Article 10: On Comics On Comics

One of the major preoccupations of comics appears to be... comics. This can lead to some fascinating insights for established readers, but it also makes a lot of books - like the recent nine-cent FANTASTIC FOUR - inaccessible.
16 September 2002

Last time, I gave you some thoughts about comics journalism. This week, I'm continuing along a similar vein. Because if you're looking for analysis of comics then there's another place you can find it. And that's the comics themselves.

Of course, comics aren't totally obsessed with themselves. The most popular subject matter for comics remains that perennial favourite, "Men in strange costumes punching one another in the face". In comparison, the state of the medium trails badly behind. Nonetheless, all sections of the industry, from the totally mainstream to the radically alternative, have tended to devote a fair amount of time to comics - the industry, the medium, and their predominant genre of superhero comics.

One of the acknowledged classics of the medium, WATCHMEN, is in large part a deconstruction of the superhero genre. Grant Morrison's recently re-printed ANIMAL MAN is also so obvious as to barely require a mention (and he seems to be revisiting similar themes in THE FILTH). The painfully overrated KINGDOM COME was based on the classic Golden Age DC heroes feuding with one-dimensional figures intended to symbolise the decay of the superhero in the 1990s under the influence of Image. Or there's the Dan Pussey strips in EIGHTBALL. These are the most glaring type - comics that are explicitly about comics.

The recent HOWARD THE DUCK miniseries ended with an issue in which God explained the meaning of life to Howard. Somewhere along the line this segues into a rant about work for hire and creator ownership. All very amusing if you happen to work in the comics industry or be sufficiently deeply ingrained in fandom to have an interest in the subject of creator ownership. But largely pointless to the rest of the planet.

This is the sort of thing that worries me. Here's a trade paperback going out to the bookstores - the real world. A newcomer buys the book. He enjoys half of it, puzzles over the WITCHBLADE parody, which refers to comics he's never even seen, and wonders what the hell all of this work-for-hire stuff is in the last chapter. These issues are undoubtedly of great importance to the people who work in the industry, but they come some way down the list of universal themes. Equally, I would be very surprised if Steve Gerber was particularly interested in my contract of employment. If pressed, he might have a view on whether I should get paid more and have a nicer office. But I would hardly expect him, as a total stranger, to care.

Writing about comics' history and politics inevitably limits your audience to the relative handful who know and care about the issues raised. It's as much a barrier to new readers as heavy-continuity superhero books. Individually there is nothing wrong with these subjects or with a particular comic looking at them. But given their extremely marginal nature, you might expect to see rather less of it.

The situation is different with film and television - they're legitimately part of mainstream culture and virtually the entire population is at least broadly familiar with their nature, history and style. Hollywood likes to make films depicting itself as a glamorous lifestyle and setting. It can get away with this because the public already accepts this as true. It's a little less keen about making films that are genuinely about the industry or film genre conventions. They do exist - THE PLAYER, LAST ACTION HERO - but they're hardly a prominent theme.

Comics' self-reflexive tendencies are more akin to the less accessible aspects of modern art. Artists, as a breed, seem desperately convinced that what they do is awfully important and needs to be thoroughly explored by them. This is why we still have so many exhibits dealing with tedious old subjects such as, "What happens when I exhibit this seemingly non-art object in a gallery space?" The answer, for 99% of the population, is, "I don't care." They never go into a gallery, and certainly wouldn't be seen dead calling it a "space."

Worse yet are artists producing work about the trends in other artists' work. This route leads to a slow and tedious spiral into an in-bred art circuit where 25 different artists take turns to make shows about what the other 24 have been doing over the last year.

The resulting work may not be bad, as such, but it certainly risks being totally irrelevant to anyone outside its own circle. Potential audiences don't care, not because they're philistines, but because there is no earthly reason why they should care. This is the trap that comics can easily fall into.

The recent FANTASTIC FOUR #60 was a 9c comic, essentially a giveaway, designed to promote the new creative team of Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo. The story it contains is largely about establishing the characters, the concept, and the new team's general approach. As you might expect.

But, as you might also expect from the writer of KINGDOM COME, it comes complete with a defensive streak a mile wide in which the book sets out to argue that the Fantastic Four are still relevant, and the way to make the comic work is good old-fashioned storytelling. There is even a scene with the Fantastic Four meeting marketing advisers who want them to overhaul their comic to make it more contemporary (which still seems to mean mid-nineties Image, apparently). This approach, Waid would like to emphasise, is not the one he will be adopting.

Now, he's probably right - if ever there was a set of characters thoroughly unsuited for a cutting edge rendition, it's the Fantastic Four. Personally, I think they're just well past their sell-by date and pretty much a lost cause. Then again, I never liked them in the first place. I agree, though, that if you're going to try to do the Fantastic Four in 2002, it's best to do it straight rather than try and hammer them into a more contemporary mould.

Nonetheless, here we have a massive promotional push for his first issue. And he's spending pages writing about the dichotomy between Silver Age and contemporary superheroes, complete with segments about inappropriate revamps. Whether you agree with it or not, what on earth is this stuff doing in an issue that's essentially a freebie giveaway? There's a time and a place for arguing about the relative merits of 1960s and 1990s superhero comics, and this is not it.

Sure, it's a minor element of the story, but what's it doing there at all? It's not about the characters, it's about making a statement on the creative direction. It's unnecessary. A successful creative direction does not need to stop halfway to lecture the audience on why it's a good idea. It will already have proved its point. And the issue this scene raises - classic superheroes versus a revisionist version - is a debate that belongs in comics criticism. It's not a point which new comics readers are going to care about one way or the other.

Now, don't get me wrong. Personally, I enjoy a lot of comics that deal with comics. Many of them have interesting, insightful and entertaining things to say. But then, I'm one of the people who already reads comics. When comics decide to gaze at their own navels, we can hardly blame new readers for refusing to join in.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.