Article 10: Sturm Und Drang

The author of the THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING caused a storm last week with the announcement of his new project. Paul O'Brien explains why everyone should calm down and put their umbrellas away.
14 October 2002

There are some subjects I try to avoid writing about here. They're the ones that have been written about elsewhere at such inordinate length that I'm bored of reading, let alone writing, about them. But hell, once in a while can't hurt. A commemorative tribute to the argument that will not die.

James Sturm is an indy comics creator who, according to general critical acclaim, makes very good comics indeed. He was responsible for a graphic novel called THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING, about a Jewish baseball team in the gimmicky minor leagues of the 1920s. It won a Harvey last year. It got nominated for an Eisner as well. To be honest, I've never read it, but reading through a few online previews which are still up, it does indeed look excellent. I think I'll buy a copy. Take a look for yourself - here's the publisher's site, and there's some more preview pages here.

Crucially, not only is GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING a good comic, it is the sort of comic that is To Be Encouraged. The development of the comics medium as an artform, and so forth.

Sturm's new project is a little different. FANTASTIC FOUR: UNSTABLE MOLECULES is allegedly a biography of four real people who were the basis for Lee and Kirby's Fantastic Four characters. This includes "Johnny and Sue Sturm, a brother and sister who took great risks during the Cold War".

Now, anybody reading that story with more than superficial attention will find their bullshit alarm going off by paragraph two. Fairly obviously, it's a stunt along similar lines to the fictitious history that Marvel used to promote Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's SENTRY a couple of years ago. So it's difficult to say exactly what UNSTABLE MOLECULES is going to be.

In any event, the key point is this: James Sturm is doing a FANTASTIC FOUR miniseries. For Marvel. Presumably owned by the company. The damnable traitor.

I don't get annoyed by indie creators deciding to work on projects like these, because my own tastes lean heavily to the mainstream. Often I quite welcome it, when it sounds like the sort of book I'd be interested in reading. In the present case, honestly, I haven't a clue what to make of UNSTABLE MOLECULES and I think the Fantastic Four as a concept was milked dry at least twenty years ago. I can't say I'm particularly enthused at this stage. But Sturm sounds excited about it, so to each their own.

And I can understand the disappointment of readers who enjoyed Sturm's previous work but can't stand superheroes. Obviously they'd rather he worked on something else they'd enjoy. Fair enough.

But then there's the viewpoint which says that this is a retrograde step for Sturm, and an outright wrong decision. In its most militant form, this tends to argue that (a) "real creators" produce their own work rather than working on existing characters; (b) the superhero genre, or at least its overrepresentation, is a bad thing; and (c) work-for-hire arrangements are to be strongly discouraged in favour of other models. Thus, for a talented creator to produce a work-for-hire superhero comic is at best disappointing news and a wasted opportunity, at worst a serious error of judgment.

That is a very broad brush summary with sweeping generalisations. But I assume most of you have heard the arguments rehearsed in full more times than you care to remember. You've also heard the counter-arguments hammered into the ground, but that's not going to stop me.

The "playing with other people's toys" argument tends to blur two quite separate issues: the artistic implications of using pre-existing characters, and the commercial implications of doing so on a work-for-hire basis. The latter point is really just a reformulation of the work-for-hire argument, so I'll leave it aside for now. On purely artistic grounds, is there really an objection to writing for pre-existing characters instead of creating your own?

Pre-existing characters not already owned by somebody else are rare in comics. Every so often somebody revives OCTOBRIANA. But far and away the most prominent example would be LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a book whose entire premise is to play around with pre-existing characters, and generally considered a creative success.

LEAGUE amuses me, partly because its central gimmick of universe-building and obscure continuity is precisely the sort of thing that's often loathed in superhero comics. But that's a separate column. It could be said that LEAGUE differs from most superhero comics in that it's really playing with the original characters as an elaborate literary joke, rather than producing a straight rendition of somebody else's concepts. Then again, so is UNSTABLE MOLECULES, from the look of it.

More to the point, what is wrong with producing a Fantastic Four story - or any superhero story - if that's what you really want to do? Plenty of comics creators were inspired to get into the industry in the first place by starting off as fans of superhero comics. Some of them really do just want to do the classic superhero comics, or at least want to do that at some point in their career. Why not? Sure, it may not be part of the grand crusade to improve the comics industry, but is it really the duty of creators to make sure that everything they do is for the greater good?

It's occasionally suggested that there is something wrong with a creator who simply wants to entertain people and write superhero genre fiction. There is nothing wrong with just wanting to entertain people. Not everything needs to be Art-with-a-capital-A. Not everything needs to be a searing insight into the creator's poetic soul. It would get awfully wearing. Pure entertainment is equally valid to high art.

Problems arise, of course, when the two become seriously out of proportion. But that's not the concern of the creator who has a particular project he wants to do. Judged as individual projects, a successful piece of light entertainment is just as valid as a successful project with serious literary ambitions. Entertainment is underrated. There is nothing wrong with being a member of a boy band if you honestly want to dance on a stage and entertain teenage girls and gay men. There is nothing wrong with drawing Superman if you genuinely want to.

The financial arguments are a separate issue. There are strong arguments against work-for-hire, which from a business standpoint certainly favours the publisher in a manner which is, shall we say, not always easy to justify. Again, I don't think I need to bore you by repeating them in full. Obviously, it's in creators' interests to promote contract models which are more favourable to them, and to be fully aware of the options open to them so that they aren't labouring under a misapprehension that, say, self-publishing is any more difficult and risky than it actually is. In short, the creator should have a real choice, and it should be an informed choice. Matters are improving in both respects.

Nonetheless, even in the best possible world, there will still be a choice. If you want to do a Fantastic Four story, then that's never going to be something you'll completely own. The deal is always going to be that Marvel owns the characters. So if this is the story you want to do, your options are essentially to do it on Marvel's terms, or to take it elsewhere and use analogous new characters instead (not always satisfactory). Or, of course, to drop the idea and just do something else instead.

Considerations of financial risk and reward, and creative freedom, come into play here. And they all weigh against how much the creator really wanted to do the story in the first place. Doing the story may well turn out to be financially unwise. Then again, deciding to become a professional comics creator instead of getting a nice safe job probably wasn't a financially intelligent move either. God knows I have no time for the starving artist myth, which is adolescent nonsense, but creators don't take all their decisions solely on financial considerations. If they really want to do the story, then work for hire may be acceptable on that basis. It may arguably be a good career move in order to gain increased exposure - opinions vary on that. It depends on your priorities. As long as the decision is an informed one - and clearly creators like Sturm are well aware of the other options which they've used in the past - then that's a matter for them to weigh up.

All of the above really just boils down to saying that if you really want to do a Fantastic Four story and you're prepared to accept the financial consequences, then go for it. Which ought to be blindingly obvious, really. But the point seems to need making from time to time.

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

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