Highway 62

I’ve since amended my position a bit. I’m not entirely correct, but then neither is Mr. Bendis (nor is anyone who states that the characters belong to the fans.) It is true that the companies own the characters, body and soul (as Chris Claremont would say). The companies decide who gets to buy character rights, who gets to be made into toys, who gets pushed and who gets pushed aside.

They also decide who lives and who dies (as much as anyone “dies” in manistream superhero comics, anyways). The editors, and by extension the financial folks have to decide which characters can support their own books and which ones are dead weight. Wolverine has no life beyond Marvel comics, and his creator (Len Wein) has no say in anything to do with him (nor does he see a nickel of the money that the Canadian psychopath has made for Marvel, or Fox pictures, or any of the hundreds of other licensees who use Wolvie’s likeness to sell toothbrushes or underwear.) in Wolverine’s case, Marvel decides what’s to be done with him (and the answer to that is “quite a lot”, as he’s apearing in 11 books this October.)

But you, as a reader, don’t have any say in what happens to him. Not directly, anyways. Sure, you can choose not to buy the books where he acts out of character (or you can gnash your teeth about it on messageboards or in columns), but you can’t change what Marvel is doing with Wolverine. He is not your character. He is not your friend. He’s not even a real human (mutuant) being. He’s a fictional construct in the employ of an intellectual property company (which indeed Marvel is; read interviews with their executives sometime). As such, Wolverine is held to standards of regularity and uniformity of appearance (remember the outcry of last year when it was decreed that Wolvie was to wear a chin-beard as did his Ultimate Counterpart?) to keep his market viability. A franchise character is of no use if he (or she) can’t be recognized and beloved on sight. What use is Wolverine if you don’t know he’s Wolverine at first glance? Not much other than maybe to generate dramatic tension as you realize that the ninja threatening Kitty Pryde actually isn’t a ninja at all, but Logan; wow, that was a close one!

Wolverine’s fate, however, is out of your hands. Maybe if people stopped buying Wolverine books en masse, then Marvel would be forced to do a turnaround and have a mighty Wolverine relaunch month. But I don’t know that they’d change the character at all. In that, the audience doesn’t have any power. Wolvie’s a company man through and through.

But let’s take a look at Green Lantern, shall we? In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Hal Jordan (the once-evil/insane/disgraced Greatest Green Lantern of All Time) is coming back, deposing Kyle Rayner as the big kid on the block. This is a big deal. It’s a big deal to the literally hundreds of vocal Hal Jordan fans (not Green Lantern fans, mind you, but Hal Jordan fans) out there in the wide expanses of the interweb (and even in Real Life).

I’d love to believe that this was an editorial decision from on high, or better yet, the act of a devoted creator (not the case) to revive the character and bring him back from the brink. Somehow, though, I don’t think that this is the case. I have a feeling, deep in my heart of hearts, that this was an act of appeasement. Maybe even an act of contrition to the vocal fans, saying “We’re sorry we did away with your hero. You can have him back now. Please read more of his exciting adventures now.”

I’ve got no proof of this, mind you, rather a suspicion, based on how things seem to be working these days. In this case, I’d assert that the fans have taken ownership of Hal Jordan back, and through a collective act of will, some ten years down the line, have forced a Hal Jordan resurrection. Hey, more power to them, right? Maybe they’ll get the powers that be to overturn the Crisis next: I always liked Earth-2 better…

I have to say that I’m not a fan of either the Franchise or the Fans having ultimate power over the characters. Frankly, I think that belongs in the hands of creators, not middle managers, and certainly not the people who make me ashamed to be associated with comics fans. I’d rather that the creators get to tell good stories. Not that the creators own the characters (but it’d be nice if they got a slice of the action), but that they’re given an even chance to actually let the characters breathe and grow and change and mature, and even die.

Yes, I’m a dreamer, I am. I also realize that none of the above will ever happen with either Franchise/Fans in charge. The Franchise has no use for a dead character (other than to wave it over the fans and get a rise out of them so they hit the inevitable relaunch like a starving trout hitting an elegantly tied fly lure on the subtly bubbling surface of a crystal clear and serene brook). The Fans, obviously, are going to want their characters to live forever. Not just live, but live on in the incarnation that they’re most familiar with, as if encased in Lucite slabs.

Oh, and a small digression as to why the fans actually have power instead of being simply brushed off as a noisome rabble. Well, the answer’s quite easy. It has everything to do with the shrinkage of the fanbase (probably by a factor of five or ten over the last ten years, though I realize that this figure is both pessimistic and impossible to prove). My guess is that the vocal fans have stayed through the tough times and as a consequence have ten times the impact as a population than they used to (not to mention that the internet makes it easy for any loudmouth with a keyboard to be heard. Yes, I’m aware of the irony. Quiet, you.)

Neither the Franchise nor the Fans want to kill the golden goose. Nor do they want it growing up and flying away. The Franchise just wants readers, and they seem to figure (perhaps rightly) that giving the people what they think they want (not what they actually want) is the safest way to keep readers. The readers think that they want Hal Jordan wearing the greens (after all, he was the first Green Lantern that they read about, right?) Most comics readers (note, I said “most”, not “all”) want something familiar, and that sometimes gets taken to levels that are best described as absurd. Readers want continuity without change. They want past history of a character, but they don’t want that character to evolve because of it (nor do they want the world changing too much due to the presence of the character). And of course, the Franchise holders want people reading the books, so they’re directing the content of said books to what they feel readers want.

The big problem is that the readership has (largely) become so insular and insulated that any change to their beloved characters is jarring and often met with stern protest. The other side of this particular coin is the “greying” for lack of a better term of mainstream superhero characters. I don’t mean literal graying (though there are examples of it, if you want to look to Kingdom Come for one) but I mean more “mature” takes on events and characters in these books. Note the quotes. It’s very often not real maturity, but rather the addition of superficial elements that make the characters seem more sophisticated, but usually does one of two things: 1) breaks them or 2) makes them kinda ridiculous and or sad. Trying to graft a story examining the implications of being a superhero in the “real world” onto Silver-Age characters is wrongheaded (in my view of course.) They weren’t created to support such weight. I’m fairly sure that no amount of retrofitting is going to change that, either. This process has been ongoing for some time (I know, you already know that), but lately has come to a head, in no small thanks to books like The Authority, but had its roots stratching back further than the obvious antecedents of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, to Marvel’s books of the seventies (particularly those by Steve Gerber (him again), Steve Englehart and Marv Wolfman).

Trouble is that the audience glommed onto the books when they were kids back then and have held on tenaciously since then, demanding that books keep delivering similar thrills, only punched up in terms of violence, sex, adult themes and the like. Not to mention the dreaded “realism”, which I’ve gone on the record as saying is pretty much antithetical to mainstream superheroics. Superheroes are fantasy, not even science fiction (though they’re often dressed up in those tropes.) Adding realism to it works fine to a point, but insisting internal scientific, logical and political consistency in a world filled with superbeings is nutso. Well, it’s been done. We called it Miracleman and that ended so well, didn’t it?

But as the audience has grown up, it’s insisted that these characters grow with them, but not really allowed them to grow, if you get my gist. Unfortunately, most of these characters only work in a franchise serial form when you don’t break their rules. Any rational being in Batman’s cowl would have figured out that the Joker is a menace to society and that every day he lives is another in which people will die. Real world would be something like Warren Ellis’ Batman ripping nipples off of badguys (or quietly burying them in a small South American country owned by Wayne Enterprises). But that ends the franchise. Also, Batman getting over the death of his parents ends the franchise. Looking at it realistically, Batman’s a psychopath.

But comics aren’t real, are they? Hell no. What’s real is the reaction that they stir in the reader.

The audience, however, keeps thinking that “realism” and “maturity” is what readers want. Consequently, the market responds to that and the publishers put out books that they think will appeal to that demographic. Of course, this sort of aesthetic inbreeding leads to pools that become more and more stagnant, so that those outside things look at ‘em as green and slimy while the diehard fans are gulping eagerly as if it were the purest of driven snow.

Please don’t mistake this as me simply whining that they don’t make superhero books that I want to read anymore. I’m not. I don’t read that many superhero books (though those I read I like a lot, but I’m pretty damn finicky about ‘em too.) And really, if I want to read more of the stuff that I grew up with, I can get most of it in collections or go rummaging through quarter bins (though at my local back issue place, they’re dollar bins…) I only make noise because I recognize that catering to a small segment of the potential marketplace might make short-term sense, but it’s a long-term death sentence. Imagine what would happen if cigarette companies couldn’t hook new smokers? And yes, I’m being facetious and picking a deliberately provocative analogy for comparison. Keep thinking that.

The big two have to do what they think is best to keep alive, unfortunately this means appeasing a small and vocal percentage of folks who actually read comics. And when you’re doing that, you’re not making them more accessable to everyone else. Remember people, comics are not a genre, but a medium, a form of expression.

The direct market as it stands is the only market for the traditional Western comicbook, by which I mean the twenty-two pages of story delivered monthly. The newsstand market no longer exists for all intents and purposes. It’s a very small percentage of where the Big Two sell their books, and if you’re not in that group, you’re not selling singles at newsstands at all. Sure, you can sell singles at conventions, but don’t try to make a living at that (though you can often pay for the printing that way). You can sell comics outside of the direct market, but they better look and feel like books, dammit.

Wow. That was a big digression. Sorry ‘bout that.

Back to franchises and the danger involved. Franchises only provide for an interminable middle period of a character. There’s no beginning and no end in sight. Why was Watchmen so powerful? Why was Mr. Hyde as portrayed in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen such a great character? Because they had an ending, a finality and completeness about them. Dark Kinght Returns was powerful because it presented a potential resting place for the character, not simply because it was a solid story and bold reimagination of the character. The need of a franchise to be viable robs these characters of the possibility of real growth and the chance of a meaningful conclusion.

Does this mean that I think franchise characters should immediately start feeling the effects of aging and have them confront their inevitable mortality? Nope. Mostly because it’d be the end of the comic industry as it stands now. Both the publishers and retailers depend on the stream of income derived from franchise characters (and those successes allow the opportunity for publishers to try new things and allow for the possibility of creator-owned materials and the like.) It does, however, mean that I’d like it if franchise characters were a significantly smaller section of the comics marketplace. I know, taking all the Batman books off the stands doesn’t mean that people would turn to Sleeper or something else. People who buy Batman books aren’t necessarily looking for good stories; they’re looking for Batman stories. Same with any named character. Sure, there are often good stories told in these books, but that’s not the motivating factor in most of these sales of these books.

We as readers should be more concerned with solid storytelling (with all that entails), innovation in the field, diversity of genre material and recognition of the medium’s strengths. Yes, that’s a tall order. Sadly, they’re often neglected in the pursuit of the relatively easy pre-existing audience. I’ll be the first to step up and say that it’s far more difficult to write something for a new audience (I’m still working on it.) It’s far easier and less taxing on resources to write to expectations. No, not everyone does this. There are creators who go out on limbs on a regular basis. They don’t always succeed, but at least they put effort into it. Hell, entire companies find themselves in situations where they’re forced to do it, and sometimes the results are spectacular (even if they are short-lived.) And when your audience rejects these attempts resoundingly, it’s all that much harder to do it the next time.

But we have to, or else we’re looking at extinction. Perhaps that’s overly dramatic, but when you really look at it, you’ll see it’s not so much so. Unless readers are added to the existing base, then I think you can expect more of the same sorts of offerings that we’ve gotten in the last few years. Publishers will continue to cull their back catalogs and intensify the saturation of their prime offerings. Innovation will be stifled to appease an increasingly conservative audience base (or else the shock-motivated events will have to intensify to levels that are best described as comical.) If your audience doesn’t diversify, then there’s no way that you can hope your offerings will.

Some would say that this is a chicken and egg situation, and I wouldn’t disagree. But the audience isn’t going to diversify or increase by itself. The publishers have to step in and work to expand readership (both in terms of marketing and offering projects that are of interest beyond the existing comics readership.) Right now, the independent publishers are doing a far better job of the latter. Non big-two publishers are making stabs at the former (some better than others), but nobody seems to have the resources to put together anything organized on a large-scale. The Big Two might be able to do this, but I suspect that they’re motivated by a “don’t rock the boat” philosophy where they’re doing good enough in the current marketplace to justify their current courses. The twenty-two page pamphlet works for them, even if it’s one of the things about comics that absolutely DOES NOT work for everyone else. Hell, the pamphlet format doesn’t even work but for a handful of writers these days. We’re being served chapters, not stories; acts, not episodes. But it’s good enough for right now, right?

Good enough won’t be for long. Comics sales might be up a few percentage points over last year, which is a good sign. But until there’s some kind of major breakout, comics will still be their own marketplace with their toes dipped in a much larger pool. Until the Big Two create more books that will have a demand beyond the existing mainstream market, this won’t happen. DC’s attempts at this so far are far more solid than Marvel’s (particularly in genre diversity), though both of their marketing attempts at the mainstream culture have been oriented around movie and television events, which haven’t produced any lasting increases in readership or interest in comics as a medium.

Do I know what it’s going to take? No, I don’t. If I did, I’d be working on it instead of writing this column. I do know what’s not working, however. I’ve just spent a few too many pages talking about it. But it ultimately boils down to conservatism (no, not * that * kind) being the dominant mode. Conservatism might have been able pull the publishers through the bad times after the implosion, but it’s not a long-term strategy for success. You can try to hold on to the Glory That Was while the world changes all around you, you might even succeed. But in doing so, you’ll end up with something that’s only meaningful to you.

Truly, we’re at a moment where we can continue on this path, encasing our heroes in a CGC slab and preserve them in stasis (though preventing us from enjoying them on anything but the crassest surface level), or we can let them go, allowing a new generation to enjoy them for what they are, not what we want them to be. Then we can move on to other stories, other characters, enjoy them for what they are and in turn, perhaps learn something new. Not only will the content have to change (or at the very least, diversify), but the form will as well. Three dollars for a copy of Sleeper works because Ed Brubaker knows that a monthly episode needs to stand on its own. Three dollars for a chapter means twelve dollars or more for something resembling a complete story (though more often it’s a complete plot, the two not being necessarily synonymous.) Trades are a move in the right direction. But then again, so would making single-issue stories that stood on their own two legs. I see very few people in a hurry to do that.

What I’m talking about here isn’t just evolution of comics to adapt to a particular set of conditions, but co-evolution of both the audience and the medium/mode. One changes, which effects changes in the other, and back and forth. We’ve continued on a particular co-evolutionary path for some time now, with the development of the franchise-driven superhero mainstream and the Direct Market. That’s reached it’s apex (and some would argue nadir). We need to co-evolve in a new direction, one that’s sustainable both on the side of the audience and on the side of the medium. Publishers need to find new niches to occupy and thrive in, and the audience needs to show some adaptability as well, else we’ll (being both sides) find ourselves addicted to a set of conditions that simply won’t work and the system will crash.

Hey, look at that. We made it to the end. And you thought it would never arrive…