Quote of Day | "The system suffers from exhaustion and burnout"

My suspicion is that both [DC and Marvel] have a hard time selling comics that aren't event comics because there aren't enough readers to maintain high numbers on standard comic books. When readers are told what to buy, you have a hit. When they are joined by people that haven't been buying many comics at all, or at least that kind of comic, you have a potential mega-hit. But for the most part the system suffers from exhaustion and burnout.

--Tom Spurgeon

I don't have a lot of commentary on this. I just want to record it somewhere so I can find it again later and since it relates to my recent post on event-fatigue and DC, this seems like a good place.

I guess I will comment long enough to observe that Tom's basically saying that the kind of comics I still like from Marvel and DC are the kind that don't sell. That's always been the case though (starting with the very first series I ever collected, Alpha Flight). What's frightening is his question about "whether or not there's a system there to be salvaged long-term, and if so, if the major players are able to make the necessary investments to make that system as vital as it can be." I hope there is, but agree with Tom that the outlook doesn't look good from here.

Pirate Latitudes | The opening salvo

I started reading Michael Crichton's last book, Pirate Latitudes last week. The title's not very romantic or inspiring, but I was extremely curious to see how the renowned science fiction writer would handle a straight-up pirate story. At least, I assume that it's a straight-up pirate story. If there's some kind of sci-fi twist at the end, don't tell me. I'll probably hate it, but I'd rather be surprised I guess.

The few things I've heard about Pirate Latitudes weren't very positive. The story goes that Crichton's assistant found it on the writer's computer after Crichton died and the book got a bad rap for maybe being not quite ready for publication yet. Since I'm not even halfway done, I don't know. And since this is the first Crichton novel I've ever read, I'm not even sure how it compares to his other stuff. All I do know is that - so far - I like it.

It opens on Sir James Almont, Governor of Jamaica with a gouty foot. It's been a while since I've read Captain Blood, but I was reminded of the gout-suffering governor that Peter Blood waited on in that book and enjoyed imagining for a while that he and Almont were the same character. But then I went and checked and Blood's governor watches over Barbados, not Jamaica. I got confused because the Errol Flynn adaptation moves the location to Jamaica, but in both versions, the governor's last name is Steed. Still: fun coincidence.

When Almont hears tell of a Spanish treasure ship sitting by itself in a bay, but guarded by the impenetrable fortress of Matanceros and its blood-thirsty commander, he commissions privateer Charles Hunter to put together a motley crew and go get it. The novel then follows Hunter and his pals with occasional cuts back to Almont and the intrigue in Port Royal as Almont's secretary attempts to undermine the king's confidence in the governor. There's also a sub-plot about a pretty, but under-aged slave of Almont who may or may not be a witch. Mostly though: pirates. And great ones.

As you'd expect, Crichton's put a ton of research into this thing and it reads as authentic. That doesn't mean that there aren't also daring escapes, roguish romances, and the most colorful cast of pirates since ever. I've also laughed aloud several times. I don't want to read full reviews for fear of spoilers, but I wonder if the book's negative reputation is because it's so atypical of Crichton's other work. As it's own thing, it's totally working for me.

Song of the Week | "Blood for Poppies" by Garbage

Safety or Adventure?

Tarzan of the Apes

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality. Although this sort of Mittyesque daydreaming is supposed to cease in maturity, I suggest that more adults than we suspect are bemusedly wandering about with a full Technicolor extravaganza going on in their heads. Clad in tights, rapier in hand, the daydreamers drive their Jaguars at fantastic speeds through a glittering world of adoring love objects, mingling anachronistic histories worlds with science fiction.

[...]When I was growing up, I read all twenty-three Tarzan books, as well as the ten Mars books. My own inner storytelling mechanism was vivid. At any one time, I had at least three serials going as well as a number of old faithful reruns. I used Burroughs as a source of raw material. When he went to the center of the earth a la Jules Verne (much too fancy a writer for one’s taste), I immediately worked up a thirteen-part series, with myself as lead, and various friends as guest stars. Sometimes I used the master’s material, but more often I adapted it freely to suit myself. One’s daydreams intended to be Tarzanish post-puberty (physical strength and freedom) and Martian post-puberty (exotic worlds and subtle combinaziones to be worked out). After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes. My last serial ran into sponsor trouble when I was in the Second World War and was never renewed.

--Gore Vidal, discussing the attraction of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I can relate to Vidal's memories of telling stories to himself as a kid. My inspirations were more Star Wars and Universal monster movies, but I did that a lot and probably more than anything else, it's what made me want to become a writer.

I can also relate to his statement that "if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes." I don't pretend much anymore that my car is the Millennium Falcon and that the Interstate is a Death Star trench (much to the benefit of my fellow drivers, I'm sure), because I'm usually thinking about my day: a story I'm working on, a blog post, errands to run, all that stuff. My story-telling time doesn't take the form of unstructured daydreaming now. I have a time and a place for it.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

When I look at that a certain way, it seems kind of sad. How can you structure storytelling and imagination? But that's not really what's going on. Like I said, a lot of my daydreaming is about storytelling. Instead of being purely for my own pleasure though, I'm thinking about stories that I want to write down. It's just taken a different form.

But while I like to think that I've outgrown childish daydreaming and figured out a mature way to put it to work, Vidal doesn't let me off the hook so easily. He writes, "Until recently I assumed that most people were like myself: daydreaming ceases when the real world becomes interesting and reasonably manageable. Now I am not so certain. Pondering the life and success of Burroughs leads one to believe that a good many people find their lives so unsatisfactory that they go right on year after year telling themselves stories in which they are able to dominate their environment in a way that is not possible in this overorganized society."

But that's not talking about me, right? My daydreaming is work. It's part of the writing process. Except Vidal quotes Burroughs as saying, "Most of the stories I wrote were the stories I told myself just before I went to sleep." In other words, Burroughs' writing was a product of his daydreaming. For him, they were the same thing. And if I'm honest, they're the same for me too. Whether or not I eventually intend them for publication, I make up stories first for myself because I'm bored. Or dissatisfied. Uninterested in the mundane details of my life. Whatever you want to call it.

This isn't a profound revelation. I suspect that most people feel the same way. I don't even think that for most cases it's a problem in need of fixing. We make up stories (or read them, or watch them, or play them in video games) because we're dissatisfied. It's a tested coping mechanism and it works. But - I'm starting to realize only just recently - it's not the only coping mechanism. Another option is to change the part of life that's most dissatisfying to you.

Craig Ferguson: Adventurer

That's something I've been thinking about lately. As much as I love adventure stories, I've never been a risk taker. Presented with the easy way or a potentially more rewarding, but harder way, I've always taken the easier way. I can think of one time when I took a huge risk in my life and that was because there was no easy option for me to choose. It ended up being one of the most wonderful, life-changing things I ever did. And the other two - marrying Diane and having David - only happened because of it.

I'm sort of at another crossroads right now. I need to find a new day job and I can either stick with what I've been doing the last twenty years or branch out and try something new. Naturally, I've been trying to stick with the familiar. But the universe (or God or circumstances or however you like to think of it) hasn't made that easy so far. In fact, it feels very much like that other time when life made me take a gamble and it paid off so well.

This is far from decided (there are other people to consider besides myself), but I keep thinking about what Craig Ferguson wrote in American on Purpose. As he was trying to decide whether to stay in the US and make a go at a TV career or move back to Scotland where he was comfortable, he describes visiting the Nevada desert one night:

I got out and walked away from the car and looked up at the immense blackness of the night sky, and the tininess of myself against the enormity of the universe had never been more obvious, even on acid.

An inexplicable bolt of terror shot through my system. Then I remembered what Rock and Roll Susie had said, that fear might be God's way of saying, "Pay attention, this could be fun," and I said aloud to whoever was out there, even if it was only me:

"Between safety and adventure, I choose adventure."

Captain Nemo hates cephalopods (No. 243)

By Carson Ellis. [Hark! A Vagrant]

Dumping DC

The title of this post isn't technically correct. I don't plan to boycott DC anymore than I've boycotted Marvel. But the Marvel Universe as a whole hasn't held my interest for a few years now and DC (as a collective line of comics) is about to follow it off my radar.

DC and Marvel get their bread and butter from enormous, line-wide events. They survive by telling their dedicated fans over and over again that "this is the story that you need to read; this changes everything; this is important." And for fans of those universes, they're not lying. I want to make it really clear that I'm not down on anyone who's a fan of those universes and still buys those events. I'm kind of down on you if you're doing it without getting any enjoyment out of it, but if you like big DC and Marvel events, that's excellent. Not that you need my permission to enjoy what you enjoy.

For me, I stopped enjoying them in 2008 (Final Crisis and Secret Invasion were the last scoops of dirt on the grave) and stopped buying them. The rest of this post is going to reflect that, so if you're a fan of that kind of storytelling and think you might be offended by my picking at it, please don't read any further. It's not my goal to make you angry; I just want to record some thoughts as I'm having them.

I grew up with Marvel and DC characters, but never had the money to read as much about them as I wanted. I'd get to a part in the comic where Spider-Man references some fight he had with Electro three issues back and there'd be that infuriating little editor's note: "See issue # whatever." As a kid, I dreamed of a time when I'd actually be able to go "see issue # whatever;" when I'd be able to afford as many comics as I wanted and finally get The Complete Story. For many years as an adult, I enthusiastically bought series after series and event after event - whether or not I was enjoying them on a story level - because I was finally getting The Complete Story. I was following every major thing that was happening in these two universes.

That's the lie though, right? There's no Complete Story. There may be Universe-Changing Events, but the very nature of corporate-owned comics means that they're making this up as they go along. There's no master plan. When I was a kid, I imagined that Marvel and DC had a guy whose sole job it was to make sure that continuity was adhered to and that everything fit together with everything else.

Once I realized that no one's on top of that stuff, the more Marvel and DC tried to maintain that deception, the more frustrated I got. It's like I'd discovered the man behind the curtain, but instead of coming clean about it, he kept pulling the curtain closed and insisting that the Wizard is real.

After 2008, I threw up my hands and quit. No Dark Reign for me; no Blackest Night. I didn't quit reading everything by Marvel and DC though; just the big events.  I still had a few titles that were mostly managing to stay out of all that. For Marvel, that was X-Men Legacy, but not much else. Alpha Flight when they rebooted that. Agents of Atlas of course. There'd be a tie-in or reference to whatever event was currently going on, but I didn't let those hook me. I just stuck with what I liked. I was done following the Marvel Universe.

It was the same with DC for three years until they came up with the New 52. Honestly though, it may have been even worse for DC. I can't tell you which - if any - DC comics I was buying from 2009 to 2011. What I loved about the New 52 wasn't that everything was fresh and sparkling again. (Actually, everything wasn't fresh and sparkling again, because they wanted to eat their cake and still have it by declaring a fresh start while also haphazardly incorporating popular stories from the past into the new continuity.) What I loved about the New 52 was the absence of crossovers and line-wide events. Since everyone was focused entirely on setting up their series, I could pick up any DC book and not have to follow it to another one. The whole DCU was an open playground and I could try out anything I wanted. So I tried a lot and got interested in way more DC series than I had been in years. For the past year, DC's been getting a lot more of my money than Marvel, but they're gearing up to kill that now.

We've already seen it starting in the Batman-related books with the "Night of the Owls" storyline. And there was an odd issue of Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE that tied-into a major crossover between Animal Man and Swamp Thing. Earth 2 #1 led directly into World's Finest #1, Frankenstein's joining Justice League Dark, and now there's word that another line-wide crossover is being planned for late next year. The DCU is becoming more interconnected.

It's no coincidence that this is starting to happen just as sales on DC comics are leveling out to where they were before the New 52. With the new car smell fading away, DC has to do something to generate excitement, so they're going back to familiar methods.

Unfortunately for me, the more DC ties its comics together, the less interested I am. To the extent that they still have books I'm interested in that don't require me to buy books I'm not, I'll keep buying their product. It's just that I'm no longer part of their faithful target audience. And I don't say that with any anger or even sadness, but with relief. That's that many worthwhile creator-owned series I can support instead.

Final thoughts on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Anne Hathaway and I finished the book last week, so here are a dozen more observations with some SPOILERS if you haven't read it yet:

• Hathaway's voice for the Scarecrow made see why Movie Dorothy said she'd miss him most of all, but some of Hathaway's other choices are really odd. One of the two, main Emerald City guards sounded like Sylvester the cat and the other talked in a monotone that I imagine was meant to sound military, but was more robotic. She also gave some other characters strange accents that didn't have a lot to do with their personalities or other character traits. She does some excellent voices too; it just seemed like she was running out of good ones by the end.
• The Wizard's voice is especially off-putting. He has a Southern drawl that - combined with Hathaway's feminine voice - makes him sound like Dallas Royce on Suburgatory.
• Still, in all other respects, Hathaway's a wonderful reader and I highly recommend her reading of the story.
• The flying monkeys are handled a lot differently than the movie and are even more cool. I didn't think that was possible since they were always my favorite part of the film.
• Related: the way the Wicked Witch of the West captures Dorothy is so much more awesome in the book. Yes, the monkeys come into play, but as a last resort after a few less-successful attempts in which Dorothy's companions prove how badass they really are.
• I don't accept the Wizard's assertion that he's actually a good man, but just not a very good wizard. He's used deception to enslave his subjects, force them to build the Emerald City, and then serve him in fear. He never repents of this or comes clean to anyone who doesn't figure it out on her own. Nor does he allow those people to tell anyone else. He's a class-A jerk; just like in the movie.
• The Wizard's gifts vary a little from the film and what he gives the lion is especially entertaining. Instead of a medal, he pours liquid into a bowl and tells the lion it's courage. Baum never explicitly refers to it this way, but that makes the substance "liquid courage," which is pretty awesome. Almost redeems the Wizard for me.
• The book continues for a few chapters after the Wizard accidentally abandons Dorothy in Oz. The main quartet of characters (quintet, if you count Toto) travel South to visit Glenda the Good and see if she can get Dorothy home. It's an episodic part of the book as they have random adventures along the way, but a couple of characters' stories get tied up, so it's worthwhile. And as with all the adventures in the book, they're fun and interesting.
• Glenda isn't the same witch who met Dorothy in Munchkinland at the beginning. This is vital, because it fixes one of my biggest complaints about the movie: that Glenda knew the magic slippers could take Dorothy home the whole time and kept it from her. In the film, Glenda just appears occasionally to move the plot along without any believable motivation. In the book, she tells Dorothy how to get home as soon as she meets her. She's much more Good.
• My biggest problem with the film version though is that it's all a dream. That isn't the case in the novel. Oz is a real place with real borders; it's just surrounded by impassable desert, so no one knows where it is or can get to it without flying (which was much more difficult to do when Baum wrote the story).
• That leaves open a lot of possibilities for future stories, which of course Baum used. I'm definitely going to keep going, but I haven't decided yet whether that's via book, audiobook, or comics adaptations. I'm getting the Eric Shanower/Skottie Young comics either way, so I'll probably start there and then decide later whether or not to read the original text.
• The first of those comics should show up any day now.

(Image via Freaking News)

Kill All Monsters!: Extended Cut

Outside of Robot 6 stuff, my most productive writing time this week has been working on some extra material for Kill All Monsters. We're adding a couple of pages and some bits of dialog that'll explain the world (and why the Kill Team is in Paris) a little more quickly than we did in the original webcomic pages. You'll start seeing the new stuff in Issue #2, coming to Artist Alley Comics as quickly as we can get it produced and inserted into what we already have.

Jungle Batman hates cephalopods

Oh yes he does. You can read the whole story at Scans Daily (or by finding a copy of Batman #72).

Is Merida Brave or not?

SPOILERS BELOW

I finally got around to seeing Brave last week and I have mixed feelings about it. My expectations were high, but not unreasonably so, I don't think. Cars 2 notwithstanding, Pixar has an excellent track record and I loved how they marketed it as a female empowerment story without giving away much of the actual plot at all. That left a lot of room for surprises and I was hoping that Brave would do for girl power what The Incredibles did for superheroes and Ratatouille did for foodies.

There is a lot of girl power in the movie, but before I saw Brave I heard grumbling that it wasn't empowering enough. That it maybe made its female characters look good by making all the male characters look super dumb. I decided to lower my expectations for the movie's contribution to gender equality and just try to watch it as a movie about a girl who didn't want to follow the path her parents had set out for her. Everyone can relate to that on some level, so I hoped that I could enjoy it just for its message around that. Unfortunately, I was disappointed there too.

Brave has a lot of great pieces to play with. At the center of the film is the relationship between Merida and her mom, Elinor. Merida's dad goes along with whatever the Queen says, but it's really Elinor who has plans for Merida to be a traditional princess and follow the proper path towards marrying a noble son. Merida of course bucks against that and comes up with a way to change her fate (she hopes). Her plan involves some supernatural elements that I won't reveal, but look really cool. In fact, the whole movie looks really cool, but that's no surprise to Pixar fans by now.



There's a great story in there somewhere about having the courage (hence the title) to change your destiny. It's just that Brave never finds that story. There's magic, but there are no rules to the magic, so things just happen and don't make a lot of sense. Surely it's not spoiling anything to say that Merida and her mom eventually resolve their conflict, but it's impossible to pin down exactly when they do that. The whole story feels hasty and haphazard.

Since the central story is about Merida and Elinor's relationship, I paid the most attention to that and how the conflict is resolved, but I couldn't figure out where it happens. There's a cute montage showing them getting along after some tense interaction, but no moment where either gets any insight to the other's way of thinking. They have to work together to solve a particular problem and somewhere indefinable along the way, they decide to compromise. One gives a little, which leads the other to give a little, and by the end of the film, they've found their middle ground. It's enough to keep the story moving, but the message is no deeper than a call for compromise. I wanted dramatic revelations where mother and daughter finally understand each other. That never happens.

The title doesn't really work either. Merida gives a speech at the end about having the bravery to change your fate, but that's not actually what happens in the film. She's led to major decisions either by her own stubbornness or supernatural forces. Bravery implies courage in the face of fear, but there's never a moment in which Merida actually seems afraid of her future. She's angry about her mother's plans and refuses to go through with them, but she never resigns herself to that future long enough to let it frighten her. The only thing she ever seems afraid of (destiny-wise) is compromising with her mom. She does learn to do that, so that's brave, but it's the opposite of what her monologue claims. Is she brave because she compromised or because she changed her destiny? The movie shows us that its the former while claiming its the latter. Brave has a lot of cool stuff to work with - and you can enjoy it for those separate things - it just never puts everything together in a way that makes sense.

Superheroes are not Comics

My Twitter pal R. M. Rhodes wrote a lengthy post for Gutter Brawl on what he calls “The Scarlet Genre.” He’s talking about superhero comics and asked if I wouldn’t mind commenting on his thoughts.

Though he doesn’t directly explain it in the article, it’s obvious that Rhodes picked the title of his piece in reference to the scarlet letter that kept prejudiced people from interacting with Hester Prynne. His assertion is that the comics medium has become confused by mass audiences with the superhero genre and - like Prynne's embroidered mark - it keeps people who don’t like superheroes from interacting with all comics, regardless of genre.

Rhodes talks about how comics creators, publishers, and vendors need to market comics differently to correct that misperception and let the mass audience know that they have other choices. That’s all good and I agree with him to a certain point. Comics marketing is traditionally poor when it comes to reaching people who don’t already read and love comics. We can do better.

I disagree with him on a couple of things though. First, with the idea that mass audiences are turned off by comics because they think that all comics are about superheroes. The crazy successes of movies like The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight Rises show that mass audiences do, in fact, love superheroes. That adoring audience almost never translates into new readers of superhero comics, but that doesn't mean that there's a problem with the genre. As Tom Spurgeon points out, comics people love to analyze this stuff and figure out What's Wrong With Us, but it's really as simple as "a lot of people like superhero movies and not as many like superhero comics." I talk to superhero fans all the time who love these characters every bit as much as I do (often more than I do), but simply prefer to watch them in movies or on TV. They're just not into comics.

The reverse is also true. There are a lot of eager comics readers who don't care at all about superheroes. I don't have numbers, but non-superhero publishers like IDW, Image, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, First Second, Archaia, and BOOM! seem to be doing very well with comics across a wide range of genres.

In fact, what I said about movie fans not becoming comics fans seems to be a problem limited exclusively to the superhero genre. The success of The Walking Dead alone proves that there's a huge audience willing to check out the comics that inspired their favorite TV shows and movies. Comics retailer Mike Sterling has written about how comics movies do in fact drive interest in the comics they're based on (especially if they're written by Alan Moore, but there was also huge demand for Sin City and Hellboy comics when those movies came out).

Where non-superhero comics have the advantage (specifically, non-corporate-owned superhero comics) is that it's much easier to find the story that directly inspired the film or TV show. Every time a new Marvel movie comes out, we see a gazillion lists posted (all different from each other) about which comics to buy if you want to read more about the character. Corporate superhero comics are fun for people willing to invest some time in them, but they're impenetrable to casual readers. That's a much more significant cause for disinterest than simply not liking superheroes.

My point is that superheroes don't equal comics. I agree with Rhodes that it's often the first genre that comes to mind in most people's minds, but it's a perception that's a) easily changed with some quick pop culture references and b) is changing more and more every day. In fact, I suspect that the perception problem isn't one that mass audiences have as much as a certain segment of comics fans does. I keep reading articles in which superhero comics are referred to as "mainstream," but I wonder if that's true anymore. I'd love for someone who isn't me to run the numbers and compare sales of all corporate-owned superhero comics (and graphic novels) to sales of everything else across all distribution outlets. I bet we'd be surprised at the results.