A timely commentary on the state of comics writing. Or "let me say what some other people have said and take entirely too long about it" Article by aviewaskewed, 11:55 PM 16th Jan Disclaimer: The following column is entirely the opinions of the author (even at that we aren‘t sure), any similarity to the opinions of any other staff or affiliate of theendlesscrew.com is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all creator comments have been gleaned from other sources and no creators have actually endorsed any aspect of this column. So this week, I thought I’d muse on something simple and interesting Stephen Grant has talked about the last couple of weeks, but people have blown way out of proportion. Not to mention, that seems to be a running theme in just about everything I’m involved with right now so…let’s see how much I can bang out on this. The topic, of course, was about making better comics. Grant put forth something very simple: Most comics suck. If this industry wants respect and credibility, it simply needs to get over all the garbage that gets put out justifying why bad comics should be treated as good, either because it’s some big time creator, or because it’s a character that’s sold well in the past, or simply because it’s an independent title. It’s all a pant load. Seriously, what other medium (except for maybe film) puts out such BS ways to judge the work, instead of…oh, I don’t know…judging the work on it’s own merits. Is this slipping past because we don’t have enough criticism? I don’t think so. You know why I think this is slipping past us? Because once more, it boils down to one of the simplest problems there is in this medium: For all the leaps forwards in creative endeavor, the industry end is still run and propped up from top to bottom by fans. Fans are a great thing, but in this medium? In large groups? They stagnate it. Not to mention there is such a prevailing mindset out there now that if the industry wants real respect, they have to get all serious and talk about EVERY little problem like it’s huge and what not, and just generally bitch about the big things, without offering solutions. Like Grant said, shut up, and do the work. Police yourselves, you want to devote column inches to something? Devote it to trying to get the distribution system fixed, devote it to pushing worthy work, devote it to anything other then the kind of squabbling and complaining about little things that so many people like to use their message boards, columns, and whatever else to talk about. It’s pretty insane to me that Warren Ellis has created a forum for creators to get together, designed to be a think tank for creators to come together and jam about the medium and the industry, and they’re wasting time talking about trying to set up iron clad systems to reject crap. Hey, crap is a subjective term, but the best way to avoid bad work is to police yourself, if you write or draw something and go, “well, that isn’t the best I could do” do it again for the love of God!! Don’t just send it off. Do it right. Oh, and editorial needs to get off it’s butt in some cases and do it’s job in safeguarding the characters it’s in charge of from bad writing (I am soooo looking at you guys over on titles like Spider-Man). The industry has a real chance I think to train some eyes onto it’s best work, but the problem I’m seeing is that it almost looks like it’s best work is 20 years or so back. I can’t think of anybody who is showing us that “break out” book, and that’s sad as hell. There are so many publishers out there, there’s so many people toiling away, but it’s either the wrong books are sucking up the spotlight and the good stuff is stuck somewhere where they just can’t catch a break, or there’s just a lot of garbage, a bit of good, but nothing great. Nothing out there that is forcing people to stand up and take notice. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I think a lot of it comes back to stagnation. Stagnation of publishers, and of writers. Fact is, comics are like politics, whether you like it or not, it’s pretty much a two publisher system, with a bunch of other voices below them with various degrees of success and stability. DC is better about trying off the beaten track material, but they don’t promote it well. Marvel hasn’t had an original character idea in at least 10 years that mattered really, and hasn’t had a non-mutant new character that mattered in at least 15 I’d say. They continue to do what DC does: fill a niche, and that’s good enough for them thank you very much. The writer thing is just a lot of burn out I think, I think it’s great we have guys like Bendis, or Johns, et al. who have many, many new ideas to run about, but when they’re writing five or six books a month, they tend to dilute. Not to mention Bendis’s (in my opinion) excellent series Powers has absolutely suffered by going to Marvel’s Icon imprint (seriously, I do not even see issues hitting the shelves anymore…I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Marvel is slitting that book’s throat by keeping Bendis busy on other stuff). But I think too there’s frustration, like I said, it’s basically a two publisher system, and it is the rare book that they will take a risk on, usually they just want your talent on THEIR characters. There are alternatives, but we’re still in a situation where the most money and exposure is at the big two, who really don’t much want anything truly new and radical these days, since they can still strip-mine the crap out of the radical ness of 20 years ago. So overall point? Write good comics, draw good comics, get the word out on them, and start praying. Art and commerce are at odds with each other, especially in the comics industry. It’s not impossible to do good work, and ultimately make a tidy profit, but it is very hard. Be honest with yourself about your work, if it’s good, print it, and push it. If it’s crap, trash it and try again. It’s really that simple, don’t overcomplicate the system so badly that people like me start going out and writing horribly rambling columns to get such a simple point across. Notes and news: To someone at DC who may be reading this: TRADE MORE 70’S JSA!!! I don’t care how, just trade it up, we’ve got a new Crisis on Multiple Earths trade coming, something with a bunch of Power Girl stories…keep boxing it up, and I’ll keep buying…what about that new Showcase format mayhaps? Or continuing the All-Star Archives to include that short run? Just give me more old JSA. Now one that isn’t so self motivated: I tried out the newest issue of Exiles this week, had heard good word of mouth and thought the concept was intriguing. Liked a lot of the characters advertised for the team too (I’m a big fan of the AoA era of the X-Men) and I’ll definitely get more of this, and catch up with trades I think. It’s a fun book that visits all of the multiple Marvel-U’s, and it’s fun to read something with mutants that doesn’t mean I have to read or try to keep abreast of a bunch of books I don’t care about. That’s about all from me, couple plugs, no big news or bitches, not to mention this is pretty much late at this point, sorry, been very tired lately for some reason. Hopefully that’ll clear up by next week. Enjoy, and go read some good comics. Back to Rants