The Point

I think most people understood what I meant with my "prediction" for how the Marvel Universe was going to change, but clearly not everyone did, as this comment shows:

Is your point that the Marvel Zombies would blindly buy books with the same titles as their favorites regardless of the actual content?

Yeah... no.

My point is that "shocking revelations" that "change the Marvel Universe" tend to neither be shocking nor change very much in the long run, so the only way Marvel could truly surprise me is to drop superhero stories altogether and strongly push comics set in other genres.

But they won't, of course. Despite being the largest American comics company, Marvel is also the most conservative. No matter how many times they threaten to "really shake things up," the stories will never really change because Marvel will never stray too far from their bread and butter: superheroes. I can tick off on one hand the number of comics they publish that DON'T, in some way, feature superheroes (and all of those are adaptations of established properties).

Even last year, when they ran tribute books to other genres Marvel used to publish (Romance, Western and "Monster"), the books all ALSO had to feature some established superhero. It couldn't just be Devil Dinosaur, it had to be a Devil Dinosaur vs. The Hulk.*

And this is a problem because Marvel dominates the American comics field and what they SAY is comics, is comics. And as long as Marvel refuses to change, then the medium and the audience for that medium stagnates. Even if superheroes are your biggest selller, publishing superheroes exclusively tells everyone not interested in men in tights that comics as a whole are not for them, and that's suicidal.

For example, "Spider-Man 3" is going to be Sony's biggest movie this year, but that doesn't mean Sony is going to do just Spider-Man movies, or even just superhero movies. That would be insane! Most people would stop seeing Sony films, and if Sony made up half the movie industry by itself, most people would stop seeing movies altogether!

Even DC Comics, which admittedly publishes mostly superhero stuff, has in the last year alone published two western on-goings, a war comic or two, a bunch of fantasy/horror through their Vertigo imprint, a Looney Tunes comic, distributed the CMX line of manga, and launched MINX, which feature teenage girl protagonists.

So there's at least one major publisher pushing different genres, giving top writers and artists the chance to tell stories about anything else to an audience that likes the medium but might not be that into superhero stories. Where's Marvel's Pride of Bagdad? Their Plain Janes? Heck, it's been over twenty years, where's their Sandman?

As for actually turning Amazing Spider-Man into Picture Perfect, I guess I had a second point. I believe Marvel Zombies AREN'T actually that interested in superheroes. They're interested in specific characters and relationships. Which is why Marvel books sell fifty thousand copies and other companies' superhero books maybe sell ten, regardless of perceived quality. And by stripping away the flashy costumes and superpowers, Marvel might be able to prove to their audience that, not only could they enjoy a romantic comedy book, they're already reading one!

It's just been hiding behind a mask.


*The book itself was extremely good, I should say. I was just using it as an example.

The Character of New York City

One of the tropes of superhero comics is that the hero and his city reflect each other.

Scipio Garling at the Absorbascon has written extensively about the fictionopolises of the DC Comics world, the imaginary cities that, over time, have established themselves as architectural echoes of their protectors: the neo-futurist Metropolis is home to the Man of Tomorrow; cloud enshrouded gothic Gotham is haunted by Dark Knight; Central City has the wide open spaces needed for a hero who can encircle the Earth in under a second; even the quiet and pastoral Smallville reflects the hopeful and nostalgic Adventures of Superman when he was a Boy.

This theme is an updating of the more classic trope that the king embodied the country he ruled, and as he faired, so faired the kingdom. L'État, c'est moi, as King Louis once said.

But what of the Marvel heroes, the ones who work a) in real places and b) almost entirely in New York. How can New York BE Spider-Man AND Iron Man, Daredevil AND Dr. Strange, and each member of the Fantastic Four as well?

Well, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko did something very clever: they carved up New York and placed their heroes in the neighborhoods that fit best:

Industrialist Iron Man is a leader of Wall Street;

Dr. Strange has the sweetest Greenwich Village bachelor pad and lifestyle ever;

Daredevil fights on the side of the angels in Hell’s Kitchen;

And Spider-Man’s at his very best as the hero of Queens.

And the Fantastic Four, well that’s extra clever. While the Baxter Building fits neatly into the Mid-Town collection of art deco skyscrapers, the members of the team reflect New York's four boroughs.* Ben Grimm is Brooklyn-born and bred; hot-head Johnny Storm is a Yankees fan and ladies man like any Bronx boy aspires to be, motherly Sue Storm fits into the more residential Queens (and I'm guessing is a Mets fan, just to annoy her brother), and is there a better name for a Manhattan-ite than “Mr. Fantastic”?

Later writers would add Luke Cage, Hero for Hire of Harlem, and the Punisher, scourge of Sheepshead Bay. And with each story, with each issue, the city would gain more and more personality, more and more character, until it seemed to breathe.

Which is why I think it’s kind of silly when fans and Joe Quesada insist Marvel Comics take place in “the real world.” The Marvel Universe just isn’t real. Not just that super-powered soldiers and alien invasions would warp the course of history, but by their very legendary nature, superheroes imbue any city they exist in with mythic qualities.

When seen through the mask of Spider-Man, New York becomes a fictionopolis, a place as alive, as full of personality and absurdity and horror and hope as any Metropolis, as any Gotham.

When Spider-Man swings through Manhattan, New York lives!


* “Jon, everyone knows Staten Island doesn’t count.”

This Way to the Exposition

Mark Waid is a comic book writer that, if nothing else, I respect. I enjoy a lot of his work, and while I can't say he's my favorite writer, he's certainly one of the best at the technical craft of serialized, sequential art. So it's interesting to hear him engage in self-criticism in the same interview at Comic Book Resources that launched yesterday's post:

Robert Taylor: Biggest weakness?

...Mark Waid: ...my dialogue comes off as being a little too expository sometimes.

RT: Can you explain that a little more for me?

MW: Har de har har.

I've heard criticism of Waid's over-explanatory dialogue before and I understand it. In The Brave and the Bold #3, for example, the villain takes a page to explain who exactly each member of the Fatal Five is to a room of hostages who really don't care.

And while it does sound a little unnatural to hear the villain rattle off player stats, at least Waid understands one important fact: Exposition is Necessary. Sometimes it's a necessary evil, but it is always needed.

Remember, every comic is someone's first comic, especially an intentionally new reader friendly book like The Brave and the Bold. So some readers just won't know who the Fatal Five are. Probably even less are familiar with the new Blue Beetle. Heck, it's conceivably someone's first time reading about Batman. (okay, not really...)

It may give "the fans" a thrill to catch something that the casual reader just can't, but if someone who hasn't read comics for the past ten years is constantly left in the dark, then they're also going to be left in the cold, and just walk. The Fuck. Away.

You can't just throw, say, the Ultra-Humanite at the heroes and expect the reader to care without somehow explaining who he is and why he's a threat. When Dolores Winters pops up in the poorly-written Justice League of America #8, the casual reader has no reason to care at all because Brad Meltzer doesn't stop to explain that Winters is the Ultra-Humanite. And that the Ultra-Humanite is a body-hopping evil genius, who is also sometimes a giant white ape, as John Rogers explains in just one (1) word balloon in the much, much better Blue Beetle. (Really, why aren't more people reading that book?)

It used to be, comics had narrators who flat out told the reader what he or she needed to know to enjoy a particular issue, usually the writer/editor, who provided backstory and pointed to the issues in which those stories took place. Every Marvel Comic was (still is?) supposedly being told to you by Stan Lee himself, in his own inimitable style. Or if not the writer, than a host like the Crypt Keeper or the protagonist like Wally West in Waid's run on The Flash told the story directly to the reader.

In the wake of Watchmen, as superhero comics became more self-consciously filmic, narrators were more or less discarded as distracting artifice. Which is an acceptable artistic choice but it meant the thankless job of exposition fell to dialogue between characters.

Done well, and the reader never notices he learned something. Often, however, it's either Authority Figure explaining the plot to the Plucky Hero ("We believe Hitler is looking for the Arc of the Covenant. Here's why that's a bad thing..."), or it's Character A reminding Character B about something that Character B knows all too well ("Wow, you must be really angry that your girlfriend was brutally murdered yesterday by a gang of robot ninjas.")

But, and this is important, badly done exposition is better than no exposition at all.

Yes, the pleasure of ongoing stories is building on what came before, but not everyone read what came before and it's silly to expect them to have. So unless you want to just give up on new readers (and those without exceptional memories for details), you need some way to let readers know what's going on. Serial television shows employ "Previously on BLANK" segments before each episode to catch viewers up. Following that example, Marvel's been using title pages to re-cap the plot, to some good effect. And if you're not going to use a narrator to explain who and what everything is, then you're going to need to have characters speak in Waid's expository style now and then.

Or you could just have The Phantom Stranger explain everything. He's good at that.

Psycho-Changer, Qu'est Que C'est

One of the greatest advantages of long form, episodic storytelling is that characters develop over time as a natural reaction to their experiences. Rather than the sudden epiphany required in a two hour movie, a comic book character can, issue by issue, over years, progress through stages of growth.

Catwoman, for example, moved from thief with little conscience to someone who robs only from the rich to Robin Hood in black leather to out-and-out vigilante superhero—not over the course of one story but over two series running over 15 years! Such a well mapped progression gives a sense of character growth earned, an arc rewarded and a hero in the place she ought to be!

Which is why I really hate "psycho-changers," those plot devices that explain personality change as the sudden result of some external influence. Instead of personality changing as a natural reaction to personal experience, characters are bonked on the head with a coconut or exposed to "evil radiation" and suddenly they're jerks, murderous and wearing stupid emo haircuts. (Why yes, I did see Spider-Man 3 this weekend. Why do you ask?)

One of the many reasons I stopped watching Smallville was that the only times the characters changed at all was when they were hit with Kryptonite-infused pollen (or Kryptonite-infused bugs, or red Kryptonite, or black Kryptonite, or...) and suddenly they were adrenaline-seeking bad girls who dressed skankily or wanted to kill Clark. Why should the writers take the time to come up with a good, compelling reason teenagers would want to have sex or Lex Luthor would want to be evil, when there's Plotdevise-inite just lying around everywhere?

I mean, "psycho-changers" are okay for one-shot stories where they set-up otherwise impossible situations ("Oh no, Superman thinks he's Darkseid's son!") or are used as metaphors for internal struggles (one of fantasy's great strengths is that internal demons become external, where they are easier to punch in the nose). But when they are over-used or are used in place of real development, where the metaphor is dropped entirely, they become a major problem.

Particularly when the "psycho-changer" actually REPLACES real development (that some other writer took the time to create) with arbitrary excuses for new behavior. God forbid the loss of his entire city and almost everyone he knows drove Hal Jordan to try change history, no matter what the cost. That would, you know, make sense. Nope, he had to be infected with an alien parasite no one knew about before. (Also, all the people he killed are not actually dead.)

Or Cassandra Cain. Daughter of assassins. Trained from birth to be an assassin. Used by Batman more as a weapon than as a person. Never discovered her human side, no matter how hard she tried. Forced to fight her mother, over and over again, until she finally kills her. Disappears for a year. But what explains her trying to kill Robin?


Evil Serum!

But more annoying to me than the "psycho-changers" explaining why good characters went bad are the "psycho-changers" that explain why villains reformed. I watched Catwoman grow a conscience over a very long period of time. To say that her growth was not her own, but imposed on her by a meddling Zatanna, is to say that Catwoman couldn't have changed on her own.

The problem is that "psycho-changers" define personality as something constant and inert unless arbitrarily acted upon by fantastic forces. That rehabilitation is just as impossible as falls from grace. That some people are just born evil, and some are born good, and nothing short of alien intervention can change that.

In fact, personality is something that's constantly in flux. Are you the same person you were five years ago? Have you grown in anyway? Are you better? Are you worse? And is any of this change a result of brainwashing?

Temptation Blocker

From Comic Book Resources: STUDIO TOURS: Mark Waid, while others were concerned with what inspired Mark Waid, this is what caught my eye:

Programs used on a regular basis: Microsoft Word, Firefox, Adobe Photoshop, Windows Media Player, and Temptation Blocker, a freeware program that locks me out of selected applications for a pre-set amount of time so my online porn addiction doesn't get in the way of my deadlines. As much.

Not that Mark Waid has a porn addiction (after all, The Internet is for Porn), but that he can shut it out for pre-set amounts of time. As a would-be comic book writer (but then, heh, aren't we all), a program that allows me to use my computer and check my e-mail but NOT read other peoples blogs or download funny Google videos (for Porn).

So thank you, Mark Waid, for giving me a way of keeping my new years resolution of writing that novel or two.

Oh, and for that thing in 52 yesterday. That was swell too.

(hmm... I can't seem to actually download it though, as the web-site Google points me to is down, and I'm not sure it's available for the Mac. So I'm not sure how helpful this will actually be, unless someone helps me out...)

It's Always Someone's First Time

Incomprehensible. Exclusive. Written for a small, insular community that has a shared history with these characters, full of half-explained references and verbal and visual shorthand.

The latest issue of JSA?

Nope, this blog.

A friend recently told me that my blog is "insane". She couldn't follow a thing I wrote about and, considering that she doesn't read superhero comics, she's completely right.

I mean, look at my last few posts. Even besides the meme panels (new computer at work has PhotoShop, in case you were wondering, and TWO Thor clone jokes? I'm slipping), it's unexplained references to the most obscure characters, inside jokes about shared writing complaints, and a general assumption that my audience not only knows the stories I'm talking about, but has actually read every issue that I've read... which is, well, "insane."

So my New Years blogging resolution is to make my blog more New Reader friendly. More explaination, more annotation and explanatory links. Basically write it for an audience that knows who Superman and Batman are, but maybe not that J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, has a fondness for Oreo cookies (or Chocos, as they are known in the DCU).

Erm... the DCU being shorthand for the DC Comics Universe, the shared setting for most of the superhero stories published by DC Comics.

Though some of the Vertigo books actually take place in the DCU as well. And occasionally Wildstorm books.

Vertigo being DC Comics mature line of books...

hm, this may be harder than I thought.

Lex Luthor is Smarter Than You

Second hardest character in fiction to write? A protagonist that's smarter than the you are. If someone is a certifiable genius, if, in fact, her super power is being a genius, then how are you ever going to come up with something so clever and wise that it earns the distinction of intelligence beyond the merely human.

There's ways of writing around it, I suppose. The Richards Method is to have your character be a genius in a completely made-up field of study. If Richards expertise is Cosmic Radiation collection and manipulation, if he builds the world's best energy transmitter and no one else can, then he's a genius and no reader could say otherwise.

There's the Batman Method, where the character figures out instantly what took the writer three years to figure out, and without the advantage of being able to change the facts to fit the theory.

And there's the Ozymandius Method, in which the character does something completely insane, but since it causes everything to work out in his favor, he must, ipso facto, be a genius. Because it's the only explanation.

But when the character is a master strategist, who has all the time in the world to perfect her magnum opus, then anything you could have her do is, by definition, not something that requires a 12th level intellect to conceive of.

But that's the second hardest job. The hardest is coming up with an ANTAGONIST that's smarter than you are. Because then, not only do you need to come up with a plan so fiendishly clever that you wouldn't have thought of it in a million years, you then have to come up with someway of foiling said plan that doesn't invalidate the genius of it in the first plan. So you have to outthink yourself, and then outthink yourself again. And if you found a flaw, an obvious flaw, then your genius villain should have caught it in the first place.

Your only recourse is to hide said flaw in your villain's particular blind spot. Superman #2 is the almost Platonic Example of how to do it. Lex Luthor fairly ruthlessly and easily discovers Clark's secret in the space of one issue, proving that he is, in fact, an evil genius. But he dismisses the answer out of hand because he can't imagine someone with that kind of power not using it to subjugate others. That fundamental distrust is what makes Lex a villain, and what makes his thinking flawed.

Why I Hate the Mutant Gene

I hate the concept of the gene for mutant powers, or "X-gene", in X-Men comics. It's stupid and it leads to bad stories and muddled meanings, but I specifically hate it for four reasons. The first is scientific, the second semantic, and both are pretty petty and pedantic, but they tie into the third, substantive reason, so I'll try to get through them quickly to get to the fourth.

1. The Mutant Gene Doesn't Act Like a Gene.

A gene is a specific sequence of DNA that codes for a particular physical characteristic. A particular gene might determine whether your eyes are blue or black, but that same gene in another person won't give him stronger back muscles. Even taken to the exaggerated superhero level, the same gene can't give one guy the ability to fire lasers out his eyes and another guy fully functional wings!*

2. An X-Gene Means "Mutants" Aren't Mutants.

A mutation is a change in a gene, a mutant is a changed gene or organism arising from that changed gene. The key here is change. A mutated gene is one you did NOT get from your parents, that you have and your siblings don't. If the "mutant" gene is shared among individuals, if it is inherited, then it is, by definition, no longer a mutant, and a person who exhibits traits associated with that gene is not a mutant either.

But both of those complaints are really nerdy. After all, when you're dealing with pulp science fiction, you have to put up with some bad science and mangled language as plot devices. But the reason the "mutant" gene bothers much more than does its DC equivalent the "meta-gene" is because it's a plot device that hurts the plot it's try to support:

3. The Mutant Gene Undermines the Metaphorical Power of X-Men.

At its core, X-Men is about individuals, shunned and rejected by society at large, alienated from everyone, who come together to form a new family of choice in order to survive, thrive and relate back to the larger world. Now, whether that's an allegory for racial politics, homosexuality, or teenage rebellion in general, who better to play the role of the outcast than a LITERAL mutant, someone who, on a genetic level, is cut off from his own family? And that the X-Men don't share DNA in common, that they are connected by their otherness from everyone in the world, including each other, makes their new family bond all the more meaningful, a celebration of our shared humanity over our superficial differences.

If Marvel "mutants" are not literal mutants, however, if they inherited their power from some rare recessive gene, then they would still have a family connection. Maybe not their parents, but an aunt or distant cousin should be a "mutant" too. If there is a mutant gene, then it doesn't make sense for it NOT to run in families. And if their "mutant" gene connects them to their family rather than dividing from their family, then the power of the metaphor is severely weakened.**

And if "mutants" share a specific gene, then it seriously weakens the idea of the X-Men as a family of choice. "Mutants" are a lot closer to being a new species, united by their shared genetic identity, rather than simply humans who have happened to have the odd quirk in their genetic structure. You lose the sense of people defying their genes to find each other, and gain an unheroic doom of a group giving into it's collective genetic destiny.

And then there's the fact that:

4. The Mutant Gene is Completely Unnecessary to Explain the X-Men.

Mutation is REAL thing. Mutants happen all the time and in fact you almost certainly have a few mutant genes in you. But only a very small percentage of mutations have any noticeable effect on the body at all, and 99% of those that do cause cancer or are pre-natally fatal.

BUT... in the Marvel Universe, things that would cause cancer or instant death in our world, like MASSIVE DOSES OF RADIATION, instead grant superpowers. So superpowered mutants would be the natural byproduct of such a world. So instead of having a "mutant gene" which 1. doesn't make scientific sense, 2. is a contradiction in terms, and 3. undermines the story you are trying to tell, you could just leave it at "They're mutants," AND BE DONE WITH IT!



*And don't give me Byrne's "they all DO have the same power, to 'warp reality,' they just warp it differently," because that still doesn't answer WHY one warps reality by controlling the weather and the other warps reality by being really fat. *



**The worst was a line in X-Men 2, where Pyro tells Iceman's mother that the X-gene is carried by the father, not the mother. The only way that can happen is if the X-gene is on the Y chromosome. This is doubly stupid, because a) it means only people with Y chromosomes could have mutant powers, and Rogue is sitting right there! And b) the Y chromosome cannot carry a gene without expressing it, so Iceman's father and brother should be "mutants" too, and they aren't.**