Has creativity stagnated? Article by aviewaskewed, 12:34 AM 11th Dec 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. Is this column bi-annual now? Annual? Is Rob Liefeld secretly in charge? These are all good questions…I have no answers…maybe if you actually read it you’ll figure it out. Sometimes a sequence of thought happens just enough that I feel there MUST be a column about it. This was one of those weeks. Today I come to you my humble readership and ask you: are we destroying innovation in the comics business? I’m looking at the big two and predominate output is super heroes. That’s predominately what the direct market is selling. Worse yet, how many truly NEW heroes or super heroic concepts have we come up with in the last few years? Cause to me it looks like everything is just re-treading the memes of 10 to 20 years ago. That’s not a good thing folks, that’s a sign of stagnation. That’s not to say there aren’t still books out there I’m enjoying, I’m loving Marvel’s new iteration of Thunderbolts, I think Justice Society of America is still a great read and one of the prettiest books there is artistically out there, if a bit slow moving with it’s current plot. Daredevil is always a perennial favorite. But in the end I recognize that these books aren’t exactly breaking new ground. Daredevil I think has moved back into a certain comfort zone again after the slam bang of the outing, and the momentum it regained when Bendis and Maleev finished their run with Matt Murdock in jail. JSA is reveling in it’s past incarnations, including the All-Star Squadron years, and has also now worked to make aspects of Kingdom Come a definable part of the continuity. Thunderbolts is delightful with it’s team of scumbag villains working for the government to apprehend unregistered super heroes, but we’ve touched on similar themes in The Authority, Watchmen, and Suicide Squad. It may be fun to read, but it’s not exactly new or all that different. In some cases the work becomes downright insular or stale in other books (I read the New Ways To Die arc on Spider-Man which is post-BND and I was not terribly impressed. This attempt to re-set Spidey to “the good ol’ days” just doesn’t work that well for me). That’s what I’m having a problem with here, and it’s really true of the super hero genre now, more so then anywhere else: Everything is some damn insular or re-treaded that it’s basically become about rewarded and pleasing the faithful while doing nothing to bring in the new base. Why? I think part of the problem is because it seems most every creator in super hero comics actively is in there looking to basically re-do their favorite run on a character, or to kiss the butt of their favorite creator. Here’s a good example that Steven Grant brought up in his Permanent Damage column: Jack Kirby, the King. Everybody loves to work on stuff Kirby did, everybody who ever works a Kirby creation just loves to gush over how much they love Jack’s work and just want to honor his legacy and show their love for his work. Do you know what Jack Kirby wanted his legacy to be? He wanted it to be that YOU go create stuff guys. He didn’t want it to be you read something he created and say “oh boy! If only I could work on The New Gods and follow in Jack’s footsteps!” he wanted you to look at The New Gods and say “wow! That was so great! I want to go out there and create comics and characters of my own that are just as good and give people as much entertainment value!”. Don’t believe me, let me go and pull out the bit from Steven’s column and qoute it for you: Throughout my professional lifetime, I've watched talent go to Marvel or DC and occasionally other places, simply so they could work on Jack Kirby's characters. And do "their" version of Kirby. This includes people I consider friends. Again, it's one thing to have a good OMAC story in mind, but I'm talking about people whose greatest dream in life is to make their careers continuing Kirby characters. I don't think there was one of them who didn't believe their work on his characters somehow honored Kirby's contributions to the field. I only spoke to Jack twice in my life, but one of those times I asked him about this. In fact, Jack did not feel honored. He wasn't upset about it, and didn't complain (like others I've known in similar positions have) that he hadn't been hired instead to work on his own characters. He was saddened. Why? Because he hadn't spent his career just working. He'd spent it creating, and constantly coming up with new characters and new creations wherever he had the chance. What saddened him was that message – create your own, create your own, create your own - wasn't the legacy his career was leaving for new talents instead. Paying the bills with work for hire is fine. Not to mention that I am one of those folks that enjoys some of these characters that have been around forever and want to see them be done well, but why do people feel like it should be work for hire and nothing else? If you don’t have an original idea in you, or your own characters in you, then you aren’t really helping the comics business out in the long run. Follow the example of Kirby, and create your own stuff. Oh, and while working on the corporate and established stuff, how about we actually do something NEW? Please? I think one of the things I hate most about something like what’s happened with Spider-Man lately. What they did was hit the cosmic reset button, they hit it badly, and they took it back to what THEY wanted it to be. The people who are in charge of care taking this character and making sure it sells well and is a coherent and enjoyable story, and keeping it relevant and fresh decided that they needed to take it back to the conceit of 30 years ago. Worse, they actively undid years worth of stories just to get rid of an element to the character they didn’t like (his marriage) and tried to justify getting rid of it based on “some fan boy writers and editors did something 10 or 20 years ago that was a disservice to the spirit and the intent of the character”. Perhaps they have a point, but I would argue that that is now EXACTLY what Joe Quesada and company have done now. Worse, they asked J. Michael Stracynzski to write a story that invalidated the five or so years worth of material. Plus, the way you effected the change completely flies in the face of what a noble hero you want Spider-Man to be (although how noble it is to torture yourself and whine about how badly your screwing up your life over one incident is probably a pretty debatable point) by having him make a deal with a sinister stand-in for the devil to effect said change. We had a hero make a deal with the devil, great idea there, that’s so much better then him just simply getting a divorce and not completely upending his status quo. I mean, to make a change that radical, it almost seems to me the slate should have been wiped clean and it started from scratch. But we’ll never do that will we? The fan base won’t tolerate it, the established audience demand that feeling that what they read “counts” and is part of a larger tapestry, or publishers have at least convinced themselves this is true. I see the appeal, and I know the reward aspect of it is neat and all, but there are certainly definable events that can be pointed to where such thinking is holding the genre back. I think perhaps it’s time in the interest of working towards a more mass appeal, and what not to look at the bigger super hero properties for what they are: a never ending series of books. Never ending!! With that in mind I think we need to get almost to where Batman was post Hush, where it’s a particular creative team assigned, they do a specific number of issues, they wrap their story, and then they leave, next team comes in…rinse, repeat. Granted, to use recurring characters we’re going to have to acknowledge the past somewhat, but hopefully this way we don’t have to be mired in it and forcing everybody to be following in the footsteps of everyone else who did the book. It’s amazing that it’s worked this long without having people leaping out windows. These are just random thoughts, suggestions, pleas for sanity. I’m not trying to bag on people who are predominately doing work for hire, I don’t begrudge anybody paying their bills, but as Steven Grant said, people need to come into the business and check their fan hat at the door. If you’re really a creator, then you go out and create, otherwise your just a hired gun playing in somebody else’s sandbox. Most of us do that in life, that’s the best we can be afforded, but to just accept that? To not dare to be different, to not chase that dream and to keep doing better and memorable work. Comics is a wonderful, wonderful medium. I wouldn’t waste my money on it, or spend all this time writing about it, talking about it, and debating it if I didn’t believe that. Let’s do right by it, let’s keep exploring, creating, innovating. Let’s follow the true legacy of Jack Kirby and other trailblazers, and try to forge a path of our own, not simply walk in their footsteps. Back to Rants