Thwack!
Don’t Panic.
Okay, well maybe we all should panic. Last week was a bad week. Particularly if you’re a Wildstorm fan. Two of their books, Wildcats 3.0 (which, for the record, I didn’t read regularly) and Stormwatch: Team Achilles (which I did read regularly and loved dearly) were cancelled. It sure felt like it was out of the blue, but given the numbers that they sold every month, it’s not a terrific surprise (something in the 10-12K range).
Not a surprise, sure, but still a shock. Here were two books with solid storytelling and decidedly mature takes on superheroes (without simply being a regurgitation of the standard grim and gritty formula) that should have been selling better than they did. Sure, we can talk about irregular artistic lineups or changing cover designs as getting in the way, but those are primarily cosmetics. The people who wanted to read Wildcats were smart enough to follow the transformations of its (always beautifully-designed) covers, just as the people who were reading SW:TA weren’t all that bothered by the changing roster of artists. Those are relatively minor considerations.
The audiences for these books were primarily there for the writing, I’ll bet. Joe Casey (Wildcats) and Micah Wright (SW:TA) were the major draws. I’ll speak to SW:TA now, since I followed that title. Mr. Wright’s combination of a decidedly anti-superheroic and political material made for a strong brew, and one that was likely never going to be a hit with the average comics fan. In SW:TA, superheroes are the enemy more often than not, and really there’s only a handful of super-powered characters who are actually sympathetic. Not to mention that the lead character (Colonel Santini) was Machiavellian in the extreme, which made for a lot of fun. But I fear that most folks aren’t really ready to deal with a character who believes that the end justifies the means (or they’re already reading The Punisher).
Mr. Wright skewered conventions of superhero comics right and left, and took obvious glee in doing so. Which is more the pity, given the recent Coup D’Etat storyline, which put the Stormwatch team up against The Authority, who’d recently taken over the US. On the run against an infinitely more powerful foe? Fighting for the very ideals that one believes in?
Come on folks, this is what made superhero comics great in the first place. Yes, Mr. Wright came at it from the other side of the equation, and his political take was far too thorny for most potential readers, but the story itself was really coming into its own.
And THWACK!
It’s done. I don’t think the current storyline is even going to get to wrap up. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.
Now it looks like the stereotypical fanboy is winning. It’s a tough point to argue from where I’m standing. Marvel’s latest initiatives are all retread characters (Icon is for all intents and purposes a completely different thing, a gold star for its highly-valued creators) that fans have been “demanding” the return of for some time. DC, while they’re still doing some new stuff and working in books that aren’t 100% dependent on franchise characters (The Monolith and Gotham Central come to mind here), are not really pushing the envelope. But they’re trying at least.
The top 300 is dominated by familiar characters driven by big artists. The big writers only seem to be a factor when they’re working on known quantities/characters. There are some exceptions, certainly. Wanted by Mark Millar seems to be doing well, but I’m guessing that most of that is crossover from his Ultimates readership.
For every Wildcats 3.0 or SW:TA that we lose, we seem to get a handful of relaunches in return (not that Wildstorm is doing those, but looking at the market as a whole.) There’s nothing wrong with relaunches in and of themselves, so long as the relaunches actually do something new and interesting with the characters involved. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the case (as discerning readers of my whining a couple weeks back will recall.) Usually, it’s leftovers with nothing new and interesting added to the mix.
Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the saying goes. Too bad that doesn’t seem to be true in the mainstream of the direct market. Familiarity seems to be the only way books have a shot at survival. Whether it’s a familiar costume/character or basing the book on well-known situations. I love The Walking Dead quite dearly. It goes to the top of the stack whatever week it comes in (unless The Goon comes in that week, and then it gets the second spot), but to be bluntly honest, it’s lifted wholesale from the works of George Romero. Granted, it’s far, far more character driven than Mr. Romero’s scripts ever were. And it’s one of the best-written comics out there right now. But it’s a derivative work. It takes Dawn of the Dead (the original that is) and draws it out to a logical conclusion that the movies never had the budget for.
I can’t blame the creators. It’s a great premise. Hell, I’ve got a similar premise running around in my head right now (though mine turns the conventions upside-down, which makes it a much trickier thing to pull off.) However, theirs is a working project that’s outstanding in the field and mine is just pie-in-the sky right now, so I should just shut my yap.
Unfortunately, without the familiar setting, or the high-concept pitch (you know “it’s ACTION MOVIE TITLE meets ANOTHER POSSIBLY NON-ACTION MOVIE TITLE”) new ideas don’t have a hell of a chance in the mainstream. That’s assuming that Image really counts as the mainstream these days, which is probably up for debate. When creators take chances with the unfamiliar and new, they’re really rolling the dice these days. Most companies aren’t really behind gambles like that right now. They need to cover the (significant) costs of production and actually try and sell the book in a market that for all intents and purposes is actively hostile to new concepts and ideas.
The wagons have been circled, folks. The old fanbase is in rearguard mode, digging in and taking shots at anything that isn’t immediately recognizable or familiar.
“More Doom Patrol without all that weird shit? BRING IT ON!”
“Another Iron Fist book? GIMME SOME OF THAT!”
“What’s this? The superheroes aren’t the good guys? FUNK DAT!”
“What are all these politics doing in my books? I WANT MORE EXPLODING SPANDEX!”
People buy these books, and they don’t buy the unfamiliar. Hell, they don’t even give it a look, even when it’s something as good as Sleeper. You can blame the retailers and the publishers (and perhaps there’s enough blame to go around), but retailers aren’t going to go out on a limb and sell stuff that people simply won’t buy (even when it’s in color and shelved with all the other mainstream books.)
Which is why we need new blood in comics readership. Badly. And if that comes in the form of kids reading manga, so be it (though the crossover from manga-reader to western comics-reader isn’t really there, not yet anyways.) The market has to expand into the real mainstream of popular culture or else we’re looking at continuing stagnation, not only in the readership, but the creatorship. Yes, there’s folks who will always want to create comics, and some of them will even be good. But for the most part, they’re only going to keep the body animated; it’ll be far from alive.
Yeah, I guess I’m a little bitter. Cheer up, maybe I’ll have shaken it off next week. But don’t hold your breath.