The 1990’s were a period of excesses in comic books.
And the impact of those excesses are still being felt twenty years after the
collapse of the comic book industry. Even though the publishing world has
changed dramatically since the publishing industry collapse of 2008, Comic book
publishers still continue to hold on to the very same habits that have hampered
the comic book industry’s growth since 1993.
Twenty years ago artists Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and
Rob Liefeld became celebrities and readers started buying comics because they
featured their work, not because of the characters. Unfortunately, the focus on
celebrity artists and writers has pushed characters to the background and
creators to the foreground.
Comic book customers no longer buy books for the
character, but because a celebrity creative team is on board. Publishers don’t
promote Superman, Batman or Spider-Man. No, they promote writers and artists
first. Their names in some cases are presented above the logo of the character.
Symbolically this top billing tells the audience creators are more important
than the characters they work on. I believe that’s a slap in the face to the
reader and the original creator of the character.
Thanks to this focus on creator over character many
readers don’t discover many great books by lesser known creative teams or
unknown writers and artists. Worse, many new talents can’t break into the
industry. The constant focus on celebrity keeps fresh talent from being able to
enter the comic book medium and find an audience that will discover them and
their distinct style.
The continuing focus on making writers and artists
celebrities is preventing characters from reaching a larger audience of comic
book readers. Characters have to come first if the comic book medium hopes to
grow in the next 20 years. Kids know characters, they don’t know creators.
Storytelling has also taken a back seat to art in
comic books. Today comic stories are focused on large-scale events where BIG
things happen. This sales-oriented approach to storytelling was a great way to
move product in the 1980s when it compelled habitual buyers to buy slower-selling
midlist titles to finish a story, but today it’s a model that’s hampering access
to new readers. When it takes 100 comic books spread out over the course of a
year to tell a story it’s almost impossible for new readers to discover a comic
book character and give their stories a try.
Worse, The big event model of storytelling is
stalling the development and growth of characters long term. It’s frustrating
for writers and artists who are trying to establish a character and a distinct
“voice” for their characters, a mood for their book and craft a story model to
cement a structure for their style when their storylines are constantly being
interrupted by a major event that goes on for an entire year.
Gimmick storytelling is also stalling the craft of
writing in the comic book industry. The constant use of a death, mutilations,
rapes, murders, and other tragedies may shock readers short-term, but long-term
it does a lot of damage. As writers and artists keep pushing the envelope they
keep escalating the gore, the violence and in some cases the nudity and
sexuality to get a rise out of the reader.
Over time the characters and their stories get lost
as Editors, writers, and artists start focusing on gimmicks to grab the
reader’s interest. What they don’t understand is that there comes a point where
the reader has read and seen so many shocking and graphically violent events in
a comic book they just become numb to them. That’s why so many comic readers
are apathetic about death in comics these days. It’s an overused plot device
attention whores use to prop up a weak story.
Personally, I believe the overuse of gimmicks in a
story prevents writers from building up conflict that develops organically and
flows smoothly. It prevents characters from developing their own distinct
personality and voice. All we see is them reacting to whatever shocking events
are transpiring, not respond by come to their own observations and
understandings about things.
Sometimes a small story has the biggest impact on a
reader. A great story doesn’t need a death or some shocking moment to get the
readers’ attention. Sometimes readers just want a satisfying conclusion to the
story where the good guy beats the bad guy and goes on to live another day for
more adventures. In my 20 years as a writer I’ve learned a simple no-nonsense
story reaches more people than doing something complex and epic.
In the gimmick based “shock and awe” model of
storytelling comic writers don’t develop their craft as writers. They never
learn how to develop their own voice or their own style.
Artistically the 1990’s was one of the worst periods
of the comic book medium. While artists like Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Todd
McFarlane became celebrities for their scratchy seemingly detailed artwork,
featuring costumes with numerous pouches, belts and straps it clearly doesn’t
hold up to the test of time.
Twenty years later their artwork doesn’t just appear
dated, it just appears ridiculous. When one takes the work of these three hacks
and compares it to talents like Curt Swan, Neal Adams, John Buscema, George Perez,
John Byrne, John Romita Sr., and legends like Jack Kirby, most of the art in
the 1990’s just doesn’t measure up. Instead of balanced naturally proportioned
figures of the human form, characters became overexaggerated, overmuscled and
misproportioned wearing overdesigned, costumes that are so busy that they give
the reader eyestrain looking at them. The excesses like pouches, belts and
straps on many characters seem to be used to overcompensate for the lack of artistic
form and technique.
Worse, their skills at storytellers were subpar to
mediocre. Most of their panel work does a horrible job of conveying emotions, body
language, facial expressions or telling stories with pictures. Sure, the
characters appear attractive and pose like fashion models. But the pictures
they draw do a horrible job of moving a story forward effectively over the
course of 22 pages. Many like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld fill up the page with big
splash pages of art to overcompensate for their ability to tell a story over
the course of several panels.
Many artists and writers who came up in the 1990’s followed
in the path of these three hacks and their craft suffered. And many more today
continue to stagnate creatively as they get supervised and mentored by editors
who came into the comic book business during the dysfunctional 1990’s.
The editors who came up in this period came up in a
culture of gimmicks and didn’t understand the business of publishing. Yes, they
knew how to market and sell an event, but they didn’t understand how to tell
stories or how to sell characters.
Story is the lifeblood of a comic book. It’s stories
that establish characters as icons. It’s stories that define characters. And
it’s stories that build the word-of-mouth that gets new readers to try titles.
Instead of being good stewards who advocated for the
reader by fighting to preserve the integrity of the core elements of story and
character, editors at comic book companies in the 1990’s instead worked to
appease celebrity creators who believed they were bigger than the characters
they worked on. Fearing they would leave the company and take thousands of
dollars in of sales with them, they let them run roughshod over the characters
they were entrusted to supervise.
And along with sating the egos of these celebrity
creators, editors became obsessed with getting bigger sales by applying the
“shock and awe model” of storytelling to get more attention from readers. Leaving
the images and reputations of the characters they were entrusted with to be
abused by writer and artist excesses.
Thanks to this dysfunctional approach to managing
the publication of comic books, the industry has become a group of haves and
have nots. Popular artists have been allowed to do whatever they please, while
lesser known writers and artists get micromanaged and bullied.
Instead of all the talent getting objective and
constructive criticism that helps everyone improve in their craft, lesser known
writers and artists don’t improve in their craft and some more popular artists
like Jim Lee, stagnate. Others like John Romita Jr start to regress.
The habits many learned in the 1990’s have stagnated
the comic book medium and continue to keep it from growing. Over the course of
twenty years these dysfunctional habits have evolved into a culture of excess that
has led to the finished product of comic books becoming stale and uninspired.
In order for the comic book medium to grow in the 21st
Century many older creators will have to unlearn what they learned in the
1990s, and today’s artists will have to take the lessons learned from the 1990’s
period and use it as a textbook on what not to do when creating their work.
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