Chuck Austen is leaving Marvel.
I was never as enthusiastic an Austen basher as some, for a few reasons. One, U.S. War Machine is one of my favorite supercomics ever, his artwork on the Elektra miniseries that Brian Bendis wrote is maybe the only time a non-Frank Miller or Bill Sienkievicz take on the character worked, and even The Eternals was sleazily entertaining. Second, I quickly figured out a good rule of thumb for parsing his work: If he can show nipples and disembowelment, it’s probably pretty good, and if he can’t, run for the fucking hills. Three, once I establish that someone’s book isn’t very good–now see if you can follow me on this one–I stop reading it. I abandoned his X-Men stuff when they started fighting werewolves and taking atrociously sophomoric, nearly braindead swipes at organized religion (not my favorite thing in the world, but even if the Catholic Church was run by a clone of Adolf Hitler, attacking it still wouldn’t justify that nightmarishly bad Nightcrawler storyline), and I haven’t looked back. That’s the good thing about comics: No one’s forcing you at gunpoint to buy them, or even read them in the store. In my head, Magneto is still dead, Nightcrawler is still a mutant, and that two-issue New X-Men coda Austen did exists only in the Negative Zone.
It’s mildly disturbing to see the role that Marvel’s backtracking away from pushing the boundaries of what mainstream, superhero comics could be played in Austen’s ouster. If Austen’s dopey PG-13 work on X-Men is out of bounds, what are the odds we’ll see something like Unstable Molecules come along again anytime soon? On the other hand, Marvel’s reliance on Austen to work on franchise books, work he was quite obviously ill-suited for, was a genuine problem for the company. By excusing himself from the table, Austen just made Marvel’s job–making good comics–that much easier.
(Link courtesy of Kevin Melrose.)