Haven’t done one of these in a while.
Editor Axel Alonso announces some of the upcoming plans for the Marvel Knights imprint–assuming the agent-provacateur role vis a vis unabashed superhero fans from the oustered Bill Jemas in the process. Hee hee! The occasional excess of Alonso’s rhetoric aside, Marvel Knights has traditionally been the petri dish for the types of comics storytelling that helped turn Marvel proper, and indeed the mainstream industry at large, around. The Marvel Knights style (which I once described as “slightly more sophisticated, slightly less continuity-wonky, usually better”) has produced more hits than misses–or at least the hits have been bigger and better than the misses have been lousy flops–and I’m happy to see Marvel sending more of their big (and, not coincidentally, movie-related) franchise characters in that direction. By the end of April ’04, the imprint will include titles starring silver-screen superheroes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, the Hulk (whose book was, as I’ve said, already a Marvel Knights book, in tone if not in name), the Punisher (I think–they’re still doing a non-mature-readers series even while moving Garth Ennis’s Punisher work over to MAX territory, right?), and, if rumors can be believed (and my sources tell me that in this case they can), Blade.
Gee, when you read it all together like that, it’s clear which editor the Marvel bigwigs feel they can trust with the high-profit franchises, isn’t it? Surely it’s only a matter of time before an X-book starring central X-characters makes the migration into Alonso’s stable. Meanwhile, Captain America continues to be the red(whiteandblue)headed stepchild of Marvel Knights: His title has never gelled satisfactorily. However, the Robert Morales/Chris Bachalo iteration of the book is, even after one issue, easily the most promising version thus far (not counting the rollicking “What If the Nazis Had Won?” version by Dave Gibbons and Lee Weeks), so there’s hope even there.
In other Marvel imprint news, Bill Sherman enters the Marvel Age fray, asking defenders and detractors alike to postpone judgement until, y’know, we actually see the books. I’ll reiterate what I said on my last post on the topic: “[Everything] hinges on whether the books are any good, and (to a lesser or greater extent, depending on your perspective) whether or not they sell. But the principle behind the thing is as sound as it gets, in my book.” (Bill also picks up the Velvet Underground quoting baton and runs with it, God bless ‘im.)
David Fiore chimes in on a related topic: the “innocence” of the Silver Age, specifically blogger Alan David Doane’s feelings on same. Responding to Alan’s quote in my post on the topic yesterday (in which Alan described the “innocence” in question as a belief in the happy-family Bullpen model of Marvel comicmaking, subsequently belied by the awful treatment of Jack Kirby and the cynical statements and actions of 1980s Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter), David writes:
Look ADD–as a personal reaction to the history of Marvel Comics, your statement is perfectly valid, and I sympathize with you… However, the problem is that you allow these feelings about “corporate fuckery” and the business/contractual side of the comic book world to seep into every aesthetic judgment you make, rendering your criticism (at least of superhero comics) absolutely valueless….
The point is this–criticism deals with texts! It cannot concern itself with the manner in which the texts are created (or to whom they are marketed). The builders of the Pyramids suffered even more grievously at the hands of their masters than Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko did–we have to put that out of our minds when we’re appraising the works themselves qua works of art… I have no problem whatsoever with editorializing against the slimy business practices of corporations (or Pharoahs)–just don’t let that stuff (or your hurt feelings about Marvel as “bad father”) lead you into making critical judgments that you are unable to support with textual evidence…
This is a not uncommon phenomenon when critically evaluating comics as art. One of the best comics critics I’ve ever read has said to me that the aesthetic enjoyment or enrichment you get out of a given comic should not even be a consideration if the business practices involved in its production were immoral. He wasn’t referring to the Silver Age comics themselves–the years and years of comics derived from them were his target–and I don’t even think he’s necessarily wrong in some cases (how many of us, for example, want to hear whether Frank Miller gives his blessing to a particular version of Elektra before we buy it? Or refused to buy the collection of Alan Moore’s Captain Britain work until it was properly accredited?), but it’s important to remember this mindset when evaluating the work of critics dealing with this industry.
On the other hand, ADD does seem to have a sense of humor about himself, as his comment at this Franklin Harris post makes clear.
Stuart Moore does the advocacy bit for the “superheroes plus” genre. Saying that straight-genre comics won’t attract a wide readership (gee, why do you think that’s the case?), he argues that by setting superhero stories in a solid genre framework (crime, espionage, science-fiction, etc.) you can draw in an existing readership and, in a semi-stealth fashion, broaden their horizons, leading eventually to a more robust variety of comics. A nice theory–if it weren’t for the fact that this just isn’t happening. Superhero fans now have several years of popular, acclaimed “superheroes plus” stories under their belts–and Stuart Moore’s hard work at Vertigo and Marvel Knights played no small part in this–and yet the Direct Market still shows no signs of being able to sell anything that’s totally costume- or powers-free. It would appear that, as I’ve argued before, the key factor for superheroes-plus stories isn’t the plus, it’s the superheroes. No, straight-genre stories don’t sell, but that’s because of excessive superhero dominance of the market, and is not something that can be fixed in any substantial way by doing more superhero stories, even great superhero stories, of any kind.
Moore is, however, correct in saying that normal “people aren