Daily Breakdowns 019 - Double Jeopardy

Now that I'm back blogging regularly about comics, I seem more compelled to dig into other people's columns and discuss what I see there. I suppose for many the appropriate response would be in the comment section, but I figure I might as well explore my findings here, even at the risk that it might, ironically, seem a little more confrontational to make a new column disputing someone else's, rather than writing a comment post and moving on. My hope is only that these discussions make all of us a little sharper.

I read a couple interesting pieces in the past week, both worth reading but with various issues I wanted to dispute here. Starting with longtime retailer Ilan Strasser's column at ICV2, in which he laments what he sees as Marvel's and DC's failures as the primary reasons for the closing of several other shops in his region, as well as his own struggles to stay afloat. I largely agreed with Alan David Doane's response to the column, which points out that successful retailers such as Brian Hibbs of Comix Experience rely heavily on data from their cycle sheets, as well as the more salient point that a retailer's job is to sell comics, not Marvel and DC comics, and if Marvel and DC aren't selling as well, it's up to the retailer to figure out what he can sell, whether it's stuff he'd like to read or not.

I'm not here to pile on Strasser. In fact, I like some of the thrust of the column. It's just that, well...let's look at his suggestions for a Marvel/DC turnaround:

* Stop the big event with the multi-part crossover storylines.

* Price comics back down to an affordable level based on real costs and not short-term greed -- comics pricing has far exceeded the increase in inflation over the last decade.

* Solicit and publish their books on a timely basis. There is a world of talented writers and artists out there -- use the ones who can deliver product (let's call it what it is) on time and forget the big name, prima donna basis for utilizing talent, and create a system that punishes said talent when it fails to live up to its commitments.

* Stop publishing more than one monthly title of your major characters and don't produce miniseries that aren't exceptionally high in quality. Stop clogging the shelves with shit.

* Work TOGETHER to raise the health of the industry. Stop endlessly fighting to be first. You will always be one or two and within reasonable percentages in terms of volume and dollar sales. Wouldn't a scenario where a publisher isn't always first, but makes exponentially more money overall be better for either publisher?

* Start treating your retail partners like they really matter instead of conduits for your cash flow.

I'll address the last point first. It's a shame, honestly, that Strasser feels this way. In my own day job, I realize that as much as management can talk about how the client is #1 and we have to serve them no matter how demanding or unreasonable they can be, it's pretty tough to do sometimes. Sometimes you do want to throw the towel in, and it sounds like this is one of those days for Strasser. Fair enough. But sympathy aside, the retail partner is just a conduit for your cash flow.

That's what's troubling about the column. If Strasser wasn't a retailer himself, it would seem well-intentioned, even admirable. Let's look at those earlier points. Who doesn't want Marvel and DC to publish on time, to hold the line on prices, and to be all-around nicer and with a higher overall level of quality? All that's missing here is a proposal for a retailer variant cover edition made of chocolate and it's as good as it gets.

But of course, someone is buying all those event books and endless spin-off series that don't meet Strasser's standards. There's not a critic I respect who hasn't dipped into a 52 or Civil War, just like the coolest music fans are still downloading the latest Coldplay cd and playing it alone in the car or while jogging. Overall sales for Marvel and DC may be down (although July is up over last year), but they're still the biggest players in monthly comics. Strasser isn't really justifying his desire to be seen as a partner with these publishers when he's not supporting what those publishers obviously feel is selling (otherwise why are there so many titles and constant event series). And who gets to decide what's good and what's shit? Would it really be good for the industry to have one Spider-Man book, one Batman, etc.? Who should win the lottery to do them? What if the choice of creative team alienates the people who were reading the other fistfuls of Spider-and-Batbooks that were cancelled? Is it good for comics to put talent out on the streets? Should Marvel and DC let trademarked characters slip out of their grasp while waiting for that Strasser-level proposal? Seems like what's good for Strasser isn't so good for dozens if not hundreds of employees and freelancers. If Strasser wants to be the arbiter of quality, he can do it at the retail level, only taking preorders on comics he doesn't think will be good enough or which he thinks he won't be able to sell.

I don't get the "work together" thing, either. I mean, it sounds nice, but should Apple and Microsoft work together? Should Radiohead and Wilco just do an album together so they're not competing for dollars? "Within a point or two" means someone's losing their gig, and if I work for Marvel, I'd rather it be the other guy, you know? Ultimately, I see Strasser's proposal as a series of evasions of responsibility, and with a very unbusinesslike approach to doing business.

The other piece I read was Ng Suat Tong's piece on comics writers and collaboration, a guest feature at Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter that was a good deal more thought-provoking and insightful than Strasser's (and to be fair, with entirely different aims), but also, to my mind, less honest. Whereas Strasser's was a passionate if muddled open letter borne of frustration, Tong seemed to have a couple different bugbears he wanted to hunt and did his best to deforestate the area to make it easier.

Tong begins on fertile ground, citing and echoing cartoonist's James Romberger's sentiments that most critics today favor the comics writer over the artist, with even the New York Times not giving proper due to David Mazzucchelli's mastery of comics storytelling techniques in the review of Asterios Polyp. The review itself seems pretty strong, but Romberger was kind enough to clarify that he was referring to the Arts section piece covering this book, Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptation, and the Gaiman/Kubert Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, so I've edited a small portion of this post here.

Tong doesn't seem to want to get into the his first thought, about the cult of the comics writer, for a while yet, or maybe he's just going about it with an emperor's new clothes approach:

"When a writer fails to take into account the limitations and talents of his collaborator, what we are left with may be compared with one of those scenes in science fiction movies where dinner guests are presented with food capsules containing the essence of filet mignon (or bull rectum whichever may be the case)."

Leaving the bull rectum aside (and it's tough, unless marinated for several hours), Tong's point is simple enough and hard to dispute. Plenty of writers don't give their artists a lot to work with, and his example of writer Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man script, as illustrated by the bland Pia Guerra, is a decent enough choice, although it seems like slamming Vaughan for not conveying a sense of place in a scene set almost entirely in darkness is kind of stacking the deck, right? And it's from issue #18 of the series, meaning Vaughan and Guerra were halfway through their second year of collaboration. Tong either doesn't take a fairly obvious logical step to conclude that writers and artists develop a sort of shorthand after working together for a while, a comfort zone, and that after over a year, a good deal of the heavy lifting of the world-building had probably been performed by now. He either doesn't acknowledge this or purposely avoids it.

We then get a fine exploration of what Tong rightly points out is a collaboration of equals--the Frank Miller-written/David Mazzuchelli-illustrated Daredevil story, "Born Again." Tong is back on firm footing here because it's obviously a comic he first read and enjoyed rather than read in order to prove a point, as with the modern work discussed here. Again, it seems a little bit unfair to use the Miller script excerpt here, not because Miller has an advantage over Vaughan of also being a comics artist--that's just the way it goes--but because this was a discrete, focused run by Miller for a then-new collaborator. In other words, Miller was going to get into as much detail as he could so that nothing was lost in translation, as he hadn't worked with Mazzucchelli before and wouldn't know his methods. It would have been a fairer exercise if Tong only used scripts from first-ever collaborators as the true measure of writers at the top of their game, rather than using familiarity, and perhaps a desire to better satisfy one's long-term collaborator by giving them more freedom to interpret scenes, against them. Tong does this again later, using an opportunity to throw some old Daredevil artists a bone by giving them a panel each to draw a DD/Kingpin fight, as a lost opportunity to expand the medium.

Tong then looks at the Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev run on Daredevil from a few years ago, recently collected in Marvel Omnibus form:

"Something terrible and quite telling occurs, for example, when Manuel Gutierrez takes over from Alex Maleev in issues #38-39 of Brian Michael Bendis' Daredevil run. In essence, Bendis' simplistic script was laid bare for what it was.

It was my rather lackluster (though not completely disappointing) experience reading Bendis' initial run on Daredevil as collected in his Daredevil Omnibus that made me go back and re-read Miller and Mazzucchelli's Born Again to see if nostalgia had been up to its old tricks. (I should note here that the Bendis Daredevil Omnibus, as opposed to all the prior, shorter, hardcover reprintings, is clearly touted as Bendis' achievement by Marvel since you would be hard pressed to find out who actually drew the issues without peeping inside)"

It's hard to defend the poor three issue arc illustrated by the less-able Gutierrez, and certainly Maleev brought a ton of atmosphere to the book, but having also read those issues recently, I think Maleev would have been hard-pressed to do much better with that story, and indeed his style is somewhat ill-equipped for courtroom drama. That's really just my opinion against Tong's, certainly. What's more important is the unfortunate error Tong commits regarding the cover of the Omnibus only showing Bendis' name. In fact this was an error, and to Bendis' and Marvel's credit, they went to the expense of sending replacement covers (that now list Bendis, Maleev and colorist (Matt) Hollinsworth in the same sized font. Coincidentally, I had this cover lying on my messy desk and didn't realize why I had it until Tong's article led to a discussion of this error, and then I finally realized what was different and replaced the cover. I have no doubt this was an honest mistake on Tong's part, but it's too bad it forms a major foundation to his thesis (one of many) on the cult of the writer.

Tong hasn't had enough of Miller/Mazz, so we get more pages and script, and they're great examples not only of the skill and intelligence of the collaborators but of the unique properties of comics, the way panels can be cluttered but still, time bending to the reader's needs. If Tong merely wanted to point out how there aren't many creative teams doing work on this level in 2009, he's right, and could have winnowed his piece accordingly to better effect. Although, let's face it, not many teams were doing Born Again-level work when Born Again came out.

We then get an unfortunate moment of pettiness, as poor Ed Brubaker's Captain America run is dismissed with the gut-punch that it's the "worst of the lot" (among the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil and Vaughan/Guerra Y, and "not worth mentioning" with no details to support why this is, and, ironically, no credit given to Brubaker's artistic collaborators during his run, Steve Epting and Michael Lark). I guess Brubaker has to take one for the team.

We get back to Bendis/Maleev, as one scene is cited for its success at creating tension, but another scene (not shown) is criticized for being too indebted to film. It seems to me that if something works, who cares what influenced it? Is P. Craig Russell too indebted to opera? Film influences are the easiest to recognize because we all watch movies. It's easier to criticize what we already understand, which is probably why there's always going to be more reviews of superheroes and other genre works. What's really odd is there is only one script sample from Bendis here, near the end of the article and it's an excerpt, skipping the first two panels, where one might suspect more description of setting would be found. Also, it again seems Tong stacked the deck for the '80s and '90s lions by using a dull night scene with a guy talking in a phone booth to someone, contrasting with a colorful P. Craig Russell Sandman splash page set in an Egyptian palace, a Cameron Stewart-drawn Seaguy scene with Seaguy hanging out with a floating tuna fish and Death, and an Eddie Campbell-drawn scene set outside an old English church, both scenes accompanied by long, conversational script pages from Gaiman and Moore. Exotic or period settings and strange characters trump dark, grimy modern city streets and pasty white guys every time, though it's curious Tong emphasizes the chatty passages from these three fine writers as being inherently superior to the terse style of Bendis, who of course is more interested in conversational rhythms. I'm not saying either Moore, Morrison or Gaiman aren't superior to Bendis in most if not all ways as writers, but though Tong mentions specific skills for Moore and Morrison, he doesn't find examples on par with the Miller/Mazzucchelli pages. Where's Moore's celebrated gift for narrative structure in this page, or his gift for action sequences?

As one can tell by now, Tong has created an article so broad it's really just an excuse for him to tout creators or creative teams he he likes a lot and pick apart stuff he doesn't, under the Travelers Insurance-sized umbrella of "Writing, Collaboration and Superheroes." And in writing about the ones he likesl, he's insightful. No one's saying the guy's not bright. I would have really enjoyed just these thoughts on things he loves and understands, free of the grasping and desperate need to take down current popular writers.

Eventually, although it started the article, Tong gets around to the cult of the comics writer, or at least how they are promoted today by editors and publicists. He runs out of steam here and relies more on recent book covers to make his point, although yet again I have to call foul on some of the choices. It would seem to me pretty obvious that if one wants to call attention to comics writers getting an undue amount of attention, or "top billing," as it were, over the comics artist with whom they're collaborating, one would choose examples where the writer is only or primarily known as a comics writer. Fair enough to show the emphasis on Alan Moore over his Saga of the Swamp Thing artists Steve Bissette and John Totleben, as Moore is only known outside comics because some of his comics became movies, with no involvement from him. But Neil Gaiman is a best-selling prose writer (and screenwriter), and Coraline started as a Gaiman novella, with Dave McKean spot illustrations rather than sequential art . P. Craig Russell adapted this book into comics form, but one would be hard-pressed to come up with any reason to emphasize Russell's name over Gaiman's, or even at equal size as Gaiman's, in this case. It would be intellectually dishonest, to say nothing of throwing money away. As for Ian Rankin, he's also a best-selling crime novelist, and indeed the cover of this graphic novel--his first--was designed to complement the design of his crime novels. I don't mean to lessen artist Dell'Edera's contribution as artist, but I'm just not sure what the purpose is in tagging sound packaging and marketing decisions as somehow shameful or morally bankrupt. I think Tong should have reeled himself back to the beginning of the article, where the answer was pretty simple: there are fewer star artists right now. Also, what about the '80s, when a John Byrne art job sold as well as a full writing/art job, or a Frank Miller cover sold like a Miller-drawn issue, and the '90s, when the likes of artists Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane parlayed their enormous popularity as artists into increased power by plotting or writing books despite little experience or aptitude? There was a similar hue and cry then--the guys hadn't earned the accolades and writers with whom these guys first became famous, from Chris Claremont to Roger Mackenzie, were shoved aside or marginalized. So now we have the writer prominent. They're the ones who go to story conferences with editors. They generally initiate a project before the artist, and they're generally considered the more essential connective tissue in trying to keep a book selling--rarely will an artist stay these days with new writers coming and going. I'm not saying this is necessarily right, and I do agree with Tong that the artist's contribution to the work isn't given its due. But it seems like this could just be a cyclical thing rather than some new evil, some new incarnation of marketing or editorial gone wild. In superhero comics, despite the crossovers and events, there seems to be a wider variety of writing styles--innovation aside, the voices are more varied now than they were in the '80s and '90s (perhaps significantly, more individual voices in '70s comics like Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber were marginalized or disconnected from high profile books during this time), at the same time as it seems there is a narrower range of art styles in popular superhero comics. Few draw like Alex Maleev, yet that realistic, gritty and yet somewhat static, earthbound style is hardly suited for Avengers or Superman, while there are dozens of fairly similar artists who can slot easily on those books for a time. The decreasing longevity of artists on ongoing series is clearly another factor in the lack of star power they enjoy these days, and there are only a handful who are distinctive enough to draw readers from project to project.

Anyway, I think there's some really good work in here, amid a sprawl of unfocused and at times unfair writing. Tong gets carried away, and who knows, at this time of night, maybe I have, too. It's quite possible that with further refinement and development, he could legitimately earn a lot of the shots he takes here. Even in this rough form, there exist the bases for what could be two or three good, separate pieces.

Christopher Allen
September 8th, 2009