| Continuity | Astro City | Lunch |
| What Makes Good Comics? | Don Simpson | Registration |
| Party at the Clarion | ||
Am I forced to a drug-free Comic-Con?
As I sign up for the Comics Arts Conference I notice that I'm no longer the professional I was back in 1984. Now I'm a regular. I still have to pay twenty bucks for the privilege. Also queuing up for the privilege are Kurt Busiek, Paul Levitz, Jessica Abel, Don Simpson, and Peter Sanderson. Haven't heard of Sanderson? He has possibly the most talked-about job in Marvel Comics. He's the staff archivist, which means he knows exactly where all the comics are that nobody reads any more.
According to last week's newspaper-I needed something to wrap my lunch in-Steve Geppi just paid sixty grand for an imperfect Action #1. How does that compare with the entire output of Superman last month? Have we reached the point where a single issue of a comic written seven decades ago is worth an entire publishing run today? Rumors still exist on the net that DC bought Diamond. Scuttlebutt today is that it was the other way 'round: Geppi is now the secret Editor-King of comics and a member-in-training of the Trilateral Commission on Comics Arts.
Paul Levitz compares Superman to soul food--comfort food in his Northern slang. Comic book tales embody the Zen spirit that the destination is less important than the journey. We know how its going to end.
Peter Sanderson describes early comics the same way Clinton describes marijuana. Easy to get into, it draws people in and sucks their life away until they know nothing but the powers of their favorite superteam and the date of their next fix. Continuity required investigation in the elder days and this was the hold on fans. Continuity was the gateway drug to comic books.
As long as you don't inhale. Printer's ink is death on your lungs.
Mark explains that following continuity is learning the skills of learning. Students who wouldn't dream of memorizing the presidents of the United States can tell you every member of the Legion, their powers, and their home world. In the old days, Randy Duncan points out, knowledge of comics trivia elevated your self image.
How low was it before, Randy?
Back then, said Paul, there was a defined body of knowledge, and the definition was made by the readers. The readers defined the canon. They decided when the chroniclers--the people who wrote the damn comics--were wrong. Is comics fandom the stillborn precursor to the web?
Today, like everything else in the world, comics fandom has balkanized. We have our X-Men X-Perts, our Spawn Scholars, and our Vertigo, uh, Velodromes.
Alliteration can be hell.
The form of debate is the same in comics as it is in any other art form. That's an observation Peter Sanderson made when he ventured onto the Joycian discussion groups on the net. The criticisms he heard there were the same criticisms that fill RACM. I hear they even have their own conventions.
In the wake of the Marvel Age, DC envied Marvel's lack of history. After a ten-year campaign by Gerry Conway the Crisis on Infinite Earths chopped their history away as well. Peter Sanderson's counterpart at DC, according to Levitz, had to resign under doctor's orders because of the stress involved when each issue came out.
This was during the Reagan era. Surely he could've just said no?
In the end, the conclusion was summarized by Levitz: the story has to make sense to the listener. Comics as oral history?
Overheard while waiting, two men discussing Power Man/Iron Fist, Heroes for Hire. At an office party before he took over the series, he'd had the differences between the heroes explained to him: "Danny is the thinker, Lucas is strong. Danny is white, Lucas is... not."
"Well, at least they left it open for you. You could make him Asian one issue, Black the next."
Kurt would rather it not be the next age. "I'd rather keep doing something different."
Stan and Jack's work was only possible as a reaction against the golden age. Without the golden age, they wouldn't have had anything to respond to. "What you call refinement, I call stagnation." When Kurt started in comics it was all a matter of maintenance. The worlds were crowded. Management didn't know why it worked so they kept trying to do the same thing over again. It's that Asian philosophy again: the glorious meals of the past.
The prevailing belief was that the comics audience turns over every three years, so it didn't matter if you re-used old stories. In the previous panel, Paul Levitz had noted that some romance comics were literally redrawn, modifying the hemlines and the hairstyles. "One of the reasons that the romance line died," he said.
The comics bigwigs have been missing the boat since the early eighties. Because of the direct market, they haven't had any idea what the general public really wants. When new things came out, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the industry looked, saw that it didn't fit into their schema, and ignored it or made fun of it. Recalling a parody from an Ambush Bug comic, Kurt notes that rather than throw away the title they should have done something with Big Fat Freakin' Frogs. "It's a title that suggests your parents won't like it."
We as an industry shot ourselves in the foot in the seventies, and we corrected the error by shooting the other foot. Now at least we limp evenly. As prices for other magazines began to rise in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the industry made the decision that, as these were comics for children, they had to keep the price down. So while other magazines rose in price, comics did not. While this allowed comics readers to buy many more comics than they had under a less inflated dollar, it also meant that the retailer made far less money on a product that took up just as much space as anything else on the shelf. That was the first accidental discharge. In the seventies the comics industry almost went under because there were no outlets. Retailers had stopped carrying the product in any volume.
So the industry developed the direct market. It worked amazingly well. It was literally a lifeboat to the comics industry. But we were so happy to be afloat we didn't notice that the only people we were selling to were the rest of the castaways. Now, a generation later, we're running out of readers. Why is that a surprise?
That's why superheroes are the only major comics genre left. Because superhero fans were a tenacious lot. "We discovered we can still get people to buy economically stupid packages if we put superheroes on it. The solution is not to try and get women and children to buy better economically stupid packages." The solution is to find an economically better solution that retailers will carry. Back before we reduced the comics size to keep the price the same, the successful comic was a big thick anthology that competed economically with other mass market magazines. Go look in other countries: in Japan and Europe, comics are still successful. What are they? Bit thick anthologies that compete economically with everything else on the shelf.
But back to Astro City--this is a panel about Astro City--when Kurt sits down to write an Astro City story, "if I know how to write the story, I write a different story." Anything he already knows how to write isn't for Astro City.
"Verisimilitude" is summed up as "believe the moment". The N-Forcer is a high-tech hero who first appeared in 1959. Yet the technology of the average person hasn't changed. He's not asking the Moorian question of "what would it be like if it were real," but "what would you be looking at if you were in it?" Thus providing the realistic background and foreground.
Kurt learned the power of the first person narrative from the movie "Singin' in the Rain", (echoing Mark Evanier's belief in comics as musicals, see issue 3 of Fear and Loathing 1993). The comics format allows the writer to lie and still let the readers know he's lying.
Excuse me, I need more tea. (Note: Work not written chronologically. See last section.)
Kurt's response expanded on that: he's trying to separate the genre from the formula. "I don't think it's a narrow genre, I think it's been narrowly explored."
His characters often resemble other characters because they're based on the same archetypes. Superman and Samaritan are both Christ figures. "That's why he's called Samaritan, that's why he's got a dove on his chest."
One of the things he's finding out as he investigates these archetypes is that "all of the good names are not taken."
Part of what makes a comic "good", then, is that it makes use of the potentials of the medium. He pulls from Bob Harvey's idea that a good comic requires words and pictures that are interdependent, and pictorial styles that mesh with the stories.
An audience member (we actually have a few now) makes the point that the author should get their intent across. Is effective communication what makes a good comic?
"It depends upon the reader," says Donna.
Part of the problem is the definition of "good". Who decides? If it comes down to trusting the critics, we then have to decide, well, what makes a good critic?
Probably someone who knows good comics.
In the end, Peter makes the best point of all: "I know what the problem is, I'm pushing the wrong button."
He was talking about the tape recorder.
"Photoshop is an addiction--it's like heroin."
"A whole generation of us as artists are trying to replicate the Marvel Universe on our own terms."
"Howard the Duck was a pivotal event in comics, because a generation of artists became wary of surrendering work to Marvel."
"I'm one guy trying to do all this and that's stupid."
"The Bible: 2,000 years of Kurt Busiek."
And that's the end.
The goodies bag was a disappointment. Thinner than a cheap condom it is unlikely to hold the massive number of mid-seventies (bronze age?) I typically try to stuff into it. I guess I'll have to follow James Brown's advice and get my own damn bag. Todd McFarlane's SPAWN is coming to HBO in 1997. Is a crossover with Superman far behind?
The production values and the amount of art are both down in the souvenir program book. There's not even a table of contents for the artists, probably because it isn't necessary. There do seem to be more articles, possibly because talk is cheap.
And that's it. The souvenir book and one measly advertisement from a television show that doesn't even have a web site listed. Will I awake tomorrow and discover that everything was a dream, and I truly am the only comics fan in the universe?
The hat went over well. No one noticed the shirt, or were too polite to point it out.
Tyg arrived around ten and claimed that he needed to leave early. At 12:30 I left Tyg, David Goldfarb, and Sidne, among others who remain nameless because I only just met them and when you're off as many drugs as I wasn't using tonight, names take a low priority on working brain cells. Officer ID and the telephone number for "King" bail bonds rank much higher.
Met Johanna for the first time. Could've sworn it was Lois Lane in her secret identity. She apologized piecemeal--various parts of the sentence throughout the night--for not doing X because of Y, and that I needed to volunteer for Z. I think the Friends of Lulu meeting is at the same time as the Friends of Lulu web site demonstration--which makes no sense, but this is still the San Diego Con--and that I get to demonstrate it because that's the easy job, seeing as it isn't completed anyway. But I'm sure I missed something over the din of hoarsely yelled greetings and falling dinosaurs and there's nothing to worry about.
A young girl named Ann who doesn't read comics was worrying that if she ever managed to meet Tori Amos, she'd think Ann was a complete dork. This among the union of comics geeks and Internet geeks of which she was only a part because of her dad. New news out of medicine yesterday is that genetics can be overcome. All it takes is the right amount of radiation.
When the party spilled into the hallway, security spilled up the stairs. Rather than kicking us out, however, the Clarion offered us a room of our own with a real balcony wider than my shoe size. Giving us more room to stack the food and homebrew, and decreasing the chance of Ann slipping over the side and following the dinosaurs to the pavement. Her addiction to dihydrogen monoxide was getting the better of her as the night wore on.
Mike Meyers is the same Mike Meyers on alt.drugs who sold me the DARE parodies, "I turned in my parents and all I got was this lousy shirt." It is unlikely that Tyg is going to make another run of the Suicide Squid shirts, but anything is possible.
As the night wore on the party became trivia training ground for the RACC Avenue Irregulars, leaving the children and security wondering what language we were speaking. I left some of the poppy seed kringle for the cleaning crew and gave a couple of pieces to the parking attendant. Hopefully they won't have drug tests anytime soon.
The tea definitely did its job. I should market it to the Con on Sunday.
The damn stuff's gone cold on me now. I'd throw it on the birds but they'd probably end up staying up all night.
Actually, even the nightbirds have gone to sleep. Au Revoir
Jerry Stratton
"...he's an academic, but he's an academic who goes to Kenya to throw spears at dead elephants."--Xiphias Gladius