Daily Breakdowns 016 - You're Not The Only Flame In Town

Looks like Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort is getting some attention for some comments on his "Blah Blah Blog" at Marvel.com. Oddly, although the comments are fairly short, I haven't seen anyone fail to edit, interpret or highlight portions of them for their own readers. Here's the question asked of him, followed by his full response:

Why do booked (sic) with international lead characters seem to struggle in the US market, like Captain Britain & MI:13 and Alpha Flight? yes, i know that Wolverine's Canadian, but APART from him.

I don't know that it's any one thing, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it's all part of the same phenomenon that makes it more difficult to sell series with female leads, or African-American leads, or leads of any other particular cultural bent. Because we're an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience seems to be white American males. So while within that demographic you'll find people who are interested in a wide assortment of characters of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, whenever your leads are white American males, you've got a better chance of reaching more people overall. That's something that continues to change as the audience for what we do gets larger and more diverse-but even within that diversity, it's probably going to be easier to make a success of a book with a female or African-American lead before it is a British or Canadian-centric character.

Sean T. Collins chose not to use the last sentence, which at least adds a more hopeful, less complacent conclusion to the rest of the comments. Graeme McMillan cuts things off at the same point, and feels he's got enough juice in this nugget to title his piece, "Are American Comics Institutionally Racist?", although at least he gets a reasonable quote from writer Mark Waid before a wishy-washy conclusion where he posits that maybe Disney will help their new purchase, Marvel, have more non-white, non-male leads, but then again, maybe Disney is racist, too, soo...?

David Brothers of 4thletter! has no issue with Brevoort's comments, on the other hand, and says that comics readers get what they deserve, meaning if they continue to support event books and titles with decades of continuity, the characters in those books are generally white, American males.

It's funny, but when I first read the edited comments, I though Brevoort was coming off pretty wacky myself, because of the way Collins and others cut off the comments. Intentional or not, it makes Brevoort look like he's fine with the white, American male lead status quo and not interested in changing, but I feel a little differently after reading the whole thing. I don't know if he or anyone has any research to support that Marvel's audience is getting larger (I'm talking about the audience rather than Marvel sales being up this month over the same period last year) or more diverse, but it's only fair to reflect that Brevoort feels that way. I agree with Brothers that it comes down to the audience. Both Marvel and DC have published lots of female and/or minority characters in their own books. Some died off because their initial hook was tied into a fad or past era like Luke Cage, Power Man (blaxploitation) or Master of Kung Fu (fuploitation), while some just never catch on despite the talent involved or timelessness of the theme, like Power Girl (titsploitation).

Sorry, where was I? Anyway, Marvel and DC have to publish these characters in order to continue to hold the rights to them. Obviously they are interested in publishing versions of these characters that sell, but aside from the occasional newsworthy book like Captain America: The Truth, which featured an African-American version of the title character, what books would you really get behind and promote if you were at Marvel or DC, given years and years of lackluster sales for most of them. Spawn was a huge book for Image Comics for a long time, with an African-American lead. Does he not count just because he was decayed/disfigured so as not to resemble any particular race? Someone mentioned Sandman, who was sort of white but also looked different to different races. But let's get back to Brevoort, as the original question was actually about international characters, and it was only Brevoort that led things away from nationality into race. As far as American comics publishing goes, I think he's right. While DC has the Vertigo line where they can do work set in other countries and dimensions away from their superhero universe, Marvel really doesn't. Their other universe is also filled with superheroes and we mostly see the American side of it. I don't think there's anything stopping Marvel from having their own John Constantine running around other than the practical concern that characters set in other countries have less opportunity to interact with existing, better-selling American superheroes. The few times attempts at a more international cast or settings have worked have been spin-offs from other popular books, like Excalibur coming out of the X-books and Justice League Europe coming out of Justice League, plus in those cases you had very hot writers and artists involved. Why does a Captain Britain or, say, the most recent incarnation of Manhunter struggle and die? Well, was there ever a lot of people who liked the earlier takes on those characters? I don't want to put this all on the readers. For one thing, when a publisher throws out so many titles, as Marvel and DC do, it's all too easy for something new and different to get lost, or for potential consumers to be overwhelmed and choose the books that seem most like stuff they used to like (again, the white, male, American leads). And while I have seen that at least DC sometimes prices the first collections of more offbeat series at a loss leader price, I don't really see either them or Marvel go out of their way to spotlight books that are clearly more likely to have an uphill struggle finding an audience. I mean, I totally understand that you put your best efforts after stuff you know will sell because it's sold before, but I don't see even low-cost initiatives to bring more attention to those tougher sells. That's where I would go after Brevoort, much moreso than what seems a pretty pragmatic, if depressing, statement about the typical American comics reader. A lot of that seems a byproduct of the direct market. Get the cool books and characters exposed outside the nerdy LCS and maybe you can have some successes that lead to more and more diversification.

Boy all this talk about white, American male leads in Marvel Comics just makes me want to review a comic about one. Whaddyasay?

The Torch #1 (of 8)
Story by Alex Ross & Mike Carey
Script by Mike Carey
Art by Patrick Berkenkotter
Published by Marvel Comics. $3.99 USD

This is one of those Marvels apparently subcontracted to Dynamite. I hadn't read any and like most people still drawing breath, not a big fan of the original Human Torch. Nor have I been all that interested in Ross' work for years, although I generally still enjoy his covers. But someone must have done something right, because I picked it up anyway.

Things start the way a lot of comics start that star obscure or unpopular old characters--they mope and wonder why they're here, rather than get meta and enjoy that someone is writing a book about them again--woohoo! Rather than the original Torch, this story is about his former sidekick, Tom (Toro) Raymond, who had a mutant ability to turn to fire and fly, rather than it being a side effect of being made of phosphorus or whatever explained the powers of the Torch. Torch was destroyed, and now Tom is questioning his existence with the original Vision, who I think in the Golden Age was more violent but here is just like a wrongly colored version of the later Vision of the Avengers, floating and coldly dispensing wisdom. He also dispenses some teasing hints about the future, which is a perfectly fine way to end a scene.

The (Mad) Thinker, who originally killed Tom before Bucky Barnes brought him back to life with the Cosmic Cube in a '70s Avengers story, is recruited to work on some dastardly project, and Carey writes him enjoyably, if little different than most arrogant evil geniuses aside from his taste for fresh coffee and bourbon biscuits. Then we see Tom again, hanging his head low in every panel until you're about sick of him. Berkenkotter draws a very quaint scene of The Thinker working in the lab, with his little test tube and Bunsen burner. We're so used to huge arrays of computers and Kirbytech that I kind of liked it. Not crazy about some of the other pages, which lack detail and backgrounds, but there's some vitality in his style and his Thinker is suitably greasy and nuts. Carlos Lopez maybe needs to settle in on the coloring duties--faces have sort of a varnish look and it's not a good idea to blur backgrounds to accentuate the main character when he's already sort of indistinct due to being on fire. While I didn't really see anything exceptional here, it's enjoyable, and perhaps moreso in that it seems one won't have to read other comics to understand it.

Christopher Allen
September 5th, 2009