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rowynThis started out as a response to a question ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ursulav asked in her LJ, but as my response just kept getting longer, I thought I'd better make my own entry about it.
Some background: I used to read mainstream superhero comics, mostly in the Marvel superhero setting, mostly the "mutant" X-books. And, frankly, most of them were atrocious.
I've also had a few forays into the DC supers universe, but mostly via the Vertigo (eg, Sandman) titles. These were not nearly as bad, but they also were not "superhero" books in the sense that I would hazard James is using the word.
Perhaps it would be helpful to define what a SuperHero Comic book is. Lemme take a whack at it:
1) At least one of the main characters has superhuman powers (flight, throwing lightning bolts, mind-reading, whatever).
2) At least one of the main characters either wears a cool-looking costume, or happens to look cool naturally .
3) The superhuman powers are employed to combat the characters' enemies. (criminals, aliens, zombies, whatever).
4) Illustrations are integral to the story-telling medium. (Ie, the Wild Card novels are not superhero comics, nor would putting the occasional drawing into them make them comics.)
These criteria are the ones that, I think, pretty much everyone will agree on. Of course, by those criteria, "Sandman" is arguably a superhero book--though not really, because the book isn't really about using powers to engage in conflict.
However, "Watchmen" indisputably fits these criteria, as does "The Crow", "V for Vendetta", Matt Wagner's "Grendel" and his "Mage". These are, incidentally, all solidly-written and well-illustrated works, and I highly recommend them. If you haven't read the original four issues of "The Crow", you might find them particularly noteworthy -- they're black and white, but some of the pages have almost a water-color look to them. Lovely stuff. Much better than the movie. But I digress.
This much said, I think these are all books that James would say -- with some justice -- are not superhero comics. So what else makes a superhero comic?
5) A superhero comic does not have a planned ending. Superhero comics get cancelled, yes. And sometimes, authors wrap up the story neatly with the cancellation. But this is not because it was planned that way: the death of the book is due to waning popularity, not authorial intent. By intent, the thing is meant to go on forever, like the X-Men and Superman titles.
6) Superhero comics have continuity. It may not be very well-maintained continuity (I distinctly remember one of too many low points in the Excaliber title: when Kitty Pryde turned 15. For the second time) but it's there. What happened in previous books is meant to affect subsequent books. Unlike the typical primetime TV series, the characters do not remain frozen and unchanging, with each episode completely self-contained and having no impact on the next. Superhero comics are usually more like soap operas in terms of the connection between stories -- and, sadly, in terms of the overall cohesiveness of the tale.
7) Superhero comics take place in a shared setting with other authors who write other superhero comics. This one is a little more controversial, perhaps, but I think it's integral to understanding the whole phenomenon. What happens in a "Superman" issue has the potential to affect what happens in a "Batman" or a "Swamp Thing" or a "Wonder Woman" issue. If the author of "X-Men" blows up Philadelphia, then Philadelphia is gone from every other Marvel superhero title, too.
It's these last three criteria that eliminate all those books I named above -- even the ones that make it past #5 and #6 don't fit into #7. Those authors were all flying solo for their works.
Criteria 5-7 are the ones by which superhero comics, as a genre, have lived and died. It's the continuity that keeps fans coming back. It's the familiarity of the characters -- old friends that they grew up with, that will be there, month after month, as long as the title remains economically viable. And it's the richness of the universe -- all that background material! All that detail! All those different voices that have contributed! -- that make the stories seem so real, despite the implausibilities.
But these are also the very things that make superhero comics terrible. The two big universes, Marvel and DC, are drowning in details, most of which are, frankly, stupid. Mistakes made by some hack who wrote three issues of a book before he was canned are kept alive for all eternity. The poorly-thought-out powers of one author's prized creation become the albatross of every other writer in the setting.
And the stories can never be finished. No matter how much the character has been through, no matter how sick the author is of writing about him, no matter if he's already been married twice, had kids, saved the Earth eight times, saved the Universe five times, and most recently fought off the imminent collapse of Reality Itself and All the Multiverses from the screaming hordes of garguatian Space Locusts -- no, we still need to have another issue about him next month. (But hey, your readership is way up! Think you can come up with something more spectacular for the next story?)
So: is there hope for a superhero book that fits all of these criteria? I really don't know. I think #5 is the hardest part. It's very draining on an author to never be able to bring the project to a close, to wrap it up with a ribbon and say "ta-da! I'm done!" And it's hard on the characters, too, who begin to seem more and more absurd as they go through adventure after adventure, each one more spectacular and implausible than the last. ("You did all that?!" "Well, yeah, that was preety much everything from last year. Did you want to hear about the nine before that?")
I haven't read DC or Marvel comics in 8+ years, so I don't know if they're terrible nowadays or not. But with such a long burden of bad continuity saddled on them, it's difficult for them to rise above it and become good. But I expect there are exceptions.
There are some good superhero comics being written today, outside of DC/Marvel, that fit several of my 6 criteria. I recently read "Confession", in Kurt Busiek's "Astro City" setting. I believe that's a setting with continuity, though I don't think it's a shared setting, and the story arcs don't go on without end.
CrossGen is a fairly new comic-book company that appears to be aiming for criteria 1-7. I haven't yet seen the sort of cross-comic-book continuity that characterizes a shared setting, but the possibility for it is clearly there. The best I've read of their titles is "Negation". You can read some of their books for free on the web, which is kind of cool, but I find the interface a bit clunky. (You need Flash and ActiveX turned on, and unless you've got a 30" monitor or really good eyes, you'll need to mouseover or scroll through the word ballons one at a time to read them). CrossGen isn't strictly aiming for the "superhero" genre, however--they've got a "superhero" framework that seems to run throughout the various titles, but each individual series has another genre -- detective, medieval, fantasy, sf, etc., that it also fits into. "Negation" is a space opera/superhero crossbreed story. "Ruse" is a Sherlockian/superhero cross, and also not bad. But, whatever you do, don't read "Mystic". Just ... don't. CrossGen is an interesting experiment: it has the most promise of the "shared setting" comics companies that I've seen. But, that much said, I'm not as enthusiastic about their works, even "Negation", as I am about the other comics I've recommended in here.
But I am going to make one wholehearted, enthusiastic, and unreserved recommendation for a superhero comic in every sense of the word: Alan Moore's run of "Swamp Thing". This isn't a current series -- Alan Moore wrote Swamp Thing for three years or so back in, I don't know, the 80s. But it's still available in graphic novel format today (you can find the first installment here) and it's got it all: superheroes, continuity, combat, shared setting (Alan Moore has an amazing talent for taking other people's old, tired, lame-brained ideas and making them into something REALLY COOL), continuing characters, etc. Moreover, you don't need to read any earlier comics to follow what's going on in this series. As with "Sandman" and G.K. Chesterton, you might enjoy the "Swamp Thing" story more if you've read other DC titles, but you won't be lost without that background.
And ... I think that's all I have to say about that. Maybe this was a little longer than strictly necessary. :)
ursulav asked in her LJ, but as my response just kept getting longer, I thought I'd better make my own entry about it.Some background: I used to read mainstream superhero comics, mostly in the Marvel superhero setting, mostly the "mutant" X-books. And, frankly, most of them were atrocious.
I've also had a few forays into the DC supers universe, but mostly via the Vertigo (eg, Sandman) titles. These were not nearly as bad, but they also were not "superhero" books in the sense that I would hazard James is using the word.
Perhaps it would be helpful to define what a SuperHero Comic book is. Lemme take a whack at it:
1) At least one of the main characters has superhuman powers (flight, throwing lightning bolts, mind-reading, whatever).
2) At least one of the main characters either wears a cool-looking costume, or happens to look cool naturally .
3) The superhuman powers are employed to combat the characters' enemies. (criminals, aliens, zombies, whatever).
4) Illustrations are integral to the story-telling medium. (Ie, the Wild Card novels are not superhero comics, nor would putting the occasional drawing into them make them comics.)
These criteria are the ones that, I think, pretty much everyone will agree on. Of course, by those criteria, "Sandman" is arguably a superhero book--though not really, because the book isn't really about using powers to engage in conflict.
However, "Watchmen" indisputably fits these criteria, as does "The Crow", "V for Vendetta", Matt Wagner's "Grendel" and his "Mage". These are, incidentally, all solidly-written and well-illustrated works, and I highly recommend them. If you haven't read the original four issues of "The Crow", you might find them particularly noteworthy -- they're black and white, but some of the pages have almost a water-color look to them. Lovely stuff. Much better than the movie. But I digress.
This much said, I think these are all books that James would say -- with some justice -- are not superhero comics. So what else makes a superhero comic?
5) A superhero comic does not have a planned ending. Superhero comics get cancelled, yes. And sometimes, authors wrap up the story neatly with the cancellation. But this is not because it was planned that way: the death of the book is due to waning popularity, not authorial intent. By intent, the thing is meant to go on forever, like the X-Men and Superman titles.
6) Superhero comics have continuity. It may not be very well-maintained continuity (I distinctly remember one of too many low points in the Excaliber title: when Kitty Pryde turned 15. For the second time) but it's there. What happened in previous books is meant to affect subsequent books. Unlike the typical primetime TV series, the characters do not remain frozen and unchanging, with each episode completely self-contained and having no impact on the next. Superhero comics are usually more like soap operas in terms of the connection between stories -- and, sadly, in terms of the overall cohesiveness of the tale.
7) Superhero comics take place in a shared setting with other authors who write other superhero comics. This one is a little more controversial, perhaps, but I think it's integral to understanding the whole phenomenon. What happens in a "Superman" issue has the potential to affect what happens in a "Batman" or a "Swamp Thing" or a "Wonder Woman" issue. If the author of "X-Men" blows up Philadelphia, then Philadelphia is gone from every other Marvel superhero title, too.
It's these last three criteria that eliminate all those books I named above -- even the ones that make it past #5 and #6 don't fit into #7. Those authors were all flying solo for their works.
Criteria 5-7 are the ones by which superhero comics, as a genre, have lived and died. It's the continuity that keeps fans coming back. It's the familiarity of the characters -- old friends that they grew up with, that will be there, month after month, as long as the title remains economically viable. And it's the richness of the universe -- all that background material! All that detail! All those different voices that have contributed! -- that make the stories seem so real, despite the implausibilities.
But these are also the very things that make superhero comics terrible. The two big universes, Marvel and DC, are drowning in details, most of which are, frankly, stupid. Mistakes made by some hack who wrote three issues of a book before he was canned are kept alive for all eternity. The poorly-thought-out powers of one author's prized creation become the albatross of every other writer in the setting.
And the stories can never be finished. No matter how much the character has been through, no matter how sick the author is of writing about him, no matter if he's already been married twice, had kids, saved the Earth eight times, saved the Universe five times, and most recently fought off the imminent collapse of Reality Itself and All the Multiverses from the screaming hordes of garguatian Space Locusts -- no, we still need to have another issue about him next month. (But hey, your readership is way up! Think you can come up with something more spectacular for the next story?)
So: is there hope for a superhero book that fits all of these criteria? I really don't know. I think #5 is the hardest part. It's very draining on an author to never be able to bring the project to a close, to wrap it up with a ribbon and say "ta-da! I'm done!" And it's hard on the characters, too, who begin to seem more and more absurd as they go through adventure after adventure, each one more spectacular and implausible than the last. ("You did all that?!" "Well, yeah, that was preety much everything from last year. Did you want to hear about the nine before that?")
I haven't read DC or Marvel comics in 8+ years, so I don't know if they're terrible nowadays or not. But with such a long burden of bad continuity saddled on them, it's difficult for them to rise above it and become good. But I expect there are exceptions.
There are some good superhero comics being written today, outside of DC/Marvel, that fit several of my 6 criteria. I recently read "Confession", in Kurt Busiek's "Astro City" setting. I believe that's a setting with continuity, though I don't think it's a shared setting, and the story arcs don't go on without end.
CrossGen is a fairly new comic-book company that appears to be aiming for criteria 1-7. I haven't yet seen the sort of cross-comic-book continuity that characterizes a shared setting, but the possibility for it is clearly there. The best I've read of their titles is "Negation". You can read some of their books for free on the web, which is kind of cool, but I find the interface a bit clunky. (You need Flash and ActiveX turned on, and unless you've got a 30" monitor or really good eyes, you'll need to mouseover or scroll through the word ballons one at a time to read them). CrossGen isn't strictly aiming for the "superhero" genre, however--they've got a "superhero" framework that seems to run throughout the various titles, but each individual series has another genre -- detective, medieval, fantasy, sf, etc., that it also fits into. "Negation" is a space opera/superhero crossbreed story. "Ruse" is a Sherlockian/superhero cross, and also not bad. But, whatever you do, don't read "Mystic". Just ... don't. CrossGen is an interesting experiment: it has the most promise of the "shared setting" comics companies that I've seen. But, that much said, I'm not as enthusiastic about their works, even "Negation", as I am about the other comics I've recommended in here.
But I am going to make one wholehearted, enthusiastic, and unreserved recommendation for a superhero comic in every sense of the word: Alan Moore's run of "Swamp Thing". This isn't a current series -- Alan Moore wrote Swamp Thing for three years or so back in, I don't know, the 80s. But it's still available in graphic novel format today (you can find the first installment here) and it's got it all: superheroes, continuity, combat, shared setting (Alan Moore has an amazing talent for taking other people's old, tired, lame-brained ideas and making them into something REALLY COOL), continuing characters, etc. Moreover, you don't need to read any earlier comics to follow what's going on in this series. As with "Sandman" and G.K. Chesterton, you might enjoy the "Swamp Thing" story more if you've read other DC titles, but you won't be lost without that background.
And ... I think that's all I have to say about that. Maybe this was a little longer than strictly necessary. :)
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 09:50 am (UTC)I love this! I don't agree with it 100%, but the arguments are well thought-out. (For example, Sandman did fit all 7 criteria for the first several years; but for some odd reason, one didn't see the Endless making cameos in other books. :)
Hmm, I'd love to reprint this in my comics fanzine/APA, with your permission of course... It could make for interesting debate. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 10:11 am (UTC)Not that there's anything wrong with Sandman because of that, mind you. It's a great work.
Events in "Sandman" even affected the rest of the Vertigo line ... eventually. You could tell that Gaiman had snuck up on the other writers with the whole "Lucifer quits" plot, because about 6 months after it happened in "Sandman", it rippled out across all the other Vertigo titles. And I can think of at least one cameo Morpheus made: in Phil Foglio's limited series version of "Stanley and His Monster". :)
What firmly keeps "Sandman" from fitting, however, is that DC and Gaiman agreed to let him finish a final story arc and end the series. Gaiman was never under a compulsion to keep going forever, nor was another author swapped into his place when he left.
Anyway, thanks for reading the essay! Feel free to reprint it elsewhere, if you like -- just give me attribution for it. I could even edit it a bit to take out the references to Ms. Vernon. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:08 am (UTC)I think you're probably right on the definition of superhero comics above and beyond the mere "guys with powers" comics, because you're absolutely right--Sandman never felt like Superman, and so forth. It's good to have that clarified, because while I could tell there was a difference, the exact criteria for the difference was obviously always fuzzy in my mind. Now I see why "Preacher" and "Extraordinary Gentlemen" didn't qualify.
Thank you for writing that!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:36 am (UTC)Though I do think that stuff like "Watchmen" and "Extraordinary Gentlemen" does legitimately belong to the superhero "genre", if not to what's widely considered "superhero comics". Maybe I should make a sliding scale to show the gradients ...
Er, or maybe I've spent enough time on this already. :) I'm glad it was helpful!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 06:06 pm (UTC)The open-ended nature is part of why most superhero comics are bad, but it's not part of the basis of the genre.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:09 am (UTC)Anyway, back to comics: my experience in comics is fairly limited.
* When I was a kid, a cousin of mine had an enormous collection of comics, including several titles such as X-Men (and the spin-offs that existed at the time), Micronauts, Star Wars, G.I. Joe, etc. I don't remember much in the way of particulars, but that's pretty much where I got my introduction to X-men ... and then, later encounters with the X-men in comics got confusing. There was this whole thing with a demi-god-like Phoenix, lots of alternate realities, etc.
* When I was in college, a friend of mine (who was also largely responsible for encouraging me to try gamemastering RPGs, and giving me some pointers on how to do so) was really into collecting comics. I ran into X-Men again, and it looked like a lot of the plotlines had been revised, and characters reinvented. Oh yeah, and I drew unicorns, and someone showed me "Xanadu," (Vicky Wyman, Eclipse Comics), saying, "Oh, you'll like this!" (Shudder.)
* Much more recently, I'd just go through the collections of
IMHO, when comics are concerned, I'm far more inclined to get to see a large segment of the story, all at once, rather than going month by month ... and to go by the recommendations of someone else who's more into comics than myself, rather than wading through all the offerings on my own.
I prefer beginnings, middles and endings for story arcs. Otherwise, it just gets tired. Everything must be bigger, better and more grand. And eventually, you get onto the multiverse scale of things, because you've already shown that a galaxy or a single universe is too small for the scale of power anymore. And there's all that baggage that keeps getting tagged on.
I can't blame the comics guys for reinventing their super heroes now and again - blatantly starting over, rather than trying to just slyly FORGET certain older plot points along the way. There are some core bits, some really interesting parts that are worth keeping and remembering. It'd be nice to just do a bit of editing, start over, and just keep the good parts.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:29 am (UTC)Oh, yes. Believe me, I was thinking of that while I was writing it. These are the exact problems you can run into as a GM: continuity you wish didn't exist, characters who feel like they've reached the end of their "story" but still get played, ideas from other GMs that don't fit what you want to do ...
Yet, at the same time, all that material to mine through, all those ideas you can bring back to life, all those in-jokes, and personalities, and the ideas of other GMs that were just amazing, and the PCs that have becomes so complex and lifelike -- oh yeah. It's very similar, yupyup. :)
I can't blame the comics guys for reinventing their super heroes now and again - blatantly starting over, rather than trying to just slyly FORGET certain older plot points along the way. There are some core bits, some really interesting parts that are worth keeping and remembering. It'd be nice to just do a bit of editing, start over, and just keep the good parts.
DC comics, I gather, does exactly this, every ten or fifteen years. They scrap everything and start over. It keeps the characters contemporary without forcing them to grow old.
This is a problem Marvel has: for example, Magneto was a married man with two young children at the start of WWII. He's gone through, I think, two total rejuvenations to keep himself "young" -- he'd be, what, 90, in real terms? But Marvel time is just weird -- it runs at approximately 1 Marvel year to 3 real years, but technology and everything else advances at a real-world pace. It gets ... distorted.
As far as reading them goes -- yeah, I'd rather read them in story-arc chunks than one 20- or 30-page issue at a time. One of the things CrossGen has going for it is a commitment to graphic novels, which are much easier to collect and track. The local bookstore doesn't mark it up by 200%, or run out, if you miss it for a few months. :/
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 11:50 am (UTC)I wish Beetle Bailey would vanish; I never really found it to be funny. Just what era is Beetle Bailey supposed to be from, anyway?
And on and on and on. At least Prince Valiant had its own time progression ... but it didn't try to pretend to be in the present, despite telling a story in a few panels a week.
It's not just limited to comics. For instance ... just how old is James Bond, anyway? ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-26 12:09 pm (UTC)A friend of mine offered an interesting explanation for the Bond phenomenon: "James Bond, Agent 007" isn't a person, but rather, a job description. The original James Bond (Connery) retired, and the various others since have been awarded the name because they were especially good at their jobs, and it was a way of keeping the legend alive and scaring the enemy. Sort of the "Dread Pirate Roberts" syndrome. :)
You forgot some...
Date: 2003-06-26 01:33 pm (UTC)8. They must wear tight clothing, unless they're not muscular, in which case a trenchcoat or other loose-fitting clothing is okay, as long as it's stylish and can be drawn repeatedly with ease.
9. They can't be genuinely funny for any significant length of time, other than occasional dramatic irony, and must limit themselves to bad puns, sarcasm or sight gags at most.
10. Secret identities are de rigeur, though they may be revealed at some point, only to be forgotten again.
11. Nobody important stays dead.
Hope that helped. ';P
* - (Okay, maybe not.)
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-06-27 09:38 pm (UTC)But on 11 -- dang, you're so right. :)
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-06-28 10:59 pm (UTC)As for exceptions to the humor one, this was actually an "trick" on my part; I was hoping you could prove me wrong, thereby directing me to some genuinely funny superhero comic material.
ANYway, I'm waiting for examples. ';P
(And, no, "The Tick" and its related spinoffs don't count, as they are outright parodies of the subject matter, and don't always follow your rules list anyway. Not that I'm saying you were going to even name that.)
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-06-29 05:33 am (UTC)Scott McCloud's "Zot!", which isn't a "superhero book" by my above definition (it's not part of a shared setting) had a lot of genuinely humorous moments, though I didn't follow it until near the end of its run.
Umm ... y'know, the trouble with making recommendations to you is that I mostly stopped following comics six-eight years ago, so everything I can recommend is OLD and probably out of print.
Also, I think it's a lot easier to find superhero comics that don't take themselves too seriously, than to find actual "comedies". You know, like the movie "xXx": it was clearly an action film, not a comedy, but it had some funny moments and didn't treat itself as a Great Serious Work.
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-06-29 05:55 am (UTC)Matt Wagner's "Mage" -- the main character wears jeans and a black t-shirt with a lightning bolt on it. :)
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-07-01 06:40 pm (UTC)Oh, and regarding the Phil Foglio runs: does it fit all of your rules, as in continuous story line, doesn't have an ending (I seem to recall that as one of the rules), and whatnot? (I should've had the page up so I could refer to it, rather than verbally flailing about... or better yet, I could just let sleeping dogs lie, or some such cliche'.)
Re: You forgot some...
Date: 2003-07-01 06:52 pm (UTC)There was some alternate-Earth characters that were visited in a Superman comic and later spun off into a DC humor book that was part of continuity, more or less, as I recall from an essay I saw on the subject.
Humor and superheroes have meshed ... but not, I'll admit, very successfully, either in financial or story-telling terms.
Semi-Confession
Date: 2003-07-01 06:45 pm (UTC)I must admit that I've always had "issues" (no pun intended -- okay, maybe a little) with comic books. For decades I've dealt with people who, upon learning that I draw comics, show an interest in seeing them, only up viewing to say, "Oh. You mean comic strips." As if they're inferior just because they're never made into "graphic novels", or movies, or whatever. Some of them should be called "tragics", anyway. ':P
Re: Semi-Confession
Date: 2003-07-01 07:00 pm (UTC)Well, phooey on them. Comic strips are just as worthy of attention as comic books. :)