All these multpiple-page threads on comics forums, and you'd think there was some big event comic out this week or something.
By now,
Infinite Crisis has been all over the internerd and hit the
New York Times. Hell, even blogs devoted to indie comics, manga and, er, puppies are now covering it, sort of.
From the
New York Times piece:
One of the goals, DC executives say, is to hold on to a more sophisticated readership.
"Our characters were created in the 1940's and 50's and 60's," Dan DiDio, the DC Comics vice president for editorial, said. "There's a lot of elements where we've had a disconnect with the reader base of today."
Readers now, Mr. DiDio said, "are more savvy, and they're looking for more complexity and more depth for them to be following the stories on a monthly basis." A crucial phase of the campaign starts today with the release of "Infinite Crisis," the first of a seven-part monthly series that will bring together all the story threads - and the superheroes - that have been evolving in separate series over the past three years.
The word
sophisticated comes up again from Rucka further down the page:
"Our audience is much smarter, much more sophisticated, and not necessarily because it's older," said Greg Rucka, a writer working on DC's plan. "A 12-year-old 20 years ago and a 12-year-old today are reading at very different levels. That's just the way it is."
I know some people get all itchy and scratchy around the edges when it comes to etymology and multiple definitions, but
sophistication is a fun word to play with. My OED isn't handy, but the definition from
Wordnet will do for the moment:
sophistication (n)
1: uplifting enlightenment [syn: edification]
2: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone [syn: sophism, sophistry]
3: being expert or having knowledge of some technical subject; "understanding affine transformations requires considerable mathematical sophistication"
4: the quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated through cultivation or experience or disillusionment [syn: worldliness] [ant: naivete]
5: falsification by the use of sophistry; misleading by means of specious fallacies; "he practiced the art of sophistication upon reason"
This is why words are fun. That both DiDio and Rucka used "sophisticated" as a buzzword leads to all sorts of fun speculation. Is
Infinite Crisis providing the DC Universe the "uplifting enlightenment" of the first definition? Is it the third--is it too snide to say that having comprehensive knowledge devoted to superhero continuity is necessary to get a serious sense of enjoyment from the series? Or maybe the fourth line, suggesting that the past three years of "grim" tales have given readers disillusionment through experience, leading to some kind of understanding?
Or, is it something more akin to the second or fifth definition, and that something inherently false about the superhero genre is being presented through rhetoric, trying to sway readers, the public, or whomever to a set ideology?
You know, I can only speculate. Surprising no one, I didn't buy
Infinite Crisis (although I'm quite tempted to track the discussion surrounding it, and I may consider picking up the inevitable collection). But, let's face it--it's a "big event." It's going to be discussed on message boards, blogs, and in columns. From that angle, I'm sold--even though most of the dialogue regarding it thus far feels a continuation of the
Identity Crisis conversation, it's fun to watch as a spectator.
1 At the very least, it has prompted me to collect some various thoughts I've had regarding comics publishing lately. But first, a little more from the NYT piece:
"I think people feel it's dark because it's so compelling," Mr. DiDio said. "They don't know how our heroes are going to get out of the danger."
Mr. Rucka agreed: "When they're saying 'it's too dark,' they're saying, 'I'm scared.'"
He added, "It's not a crisis if they know they're going to win."
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around what they're scared of, but that's just me, or that complaints about the actual content (the rape in
Identity Crisis and the torture and murder of a teenage sidekick in one of the Batman titles are two of the complaints I hear more often from those calling DC's current publishing strategy "dark") mean people are
compelled by the story, rather than disturbed at what they perceive the direction is doing to the comics and characters to which have an emotional attachment.
I can't help but wonder if it was the second definition after all.
Giving the fans what they wantThe
New York Times piece briefly mentions some of the events leading up to
Infinite Crisis. The section on
Identity Crisis is worth noting:
Last year, the "Identity Crisis" mini-series, written by Brad Meltzer, a novelist, had the Justice League retaliating for the rape of a hero's wife by brainwashing the villain - a turn of events that drove some fans to the Internet to vent their concern over DC's direction. The series was one of the year's best-selling titles. (emphasis mine)
For all the complaining one sees online, these books certainly appear to be popular.
2 If anything, it seems to support the assertion some have made that, rather than finding new things to reach out for while aging with the medium, the majority of the market would much rather have the characters they feel entitled to age with them. This raises more questions--what about the younger fans? Are they being prevented from also finding their place in a traditionally young-skewing genre?
In many respects, I don't think so--at least, not if the kids themselves have anything to say about it. I'm not big on shielding kids (particularly kids in the 9-13 range) from things they might like and can probably handle, but I can certainly understand that some don't agree with me--particularly, the parents of said kids. I know when I was a kid, I absolutely gravitated to things that some might have said were too "adult" for me, and I'm not just talking about
Playboy. Now, my "adult" and your "adult" might not be the same thing--I was pretty young when
Golden Girls was on the air, but I'd get cross when I was told I was too young to watch it. While some adults might want to keep children innocent, the kids want to get into the more adult stuff or, at the very least, what appears to be "adult".
3People also say the interlaced continuity makes it impossible to get kids into these comics, but I think that's crazy too--everyone reading comics started
somewhere, and I know I've met some comics fans that probably can't tie their own shoes, but can rattle off enough minutia to bore other nerds out of their skulls. However, that doesn't mean there isn't any truth to that theory. While we don't give kids enough credit regarding their ability to understand things, dense continuity isn't likely to be the thing that gets them to fall in love with these characters to which people are so devoted.
I skimmed through the
CBR Forums thread on
Infinite Crisis, and I like
Tom's point that "IC isn't supposed to be new-reader friendly. It's a sequel to a 20-year-old story that had a lead-in of almost an entire year. It's a silly complaint." Of course, that isn't to say that a sequel can't or shouldn't be accessible to new eyes--in fact, it probably should, particularly with how much time, effort and cash DC is putting into promoting the damn thing. If anything, I find
that to be more troubling than the content issues (as much as I personally don't like the content issues, but that will come up later). While I can see the argument that big continuity-driven series like this are meant to raise consumer interest in the backlist catalogue and in titles affected by the series, I don't know how well that will translate to actual sales--it could even have the opposite effect, over saturating the market and turning consumers off.
I have to admit that I don't know many kids, and even less kids that read comics (or read, but that's a different subject entirely). At this point, the market is subsisting primarily on the... M18-49 demographic? the M25-49 market? I think that some of the people shouting "think of the children" might be motivated by other factors, such as wanting to see the comics they'd prefer. Hell, we'd all like to see more comics that suit our tastes, I'd imagine. In that regard, they aren't much different from those who want the characters they grew up with to grow up with them--both groups primary desire is for
the characters they grew up with. That's what's funny about watching both sides fight it out. I'm generalizing, I admit--I know some people embroiled in the whole kerfuffle read things other than just these specific superhero comics, but it's funny to imagine a tug of war going on over Batman's cape.
That's not to say that all the people who'd like to see less of the grimness in their superhero comics are being selfish about it, or anything like that. Over at
Brill Building Ian Brill hopes, like many others have opined, that the ramifications of
Infinite Crisis will lead to a brighter, less pessimistic DC:
[C]an I defend reading this stuff? No. It’s “big, dumb super-hero melodrama” done in an entertaining fashion and nothing else. By all accounts the cynicism on display will be subverted for a happier, kinder DC and that sounds appealing. Although why they have to have one event book after another to introduce such a concept instead of just writing happier, kinder books is beyond me. Still, if this is how they want to introduce such a thing it could be worse.
My concern regarding that is a strictly fiscal one (and a short-term one at that)--if those buying the dark, "grim 'n' gritty" type of superhero comics in droves are enjoying them so much, what will happen once things even out a bit? Yesterday, a friend of mine posited these events would lead to a more diverse tone to DC's superhero line, with more upbeat titles to balance out the darker ones. I wouldn't be able to find fault in that kind of logic, but much like the past few years in the television industry, mainstream comics still appear to be in a short-term mindset. Series aren't given much time to catch on (I didn't follow this enough over the past few years, but didn't a bunch of comics retroactively become miniseries?) and more noise is made in the business sector regarding quarterly profits than any time I can remember. What is this leading to? People joke that we've hit the '90s nostalgia wave--books like
The Gift and
Ant from Image hit the all-glitz-no-brains buttons the early Image books did, sure, but more troubling is that variant covers (holofoil covers too, I think) are making a comeback, and comics speculation seems to be on the rise again. Of course, comics publishing is a business before it's anything else. And I do mean
publishing--I'm sure Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics' marketing and promotions guy, would say that as much as they want to publish good, quality art comics, they need to make money. However, if the mainstream comics companies look at the numbers too short term, and if the comics that are selling well are the "dark" superhero stories, I fear the other comics could fall by the wayside, which would dash the hopes of those hoping for more balance.
The problem with labelsMany people said they'd have less of a problem with the rape, the killing and the tone of
Identity Crisis if there had been a
Mature Readers label on the cover.
I find it telling that we use
Mature Readers as a warning label as much--if not more so--than as a content descriptor, as if
maturity was something from which we should inoculate children.
Except, you know, there really wasn't much of anything "mature" about
Identity Crisis. For all it's promise of realism,
Identity Crisis still wasn't much more than an adolescent power fantasy wrapped up in "whodunnit" paper, with a bow of "tiny footprints" to add that final touch. I don't remember who coined it, or if it caught on, but "Hack
Watchmen" kind of stuck with me regarding the miniseries--it was very much a surface reading of
Watchmen (and, to a lesser extent,
The Dark Knight Returns), the kind of thing Moore and Miller referred to when they lamented the way other comics took only the "dark" aspects from their work.
Both the "Mature Readers" and "All-Ages" labels wear on me, as they don't seem very accurate to me. Is there anything mature about the content in some series labeled "mature readers?" Playing the pedantic card again, the
American Heritage Dictionary defines it:
mature:
1A: Having reached full natural growth or development: a mature cell.
1B: Having reached a desired or final condition; ripe: a mature cheese.
2: Of, relating to, or characteristic of full development, either mental or physical: mature for her age.
3A: Suitable or intended for adults: mature subject matter.
3B: Composed of adults: a mature audience.
4: Worked out fully by the mind; considered: a mature plan of action.
5: Having reached the limit of its time; due: a mature bond.
6: No longer subject to great expansion or development. Used of an industry, a market, or a product.
7: Geology. Having reached maximum development of form. Used of streams and landforms.
Again, it's fun to play with the definitions--some would argue that it's the sixth definition, that there's no real "development" going on in many titles labeled "Mature Readers," or even the fifth, that these comics are a sign that the superhero genre is dead. People really into it might suggest 1A and 1B, that it's reached its highest point and that's totally awesome.
No one, I think, looks at comics like they are rocks, so forget seven.
It's the third definition I associate with the labeling books as "mature." The first certainly works if one treats the label as a warning regarding content--kids need not apply--and as a designation of intended audience. The audience for them, though... that's debatable.
Now, I'm not knocking books that are labeled "mature readers," and I'm not looking down on those that enjoy them. I've enjoyed a bunch of them. It's just that, in many cases, that label only serves to indicate that the books have tits, violence and swearing. Subtract the violence, and you've got
American Pie. It's also got a label telling kids to stay away (yeah,
that worked) through a rating system, so it's for adults. And while it does have it's charm, a bit of a message, and some sweetness to it, I think most people still refer to it as "juvenile humor." Again, that's not a value judgment, per se--I feel I have to keep reiterating that because people sometimes take offense to these things. I'm not as vested in the superhero genre as much as I once was, so I'm basing this more off of the discussion surrounding them, but the reaction to these adult-oriented comics seems to hinge on scenes, dialogue and images meant to provoke a "wow, that was cool" from readers--a more instinctual rather than developed reaction.
Some have argued that because superheroes were either created with children primarily in mind or written that way for a long time (depending on who you ask), they should
only be done that way. That, too, is something I don't buy into. Even with the qualifiers provided ("What I meant was just the characters designed that way--you can keep your
Watchmen, because that's its own thing" is an example of that, but there are others), it still smacks of "this is the only thing this device can do," which works fine with things like toasters, but not with storytelling. I'd be more than happy to see more balance--superheroes for kids! superheroes for teens! superheroes for adults! superheroes for
everybody who wants to read them! The more we pare the idea down to a canonical This Is What Comics Should Be, we start to make the niche market even more narrowly cast. Better, I think, to suggest, demonstrate and aspire to what comics
can be.
You know, I think superheroes can be all-ages. Better to try for all-ages superheroes (and comics) than to simply treat "All-Ages" as a marketing device/content label as daft and silly as the "Mature Readers" one. Let's be honest, here--a lot of comics that are labeled "All-Ages" are just trying to sell kids comics to the adults in the market. There are exceptions, surely--some have said that Mark Millar's
Superman Adventures were some of the best all-ages comics published in the last ten years, and I really do think that once you get outside superhero comics, you find titles that can be called all-ages (
Owly,
Herobear and the Kid, and
Bone come to mind easily--some titles omitted out of laziness or unfamiliarity, but some are certainly left out intentionally). The ones that are trying to sell kids stuff, though... do the kids really like them? Have the Marvel Age comics done well with them? I don't follow the numbers closely, but I think I remember reading that they're not doing gangbusters in the direct market or otherwise. Why? Again, I'd suggest that kids don't necessarily want to read "childish" comics. People will complain that the public at large still treats comics like a child's thing, but when we were kids, we knew better. And, in some ways, we were better served--I can't remember a single "kids" comic I was reading when I was between the ages of seven and thirteen. I was reading the same comics the older people in my shop were, and I'm not just counting
Badger or
Love & Rockets (which I was probably "too young" for, come to think of it--hooray for lax parenting and the perceptions of the medium!), but the mainline of Marvel and DC from the '80s. While the target audience was increasing in age, kids were still reading the books, possibly because they weren't being "talked down to"--hell, we were learning great new words that weren't being covered in our grammar school classes, even if we weren't cognizant of the vocabulary development we were going through.
Back to the idea of mature superhero comics, though. I guess I'm as selfish as other fans in regards to wanting what I want in comics (well, I want diversity in all genres, from a market standpoint, but now I'm just talking about reading the damn things). I'd like to see mature superhero comics that really dwell in the fourth definition above, comics that are "worked out fully by the mind; considered." It could be suggested that we don't
need those, though. We've got adult works in coming from the independent, alternative and small press circles. Sure, that's true, and I'm thankful for it, but a quick survey of the Direct Market's
top 100 comics for September shows some "bear shits in the woods" type of knowledge--the Direct Market likes what is familiar. As Matt Brady notes:
September saw a couple of rare titles from non-DC/Marvel publishers break into the Top 50. Dynamite Entertainment’s Red Sonja #2, which had a strong July debut at #18 and selling over 80k copies, came in on September’s charts at #37, buoyed by having several variant covers. It was joined by Dark Horse’s Serenity #3 (of 3) at #42.
So why did these titles pop up into the top 100? The first non-superhero book on that list is
Red Sonja #2 from Dynamic Forces, which has a character with whom some fans are already familiar in a book worked on by mainstream comics creators (and I don't know how the alternate cover game works in regards to the numbers, but it's Dynamic Forces--I'm guessing a bunch of people bought multiple copies). Next is
Serenity #3, which is fueled in part by the Browncoat segment of consumers. Further down is
Conan; again, a character familiar to fans and a comic done by professionals established in the mainstream market.
This is why I'd like to see mature, well-crafted superhero stories. I'm not saying there aren't any out there, but they're certainly rare things. However, now might be the time--while the numbers prove the popularity of the current approach, how long can it last? Instead of waiting for the bottom to drop out yet again, perhaps those disinclined to the current state of superhero comics could embrace and foster a new kind of adult superhero comics, comics kids quite possibly wouldn't even want to read due to both content and cover design.
4 Maybe some of the "grim fin-headed arserape" types would find something of value there, too, as well as the "mad idea" faux-Silver Age types. It's not like there haven't been successful, mature (or, at least,
more mature than the average) superhero comics in the past.
Superhero comics that one can call mature without using snarky quotesIf pressed, I'm sure any mainstream comics nerd could list some superhero comics s/he thinks are mature and why. I'm not going to say these are better (or even more comprehensive--there are a lot of comics that could fit my criteria that I haven't read, and others yet that I won't get around to mentioning
5) than any others might list, but I'd still like to point out specific instances of comics that fit what I would call mature works in tone and execution while staying firmly in the confines of characters familiar to mainstream comics fans. As I've spent so much time typing, I'll try to be brief with this part.
Batman: Year OneThe Golden AgeNew FrontierWith these, it's a combination of a few things. The style of the art, the way the story is presented, and the tones the books have combine to form a "grown up" looking package. But what's really connects these? It's not a shared theme, shared characters or a specific style--they're all finite, stand-alone stories (I almost included
Watchmen, but despite the obvious source material for Moore's characters, they don't fit neatly into the familiarity the A-, B- and C-list DC characters have). For the most part, they're free of continuity aside from the familiar, recognizable nature of the characters, which lets the creators explore theme somewhat easier--the elements combine so as not to be simply finite, but cohesive.
It's possible to achieve something similar in a serial format, too.
Marvel Knights: 4, one of the superhero books I buy, comes close to what I'm talking about. In twenty-some issues, Aguirre-Sacasa has combined both longer and shorter, one-shot tales to focus more on the characters that comprise the Fantastic Four. It's still very much a superhero comic--people fight, property is destroyed, and things resolve--but nearly every issue asks "who are these people" in a slightly different way (two recent examples are issues #21--basically a self-contained romance story with a Kirby homage for fans who grew up reading the classic
Fantastic Four--and issue #22, which asks a similar question to the "This Man, This Monster" story from
Fantastic Four #51, when Ben Grimm fights a golem in his Yancy Street neighborhood).
It should be noted, of course, where books like
MK: 4 fall--in
ICv2's Top 300 Comics Actual-- August 2005, issue #21 plotted at #88. While it's certainly not a runaway success, it's holding its own without a lot of hype or marketing, and outselling the internet darlings
The Walking Dead and
Invincible.
7 I hear both of those are rather good (and plan on getting collections some day), but I'd be willing to guess that a big part of the ordering and selling of the title hinges on the familiarity of the characters.
Man, but wasn't that some long-winded babbling for the hell of it or what?Is it feasible to suggest that more adult-oriented comics would help the mainstream comics industry, or that more balance is needed in terms of tone and content so that each segment of the superhero comics fans was better served? Is it too much of a risk for companies? Once again, no real solutions to the matter, just observations on and reactions to what's happening--par for the course at The Low Road. I hope, at least, it's something others may enjoy pondering or discussing.
8
FOOTNOTEY!
1. That is, a highly nerdy spectator sport--perhaps more Scrabble championship than Big Ten football.
2. That's not a judgment on quality--that just means people like 'em.
3. I'm reminded of a bit from a poem called "Days on Hand" by Jason Stoneking (no, you shouldn't know the name--I don't know whatever became of him. We just shared the same hometown, occasional poetry readings, and he vouched for me when I "forgot" my ID at bars once or twice):You had the best macaroni and cheese
in the whole world
Stayed up till Johnny Carson
just to tell your friends that you could
and laughed your brains out
at every joke you didn't get
From Stoneking's Double Edged Pen. If you find a copy in some random, artsy-fartsy bookstore, pick it up. And for you Sandman/Tori Amos fan types out there, Amos wrote the foreward.
4. Yeah, I'm attached to the notion shared by some in the comics industry that you don't need warning labels to steer kids and/or parents away from books they aren't ready or suited for, but that's a whole 'nother bag-of-worms type conversation, and this is long-winded, rambling shit already.
5. For example, even though I don't like Kingdom Come very much at all, you could certainly make the case for. You could probably make the case for Dark Knight Returns as well. I haven't read Starman, but I hear that does it for some people, and it's a book I've been meaning to try.
6. Unfortunately, doing it this way prevents some great comics from being mentioned, like Kurt Busiek's "The Nearness Of You" story from Astro City #1/2, which I would like even if it didn't reference Hoagy Carmichael, and James Sturm's Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules (although recognizable, it's lacking the obvious draw of the superpowers thing that some people need) just to name two.
7. The notes under the ICv2 numbers reminds readers "sales through Diamond and other comic distributors are non-returnable to retailers. That means that there is a considerable unknown percentage of books unsold at the retailer level, probably amounting to 5-20% of sales." If you ignore that estimated percentage for both The Walking Dead and Invincible, and take the full 20% of of MK: 4, it still comes out ahead of the first by a few thousand copies.
8. At the very least, so I don't feel like a crazy bastard for spending so much time on it.
