[...] him once more for letting us showcase his work here on the website. Our resident stand-up guy Greg Manuel is tackling the recent Liefeld-Peter David bru-ha-ha over some gay kiss or another (certainly not [...]

There was no Blackest Night talk in this at all…

Boo-urns to you sir.

Boo-urns…that’s the GOOD one, right?

Ah, well – come along, Bort!

I’m making up for that in this week’s LYSAD Gary

http://bit.ly/Kw7gh

Why no Blackest Night review on here? Simple… not everybody HAS to drink the kool-aid ^_~

As for Greg’s theory of the differences between Marvel and DC, we’d been talking about it and here’s my take on it…

And while I can see the views as DC being “Right Now”, with Marvel being “WHAT’S COME BEFORE to propel the RIGHT NOW into WHAT COMES NEXT”, I think it also stems from issues pertaining to how the companies were created, who owns them, the people who read them and in some ways, personal philosophies of the people who made those companies big.

I’ll be frank… Marvel has always been more of the actual literature company, that cares about telling a story. DC has always been the place that went, “What kind of stories can we tell that will appeal to the lowest common denominator?”, especially during the silly 50′s and 60′s era, when Mort Weseinger was king. Stan Lee admits when he created FF#1 with Jack Kirby, was that he hated doing comics because they didn’t seem to take themselves seriously and didn’t want to tell a story with depth. As he mentioned in the “World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” documentary on the FF: Extended Edition DVD, “Typically, a story was with Captain America or somebody who saw a villain and went, “Oh look, there’s someone doing something wrong, I’ve gotta stop them”. I didn’t know what their personal lives were, how did they make a living, how they felt… there was nothing”.

He wanted to tell the great American novel but was stuck doing comics… so when he saw the writing on the wall that Timely/Marvel was going under (which Jack saw too), they decided to say screw it and do a comic the way they wanted to do it, which focused more on the humanity of characters rather than the slam and the bang.

Contrast that with DC. That was a company that at it’s height, was all about telling rather ridiculous stories that were meant to entice kiddies to buy comics (Mort’s own words) and only barely had issue-to-issue continuity. There’s TWO SEPARATE stories during this period where it’s revealed Jor-El and Lara were alive but in suspended animation… both of them, seemingly meant to be canonical but yet never mentioned again (they didn’t have the “Imaginary Tale” tag which was used predominately at the time). One of Superman’s prolific artists, Curt Swan, admitted in interviews that he hated working under Weseinger because he’d dumb down the stories and ask for stupid crap to be in there (in the Death of Superman Wizard Special, he also goes into he wishes he had the types of stories written in the early 90′s back when he was drawing comics… and that the writers he worked with wanted to write stories like that). Honestly, you can pretty much pick up any book that deals with writers/artists that worked under Mort in the that era who will all tell you that they hated him and he was a hack of the highest order. And on the other hand, they wouldn’t do any true lasting changes anyways (which is why they would tend to ‘ignore’ anything that might alter the fundamentals of their characters, like Jor-El and Lara being alive) because they want to ensure their characters are stable for marketing purposes.

And notice that when DC started to become more Marvel-like… it was because a lot of Marvel staples (Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas) were migrating over to DC, as well as people who were entering DC but had started to read Marvel Comics and wanted to write that style (guys like Cary Bates). Couple with the fact that DC Editorial saw Marvel was beating them at sales and thus they wanted to capitalize on that.

So, you had one company that really gained ground because they took an independent view (of saying screw it, I’m doing what I want) and because they were in a situation where it pays to be innovative (near bankruptcy) where DC was pretty much always about standardizing their line for the lowest common denominator in order to make the most money.

Couple that with the fact that since DC had for years been one way (not really caring about their continuity because they just wanted to craft stories that would make them money, to hell with contradicting previous works) to another (caring about continuity and focusing on characters) while Marvel had pretty much always been about the characters.

This is why DC is so schizo in it’s publication history… because during the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s, you got Marvel people over at DC, who wanted to craft stories with characters who moved and changed, but now people weaned on the “DC’s doesn’t give a shit about continuity”, people who are now old enough to try to solicit work from the company (namely, people like Jeph Loeb and even Geoff Johns) are jumping into the pool to change things back to ‘their’ status quo.

Whereas with Marvel, for the most part, never had that problem because they never had two conflicting types of publication ideals going on… they just always focused on the character.

Add into this pot the fact that DC got bought up by Warner Brothers… a corporation out to make money. Thus, by the fact that it’s a corporation out to make money, they don’t want their characters to change too much, meaning they’ve got a stake in wanting to keep things ‘status quo’ because it effects their marketing. So even without DiDio, Johns, Loeb and everyone else who goes out of their way while at DC to changes things to how they happened to like their characters, WB will slap down any changes they deem too excessive.

The main problem with Marvel nowadays is that since it’s bankruptcy, they’re worried about changing their status quo too much for fear of loosing money and they want to make money at all costs. Couple this with people who don’t want to show respect or acknowledge that Marvel was built on moving characters forward (not backward), and you start getting into the DC problem… wanting to craft things that will appeal to the lowest common denominator (to make money) and yet keep things ‘the same’ so that marketing can craft a stable product to make money.

It’s why I don’t give DC any leeway on their ‘retcons’ because I don’t believe it’s a credible policy… it’s lazy ass storytelling. It’s the reason I get pissed off at Joe Quesada when he pulls crap like OMD/BND, because what he does is lazy ass storytelling.

And yet, even with Joe Quesada at the helm, I’ll give him credit for at least keeping Marvel tradition in trying something new, changing the status quo (although stupidly keeping things the same) and trying to tell, for the most part, a continuing narrative.

DC just keeps altering it’s history to the point where I don’t give a damn anymore, because why should I care about these characters when their history changes on a whim? I have no interest in reading Superman since by my estimation, in 5 to 10 years from now we’ll have yet ANOTHER origin.

That’s my beef… Marvel is slowly but surely becoming old-school DC and DC is allowing itself to morph back into a company that’ll be mocked for not taking it’s stories and characters seriously.

So, quite literally, I would say that DC is “Non-Literary” and Marvel (despite it’s problems) being “Literary”.

It’s why I’ll never accept the idea that DC is just about the myths and it’s okay for them to pull such crap… because I’m wanting a story. And stories have internal consistency with beginnings, middles and ends. Marvel, for the most part, follows that model, DC doesn’t.

And DC doesn’t have the excuse that the bards who orally retold the stories of Beowulf had, which is that there was no paper, it had to be told orally and mis-rememberings/mis-interpretations would happen.

It’s just plain shoddy stortelling and shame on them for thinking it’s okay to continue to milk their fanbase by altering characters and retelling stories without giving people who have pumped hundreds if not thousands of dollars into their comics a proper ending.

*Off Soapbox*

You wanna see Liefeld bashing, head over to the Hero Machine blog ( http://www.heromachine.com ) and see the man pick apart Rob’s “talent” like a surgeon. His latest rants surprise me as he finds out Rob has “borrowed” scenes from classic artists and gave them his personal touch. Honestly, a lobotomized chimp suffering from Lou Garrets disease with a pencil taped to his paw has more talent than Liefeld.

I definitely agree with the argument of DC and its continuity mess. Hard to figure out what stories to intro to fans when they change the history so many times it will cause migraines that will cripple a rampaging elephant. Marvel, despite its few good points these days, are falling into the trap of being like their competition.

Also, no need to worry about “spilling the beans” Greg. I’ve got back up plans. Plus I prefer to use a sniper rifle over a crossbow. Longer range and makes heads disappear with the right bullets. *gives off an evil chuckle*

Mr. Q (aka Dale Gribble… or am I?)

I am trying to understand why anyone would want comics to take themselves seriously?

That’s an absurd statement. Comics are essentially guys in capes fighting guys in darker capes.

Like any genre…you have good and you have bad.

DC I believe is coming out of a long slump. Some time after Crisis on Infinite Earths people had an obsession with cleaning up perceived problems and gaps in the continuity. That obsession led to endless changes and other such nonsense. Including some really bad comics.

I didn’t much like Infinite Crisis…or Countdown…and struggled to figure out what DC was doing. Struggling to find its status quo I guess. I think Coming out of FC they have. They have been taking interesting chances, getting their stable of talent in line, and building a coherent universe.

I don’t think Marvel takes itself more seriously then DC or ever has. I think there was a generational gap in the creative forces…the heroes Lee and Kirby were created come from a different time then the DC characters who existed in some form or another a generation and more before most of the Marvel family of characters existed.

Sure Lee and Kirby had been working on comics for some time. But the characters origins were of a different time. Different sensabilities were at play then the ones that led to Supes and Batman and Green Lantern and Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

Today, I will say..I still don’t like that Barry is back..or Kal-l will be a Black Lantern. but I am content to get good stories and enjoy it. I don’t over think it.

Comics are fun and entertaining. Serialized fantasy in spandex. This old fan will never get his comic glory days back. I don’t think anything could be as good as the comics I used to read in the back of my moms Lincoln Mark V. Different time, different creators.

Aris,

I think that by boiling down a whole genre of creation, that of sequential art, and saying it’s just “A bunch of guys punching each other” is an unfair generalization.

Nor do am I a believer that by “literary” it means it has to be dark, dreary and melodramatic.

I’m just asking that comics, any sort of comics, not be stupid as a rule.

It’s like with movies. There are films that are popcorn films, that aren’t high art, but they don’t undervalue the intelligence of their audience.

You can’t tell me that something like Rocky and Bullwinkle was stupid. It WAS for kids but it was written so that on a surface level you’d laugh but later on, you could also get some of the underline socio/political humor. Or even the Looney Tunes stuff. Sure, I’d laugh at the Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoons initially because Daffy kept getting shot… but now as I’m older, I really appreciate how intelligent they were with their wordplay. It’s why I still love Looney Tunes but can’t really stand to watch Tom and Jerry, which is all about the violence.

And I don’t agree with the different times, different motivations logic either. If that were true, Superman nor Batman would have ever become as campy as they did in the 50′s/60′s. Batman had a gun in his first few appearances and was moody… and Superman fought for social justice and threw people through brick walls.

BOTH of those characters had a bit more going on than, “I have to save the Galaxy by whistling and juggling planets… but if I do, Lois might discover my identity!” which is what guys like Mort transformed them into. If you do the research, writers and artists state they wanted to do more mature stuff. It’s why the Superman newspaper serial did well against the comic book version, as the comic book was overly campy when the Newspaper strip wasn’t (and again, an interview with the editor of the strip in the Wizard “Death of Superman” special points out that no one like Mort or his policies, because he cheated artists of money, stole writer’s ideas and took anything remotely interesting and turned it into lowest common denominator trash. It was work that THEY WEREN’T PROUD OF.

It’s like with Transformers. I know it isn’t Shakespeare, I know it’s meant to be entertaining, but you can’t tell me that was in “Revenge of the Fallen” was the apex of entertainment the series could reach. You can’t tell me that if they did a little bit more character work and took out some of the cheap jokes like robots humping legs that perhaps a more consistently entertaining film could have been made.

All I ask are for intelligently written stories no matter what you do, be they in comics, film, television or novels. If you’re going to write something fun and fluffly, do it… just don’t insult my intelligence or assume that they only way to write fun characters is to insert dick and fart jokes.

I enjoy Van Helsing, but there’s a movie where my enjoyment is bogged down by some rather stupid moments that if they were deleted or re-written would never take me OUT of an experience (namely, Dracula saying he can’t feel any emotions and yet he’s EMOTING).

And when I read insanely stupid things in comics, like Peter Parker making a deal with a demon, it takes me out of the experience and I have one hell of a time getting back in.

Rocky & Bullwinkle the TV series sure wasn’t stupid, no question about it. As a 30 year old (alleged) adult, I am blown away by its brilliance. Especially in the nation of Pottsylvania as a symbol of the sheer absurdity of the “Cold War Enemy” as Americans perceived it at the time – this strange amalgam of Nazi Germany (Fearless Leader) and Soviet Russia (Boris & Natasha) that DOESN’T REALLY EXIST.

But the movie…oh, that movie…it stands alongside “Batman & Robin” and “Spider-Man 3″ as just one of those movies that I wish I didn’t pay money to see.

But as film examples go as far as providing what we should consider the bare minimum in terms of entertainment that doesn’t insult our intelligence, I noticed that Ryan cited a work of Stephen Sommers – I never saw “Van Helsing,” but I did see “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns,” and I am in total agreement on that point – If you’ve got a story, then tell it. Just don’t phone it in, for Stan’s sake!

Aris – the closing sentence in your comment raises another point: “This old fan will never get his comic glory days back. I don’t think anything could be as good as the comics I used to read in the back of my moms Lincoln Mark V. Different time, different creators.”

That leads me to ask…what is it ABOUT those times that made those stories better? Isn’t there a standard of quality there that we can consider timeless – a standard that we as consumers should hold today’s creators to? I don’t think anybody really expects today’s writers and artists to try and BE Eisner or Kirby or Stan Lee or whomever…but in a day and age when mainstream comics cost an ABSURD amount of money per issue, is it asking too much to expect today’s writers and artists and editors and publishers to bring their best to the table and treat properties (and as a result their readers) with respect?

Because while its true that you can’t please everybody and you shouldn’t try, I think a big difference between now and ten or twenty years ago, is that at least the writers and artists were always trying their best, and editors were doing their job and working to make sure everything in the finished product MADE SENSE. And as a consumer, if you didn’t like a direction a comic was going, it was likely because the story just bored you, or the artwork wasn’t clicking for you. So you could leave it alone and come back when it interested you again. But nowadays, it could very well be because the story repulsed you. Or the artwork was downright amateurish. (*cough*LIEFELD!*cough*)

If anything, that’s what has changed since we were kids. And we shouldn’t stand for it.

UPDATE, Re: 7/25@ EastVille Comedy Club – For those of you who might have been interested in this coming Saturday’s show, I wanted to let you know that I am going to have to reschedule that slot. Had a family matter come up that I will need to attend to upstate.

However, I have been booked for a completely unrelated show – Tuesday Night Funnies at Ochi’s Lounge this coming Tuesday evening, July 21 at 7:30pm. Ochi’s Lounge is the downstairs bar at COMIX NY, a comedy club on 353 West 14th Street, just east of 9th Avenue. (http://www.comixny.com/ochislounge.aspx)

As the website notes, there is NO COVER CHARGE and just a single food or drink item.

Will keep you posted for the next time I’ll be at the Eastville – or just go on any given night, cuz you’re gonna have fun there no matter what. But feel free to come out this Tuesday night if you can!