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AICN comic book roundtable discusses Marvel's Spider-Man reboot and don't much care for what they see.
I've been following Marvel's Spider-Man shenanigans from the sidelines, mostly to point and laugh, but more and more I see the ongoing decline of mainstream comics (ie the "Big Two") to be one of serialization. Today's iconic characters are at least 40 years old. The big three - Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman - are septuagenarians. As I've written before, this creates a huge burden on writers. According to the AICN discussion, this used to be less of a problem because there was a sense that the comic-book audience turned over ever four years or so. How much of a reality this was, I don't know. Certainly back when I started reading comics (more than 20 years ago now - shit), four years wasn't enough time for Chris Claremont to tie up a plotline. Of course, Claremont's work on The Uncanny X-Men may reflect a change in how comic books were written that encouraged longer periods of readership. I'm sure someone knows but I don't.
Anyway, I think it's self-evident that that kind of turn over in readership is no longer occurring. I wandered through but didn't buy anything at a couple of Dublin comic shops on Thursday night (a commentary on the shit state of mainstream comics these days than my self control) and, while I was older than most of the patrons, at 34 I was not terribly out-of-place (as a girl, however...). Most of the customers were mid-20s emo types. But there were no kids, no high schoolers (much easier to pick out in Dublin thanks to the school uniforms), no families. Of course, you'd hardly expect to find a lot of kids hanging out in Temple Bar of an evening. Then again, the location of the shops themselves reflects the problem the industry is having. The first comics I ever read (or bought) came from the corner store. When I started reading them more seriously, there was a comic and memorbilia shop in my neighbourhood. 10 years later, the only comic shops left in Toronto were on the funky, counter-culture strip of Queen Street West and comics had disappeared entirely from the convenience stores and groceries. What I've taken to thinking of as the long, slow death of mainstream comics begins here, where the casual readership is forsaken for the specialty market during the temporary boom in the market in the 1990s.
Leaving aside the problem a readership that is not renewing itself creates financially (I need to dig up the link to the column about how Hollywood is supporting comics through licensing fees and the inevitable crash when comic book movies go out of fashion - eta 2009, IMO), the shift from a relatively short audience life to a long audience life has created a huge problems for writers: how do you reward readers who've been reading this character for 10, 15, 20 years or more; how do you write for a character that's accrued that kind of history; moreover, how do you keep the character interesting and relevant? All of which is complicated by the current insistence on keeping these characters relatively static - Batman has been in his mid-30s for about 20 years now; much of the impetus behind Marvels Spider-Man reboot seems to be finding a way to bring the character back to his early 20s - and the serial format of comic book publishing.
When the first Superman story was published, no one expected that people would still be publishing Action Comics 70 years later. or that Action Comics would still be telling Superman stories or, rather, one Superman story in an unbroken succession of issues. In many ways, comic books are unprecedented in the history of publishing. After all, even Dickens did, finally, end his books. Instead the Big Two are more like the soap operas of the publishing set. But whereas soap operas periodically renew their casts by bringing in new characters, Clark Kent is still Superman, he still loves Lois Lane, fights Lex Luthor, etc. etc. While some comic book franchises have been successfully rebooted with different characters under the mask (although the only one I can think of is The Flash and now I hear rumours that DC is bringing back Barry Allen after all) comic books tend to be slavishly faithful to their own continuity, even as it strangles them creatively.
As a writer, I have some sympathy with Keith Giffen when he say to hell with continuity. But as a reader, I also want to see my investment in a book rewarded. And the longer I read it, the more I want that investment repaid. That is why I believe long-running serialization is death for comic books and why reboots and retcons don't work: when you throw out the history of an ongoing character, you're taking away the consequences of the actions that make up that history from the audience. You're telling them the cake, which they've paid for, is a lie. And no one likes having their cake taken away.
The rules of narrative are constant, whether you're writing plays, novels or comics: things happen and there are consequences. Take away the consequence and the event has no meaning, there's no drama and without drama, no entertainment. Every time DC or Marvel retcons a creative decision whether large (Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Really Final Crisis, Final Crisis - This Time We Mean It) or small (House of M aka 'Whoops maybe making every other person in the Marvel U a mutant was a bad idea'), it attacks the integrity of the cake. Holey, crumbly cake is better than no cake at all but is likely to drive cake-lovers in search of a better providers of cake (books, tv, movies and now video games are creating detailed, satisfying, internally consistent mythologies that provide the same narrative bang as comics).
At the same time, Giffen's not wrong that rigid adherence to continuity strangles creativity. But nature of serials, the very act of presenting something as part of an ongoing sequence (1, 2, 3, 4... 546) creates an expectation in the audience that what occurs in issue X will have meaning in issue Y and onward. And because serials by their nature are open-ended, internal consistency and the little bites of cake you get from seeing the events of A carried over in D take on a larger significance than they would in a story that actually ends. It's not fair to you audience to present a story in such a way as creates certain expectations and then beat them over the head for having those expectations.
So how do you solve a problem like serialization and the rigid adherence to continuity it creates? Stop producing serials.
It's like TV. Why is UK TV better than US TV? Why was Season One the best season of Battlestar Galactica? Why is US cable TV better than broadcast?
The answer is the same for all: each involve producing fewer episodes in a format structured so that there's a beginning, middle and end (even if that end is a cliffhanger).
Transplanting this model to comics would mean ditching the long-running serials in favour of limited runs where a creative team signs on for a specific number of issues, say from four to 24, to tell a specific story with hard edges so that there's a beginning, middle and end. By getting rid of the serialized format that encourages audience to think of stories as part of an unbroken line of history, writers would be free to tell more innovative stories without editors worrying about fitting that into some arbitrary character history. It would also be possible to tell stories that take place over a couple of days but involve 24 issues without causing continuity problems for either the rest of the "universe" or the character's other adventures. It would also be possible to try out ideas like "Clone Spider-Man" or a new Batman without the convoluted and often illogical plot twists required to bring these ideas into an ongoing serial (or worse, those required to undo them).
If publishers are going to insist on treating these characters as static, they need to look at presenting their adventures in a format that encourages the ongoing reinvention of these characters without alienating audience. Changing the publishing paradigm from one that caters and cultivates long-term readers of a particular character to one that rewards the readers of a particular story would renew readership and invigorate these characters.
It certainly couldn't be any worse than "Infinite Crisis".
I've been following Marvel's Spider-Man shenanigans from the sidelines, mostly to point and laugh, but more and more I see the ongoing decline of mainstream comics (ie the "Big Two") to be one of serialization. Today's iconic characters are at least 40 years old. The big three - Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman - are septuagenarians. As I've written before, this creates a huge burden on writers. According to the AICN discussion, this used to be less of a problem because there was a sense that the comic-book audience turned over ever four years or so. How much of a reality this was, I don't know. Certainly back when I started reading comics (more than 20 years ago now - shit), four years wasn't enough time for Chris Claremont to tie up a plotline. Of course, Claremont's work on The Uncanny X-Men may reflect a change in how comic books were written that encouraged longer periods of readership. I'm sure someone knows but I don't.
Anyway, I think it's self-evident that that kind of turn over in readership is no longer occurring. I wandered through but didn't buy anything at a couple of Dublin comic shops on Thursday night (a commentary on the shit state of mainstream comics these days than my self control) and, while I was older than most of the patrons, at 34 I was not terribly out-of-place (as a girl, however...). Most of the customers were mid-20s emo types. But there were no kids, no high schoolers (much easier to pick out in Dublin thanks to the school uniforms), no families. Of course, you'd hardly expect to find a lot of kids hanging out in Temple Bar of an evening. Then again, the location of the shops themselves reflects the problem the industry is having. The first comics I ever read (or bought) came from the corner store. When I started reading them more seriously, there was a comic and memorbilia shop in my neighbourhood. 10 years later, the only comic shops left in Toronto were on the funky, counter-culture strip of Queen Street West and comics had disappeared entirely from the convenience stores and groceries. What I've taken to thinking of as the long, slow death of mainstream comics begins here, where the casual readership is forsaken for the specialty market during the temporary boom in the market in the 1990s.
Leaving aside the problem a readership that is not renewing itself creates financially (I need to dig up the link to the column about how Hollywood is supporting comics through licensing fees and the inevitable crash when comic book movies go out of fashion - eta 2009, IMO), the shift from a relatively short audience life to a long audience life has created a huge problems for writers: how do you reward readers who've been reading this character for 10, 15, 20 years or more; how do you write for a character that's accrued that kind of history; moreover, how do you keep the character interesting and relevant? All of which is complicated by the current insistence on keeping these characters relatively static - Batman has been in his mid-30s for about 20 years now; much of the impetus behind Marvels Spider-Man reboot seems to be finding a way to bring the character back to his early 20s - and the serial format of comic book publishing.
When the first Superman story was published, no one expected that people would still be publishing Action Comics 70 years later. or that Action Comics would still be telling Superman stories or, rather, one Superman story in an unbroken succession of issues. In many ways, comic books are unprecedented in the history of publishing. After all, even Dickens did, finally, end his books. Instead the Big Two are more like the soap operas of the publishing set. But whereas soap operas periodically renew their casts by bringing in new characters, Clark Kent is still Superman, he still loves Lois Lane, fights Lex Luthor, etc. etc. While some comic book franchises have been successfully rebooted with different characters under the mask (although the only one I can think of is The Flash and now I hear rumours that DC is bringing back Barry Allen after all) comic books tend to be slavishly faithful to their own continuity, even as it strangles them creatively.
As a writer, I have some sympathy with Keith Giffen when he say to hell with continuity. But as a reader, I also want to see my investment in a book rewarded. And the longer I read it, the more I want that investment repaid. That is why I believe long-running serialization is death for comic books and why reboots and retcons don't work: when you throw out the history of an ongoing character, you're taking away the consequences of the actions that make up that history from the audience. You're telling them the cake, which they've paid for, is a lie. And no one likes having their cake taken away.
The rules of narrative are constant, whether you're writing plays, novels or comics: things happen and there are consequences. Take away the consequence and the event has no meaning, there's no drama and without drama, no entertainment. Every time DC or Marvel retcons a creative decision whether large (Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Really Final Crisis, Final Crisis - This Time We Mean It) or small (House of M aka 'Whoops maybe making every other person in the Marvel U a mutant was a bad idea'), it attacks the integrity of the cake. Holey, crumbly cake is better than no cake at all but is likely to drive cake-lovers in search of a better providers of cake (books, tv, movies and now video games are creating detailed, satisfying, internally consistent mythologies that provide the same narrative bang as comics).
At the same time, Giffen's not wrong that rigid adherence to continuity strangles creativity. But nature of serials, the very act of presenting something as part of an ongoing sequence (1, 2, 3, 4... 546) creates an expectation in the audience that what occurs in issue X will have meaning in issue Y and onward. And because serials by their nature are open-ended, internal consistency and the little bites of cake you get from seeing the events of A carried over in D take on a larger significance than they would in a story that actually ends. It's not fair to you audience to present a story in such a way as creates certain expectations and then beat them over the head for having those expectations.
So how do you solve a problem like serialization and the rigid adherence to continuity it creates? Stop producing serials.
It's like TV. Why is UK TV better than US TV? Why was Season One the best season of Battlestar Galactica? Why is US cable TV better than broadcast?
The answer is the same for all: each involve producing fewer episodes in a format structured so that there's a beginning, middle and end (even if that end is a cliffhanger).
Transplanting this model to comics would mean ditching the long-running serials in favour of limited runs where a creative team signs on for a specific number of issues, say from four to 24, to tell a specific story with hard edges so that there's a beginning, middle and end. By getting rid of the serialized format that encourages audience to think of stories as part of an unbroken line of history, writers would be free to tell more innovative stories without editors worrying about fitting that into some arbitrary character history. It would also be possible to tell stories that take place over a couple of days but involve 24 issues without causing continuity problems for either the rest of the "universe" or the character's other adventures. It would also be possible to try out ideas like "Clone Spider-Man" or a new Batman without the convoluted and often illogical plot twists required to bring these ideas into an ongoing serial (or worse, those required to undo them).
If publishers are going to insist on treating these characters as static, they need to look at presenting their adventures in a format that encourages the ongoing reinvention of these characters without alienating audience. Changing the publishing paradigm from one that caters and cultivates long-term readers of a particular character to one that rewards the readers of a particular story would renew readership and invigorate these characters.
It certainly couldn't be any worse than "Infinite Crisis".
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