Inside Pulse | Thursday I Won't Care About You #2: Beef (!?) and a Comics Treatise

Thursday I Won't Care About You #2: Beef (!?) and a Comics Treatise

by Jay Galette on May 20, 2010

Disclaimer: Damon and I have actually hashed this whole thing out over in the comments section of his blog, so don’t think there’s actually any beef between us. That title was devised when I first saw his posting and was filled with righteous nerd anger. I’m only sharing this new because A) The discourse is good and healthy & B) This has been sitting in the Nexus queue since I wrote it last week and I’d rather this be my posting for the week instead stirring the shitpot that’s been boiling over all around the net since they killed Ryan Choi...or, y’know, coming up with something else to rant about.

I have to say, the last thing I thought I’d see when I went to check the comments on my Return of Bruce Wayne #1 review was a link to a manifesto. That’s the last thing I ever expect to see when I click a link. Porn? Wouldn’t mind it. A funny video? Why not. A list that’s in the form of slideshow instead of just plain text like they used to do it? I hope not, but I wouldn’t be surprised. A manifesto? Never.

I could tell from the start that my opinion would differ from that of Mr. Beres as soon as I read “This is a difficult comic to write about.” That’s just the thing; it isn’t at all.

Bruce exits the cave after finishing the carvings he began at the end of Final Crisis. He meets the cavemen and they are attacked by Vandal Savage’s tribe. Vandal chooses to wait until morning to kill Bruce who is having a fever dream about the giant bat carcass in front of him. He is saved by Boy. He dresses himself in the Bat-skin. He lays the smack-down on Vandal Savage and then leaps off into the future. Superman, Booster Gold and Green Lantern appear and Superman gives a vague little speech about how Batman returning to the 21^st century without their help will doom everyone.

That’s what happened in the issue and that’s what I judged it on. Batman fought cavemen and Superman told us something terrible is going to happen. As far as I’m concerned nothing happened and it bored me. Now if you were expecting me to go into some deep analysis about the parallels between this and Final Crisis (although I think it would be more apt to look at this story as sequel to Batman R.I.P. rather than one to Final Crisis,) or acknowledge the link between Bruce’s night terror about the bat and unraveling mystery of Barbatos which is being revealed in Batman & Robin, well I’m just not going to do that. Why? Well it certainly has nothing to do with me lacking “cognition.”

Thank you, by the way, for tossing in that snide little insult. I’m glad to see that higher level of discourse you want for comics includes petty flaming.

When it boils down, I didn’t write about any of the parallels and symbolism and groundwork because I didn’t give a damn about any of them. And I didn’t give a damn about any of them because the writer didn’t make me give a damn. This issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne might as well have been the latest episode of LOST. Yeah this stuff is important to the story as a whole, but good job presenting it in the most uninteresting way possible. Grant Morrison told us this story was supposed to show us why Batman was cool. I don’t think this part of the story did that and no amount of hypertextuality is going to change the way I feel.

Don’t get me wrong though – just because I don’t think RoBW #1 is a good comic doesn’t mean I think Grant Morrison is telling a bad story, it’s just off to a slow, uninteresting start.

What this really comes down to is the fact that you took a review that I barely took seriously (and only did as a companion to my I Hate You, Bruce Wayne column,) very seriously – enough so to write up a manifesto about the weakness of comics journalism and the stupidity of your fellow comic book fans.

Do you really think comics don’t get a prominent place in our media because of the lack of respectable commentators? Maybe comics would benefit from having a Roger Ebert but that would not change the way they are perceived by the populace at large. Regardless of all the comics out there that can be regarded as pieces of art it’s impossible to deny the negative connotations that the average person thinks of when they hear the words “comic book.” Until a massive shift in consciousness occurs, comics will always be regarded as “Superhero kiddy stuff.”

Even to speak in defense of the genre and tout examples of superhero work which push the boundaries of content and form the bias against it will remain. In the eyes of millions of people, the ideas of someone like Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis will always be worth less because they did not choose a more widely accepted medium such as film, television or even prose. There’s a part of me that thinks one would be more socially well-received if they were the writer of a cartoon rather than of a comic.

What’s really hurting comics in regards to mainstream acceptance is the fact that they still haven’t been fully accepted within academia. I once had a professor who made sure to include a graphic novel on the syllabus of every course she taught. If only every English (or Philosophy, or Art or Psychology or Communications) professor could take the time to explore the passageways of America’s forgotten medium; we’d have a massive shift in the way people view comic books.

Some comics have managed to break into the mainstream but they’re almost always the ones which fall outside superhero genre. Even worse is that often it seems these comics gain mainstream popularity simply because they aren’t about superheroes, as if their existence somehow legitimizes and de-stigmatizes the medium. It’s not a coincidence that once the film version of Persepolis was released Barnes & Nobles started shelving the graphic novel in the memoir section rather than with all the other comics. The slowly spreading mainstream acceptance of comics isn’t happening medium-wide the way I think most of us would hope and instead we’re seeing a polarization based around genre much in the same way it exists in other mainstream entertainment mediums.

Superhero comics are the action movies of the comic book medium. Grant Morrison, god bless him, might as well be writing Rambo V: Rambo In Time, so forgive me if I don’t take that all too seriously. The flaw in your manifesto was that you thought there needed to be a change in the way we write about comics when really it’s that we need to change the way we write about superhero comics.

Personally, I think if we take them too seriously no one else will. They’re just stories and it’s not a big deal if I didn’t like one (or that I didn’t express my dislike pretentiously enough.) I don’t get mad at people who tell me they don’t like The Catcher In The Rye because Holden is too whiny; you should be able to handle me writing a review where I don’t talk about how Grant Morrison did his Grant Morrison thing.

I take a look at a blog like Rikdad’s and I definitely appreciate what that guy is doing and just the fact that he’s willing to sift through so many back-issues to find connections to the current story is commendable.

But I don’t think it’s enough.

It’s not enough for us as fans to only breakdown and discuss the significance of themes/ideas from a comic within just the context of that particular comic and comics that connect to it. Comics are a part of our culture and they carry with them the weight of our history and a shared set of values we’ve built up around the concept of hero.

The Return of Bruce Wayne isn’t just a story about Batman testing himself through time, it’s about Batman being reborn and rebuilt through time. This is a man who we have seen do the impossible yet there are still fans who cry “Batman shouldn’t be time-traveling or fighting aliens! I like him more grounded!” So Grant Morrison is taking him and putting him through an impossible paradigm to give birth to a new Batman – one whose origins lie in Bat-demons, the spite of an evil fallen god and history itself.

What does it mean for superhero comics as a whole, when the only way we can accept a man handling the impossible is by seeing him birthed through it? What does that mean for us as human beings and things we think mankind can handle?

Morrison is trying to change the way we think about Batman so that we can take in all those crazy stories from the 50s that no one ever talks about. This epic sweeping story he’s writing is all about making us willing to accept any and all stories about the Dark Knight.

He’s asking us to take superheroes less seriously.

I’m Jay Galette, and here’s hoping that all you high-strung comic fans out there find some chill pills for what’s ailing you.

Tags: Batman, comics journalism, Damon Beres, The Return of Bruce Wayne, Thursdays I Won’t Care About You

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Joel La Puma

Jay, here’s a secret: there IS NO group of people out there thinking comic books are “superhero kiddy stuff.” Whenever you hear someone triumphantly shouting, “It’s now cool to like comics,” it’s not true, simply because there has never been a real time where anyone cared if you liked comics. All of it was a delusional martyrdom fantasy by comics nerds blaming their arbitrary, self-imposed feelings of persecution on the books they were reading rather than their lack of social graces.

Books like Persepolis get moved to the Memoir section because Non-Fiction books sell thirty dollars to every single dollar of prose Fiction sold, and memoirs are a huge part of that. It’s nothing to do with mainstream acceptability, it’s sales and accessibility, pure and simple. They want to highlight a book connected to a well-regarded movie in the one section of the store in which most of their customers are going to be.

And academia? I can’t even begin to dissect that argument, given the level of apathy most sane people have towards academia and college English departments’ success in making literature inaccessible to normal people. And I can’t imagine that discussing things in a college course suddenly makes them cool in the mainstream – that conclusion absolutely baffles me. I will say, however, that I have seen plenty of college courses in a number of disciplines incorporate graphic novels, so your big argument there is already happening, and it’s changed nothing.

The only thing preventing comics from being discussed in the mainstream media are the comics companies themselves. Their way of business is archaic and their marketing and distribution are jokes. It seriously takes a movie or TV show for a comic to get any recognition, because comics are a beaten up factory town miles away from the big city. Comics just don’t make enough money or have enough readers to be talked about in the same way as movies, music, and television. It’s not some ingrained antipathy in the minds of the squares; it’s just a niche medium that refuses to pull its way out of the gutter. For all I know, that might not even be a possibility anymore.
Joel La Puma

So I looked at that blog, and man, that thing is full of pretentious nerds that don’t shut up. I know, pot, kettle, black, but seriously, this is a real sentence in the comments: “I suppose it would be silly to try and define ‘a lot’ since it’s an entirely subjective quantity.”

Here’s another: “This comes down to aesthetics and what importance you place on it in the western enterprise of thought.”

And another: “Yes, the format gives us little choice but to assess individual issues rather than an entire story at first, but so many people fail to account for the fact that they are viewing one sliver of what will ultimately be a complete narrative.”

This is like a triptych of guys who have given up all hope of being cool, or even functional. You think they listen to Mars Volta? I bet at least one listens to Mars Volta.
JayGalette

I can’t argue your point about Persepolis, because, you’re right. I never really did consider the economic reasons for the shift in the way you put it. I had no idea memoirs actually sold that much.

In regards to academia: Being that comics are a very niche media, I think that getting them into schools just does the good job of exposing more people to them because it’s not something many people seek out. It’s optimistic (and definitely not better than comics finding a way to remarket and redistribute themselves) it is merely my hope that getting high school and college kids into comics might steer some into the path of working in or commenting on the industry.

I was in Catholic School all my life and they’d have Seminarians visit us every once in a while with the hopes that it might sway some of us towards the priesthood. I guess that’s kind of what I hope weaving comics into academic discourse would do after a while.

What do you suppose comics should do? I see your sentiment tossed around in regards to comics business model but I rarely see solutions for the problem. I’m sure most people who’ve thought about have come up with an idea or two – do you think it’s just stubbornness from the industry that’s stopping them from initiating an idea?

And as for everyone on that other blog…I’m going to play nice.
Joel La Puma

You are much more tactful than I am, man.

I see your point about academia, and maybe that would lead to something, I don’t know. But I’ve read plenty of comics in classes, and I don’t think it really inspired anybody but the people already reading comics. Regardless of anything, assigned reading is assigned reading.

I’m not sure it’s industry stubbornness so much as a combination of complacency and nervousness about trying new things. DC and Marvel are content to jockey for market share, so their entire business model is about extracting the most money out of the fanboys that they can. They don’t make a fuss, because they want total freedom content-wise, and they know AOL-Time Warner/Disney doesn’t care as long as they have access to those insanely profitable trademarks. I will say, though, with better distribution, Marvel’s current direction would probably play well in a larger market.

I think one of the huge problems is that the comics companies seem intent on playing along with Diamond, who as a distributor with no competition for its role has done nothing but push around comic shops and keep the industry consigned to its niche. DC and Marvel are subsidiaries of gigantic corporations, I don’t understand why they need Diamond in the slightest when they can either handle their own distribution or go through a distributor that’s easier to work with.

Here’s some basic ideas that have probably been mentioned a lot, and I think they would do a lot in helping get the message across and the books in hands.
1.) Advertising in mainstream publications, on television, and on non-comics related websites.

2.) Getting Borders and Barnes & Noble to shelve certain comics along with the children’s books, rather than in the graphic novel section. If possible, get some really major comics shelved or displayed in Fiction & Literature: Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, All-Star Superman.

3.) Digest-style comics – black & white, plenty of pages for little price. Get them in the kids’ books, and in special displays at Wal-Marts and Targets right next to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. If they can get a display for Green Lantern: First Flight on a DVD endcap, why can’t they do this? Most importantly, they need Superman/Batman/Spider-Man digests at checkout lines, because that’s where parents buy things to calm down their kids. That’s why Archie still sells.

4.) Plenty of people have made the manga argument, so all I will say is that along with the digests, it wouldn’t hurt to put out some DC or Marvel books in a continuity-lite style (or possessing their own continuity) in the same size and format as manga issues. You could even do them in limited series, with endings. Give a writer and artist twelve books of a Batman manga for a couple of years, end it, then do a new one with a different team and story.

5.) Give away free comics in movie theaters with a ticket to the most recent Marvel/DC movie. Why can I walk into Iron Man 2 and not be handed an Iron Man comic? Especially one with an advertisement for ComicShopLocator.com (which should be on all DC and Marvel advertising, as well as the tags for related merchandise).

6.) Content ratings. If an issue has violent content, put a warning on the front. Even better – keep your mainstream superhero books acceptable for mainstream audiences. The superhero movies would get an R for the bloodshed that regularly happens during superhero comics.

7.) Cross-promotion with unrelated products. Back in the day, you could send away for, say, a Spider-Man comic with a breakfast cereal proof of purchase. Why don’t they do that stuff anymore?

8.) Subscriptions! Remember these? I used to have them as a kid, and I’m just out of college. What happened in the past decade to change this?

9.) Your writers are expendable. You are selling Superman, Batman and Spider-Man, not Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Brian Michael Bendis. Attract top talent, pay them nicely when they sell, but you need a strong editorial team to rein them in. You are advancing a brand.

And this is just about raising awareness and getting physical books into the hands of audiences, especially kids. That’s not even taking to account various online distribution strategies. And comics, being disposable, light entertainment, are perfect for the iTunes era.
http://rtpcardinals.blogspot.com/ Eugene Tierney

Marvel still has subscriptions, I have 5 of them. I don’t think they publicize them anywhere other than their website.

I think you need to take a step back and look at where you can get young readers. I started picking up comics at the local grocery store. As time has gone on, they gradually disappeared. There was a time when 7-11 was going to carry them, but I don’t know if they did. This is also why Free Comic Book days doesn’t attract many new readers (as far as I know, I could be wrong); they have them at the place where people already go for comics. Do they really attract new readers with this program? Why not have free comic day in association with Borders or Barnes & Noble? Sure, it will involve more logistics to get it to work, but I would think the trade off would be worth it.

I agree about giving them away at movies. Kids are eating up the movies and that would be a perfect opportunity to hand out some all ages titles.
http://comicsnexus.insidepulse.com/author/gmguity/ Greg Manuel

Joel – This is a killer list; especially #9. I could HUG you for #9 – in a completely non threatening, dude way.

And it was a digest-styled edition of Captain America vs. Baron Blood that made me a fan of the character for the rest of my days…
Joel La Puma

Does Marvel still have subscriptions? Geez, you’d think they’d still have that page in their books. They do so much in-house advertising already.

Speaking as someone who used to buy comics in drugstores and grocery stores all the time, I miss those days myself. I’d love to see them in convenience stores, but I think Wal-Mart and Target should be the main focuses. I do see comics in Target from time to time (even trades of Watchmen when the movie came out!), but when I worked there, kids would be asking about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Twlight, all the usual suspects. Newsflash, comics companies: there’s your audience, and they’re reading the same as they ever were.

I love the idea of having Free Comic Book Day in association with Barnes & Noble. One of the things no one mentions about FCBD is that the dealers pay for those free books – this is another issue I have with Diamond. So taking FCBD out of Diamond’s hands would be wonderful. The event’s not going to help much unless they get free comic books where people actually go. Advertising is about getting to people, not asking people to come to you.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a good, manly hug of respect, dammit.

Seriously, I’m in process on an MFA program for Fiction Writing now, so why am I the one saying that the writers support the characters, rather than the other way around? Isn’t editorial like the traditional enemy of the writer? We’ve had a comic book industry centered on writers for a decade or so now, and where has it gotten us? The stories are worse! And the art has suffered enormously, too. DC’s only going to get worse too, now that Johns is Creative Czar of the JLA Satellite, or whatever fake title they bestowed on him like a Boy Scout merit badge.

http://rtpcardinals.blogspot.com/ Eugene Tierney

Not all of the stories are worse, it just depends on the situation. Millar on his own stuff – good. Millar on others stuff – not good.

I see where you are coming from, but I think more of the problem with books now are the fact that you need 4-6 issues to tell the stories. Remember 15-20 years ago where you could pick up a random issue and not be totally lost. New readers pick up a book now and they are almost guaranteed to be in the middle of a story. The way the last 2 years have been, you can’t pick up an issue without picking up 3 other titles that tie into the story line. I think that is why you see the big book stores focusing on graphic novels and digests.

Joel La Puma

Eugene, I honestly think that across the board the general quality of mainstream comic book stories has slipped over the past decade. I think Marvel’s maintained its line the best, and that they have a strong editorial foundation and a stable of writers that’s not awful and gets used where they’re effective. The most important thing about Marvel over the past decade is that it’s constantly pushing its brand forward and building new things off of other new things. There’s definitely an event overload, but everything seems tied in pretty neatly and focused on the present and future. Not to mention that they actually still have those pages in the front of the books that fill you in on the characters and situation.

Here’s an example, and this is probably going to be unpopular: One More Day, despite being a stupid, stupid idea, was followed up by a really strong set of editorial decisions. In realigning the tone of the Spider-Man books and reshuffling the line, they really strengthened the franchise. Doesn’t hurt that they’ve kept some strong creative teams on the books, especially art-wise. The only shame is that so much of what those decisions accomplished was eroding the ill-will that had been built up by the initial decision. But at least they don’t make fun of their fans about the outcry in the issues themselves, DC.

DC’s just a mess. Aside from grad school, that’s one of the reasons I just don’t write much about comics anymore – I love DC, but there’s just nothing going on. So much of it is so apathy-inducing that it’s hard to work up the energy to even bitch about it. It’s like Glazer said, now that they killed off Ryan Choi, “I can go back to not caring about the Atom.” Imagine a whole line comprised of that thought.

I do think the decompression situation is an issue, and I think that it’s a huge impediment to getting kids back on board. Kids are pretty sophisticated about stories, but they do get bored easily. They’ll read 600-700 page Harry Potter tomes, but that’s because it’s densely plotted, and that’s what comics need to go back to.

Not to mention, that decompression situation? It’s a symptom of the present focus on the comic book writer. Then we get guys like Beres up there willing to sit back and let Grant Morrison or whoever they consider legit just piss all over their faces while they shell out $4 an issue waiting to see if the story comes together or not. Hey, I thought Final Crisis was an interesting failure, same as a lot of his Batman stuff (except Club of Heroes and #666, which rock), but a dull setup issue is a dull setup issue. This is why people wait for the trade.

I don’t think starting issues in media res is totally alienating, but you need to proceed from a good cliffhanger if you do that. It’s still a serial medium. But you’re right, it’s so much easier for Barnes & Noble or Borders to focus on manga or self-contained books, which is why I’m so enamored of the digest idea, and the manga-styled subline idea. They’re easy to market!

We are totally opposite on Millar. I can’t stand Millar’s creator owned work, and while I don’t like his stuff with the big guns, the man knows how to write a comic where things happen. They might be stupid things, but it never gets boring, and he can definitely plot a series. He’s got blockbusters and event comics in the blood. Seriously, he is the Michael Bay of the comics world, for all the good and bad that implies. (He also writes a killer Lex Luthor, so go figure. His best stuff, I truly believe, was on Superman Adventures.)