Thursday, February 9, 2012

Pulp to Comics -- A Bridge or a Chasm?

You might think with the masks and vigilante spirit they share, pulp heroes and comic book heroes would be successfully wading back and forth into each others' waters all the time. The numbers, however, show a different tale (equally dark and bathed in mystery, some might say).

Somehow, with all the trappings they share in common, pulp heroes just don't seem to successfully make the jump into the four color world of comic books.

Curious about the whys and what-nots behind this, I turned again to the pulp and comics writing community to pick their brains... to glean the following:

Considering the similarities between pulp characters and mainstream comic book characters, you'd think comics featuring pulp heroes would perform better in the marketplace. What do you think is holding them back?

Chuck Dixon: It's a matter of marketing and presentation. Most of the classic pulp heroes are at back bencher companies that don't have the budgets to attract major art talent or for marketing.

Bill Craig: One thing, and this is of course my personal opinion, the quality of artwork these days is horrible.  Too many comic artist have gone to japanese manga style art,  There is no realism such as you found in Jim Steranko's work or even later Paul Gulacy's stint on Master of Kung Fu.  Steranko's work on Chandler: Red Tide was pure pulp entertainment.  Comic companies want dark and gritty, they have forgotten that readers came to characters because while there was the over the top danger, there was a lighter side to the heroes.  This is something that I think is very evident in the lack of sales of many Marvel titles.  They have forgotten how to have fun, where DC on the other hand has brought back the fun in their characters with the new 52.  Another thing is that the people that have been put in charge of the titles had no familiarity with the subject matter and wanted to re-invent the wheel in their own image rather than honoring the source material.

C. William Russette: I think it boils down to the editor. You need a great story (writer) and an artist that will render it faithfully. If the editor doesn't 'get' what the target audience wants then he won't recognize the solid tale when he finds it nor will he find the right team who then screw up  the project and you get crap sales.

Lee Houston Jr: While part of it is finding the right creative team to handle the character "properly", sadly the biggest factor in wooing and wowing an audience today is the passage of time.

The golden age of pulp is basically from the Great Depression to the end of World War Two.

Generations later, most people who are aware of characters like The Shadow (my personal favorite) and Doc Savage, et al; consider them classics and period pieces, despite the fact that they were originally written as contemporary tales of their day. Those same fans hold any attempts to revive the characters to very high standards; while those fresh to the properties compare them to more modern contemporaries (like The Shadow versus Batman, for example) and wonder what all the fuss about the past creations is about.

M.D. Jackson: The simple answer to that question is this: costumes, colour and sex. Comics have all three, and traditional pulp heroes don't measure up.

According to the Diamond Distributors website, the top selling comic books for 2011 were, variously, Justice League, Batman, Green lantern and -- the only Marvel character to make a showing in the top ten this year -- Spider-Man. All of these titles feature muscular (or buxom) heroes in skin-tight costumes in a rainbow of colours. The line up of the Justice League is a splash of the traditional four-colour printing process: red, green, blue and black. The costumes are skin-tight -- practically body paint. The artists are effectively drawing nude, brightly coloured, heavily muscled, adonis-like figures.

Let's face it: If you have a body like Schwarzeneggar's (in his prime) and perform feats of athleticism in public wearing body paint and a mask -- you're Mr. Sex.

Comic characters have also rolled with the times. Despite many of them having begun in the 1930's or 1940's the comics have stayed updated, modern and fresh. The same can't be said for the pulp characters. Most of them are still stuck back in the 1930's, in their heyday. That's a big barrier for modern comic book buyers. 

Erwin K. Roberts: Part of it is the costumes. Or lack of them. They were mostly black, a form of camouflage as they worked in the dark. Great for prose. Not so good for panel art. When MLJ Comic's Black Hood moved into pulps they added a black cape so that he could hide his mostly bright yellow uniform at night.

Plus most of the hero-pulp characters operated in disguise. Even Doc Savage, at times. Some, like Secret Agent X & the Phantom Detective spent all, or almost all of their time wearing somebody else's face. The (Green) Ghost usually wore a very forgettable face. But with makeup, special lighting, and facial contortions he could "turn on the Ghost" and look like an animated skull. And, like the Phantom (Detective) and even the Black Bat, that skull face got relegated to observer status in the backgrounds of pulp covers. (I've even resorted to the same tactic with my disguise artist hero, the Voice). But, can you imagine, month after month, if Lex Luthor, or Terra Man, launched new crimes or attacks with Superman just glaring at them from afar?

So, what's an artist to do? For DC Comics' Deadman, the characters he inhabits have a yellow glow about them. DC also gave the Unknown Soldier a "tell." He sometimes scratches at his collar that causes his mask to itch. As for Secret Agent X, Rob Davis of Airship-27 sneaks the letter "X" onto signet rings and tie clips as a sort of inside joke. With G-8, in his one Silver Age comics appearance, Gold Key sort of cheated. G-8 was drawn with very deep-set eyes. When he impersonated someone they would acquire those sunken eyes that looked sort of like a domino mask. But nobody in the story noticed. Anybody got other ideas?

Derrick Ferguson: What's holding them back is that we have a generation, possibly two that has grown up with the manufactured angst and drama that infests most comic books today. Like another genre, the daytime soap opera (which comic books actually have the most in common with) comic books are no longer a vehicle for telling interesting stories about interesting characters. Now they are simply vehicles for writers to demonstrate how much they hate superheroes.

What's the constant thing you see whenever a pulp hero is revived by DC or Marvel? It's that hated word that will appear in the first paragraph: "relatable." It's always stressed that the pulp hero is being made "human" so that readers will "relate" to him. We're talking about readers who have been raised on Spider-Man who lost more often than he won and spent just as much time agonizing over how he was going to pay the rent as he did worrying about how to beat The Green Goblin. And that's why Spider-Man has his fans because they relate to that. And that's okay. Me, I'd rather relate to Tony Stark who is the smartest guy in the world with his own warehouse of high-tech armor, buys a dozen Ferraris when he's in the mood and babes lined up outside his door since the week before. Or Thor or Superman. That probably says more about my ego than anything else but I digress.

My point is that comic book fans are conditioned to reading about characters who don't win no matter what they do. Spider-Man makes a deal with The Devil and his marriage is wiped from existence and those mothercussin' X-Men are still BMW-ing [editor's note: bitch, moan, and whine - it took me a minute too] about how humanity hates them and why can't we all get along and Wonder Woman is still figuring out who she is and what she's supposed to be doing. Because comic book readers think this constantly recycled soap opera crap is drama. But the classic pulp heroes weren't built along those lines and don't subscribe to a whiny "woe is me" philosophy.

So now, we give them Doc Savage. The most perfect example of humanity: the smartest and strongest guy on the planet who travels all over the world fighting the forces of evil with his five best pals. Should be simple to do that comic each and every month, right?

Nope. Because the comic book fans of today and even worse, the writers throw up that word; "relatable" They insist that a Doc Savage who is written as he's supposed to be written is no good to today's world because he's not "relatable" and he has no flaws and because the writers aren't good enough to work their skills to write Doc the way he's supposed to be written, they tear away everything that makes Doc and his world interesting and then they wonder why nobody wants to read the book.

The Shadow doesn't have that problem because he never gets watered down like Doc and The Avenger. After all, The Punisher and characters of his ilk are similar and The Shadow was there before all of them, performing .45 caliber lobotomies before they were born.

Me, I'm like Benjy Stone in "My Favorite Year" when he yells at Alan Swann that he can't use him life-sized, he doesn't need him life-sized. I'm that way with most of my heroes; I don't need them to be "relatable." I can't use a Doc Savage who worries about paying the rent or where his next meal is coming from. That's not what I read him for. Like Benjy, I need my heroes as big as I can get them. But not comic book fans. They're used to reading about heroes crushed by life and losing all the time. That why most pulp heroes don't work for them because that's not real to them.

Percival Constantine: I think the main thing is a lack of recognition. People have definitely heard of characters like Doc Savage, the Shadow and the Phantom. But they aren't as familiar with them as they are with their superhero successors. And in today's market with comic prices being what they are, it's difficult to get readers to take a chance on something they aren't as familiar with when they've got so much familiar material to choose from. For instance, a Batman fan would definitely have many reasons to like the Shadow and would probably get into the character once they got some exposure to him. But how can you get a Batman fan to pick up a comic featuring the Shadow when they've got at least half a dozen Batman comics to choose from?

Jim Beard: The ADD of consumers and their need for flash and bang. WE all know what weight the pulp characters hold, but I suspect the general populace gets a whiff of the age that's attatched to them and they turn instead to look at the newest sparkly thing. Here's the irony: the pulp heroes came out at a time when the country was feeling the bite of a Depression and readers could act out their frustrations through the blood-soaked adventures; these days, why take the time to, you know, READ when a video game is so much easier to lock-and-load? We are experiencing the kind of atmosphere that pervaded the 1930s right now, yet reading has taken the far back seat to more "immediate" media and entertainment. I fear that no education on our part of the merits of the pulp genre -- in PRINT -- will be enough to counteract the pervasive ADD of potential consumers. But, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying.

John Morgan Neal: Luck, timing and the same thing that holds back second tier characters at DC and Marvel. The majority of fans are going to buy what they know. That's why the big icons like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and The X-Men have sold the best. But The X-Men themselves took off in the '80s after a lackluster first run and the Teen Titans and The LSH took off in the '80s as well. The old pulp guys are just not as well known anymore and weren't even as well known by fans in the '70s and '80s by that point. Many of the comics made in those years were very very good but in the end just didn't sell as well as others. 

What could be done to improve the showing of pulp heroes in the mainstream comic book world, to win over both the retailers and the fans who don't know much (or anything) about The Spider or Doc Savage and their compatriots?

Chuck Dixon: It's a tough sell. There's a rapid attrition of folks who recognize these characters over time. Absent a hit movie or TV show or game, I don't see how these characters can re-enter the mainstream through comics. Hell, most COMIC BOOK characters can't find a steady audience.How many re-boots of Firestorm are we expected to suffer through?

Bill Craig: You need some dynamite art and writing that will open the story with a bang and then through the course of the story reveal the background and origins rather than shoving it down the reader's throat at the beginning.  They need to engage readers and retailers first, then tell them who these characters are!  In my opinion that would do a lot towards making the titles successful.  Also, keeping the price below 4 bucks for comics that used to cost 12cents to 50 cents for annuals.  I recently saw an annual title from one publisher that had a 6.00 cover price.  The comics are rapidly pricing themselves out of the market.

Lee Houston Jr.: The best thing that can be done is to find the right creative team (writing, art, editing, etc) possible for each project and have them tell the best tales they can make with modern production methods (printing, lettering, coloring, etc), staying true to the original characters and concepts, while not playing towards any preconceived notions of the properties, in hopes of achieving the biggest reader/fan base possible. Moonstone should be commended for their overall efforts.

While the recent "First Wave" attempt failed, DC did great in the 1970s by giving Dennis O'Neil the writing assignments for The Shadow and Justice, Inc. (The Avenger). But then again the results prove my point because he and the artists involved were from a generation raised on the pulp genre.

Marvel took a good approach by using the genre techniques with new characters on Mystery Men, and I hope they keep the same creative team on any future stories with those characters.

Dynamite has done The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and John Carter to critical acclaim and praise; and I'm waiting to see how Garth Ennis handles The Shadow.

So doing pulp within the comics format is possible. It's just a question of bringing all the right elements together in the process.

M.D. Jackson: I think the best way to improve the showing of pulp heros would be to drag them into the 21st century. I know that most pulp fans cringe when they hear that. Most pulp hero fans are purists, but if you want the pulp heroes to reach a wider audience, then you have to make the hero go to the audience.

A 21st century setting, a modern attitude, a colourful costume and a dash of sex is what would do it, I believe. Most pulp heroes are pretty straight arrows. That would have to change. They would have to be more morally ambiguous, perhaps a bit sinister. At the very least they would have to have a more dynamic emotional range.

However, if you do all that to attract the comics reading audience, do you lose the essence of what made the pulp hero great in the first place? Unless it was done very carefully, quite probably. The operation would be a success but the patient would die.

It can be done, however. Witness the recent British TV series SHERLOCK. That has successfully transplanted a Victorian pulp hero into modern times, given him a modern edge and even made him sexy, all without losing the essence of who the character is. It is rare when that happens and it takes great skill, but when it does happen the results can be spectacular.

Can it be done, making pulp heroes more popular as comic books? Probably, but what you end up with may no longer resemble the hero you started out with. The question is then is it worth it? Are you willing to sacrifice all the things you love about these old pulp characters just to make them more popular? 

Derrick Ferguson: The simplest thing to do, which of course nobody is going to do because it makes sense is to put these characters in the hands of creators who know them, love them and will do them right and present them as they are. I know, I know, we've got Moonstone who is doing that and a few other "smaller" comic book companies. But the fact is this: if it ain't The Big Two, most comic book fans ain't even going to look at it. And like everything else in this cold ol' world of ours -- if you ain't got the numbers, it don't mean a thing.

Marvel's recent "Mystery Men" series shows that pulp can be successful in the mainstream comic book world. Marvel had the good sense to hire a writer and artist team that obviously loved what they were doing because it showed in the artwork and story. You can't hire writers with contempt for the characters they're writing about or artists who couldn't care less because it shows in the work.

I myself feel that the best way to win over retailers and fans is to do what politicians have known since the time of The Roman Empire: there's nothing yet that beats kissing babies and pressing the flesh and getting out there in public and explaining to folks why they should be reading pulp in all media, not just comics. How many times have you met a writer you may not have had the slightest interest in reading anything he wrote but after meeting him in person you picked up a book or two of his? Just because he shook your hand and chatted with you for five or ten minutes. All of us have, sure.

And maybe that's something we all should remember, we're all ambassadors of pulp. It behooves us all to behave as such when we attend professional publications or write in our blogs and Facebook pages and websites and what-not.

Erwin K. Roberts: To adapt most 40,000 word pulp novels is going to take quite a bit of cutting and 64 page graphic novel. At a minimum. For Airship 27's All-Star Pulp Comics I wrote the first ever Jim Anthony strip. With only eight to ten pages there just wasn't time to have Jim save the world. So I took a minor character from one of my stories and told how she met the Big Boy Scout. If I did a prose version I doubt I'd reach more than 7000 words.

To make an intricate pulp style story work you probably have to dump today's every-panel-a-page style of storytelling. Then research how Will Eisner drew the Spirit. Or how Steve Ditko crammed huge amounts of plot and dialog into an eight page story of the Question. In my opinion, otherwise you may end up trying to play football on a baseball diamond.

Percival Constantine: Despite the problems in execution, DC had a good idea with First Wave to introduce them in connection with a Batman book. One thing that would help would probably be getting big name creators (who have an appreciation for the characters, of course) to write these titles.

Another thing that would help is more mainstream (and successful) media adaptations. If we have more films that treat the pulp characters in the same way they've been treating superheroes as of late, I think that would definitely be a shot in the arm. The upcoming John Carter film, if successful, will likely get people interested in the John Carter comics that are coming. Shane Black is set to bring The Man of Bronze back to the big screen, and I imagine if DC (assuming they still have the rights at that point) puts out a stellar Doc comic that treats the character with the same respect that Black seems to have, it will do very well.

There is definitely a mainstream market for these characters. The longstanding popularity of Indiana Jones and Batman shows that people would respond well to Doc Savage and the Shadow, provided they're done well.

John Morgan Neal: We have to sell them. We have to educate them. We have to let the characters shine. Show they can be just as relevant today as they were in their era. The best we can do is try and get as many people to discover these old characters and see them as something not so much as old but as timeless and be willing to give them a chance and perhaps they can find the magic of them like we all have.

Jim Beard: Keep putting out better and better books on a professional level that rivals that of mainstream comics, etc. That's paramount to our cause, I think. If there's even the hint of poor graphics on covers or typography or the like, the audience will turn away. Yes, the insides matter, of course, but we need to hook them with slick, professional dress and get them to crack that cover. Also, I believe that we should continue to look at creating new genres within pulp by melding existing themes and looking for key avenues of expression. What are the trends today in comics and video games? Can they be adapted into the pulp world? What would happen if they were? Would it still be pulp? Can we remain true to our pulp principles? These are questions that need to be answered so that pulp can grow and thrive, yet retain all the wonderful uniqueness that makes it what it is.

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Want to see what's up with the creators who took part in this interview? Just click on their names "Heavy Hitters" list on the right.

15 comments:

  1. Modernizing pulp characters is a bad idea and should be dropped from the discussion. Conan would not work in the modern day, he is from pre-history and should stay there. Zorro and the Lone Ranger would not work either. They are from the old west, Zorro from the very old west. (Nor should they have been teamed up in the comic featured, they are from two different time periods.)Domino Lady would not work in the modern day. Young women walk around wearing next to nothing all the time now. Where would her shock value be. (The Domino Lady comic featured was set in the 30's but was full of angsty characters. What a let down.)
    Why must a character like the Shadow be thrust into the modern day?
    Doc Savage's gizmos worked in the 30's just fine, leave him there.
    Be it pre-history, western or 1930's and 40's these are fixed points in time that can be mined endlessly for stories and content.
    Create modern characters for the modern day.

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  2. I agree with you in spirit and principle, Mark. However our desire to keep the Pulp heroes where they belong also 'ghettoizes' them. For whatever reason, the larger audience do not gravitate to period pieces any longer. The decline of the Western is clearly a sign of that. Sure there are exceptions like the success of Pirates of the Caribbean and Sherlock Holmes, But while they are set in the proper times the movies are stylistically very modern.

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  3. Granted, transporting every character from the past to the present will not work, but the idea should not be totally ignored for the concepts that are viable today.
    I could definitely foresee a modern day Shadow fighting crime and terrorist threats IF you make him/her a descendant of the original. It's worked for the Green Hornet franchise.
    And who's to say you cannot take the Sherlock approach to Doc Savage or some other workable character and have them start fresh in the 21st century, presenting modern versions of their adventures from day 1?
    While John Carter has a definitive departure point, once he arrives on Mars, does it matter when his adventures take place in regards to Earth time?
    The same can be said for Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers too. Once they leave (present day) Earth, that does not affect their adventures.
    But the BEST approach to doing a modern day pulp comic book might be to start fresh with a whole new character in the genre from issue 1, provided you can get a publisher interested in such an idea since it will not have any guaranteed audience(s) like a licensed character would.

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  4. Digging the discussion. Keep it up.

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  5. Let's take a look at two versions of Domino Lady in comics out now. Both versions feature the art team of Rock Baker and Jeff Austin, the best Good Girl Art team in the business. Perfect for this kind of story. So we are on a level playing field concerning art. In Moonstones Domino Lady vs Mummy, DL is angst driven and reactive to the situation on hand. In Airship 27's All Star Pulp Comics Domino Lady is a proactive Punisher type dealing out lethal justice. Neither portrayal touched upon her use of sex appeal or behind the scenes manipulation to solve crime or bring about justice.
    Which Domino Lady is the right one for 2012? I say neither.
    In Moonstone's Spider vs Werewolf we are presented with the Spider. I personally was completely unaware of the character. I don't know his history or the nature of his power. A simple paragraph at the beginning of the story could have caught up a new reader like me. However the story does nothing for someone unfamiliar with the character. It was not till close to the end of the book that I found out the Spider is cursed(?) and could go on a killing spree at any moment.
    If publishers want new readers to read about almost forgotten characters there has to be some consistency and rules.
    Is Domino Lady proactive or reactive? Does she use sex appeal to get what she wants or no?
    Help a new reader understand the character by giving a brief description at the beginning so we don't stumble around trying to figure out what's going on.
    With multiple publishers putting out books about the same named characters but throwing out bits of the established history and inventing their own new slants you won't be able to garner any kind of fan base.

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  6. Well of course the bottom line whether the pulp characters are moved to current time or left where they came from originally it should be done well. It appears to me that the issues with Domino Lady have nothing to do with it being set in current time. They just were poorly handled in your view.


    As for Lee's suggestion. I couldn't agree more and if I didn't it would make me a hypocrite. As I have done that very thing with my own Aym Geronimo and the PostModern Pioneers. And one of her inspirations Buckaroo Banzai did as well in the 80's. And of course both Buckaroo and Aym are influenced by Doc Savage. Who is a character I feel like Batman and Superman can fit any age. That is what it comes down to as was touched on above.

    For some reason the classic iconic superheroes, who were created very close on the heels of the great pulp age, are allowed to change with the times and demonstrate how timeless they are. But the pulp characters seemed mired in their era. I'm not sure why this is so. Not that some should remain in their by gone age as that is what best suits the character. That it true of certain comic characters as well.

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  7. The Super Heroes I grew up with in the 60s and 70s are unrecognizable to me today. Gone is the sense of adventure, wonder and just plain fun I had reading a comic book back then.
    The Robert Downey jr. Sherlock Holmes is another character I have no connection with. I stopped watching the first movie half way thru and have no desire to finish it.
    Modern writers have to write for the modern audience of short attention spanned individuals. At 48 years old I feel like a dinosaur.
    Look what a modern writer did to the Green Hornet in the movie that came out last year. Did they improve the character? Update him for the modern day? No, they spat at his generations of fans who thrilled at his and Kato's adventures and made a movie for teenagers who never even heard of the Green Hornet. Now millions of people know Britt Reed has always been a drunken bumbler. Why? Because it was in the movie. Nice way to honor a childhood hero of mine.
    Looks like Hollywood has it's sights on deconstructing the Lone Ranger next.

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  8. This a great and relevant topic and some good ideas, but so many wrong assumptions here, I don't know where to start. First, the idea that old pulp heroes can't translate into the present day is wrong, especially when we face a recession that echoes the great depression. There are also plenty of other tensions and problems that superficially look hyper-modern but could match a pulp story; cybercrime, spying, underworld mafias and drug cartels, etc. Second, 'updating' the characters (as the above poster said with the new Sherlock Holmes movie) to make them angsty and sensitive is a bad idea and makes the character unrecognizable. This is the entertainment world's misconception of what audiences and readers want. Third, grimdark angst with broken heroes is not what audiences are conditioned to read - it's what the big two are dishing out. But look at any fan forum and you can see fans bitching to high heaven that this is not what they want. This is why sales are falling. For some reason, editors will not listen. Fourth, further blaming the new generation (of which I am not part) of having video-game inspired ADD and being unable to comprehend stories with more than four words per page, while also being addicted to violence, sex, and gore, is another marketing analytical misconception. Again, this is why comic sales are dropping. What sold comics was substantial stories, characterization and continuity, something the pulps are great at. Is it not the case that gamers, for example, are a sophisticated audience that actually have inordinately high attention spans when it comes to following a plot down to its end? The violence in games is a red herring, hiding gamers' real qualities. And while the rest of a younger generation may not be fully fledged gamers, it may be that what they yearn for in a blipping, blinking, gadget-driven world is that stability of a solid story, told well, with a clearly-shaped hero who isn't defined by his latest nervous breakdown. The pulps could give several generations just what they want, not what editors and industry people bizarrely and mistakenly think they want. Finally, the idea that older characters are unrecognizable, and there is no appetite for material that looks dated is also wrong. Steampunk is only one example of trends that indicate that there is a huge appetite for older tropes, themes and styles, the more we push into the shiny tech-driven future.

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  9. That steampunk argument is a good one, ToB. It certainly is thriving by tapping into an older vein.

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  10. I am sorry if I was overly critical. But I feel that the gimmicks used since the early 1990s to sell comic books are not the answer to the woes of the industry. Instead of stepping back from these approaches, today's editors and writers do more of what has hurt the industry, not less. Multiple covers; slick merchandising for select titles but not others; over-inflating certain comics series (like the Batverse - a character I like, but the bubble will burst and fan exhaustion will set in when there are 30 Bat titles); viewing characters primarily as brands across several marketing venues and as gateways to selling other commodities - ALL these things are given priority, when what should matter is the story and the art. The other stuff grows out of it. But look at the low quality of story-telling, rife with preconceived marketing gimmicks, with inverted morality as its selling point: the grimdark angsty hero; heroes who are psychopaths; heroes who are broken; heroes that murder; shades of grey; villains as heroes; the Starfire-ization of heroines like Koriand'r and Donna Troy, who over decades have their characterizations stripped away. The revolving door of death. Sex, gore, violence - all have their place, as does horror - all have great pulp roots - but when these things are ALL there is between the splash pages (with 5 words per page) there is no substance left. Erasing continuity; elseworlds as a sales gimmick. On and on and on.

    Then industry editors and creators blame fans for these changes. I've seen industry people online constantly claim that the drop in quality is all the fault of the fans, whom they assume are not sophisticated enough to read a 30 page book with an involved story, action with continuity and deep characterization, that costs about $1.25. Look at any comics fan forum, and you will see a lot of people who demand just that. Instead of that, the medicine offered for the problem of falling sales is more and more of the same that made the sales fall in the first place.

    The problems with the big two are rampant: inflation of the medium, while deemphasizing substance. Dumbing down of plots. Shiny new costumes. Crossover sickness. Big mass kill offs and die offs as selling points (DC has killed off over 600 characters since 2003).

    TPTB groom the comics to suit superficial movie plots, model-like actors, instead of allowing comics to develop a true, fertile base for scripts. It puts the cart (movie) before the horse (comics). Peter Chung spoke very eloquently on the demise of comics a few years ago and cited these problems. Comics industry leaders are like people who see a house burning down, and try to put it out by pouring gas on it.

    The bottom line: updating the medium to suit today does not mean that comics should primarily be conceived as phone apps. The creators should be given some free rein to stand back, take from the past what still resonates, and talk to the worries, crime and problems of today - we certainly have enough of those. Heroism in the face of that is still relevant and should not be deconstructed into the inverted nightmare it is now. This is why pulp heroes, with their unambiguous crusades into the darkness could not be more relevant than they would be now.

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  11. Where did you get that stats for DC killing 600+ characters since 2003? That's mind-numbing. Just wow.

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  12. The number of characters killed in the Didio era at DC is actually closer to 700. It is surely a landmark in comic book history. I have a whole series devoted to the revolving door of death on my blog; the first post in the series discusses the character death count.

    http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.com/2010/06/reflections-on-revolving-door-of-death.html

    The number comes from a LOSH fan forum, where the fans made a list of DC characters killed since 2003. The link is in that post. Elsewhere in that blog series, I believe I have some links to comments from DC insiders who described board meetings where killing characters was taken as a dramatic policy to drive sales. It now appears that that policy dovetailed with Dan Didio's personal dream to Sue some Silver Age characters and attract 90s Marvel fans, all at the expense of the rest of the DCU. The whole blog series:

    http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.com/search/label/Revolving%20Door

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  13. Thanks, Zainub. Happy to provide a little enjoyment for you. Drop by often. Daily even. *grins*

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