This much-buzzed-about-by-comics-folk Wall Street Journal piece on contemporary superhero comics and the comics industry at large by Tim Marchman pretty much stunned me, for several reasons.
First and most of all, it ran in the Wall Street Journal. If you’re at all familiar with mainstream-media comics coverage, you know that, outside the confines of reviews or profiles of the biggest alternative/literary graphic novels and their makers, for these publications comics equals superheroes, and superheroes equal whatever the Big Two say they equal. The ease with which DC and Marvel can place plot twists, publishing initiatives, and cultural-hotbutton gimmickry in fawning, unquestioning puff pieces everywhere from The New York Times on down would make the Defense Department blush. So it’s quite shocking to see someone write a thinkpiece (in the guise of a review, but you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t look at the section header) about how much he doesn’t like today’s superhero comics, complete with names named and alternatives proposed and celebrated.
Second, he’s writing his anti-superhero-comic piece from a position of openness to and familiarity with superhero comics, even if he goes on to reject them. To the extent that alternative comics are discussed in these big-name publications, it’s usually accompanied by sneering derision of the entire genre, with perhaps one or two exceptions thrown in to prove the rule. But Marchman knows enough about the field to articulate why it’s lacking in what could once have been considered its cardinal virtues, and that’s impressive, too.
Third — and as best I can tell, aside from James Sturm’s Avengers-boycott advocacy in Slate, this issue has been entirely untouched by the national media — he frames much of his disgust in ethical terms, singling out DC’s odious Before Watchmen project for especial opprobrium but also mentioning the plights of Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, and Joe Shuster. It’s not just that movie critics and entertainment-business reporters whiffed on the Kirby lawsuit when covering Avengers — everyone did, including progressive pop-culture critics I read and enjoy every damn day, who’ve made a career out of reclaiming genre (including superheroes) and investigating the moral, political, and ethical ramifications of art. If Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alyssa Rosenberg and Spencer Ackerman can (as best I can tell) miss the issue entirely, it’s just amazing to see someone, anyone, bring this up at all.
That said, is it a perfect piece? No. Before Watchmen scab J. Michael Straczynski deserves to be rhetorically roughed up, but Marchman’s He-Man reference is a cheap shot given the many other respected-by-society items on JMS’s resume, and there are other terrible Spider-Man storylines for which he should be blamed instead of “Spidey sells his marriage to the devil,” which was not his idea and which was done over his protest. Marchman’s slam of Joe Quesada, Brian Bendis, and Grant Morrison as three of the four men most responsible for superhero comics’ sorry sales state is unjustified given how they turned Marvel around from bankruptcy with Bill Jemas. His comparison to the ’90s million-selling juggernauts ignores the fact that that boom was driven by speculation and fueled by comics far more incomprehensible and awful than anything being published today. And in general I’m wary of any argument predicated on the notion that comics could or should be a mainstream taste or mass medium at any time later than, say, 1970. But kudos to Marchman for adding this necessary voice of dissent to the conversation. Or more accurately, kudos to Marchman for starting the conversation in the first place.
UPDATE: I thought it was important to add that I read and like quite a few Big Two superhero comics being published today, and I enjoy the field overall more than Marchman does, so that would be another quibble of mine with the piece. My attitude for the last few years has been that since I have an easy enough time finding superhero comics I enjoy, I don’t bang my head against the overall health of the genre.
Tags: comics, Tim Marchman
Hey Sean, I enjoyed your response to the article. One point of clarification: Marchman’s reference to “the comic industry’s brief Dutch-tulip phase” of the 1990s is EXACTLY a reference to a speculation-driven market. Historical reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Tulip_Craze
Right, so doesn’t that invalidate the comparison?
Well yeah, since he goes on to equate sales with audience. I see your point now — I thought you meant he was neglecting to acknowledge the speculation boom altogether. He does go on to ignore it almost immediately after citing it!
If they’re missing the issue, that might be because they consider writing stories about and drawing the same few characters repeatedly to not be creative work. If anyone, no matter how talented, wrote comics stories starring the same person for decades, how often would he repeat himself? First would be themes; second might be character traits; third could be plot points. Even fictional characters have natural life spans.
The differences between any two novels in the same genre, by different writers, are greater than the differences in any two stories about the same character, by the same writer.
SRS
Since twitter isn’t real life, I just want to plainly restate my contention: of course comics can be mainstream. They aren’t the only luxury entertainment item in society (and never have been) but with capitalism and marketing, sure of course comic books can be mainstream. It isn’t fair or particularly logical to presume a cultural event is outside of the realm of possibility. People can be pursuaded to buy anything if they think that they will derive sufficient pleasure and entertainment from it.
Will Marvel or DC do what it takes (as comic book industry leaders) to get the comic books all the way through to the mainstream? Not likely. But just because something isn’t happening doesn’t make it impossible.
“There’s always a way,” -Grant Morrison.
I agree that the Boll/JMS comparison isn’t quite fair and accurate. A better analogy would be: “A ‘Before Watchmen’ written by J. Michael Straczynski would be as bad an idea as a ‘Taxi Driver’ prequel written by J. Michael Straczynski”.
Actually, I’m much more interested in seeing some kind of direct-to-video ‘Taxi Driver’ prequel than any kind of non-Moore ‘Watchmen’. I can picture it now: ‘Before Taxi Driver: Saigon Cab Stand’. Or maybe a better route would be to do the kind of reboot that Herzog did with ‘Bad Lieutenant’. (I call dibs on ‘Taxi Driver: Cairo Rush Hour’.)
Tom Ewing had a pretty good analysis of this at his Tumblr:
http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/23810981844/worst-comic-book-ever