Reginald Hudlin is going to write the latest BLACK PANTHER title, starting in February 2005. He's primarily a film director by trade. And he's already ended up doing an interview denying that he's going to turn the character into a rapper.

Interviewer Michael Sangiacomo explains, "The question had to be asked, considering that Hudson wrote and directed HOUSE PARTY I and II, and is the director of THE BERNIE MAC SHOW". He might also have mentioned Marvel's remarkably ill-advised solicitation for issue #1. "The Wakandan super hero is back with Hollywood heavyweight Hudlin (HOUSE PARTY, BOOMERANG) and fan favorite [John] Romita Jr... teaming up to deliver a new ongoing series that's sure to excite true believers and the hip hop faithful".

The hip hop faithful. Good lord. Do Americans really talk like that? Somehow I suspect they don't. Perhaps the hip hop faithful will be distraught by the news that the Black Panther is going to be written in character. More likely, if they care at all, they're just mildly relieved that it's just the solicitations that are patronising, not the actual comic.

In fact, this is not Hudlin's first venture into comics. Back in July, Random House published BIRTH OF A NATION, a graphic novel that he co-wrote with Aaron McGruder. It's a satire about East St Louis declaring independence after election fraud. Never read it, but it sounds quite good - heck, Kyle Baker did the art. It's certainly more encouraging than the news that he wrote HOUSE PARTY II.

You won't find any mention of BIRTH OF A NATION in Marvel's publicity for the new BLACK PANTHER title. In part, that probably shouldn't be surprising. Marvel is aiming for the superhero crowd. They're not going after the Kyle Baker audience. Besides, Hudlin's films are much better known than his one comic. The recognition factor is much higher.

'Whedon, Smith and Straczynski are marketed as big names in comics.' Nonetheless, even if Hudlin had a better established comics career under his belt, his publishers would still be pushing the film line. This is what happens when writers from a different medium turn up in comics - we are breathlessly reminded that this person is a real novelist, or a real writer from a proper medium like TV or cinema. The veiled implication is that somebody who has written films, TV or novels must be fantastic. Because as we all know, the standard of writing in every other medium is unflaggingly high. And up to a point, people seem to buy into it.

So, for example, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith and J Michael Straczynski have been successfully marketed as big name authors in the context of the comics market. Viewed from a mainstream perspective, they're really creators with cult followings, but the mere fact of being writers who had achieved some degree of success elsewhere seems to lend instant credibility.

IDENTITY CRISIS was promoted largely around the idea that Brad Meltzer was a bestselling author. He'd already written an arc on GREEN ARROW, one of DC's better selling books, but that didn't stop DC hammering the best-selling novelist angle. This may have stemmed in part from DC's apparent delusion that IDENTITY CRISIS was in some way marketable to anyone other than superhero fans, but it also lent instant credibility to the book.

Admittedly, this only works up to a certain point. There are few words more overused than 'New York Times bestseller list' - have you seen some of the dross that makes it onto that list? Marvel bravely tried to push October's WEAPON X prose novel on the basis that author Marc Cerasini was a best-selling author. Nobody was fooled. Perhaps Marvel's mistake was to mention the title of his bestseller. The book in question was OJ SIMPSON: AMERICAN HERO, AMERICAN TRAGEDY, a rush job bio that appeared within three weeks of the murder and was described by one reviewer as "a truly shoddy piece of sanctimonious opportunism".

'There are few words more overused than 'New York Times bestseller list'.' In fact, Cerasini has written tons of books, most of them teen novels, movie adaptations and learn-to-read books such as I AM A JEDI APPRENTICE. His recent work includes novelisations of ALIEN VS PREDATOR and SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: THE MOVIE. Nothing wrong with any of this (well, apart from the OJ and Diana bios), but at best it's the CV of a journeyman, and there's no point trying to claim such people as credible authors.

It also doesn't work if the creator in question does so many comics that readers already see them primarily as a comics author. By my count, Greg Rucka's written more novels than Brad Meltzer has, but best of luck trying to market him as a novelist now.

Yet if you can convince the readers that they're dealing with a proper, credible writer from another medium, it seems to work. Even if they've never actually heard of him before. (How many comics fans have actually read a Brad Meltzer novel?)

In fairness, most writers who turn up by this route are genuinely pretty good. I have limited sympathy for John Byrne's complaints that they're putting proper comics writers out of work; aside from anything else, superhero comics are such an inward-looking and self-contained community that anything new, no matter how marginally, is usually a good thing. And the comics tend to be worth reading.

But it's still interesting to see the reaction to these writers turning up in comics. There is a definite undertone of, "hey, this is a real writer, from a proper medium". It plays off comics' unspoken inferiority complex, the same reasoning that leads many superhero fans to assume that every property must one day aspire to be a TV show or a film.

Of course, that inferiority complex is not without justification - whatever one thinks of the possibilities of the medium, there's no denying that it's presently a very marginal thing, playing to a narrow audience. But that also translates at times into a slightly awestruck response to anyone who's worked in a more prominent field, combined with a sort of disbelieving gratitude that they bothered to lower themselves to this sort of thing. And the inferiority complex doesn't have to go that far, does it?

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

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