Learning To Drive

Plenty of people were watching the WATCHMEN, but were any of the creators who followed paying attention? The tremors from WATCHMEN are still being felt today, but Brent Keane is still waiting to see the book's promise fulfilled.
24 March 2003

"It was a good piece. Nothing like it had ever been done in comics before...[what] was actually important about WATCHMEN [wasn't] the superheroes at all - it was the way the story was told. I'm very, very proud of that." - Alan Moore, from an interview with Mike Cotton in Wizard #130, July 2002.

Via the 'Net, I know this woman who lives in Canada; for the sake of privacy, we'll call her Missy. Over the last few months, we've become good friends, and as such, she knows of my appreciation of comics and graphic novels. Until recently, Missy's only exposure to comics was via another medium: motion pictures, specifically the first X-MEN movie, which was filmed in the Great White North. She told me that she enjoyed that first instalment, and intends to see the sequel in a couple of months time.

Now, I'd like to claim credit for this next part, but I only played a small part, to be honest. Missy frequents many of the same online forums I do, some of which discuss (to varying degrees) comics and the like. Her interest piqued by those exchanges, she began asking questions about what titles to sample. Some people sent her material to try, and her curiosity increased, though she was also left lamenting the lack of a comic book store in her region to allow her to investigate further. I suggested the library. Sure enough, she had better luck; she had never even thought to try the library, despite being a frequent user.

I can tell you this much about Missy: she likes to jump in at the deep end, so to speak. Her first graphic novel of choice was PROMETHEA, based on many people's recommendations of Alan Moore's output. She liked the series, but, being unfamiliar with the semiotics of sequential storytelling, she found it difficult to know how to read it. Understandable, I grant you. Which made her next selection interesting, from the viewpoint of an experienced reader like myself:

WATCHMEN.

It's been widely suggested that WATCHMEN isn't a book for first-timers; according to Richard Reynolds in his book SUPERHEROES: A MODERN MYTHOLOGY, in order to get the most out of Moore and Gibbons' opus, the potential reader would have to be passingly familiar - at least - with the preoccupations of the superhero genre.

"Textually, WATCHMEN functions as a critical response to ... over 50 years worth of superhero stories," states Reynolds in the course of his dissertation. However, I respectfully disagree with his dismissal of what non-comics readers might get from WATCHMEN: A good story is a good story, no matter how it's told. That was largely the impetus behind the graphic novel explosion of the late 1980s, and sadly, that fact was lost when the larger companies responded by putting their characters through the grim-and-gritty treadmill.

"At the moment, there are a lot of self-consciously hip comics around, showing grim psychological portraits of [familiar] characters. It may be making lots of money, but in the long run, it isn't doing comics any good." - Moore on the impact of WATCHMEN, from an interview with Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, August 1990.

KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT. THE ARMOR WARS. ARKHAM ASYLUM. John Byrne's closing SUPERMAN arc (in which he executes three Kryptonian criminals). By the turn of the decade, superhero comics were just no damn fun anymore - even at the age of twelve, I could see the writing on the wall. (And lest anyone think I'm advocating a return to the Silver Age, forget it; honestly, Gardner Fox's stuff damn near drove me up the wall. All! Those! Exclamation! Points!)

So, by the mid-90's, a lot of creative types responded to the wave of vengeance-crazed types with their guns and chains and claws: MARVELS. ASTRO CITY. KINGDOM COME. Mark Waid's work on THE FLASH, IMPULSE and CAPTAIN AMERICA. Grant Morrison's JLA. It's a pendulum swing, back and forth like a hypnotist's watch.

"Everyone talked about a comics renaissance (in 1986), but there wasn't any ... it was just three or four blokes doing good books. It was no bigger than that." Moore on the tenth anniversary of WATCHMEN, Wizard #62, October 1996.

I've made mention before - specifically, in my review of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN - of that group of books, the Class of 1986, which helped shaped the evolution of the art form (and, to a lesser extent, the industry). While some creators took those books as an indicator of what could be done with comics, by and large, the industry saw dark and depressing superheroics as a license to print money. The pendulum swings, and nostalgia kicks in, thus enabling a return to old-fashioned heroics informed by a modern-day sensibility. Pendulum swings back, and we have THE AUTHORITY and BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN. Pendulum swings again, and now we have the 80s retro trend.

Again, it's nostalgia for a simpler time. Many of today's writers and artists grew up in the 1980s, so it's understandable that they would have affection for shape-changing robots and paramilitary strike forces. Here's the thing, though: did we really need to see them again? Did they need to be trotted out, like an ailing relative in a wheelchair, and made to perform one more time? I don't think so. No disrespect intended to Devil's Due, Wildstorm, Top Cow, Dreamwave, et al, but I would like to see something new, something that pushes the boundaries of the form, like those books did in 1986. Not empty shells resuscitated and made to walk zombie-like in search of fresh meat.

Missy grew up in the 80s, like I did, but she doesn't want to read about the cartoons she saw on TV nearly twenty years ago. She wants something new, different, exciting, challenging. This is why she's begun to read comics. She's the new reader the industry wants, and indeed, needs. Why are we letting her down with cheap retreads and gaudy trademarks?

"For the past [few decades], comic books have muddled through their infancy ... [but it] becomes very clear that events will no longer be proceeding at a crawl. Next thing you know, the kid will be learning to drive, and won't that be something?" - Excerpted from Moore's introduction to VIOLENT CASES, first British edition, October 1987.

Brent Keane is a regular contributor to Ninth Art and PopImage and has also written for Opi8, Sequential Tart and Nerdbait.

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