As a LIFELONG reader of comic books, the past few years have been nothing short of bizarre! The rumblings of Blade led to the first successful "X-Men" movie, which, let's be honest, shall we,nobody expected to be as good as it was. This led to more weird things.
First and foremost, Grant Morrison has spent this decade on high profile superhero franchises (as opposed to the later nineties, when he worked on weird little Vertigo books like The Invisibles, Sebastian O, and Flex Mentallo--yes, yes, he did do three years on JLA, but that was the anomaly). In the wake of the first Singer "X-Men" movie, we had Morrison on New X-Men. Even though I had sworn off the X-Men franchise in the early nineties (when Claremont, who, for those of you who are not wretched geeks like myself, created the X-Men as we know them, left the book), I was intrigued enough to give Morrison's take a try and with only a few exceptions (the fill-in art and the Xorn reveal) absolutely loved it. Then he was on to Batman, another completely worn-out character, and did (and still is doing) mildly interesting things. Read his All-Star Superman, also, if you want to see Morrison at his most accessible.
In the meantime, more movies. Spiderman and Iron Man both exceeded expectations. Nolan's Batman movies were pretty top notch, and the second X-Men movie was, in my mind, THE greatest superhero movie of all time. Singer's Superman Returns was both mildly satisfying (to see another Superman movie) and mildly disappointing (to see him fail to kick ass both on screen and at the box office). The fact that someone thought that Watchmen would make a decent movie still blows my mind, but it was both amusing and infuriating to watch would be hipster sheep break their necks to get to that one. How many people now have a copy of Watchmen on their bookshelf that they'll never read again (or rather they will, but they'll skip all the "boring" Black Freighter stuff and the found objects--Rorschach rules, rah?).
Somewhere in that time I went from being a fierce advocate of indie/creator owned works to lightening up and indulging myself a little bit with the superhero stuff. Yes, I was one of the early drinkers of the Dan Didio koolaid, but it didn't take long to figure out that he was rapidly running DC into the ground, gratuitously killing off beloved characters and making everything a tie-in to something else. Other than the work of Morrison and Rucka, I can barely stomach any of DC's current line, and this is something coming from a guy who all but worships Superman. In addition to being disrespected as a fan and made to feel like I should buy everything under the sun if I want to stay in the loop, the general level of mediocrity is crushing! Geoff Johns is indicative of the upper level of talent now working at the company--well meaning, necrophillic/nostaligic, and completely pedestrian and uninspired. Why another Crisis? What did it accomplish? Why bring back Barry Allen? He had perhaps the most meaningful death in superhero comic book history, and doing it completely negates ALL of the character development that has been achieved with Wally West over the past twenty-odd years! Why are they trying to have every book duplicate that awful mid-nineties faux Jim Lee Image housestyle? And maybe I'm going old fogey here, but should the word "ass" appear in a Justice League book? Should a major story be centered around Dr. Light raping one of the more innocuous characters of the Silver Age? Etc.
Believe it or not, the general level of quality at Marvel has been a lot better. Bendis is no Shakespeare, but he has singlehandedly brought the Avengers back from marginal status to the point where they are close to supplanting the X-Men as Marvel's top franchise! And anyone who knew me when he first started knows I was the biggest skeptic of all. Captain America has never been as good as it now is under Brubaker (who has also worked wonders with Iron Fist and Daredevil). Marvel has also done a good job of integrating top notch outsiders (like Fraction and Hickman) into the fold. Clearly this is a team that wants to win.
Then:
They jacked prices up on many of their books to $3.99--a full dollar hike in one month. Multiple sources (John Suintres of Word Balloon, among others) confirm that there was no necessity to hike the price; they did it because they knew their fans would pay more for the books. This is where I had to take a stand. I have no problem paying a bit more to support a smaller publisher like Dark Horse, Drawn and Quarterly, Fantagraphics, or even Image, but hell will freeze over before I pay $4 for a regular monthly superhero comic that has 24 pages in story (and nearly fifteen in advertisements--not including "previews" [i.e., another ad] for a new title in the back). I dropped every book that hiked the price (painfully, as I absolutely loved many of them) and I am proud to say I've successfully stuck to my guns here.
Another thing that irked me hugely was the return of Captain America (my favorite character in comics--sorry, Superman). I have been faithfully reading this book for over four years. I have no problem with him coming back from the dead, which I knew was inevitable, but I do have problems with at least two things: the fact that 1) it did not happen in his own book, where the storyline actually started (they did it in an "event" book called Captain America: The Return), and 2) this event book that I'm supposed to buy if I want the FULL story costs, yep, you guessed it, $3.99. In short, this is a company that despises its own fans. And now they've inspired DC to do a similar price hike (though to be fair, DC gives you more material for the extra dollar).
And now, Disney. I don't pretend to fully understand this deal, but it seems that Spiderman, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine, etc. will probably end up shilling a lot more tie-in products. To badly paraphrase Warren Ellis, the characters will be used to sell toothpaste, and the creation of good quality comic books will become secondary. This was probably inevitable as soon as the movies became successful, but it is a shame. It comes at a time where at least some chances were being taken with characters and story content at Marvel, who was lapping its clueless and retrograde counterparts at DC. I wonder if monthly Marvel comics will be as inconsequential as the Star Wars tie-ins at Dark Horse--slaves to the mass media version of itself, never able to move forward in any way.
And this leads me back to where I was at the beginning of the decade. Pretty much, Warren Ellis had it nailed in his collection of essays Come in Alone. If you want decent comics, your best shot is to go with creator-owned properties. Many naysayers will cry foul and point out the slew of sub-par creator owned material out there, and they have a point. But pretty much if you want stories that take chances and where things actually happen, there's a lot of good stuff out there--Kirkman's The Walking Dead, Smith's Bone, Fraction's Casanova, Powell's The Goon, Hickman's Pax Romana, Lutes' Berlin, Tomine's Optic Nerve, Clowes' Eightball, Ware's Acme Novelty Library, and even some of the vanity lines from the Big Two (Brubaker's Criminal and Incognito; Azzarello's 100 Bullets). I'm not saying it's a perfect option, but it's your best shot, if you want new, somewhat unpredictable, somewhat meaningful content. Still, Disney or no, if you're trying to relive the old childhood with familiar characters, Marvel and DC are the way to go. You may not like where they're at now, but if not, wait five years or so and they'll be back to the versions you recognize--the versions that will be able to sell the most toothpaste to kids.
07 September 2009
01 March 2009
Watching "Watchmen"? or "Sean is an Elitist Asshole, Part 627"
This has been bugging me for a while. I'll try to not get too long winded here--I'll say my piece and leave it be.
I've been moderately annoyed by all of the ubiquitous Watchmen tie-ins. I also have friends who are slobbering over it and will probably see it no later than the close of opening weekend. (A similar phenomenon occurred upon the release of another Snyder film 300.)
Okay.
So what possible objection is there to be had when people get hyped up for the big "summer" blockbuster-style movie? That's what they're for, right?
Except that's not what Watchmen (the comic) is about. Were one to read it, they would discover it is quite possibly the last superhero story. After reading it, it is certainly very difficult to look at superheroes with the same uncritical enthusiasm ever again. For spoilers sake, I won't say why--just go out and read it if you've not already. (But then again, how could you have missed it, what with it being plastered everywhere in every book shop, comic shop, and even Target?) I can say without spoiling anything for anybody that it's a very densely layered piece of literary criticism/art criticism, performed on American pop culture in general, and the American comic book specifically. And since when is literary criticism fodder for widescreen summer movies?
It's not, unless it's severely dumbed down. And when a masterpiece is dumbed down, what's the point?
$200 million. That's the real point.
What I imagine will happen is that millions of people will go out and buy the trade paperback but never read it, since it doesn't offer the simple mindless escapism offered by the movie trailer.
Don't get me wrong--it's nice to see a true work of art get its due. But it's only getting its due because a company can use it as a vehicle to generate interest for what it's not.
That sends the message that great art only matters if it can generate a massive stream of revenue.
And I don't like that message.
I've been moderately annoyed by all of the ubiquitous Watchmen tie-ins. I also have friends who are slobbering over it and will probably see it no later than the close of opening weekend. (A similar phenomenon occurred upon the release of another Snyder film 300.)
Okay.
So what possible objection is there to be had when people get hyped up for the big "summer" blockbuster-style movie? That's what they're for, right?
Except that's not what Watchmen (the comic) is about. Were one to read it, they would discover it is quite possibly the last superhero story. After reading it, it is certainly very difficult to look at superheroes with the same uncritical enthusiasm ever again. For spoilers sake, I won't say why--just go out and read it if you've not already. (But then again, how could you have missed it, what with it being plastered everywhere in every book shop, comic shop, and even Target?) I can say without spoiling anything for anybody that it's a very densely layered piece of literary criticism/art criticism, performed on American pop culture in general, and the American comic book specifically. And since when is literary criticism fodder for widescreen summer movies?
It's not, unless it's severely dumbed down. And when a masterpiece is dumbed down, what's the point?
$200 million. That's the real point.
What I imagine will happen is that millions of people will go out and buy the trade paperback but never read it, since it doesn't offer the simple mindless escapism offered by the movie trailer.
Don't get me wrong--it's nice to see a true work of art get its due. But it's only getting its due because a company can use it as a vehicle to generate interest for what it's not.
That sends the message that great art only matters if it can generate a massive stream of revenue.
And I don't like that message.
07 February 2009
Draft: Is There a "Strategy" Genre?
Help Me Form a Theory of a Genre Strategy with Any Examples or Ideas That Might Occur to You...
Another interesting idea occurred to me while watching Elizabeth (1998). I was struck by how similar this narrative was to the first Godfather (1972) movie: each protagonist is a young adult is drawn into a position of authority that they initially tried to avoid in favor of more conventional life; each has to choose against competing mentors, to some extent; each have to assume leadership of declining institutions during crises and lead them to stability. Each even has scenes where the budding leader has to directly confront antagonists, and other scenes where all enemies are slain or otherwise dispatched in one fell swoop.
And it quite led me to wonder if there may not be a super-genre that is nothing less than strategy-oriented. I am at a handicap here, as I've not read enough of this sort of literature to draw out all of the examples that I need. Certainly there are obvious examples that may be drawn from classic sources of history and political science--Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Herodotus, etc.--anything that is on its face a manual of strategy and/or a history of a conflict. However, where I feel most confident in coming up with examples is from film. But again, these come from genres that are strong on the social sciences: crime (particularly heist narratives, revenge narratives, and "fish out of water" mystery narratives [where the protagonist is either placed in a situation unlike any they've ever been in and compelled to perform or else not privy to all of the facts and thus has to hunt around for facts to construct a likely narrative that will illuminate themselves and the viewer)/gangster and espionage. Yet many average and less than average crime, gangster, and espionage films do not fit the bill. There must be a fairly strong commitment to realism; that is, even if the narrative is highly stylized, it must exist in a setting that physically, socially, and psychologically resembles our own. Diehard, for example, is not a strategy movie; The Bourne Identity might be, and Jackie Brown definitely is. Likewise, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Curse of the Golden Flower are not in the super genre while Hero and House of Flying Daggers are. The Wire is, while NYPD Blue is not. There must be romantic movies and romantic comedies that fit into this, though I am at a disadvantage insofar as that...
What else occurs to me as qualifiers for this supergenre is the need for the protagonist to respond to a series of plot complications that quite often present themselves as some form of collusion or conspiracy on the part of two or more characters. In this conflict, the protagonist usually finds himself at some disadvantage, and the necessary response is for whatever reason beyond the scope of his/her normal ability, which cause the character (or the audience's perception of the character) to evolve in some way. Said response is in many cases first cerebral (be it discovering concealed information
or formulating a plan) and then physical (executing the plan; acting on the discovery).
Some of these movies have what might be called a "prism protagonist." In the two examples that inspired this meditation, for instance, we have a macroprotagonist of Britain, with microprotagonists representing multiple points of view that the viewer may sympathize with--the novice embattled executive (Elizabeth), the statesman (Sir William Cecil), and the strategist (Walsingham, who is shown as having impeccable judgement and executes his perfect plans flawlessly). In The Godfather we have a similar arrangement. The institution is the Corleone family, which, we are led to believe, is a righteous organized crime family--they don't commit the same amount of irrational wanton violence as the families in Sicily do, and they are prudent and moral enough to want to steer clear of the drug trade (which, the theory goes, brought quick big profits but stricter law enforcement with more prison time, and therefore more informants and witnesses)--as opposed to the all of the other corrupt ones. Still, Michael wants no part of it. In the novel, Puzo beats you over the head with the fact that Micheal is the true heir apparent--Coppola is a bit more subtle. Don Coreleone is the paragon, the classical/mythical Righteous Don who will be brought down by modernity. (He's also, incidentally, every elder who will watch the movie and connect with "things not being what they used to be.")
To be continued...
Another interesting idea occurred to me while watching Elizabeth (1998). I was struck by how similar this narrative was to the first Godfather (1972) movie: each protagonist is a young adult is drawn into a position of authority that they initially tried to avoid in favor of more conventional life; each has to choose against competing mentors, to some extent; each have to assume leadership of declining institutions during crises and lead them to stability. Each even has scenes where the budding leader has to directly confront antagonists, and other scenes where all enemies are slain or otherwise dispatched in one fell swoop.
And it quite led me to wonder if there may not be a super-genre that is nothing less than strategy-oriented. I am at a handicap here, as I've not read enough of this sort of literature to draw out all of the examples that I need. Certainly there are obvious examples that may be drawn from classic sources of history and political science--Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Herodotus, etc.--anything that is on its face a manual of strategy and/or a history of a conflict. However, where I feel most confident in coming up with examples is from film. But again, these come from genres that are strong on the social sciences: crime (particularly heist narratives, revenge narratives, and "fish out of water" mystery narratives [where the protagonist is either placed in a situation unlike any they've ever been in and compelled to perform or else not privy to all of the facts and thus has to hunt around for facts to construct a likely narrative that will illuminate themselves and the viewer)/gangster and espionage. Yet many average and less than average crime, gangster, and espionage films do not fit the bill. There must be a fairly strong commitment to realism; that is, even if the narrative is highly stylized, it must exist in a setting that physically, socially, and psychologically resembles our own. Diehard, for example, is not a strategy movie; The Bourne Identity might be, and Jackie Brown definitely is. Likewise, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Curse of the Golden Flower are not in the super genre while Hero and House of Flying Daggers are. The Wire is, while NYPD Blue is not. There must be romantic movies and romantic comedies that fit into this, though I am at a disadvantage insofar as that...
What else occurs to me as qualifiers for this supergenre is the need for the protagonist to respond to a series of plot complications that quite often present themselves as some form of collusion or conspiracy on the part of two or more characters. In this conflict, the protagonist usually finds himself at some disadvantage, and the necessary response is for whatever reason beyond the scope of his/her normal ability, which cause the character (or the audience's perception of the character) to evolve in some way. Said response is in many cases first cerebral (be it discovering concealed information
or formulating a plan) and then physical (executing the plan; acting on the discovery).
Some of these movies have what might be called a "prism protagonist." In the two examples that inspired this meditation, for instance, we have a macroprotagonist of Britain, with microprotagonists representing multiple points of view that the viewer may sympathize with--the novice embattled executive (Elizabeth), the statesman (Sir William Cecil), and the strategist (Walsingham, who is shown as having impeccable judgement and executes his perfect plans flawlessly). In The Godfather we have a similar arrangement. The institution is the Corleone family, which, we are led to believe, is a righteous organized crime family--they don't commit the same amount of irrational wanton violence as the families in Sicily do, and they are prudent and moral enough to want to steer clear of the drug trade (which, the theory goes, brought quick big profits but stricter law enforcement with more prison time, and therefore more informants and witnesses)--as opposed to the all of the other corrupt ones. Still, Michael wants no part of it. In the novel, Puzo beats you over the head with the fact that Micheal is the true heir apparent--Coppola is a bit more subtle. Don Coreleone is the paragon, the classical/mythical Righteous Don who will be brought down by modernity. (He's also, incidentally, every elder who will watch the movie and connect with "things not being what they used to be.")
To be continued...
04 February 2009
A Question of Royalties or What if Prince Had Been More "Dukish"?
Just an idea I had that I couldn't let go of b/c of its intriguing appeal:
Prince killed jazz.
Think about it. The case is completely closed on the theory that he killed funk. According to sources I can't recall (and so unfortunately can't cite), record companies discovered that what once took dozen-man supergroups of instrumental virtuosos (like Parliament and the JBs) to produce could all be done by this one man, thanks to improvements in recording technology, and so the funk band went away.
When young "Prince" Rogers Nelson came on the scene in 1978, jazz was gasping polluted air. Younger stars like Herbie Hancock had forsaken the once dominant acoustic sound and went electric. Miles got strung out on dope again, but even before he had gone deeply into the voodoo nightmare midlife crisis that was fusion. Coltrane, Ellington, Basie, and Monk had either died and/or withered away during that period and new blood was sorely needed. Enter a five foot two multi-instrument-playing songwriting genius who melded genders even more convincingly (and much more enticingly) than David Bowie before him. Imagine if Prince had turned his powers loose on a battleplan for making jazz a dance music (rather than a navel gazing exercise) again, focusing on grooves and improvisation moreso than a marketable persona but using that persona (which Miles himself found irresistible and to which he gave an unconditional and ringing endorsement in his autobiography as the future of music), that manic sexual energy he exudes on stage not just on promoting himself but on making jazz (which was even then your grandad's music) young again. This would have been at the exact moment that disco, which had swallowed the falsettos and string arrangements of Philly soul without even so much as chewing and burped itself white (ala the Bee Gees) fell down dead from over exploitation and lack of musical substance. What was R and B in the eighties? Luther Vandross singing over jingle bell-sounding keyboards, at least 'til hip hop came along. And the Minneapolis sound which, as interesting as it was initially, was frigid and overproduced. Forget Purple Rain and gerry curls and New Romantic-inspired ruffled shirts. Forget latter day Prince's perpetual impending "renaissance." Have you ever listened to Under the Cherry Moon? Have you ever seen the Sign o' the Times live performances? The One Night Alone sets? Just as the injection of such a talent could have catalyzed jazz into a new Golden (or at the very least a degraded Bronze-modern) age by inspiring his contemporaries in the (jazz) genre to greater heights, this abdication which spiraled him into a lesser orbit (the Prince/Madonna/Michael Jackson 80s MTV kitschy triptych) spelled disaster, and not just for this one musician's ability to live up to his own righteous destiny.
Whether or not jazz survived the loss (yes, it did, but just barely) is beside the point. History is certainly what was which led to what is, but just as important is what wasn't but could have been. These sorts of gaps, this sort of "idle speculation" has intrinsic value that is every ounce a part of the narrative and the drama of any art form.
So for a moment, imagine with me an alternate universe where the spokesman for jazz is not the relatively bloodless Wynton Marsalis, but instead a pint-sized light skinned sonic Moses who led his brethren from captivity in a introverted barren classicist desert into a living, pelvically-gyrating promised land, where Cab Calloway and James Brown prepared a house for us all. It's easy if you try.
Prince killed jazz.
Think about it. The case is completely closed on the theory that he killed funk. According to sources I can't recall (and so unfortunately can't cite), record companies discovered that what once took dozen-man supergroups of instrumental virtuosos (like Parliament and the JBs) to produce could all be done by this one man, thanks to improvements in recording technology, and so the funk band went away.
When young "Prince" Rogers Nelson came on the scene in 1978, jazz was gasping polluted air. Younger stars like Herbie Hancock had forsaken the once dominant acoustic sound and went electric. Miles got strung out on dope again, but even before he had gone deeply into the voodoo nightmare midlife crisis that was fusion. Coltrane, Ellington, Basie, and Monk had either died and/or withered away during that period and new blood was sorely needed. Enter a five foot two multi-instrument-playing songwriting genius who melded genders even more convincingly (and much more enticingly) than David Bowie before him. Imagine if Prince had turned his powers loose on a battleplan for making jazz a dance music (rather than a navel gazing exercise) again, focusing on grooves and improvisation moreso than a marketable persona but using that persona (which Miles himself found irresistible and to which he gave an unconditional and ringing endorsement in his autobiography as the future of music), that manic sexual energy he exudes on stage not just on promoting himself but on making jazz (which was even then your grandad's music) young again. This would have been at the exact moment that disco, which had swallowed the falsettos and string arrangements of Philly soul without even so much as chewing and burped itself white (ala the Bee Gees) fell down dead from over exploitation and lack of musical substance. What was R and B in the eighties? Luther Vandross singing over jingle bell-sounding keyboards, at least 'til hip hop came along. And the Minneapolis sound which, as interesting as it was initially, was frigid and overproduced. Forget Purple Rain and gerry curls and New Romantic-inspired ruffled shirts. Forget latter day Prince's perpetual impending "renaissance." Have you ever listened to Under the Cherry Moon? Have you ever seen the Sign o' the Times live performances? The One Night Alone sets? Just as the injection of such a talent could have catalyzed jazz into a new Golden (or at the very least a degraded Bronze-modern) age by inspiring his contemporaries in the (jazz) genre to greater heights, this abdication which spiraled him into a lesser orbit (the Prince/Madonna/Michael Jackson 80s MTV kitschy triptych) spelled disaster, and not just for this one musician's ability to live up to his own righteous destiny.
Whether or not jazz survived the loss (yes, it did, but just barely) is beside the point. History is certainly what was which led to what is, but just as important is what wasn't but could have been. These sorts of gaps, this sort of "idle speculation" has intrinsic value that is every ounce a part of the narrative and the drama of any art form.
So for a moment, imagine with me an alternate universe where the spokesman for jazz is not the relatively bloodless Wynton Marsalis, but instead a pint-sized light skinned sonic Moses who led his brethren from captivity in a introverted barren classicist desert into a living, pelvically-gyrating promised land, where Cab Calloway and James Brown prepared a house for us all. It's easy if you try.
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