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.
