Plagues of locusts in Australia, Warren Ellis writing Fantastic Four, WILDCATS cancelled, a Liefeld/Nicieza X-FORCE, cats and dogs living together. The end days are nigh! Or are they?

Ivan Turgenev wrote an essay in 1860 on how there are two eternal hero types: Don Quixote, or Hamlet. The man who thinks he is strong, and the man who knows he is weak. It's an essay I've always loved, and I'll ask you to bear with me as I quote from it, as the Don Quixote section is pretty much a how-to manual for writing golden and silver-age superheroes:

"Don Quixote is entirely consumed with devotion to his ideal, for the sake of which he is ready to suffer every possible privation and to sacrifice his life; his life itself he values only insofar as it can become a means for the incarnation of the ideal, for the establishment of truth and justice on earth. To live for oneself, to care for oneself, Don Quixote would consider shameful. He lives ... outside of himself, entirely for others, for his brethren, in order to abolish evil, to counteract the forces hostile to mankind - wizards, giants, in a word, the oppressors. Don Quixote is an enthusiast, a servant of an idea, and thus is illuminated by its radiance."

What we are seeing with DC and Marvel's much- discussed "spandexification" is a conscious return to the superhero as Don Quixote, pushing the titles that suggest that our system or national character is weak back to the independent publishers where they are more usually found.

Whether this is symptomatic of an industry under economic pressure, or of a larger need in the American psyche to be reassured in the post 'Iraquistan' debacle, I leave up to you to decide. But I would mention in passing that Marvel is developing a non-spandex title celebrating the heroism of US soldiers in Iraq. And while Chuck Dixon's AMERICAN POWER for Crossgen has been cancelled, that it got anywhere near publication at all shows that certain portions of America are feeling the need to be reassured that their country is still the City on the Hill.

THE COMMISSAR VANISHES

What also suggests to me that the events of the past month aren't purely commercially motivated is Micah Wright's truly excellent bit of civil disobedience over the past couple of weeks.

When DC canned STORMWATCH, someone forgot to tell Amazon that the third STORMWATCH trade would no longer be issued. Wright rallied readers and like-minded troublemakers via the Delphi forums and within two days the theoretically non-existent third STORMWATCH trade peaked as the 55th best selling book on Amazon.com, outselling every other graphic novel. A search on Amazon now shows that, like photos of Stalin and his ever-shrinking cabinet - or the details of Wright's own military service record - the commissar has vanished: "From the Publisher - THIS TITLE HAS BEEN POSTPONED INDEFINATELY [sic]". Yet less political Vertigo titles continue to limp on with sales well below that of STORMWATCH or WILDCATS.

'We're seeing a conscious return to the superhero as Don Quixote.' The pendulum swings. So it goes. Comic editors have been whispering about needing more "picture books for the kiddies" since last autumn, and they are retreating to what has always worked for them in the past. Like any sudden shift by a large corporation, there have been casualties: DC cancelled my favourite title; Marvel fired one of my favourite artists. A lot of creatives have been reminded that companies don't have loyalties, they only have needs.

And the ones left standing have to work that bit harder to make good, entertaining spandex titles. Like Alice, they have to run very quickly indeed just to stay in the same place.

This can be done - anyone who remembers the Giffen/deMatteis JLI run, or who is reading Mark Waid's SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT, can vouch for how good spandex titles can be. Too often, though, a big spandex title, with all its corporate shackles, is just an excuse for mediocre writing.

Quite a few people I know respond to this by just pirating copies of the mediocre stuff from internet download sites. I can't actually get too annoyed about this, as my anger toward people who consciously turn in mediocre writing is narrowly greater than my passion for artist rights. I make a deliberate effort to buy the singles of the comics I really like, however, to try to ensure their survival. Yes, I prefer trades too, but waiting for the trade has been the death of a few too many good titles recently.

THE HOUR OF LICENSING

Speaking of trades and manga, the really interesting thing for me about this return to the classic properties, classically packaged, is how it consciously cedes whole territories of the sequential market to manga and to European albums. How can it not be conscious, when DC makes deals to distribute Humanoids and 2000AD books in America? Why commission titles for girls with existing properties when you can just licence manga, as DC has hinted it plans to do via new division CMX?

Licensing is cheap and low-risk, while creating western tankubon- format books presents the problem of how you get anything approaching the typical Western comic ad ratio (one page of ads to two pages of story) in those little digest books.

Time for a bit more Turgenev, this time telling us how to write indie and European comics:

"Doubting everything, Hamlet, of course, spares not himself; his mind is too much developed to be satisfied with what he finds within himself. He is conscious of his weakness, but even this self- consciousness is his power: from it comes his irony, in contrast with the enthusiasm of Don Quixote. Constantly concerned with himself, always a creature of introspection, he knows minutely all his faults, scorns himself, and at the same time lives, so to speak, nourished by this scorn."

It's a trope in big business that big companies always retreat to their past strength when the market is changing and they actually should attack. DC is being more adventurous in licence acquisition, but at the same time it's throwing bones to its hardcore fanbase via the return of Hal Jordan and Firestorm. Marvel, however, seems to be retreating. Why does it matter? Why licence manga when you have profitable franchises like the X-Men, Avengers and Fantastic Four?

DON'T MENTION THE WAR

The other day, a friend sent me some comic sales statistics from Germany, a country of 83 million people (versus the USA's 293 million). Roughly two thirds of the German comic market is manga, with the remaining one third split evenly between American and European comics. With American comics, trades outsell singles three to one.

Part of this is due to the fact that German comic stores are more like bookstores, and much more girl-friendly - so the strength of manga, which gets lost in the USA due to the chasm between direct- market stats and bookstore stats, is more accurately reflected in Germany. Part of this is due to the fact that a US single (22 pages of content) is two euros, a manga (160-180 pages of content) is five euros, and a European album (46-64 pages of content) is fifteen euros. The market is saying something, but the companies who think they're strong don't listen.

Meanwhile, Don Quixote rides forth in ungrateful Iraq (they're not listening either) with his little buddy Great Britain as Sancho Panza, to tilt for truth, oil and the American way. And we are given shiny spandex heroes to reassure us that Right Always Triumphs.

Mind you, the anxiety and pessimism of the middle years of World War II spurred an artistic flourishing of - not superheroes - but Film Noir. Now, the mess in Iraq is hardly World War II, but perhaps Hamlet has been written off too soon.

"Everything passes; good deeds remain." - Ivan Turgenev, 'Hamlet and Don Quixote', 1860.

Alex de Campi is a comics writer whose projects include the Eisner-nominated SMOKE with Igor Kordey and the forthcoming KAT & MOUSE with Federica Manfredi.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution 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.