned Stark. It’s stunt-driven and doesn’t amount to much, but it does grant some esteem to the (superhero) comic book and its reader, that these characters receive such attention from the glorious “outside.”
The Ellen DeGeneres thing I’d put in a different category, because it genuinely was news at the time for there to be a lesbian lead character on primetime television, but the Barbie story is certainly a good examples of what I am talking about. I still think it seems to happen more often with comics than other media, but my case is getting shakier.
It’s an interesting case, though! I think you may be right that it’s unusually the case that comics get reported on in this way. There are various reasons for that — but I think all of them maybe highlight the way that comics is in an anomalous position in terms of its relationship to the mainstream media.
Also, almost all the first definitions of comics included something about a central character or cast of repeated characters… I think for most people, comics are franchise first. The story/book itself is beyond the point– as the character. I don’t feel like this is the case with most movies or television, but occurs whenever a company privileges the character/franchise over the original story, highly licenses the character/franchise, and posits a continuing storyline (a parallel story dimension where that character’s life is going on right now.) Perhaps the Disney Princesses are in a transitional phase…?
Doesn’t it have more to do with the idea of long-running (and still-running) iconic characters that are perpetually part of the social consciousness? So many of these types of characters have origins in comics…that it seems like a “comics” thing. James Bond qualifies as that kind of figure. And…so does Snuffleupagus…but TV shows (and film series’) tend not to run so long, so the proportion is higher for comics…
Snuffleupagus has come out??
As an actually existing creature…(Remember nobody could see him but Big Bird, back in the day? Now he’s just another giant muppet)… Or, maybe you knew that and this was just a joke.
Ugh, that art does not look very good at all. And all that text! Ugh.
I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t a dramatic issue where Clark outs Lex Luthor as the blog’s resident troll.
Heh. There’s a great Johnny Ryan comic where Batman is writing on his blog, and someone trolls him, and he goes out to find who it is, and it turns out it’s Superman. So he says, “Superman! You! Why!” And Superman says, “Because you suck.”
I don’t know. It seemed to encapsulate the internet experience….
——————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
…I knew it was casual; I just thought it raised some interesting questions and so thought I’d try to tease them out. (It’s a fairly casual post too!)
——————–
At least it gave me a chance to agree with you about something…!
Those were also pretty spot-on criticisms of the media Clark gave out.
And, alas, doesn’t the fact some bump in the career path of a fictional character has “gotten a lot of mainstream media play” itself count as yet another indictment of the media?
“Slow news week” indeed…
Snuffleupagus can be seen? Oh thank god. That made me so upset as a child–to exist and to have no one believe in you. Nightmarish.
Barbie dumps Ken hit the NY Times. And Dumbledore is gay was a big story all over.
I believe they made Snuffleupagus visible for exactly the reason, actually; they worried that kids would get the idea that they couldn’t trust their parents to believe them.
I loved that nobody could see Snuffleupagus.
I was going to comment along the lines of what Eric said, that the long-running, beloved, iconic nature of the characters is probably what prompts this kind of interest; there aren’t many examples of this in other media, although Sesame Street or James Bond are good examples. There’s also a little bit of mild outrage at what they’re doing with the character, although less so in this case than when Superman renounced his citizenship or whatever. It’s like when Cookie Monster supposedly stopped eating cookies (which never happened, at least not permanently; he still eats lots of them in the episodes my kids watch) and people got upset that political correctness was invading stuff for kids.
The Cookie Monster thing is an urban myth that’s been around for at least a decade. He will never stop with the cookies…unless he loses funding.
At least three years late, but then it took Death Note three years to get around to “torture to extract a confession from a mass murderer – yes or no?” so that’s okay… What I don’t get is that movies take two or three years to greenlight, cast, shoot, edit, etc so of course they are several years behind, but comics don’t take that long to draw and don’t need to involve as many people, so they could be a bit more timely, you would think.
I wonder if there will ever be a superman celebrity angst issue where Clark struggles with feelings of being overlooked compared to his celebrity alter ego. That would be timely or at least fit in with the pop culture of the moment. But he’s like Captain America right, the appeal of the character is that he’s old-fasioned.
Anyway I do kinda want to read this issue of Superman, now, even though I’ve never read an issue of Superman before. So nice work, DC.
I’ve always ranked Superman as my least preferred DC hero specifically because I never felt that he was relevant or relatable… I understand in the late 30s that he was necessary as the hero that would save the world and blah blah blah… but that is so deeply engrained in his character that a simple job change isn’t enough to make him ‘current’ and there’s nothing that DC can do about it (cue evil laugh) unless they completely change his character. His value, if we’re to award him any, is in nostalgia… He’s just like Captain America, whom people find appealing because he’s a fuddy-duddy, a reason that’s not valid enough for me to be bothered to actually spend my time reading about him…
But I suppose it’s good that comics are receiving any attention at all from the outside world, and while Superman’s not my cup of tea, I’m sure this is sparking some people’s interest.
If they had any balls they’d have The Daily Planet go belly up. At least they’d be ahead of the curve. But I guess blowing it up instead is more their style.