Astro City #45 - "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes"

[laughing_tree]

We always need new superheroes. But actual new ones, reflecting the modern day, rather than reflecting yesterday. Unless reflecting yesterday is the point of the story. But the idea that we don’t need new superheroes is like not needing new romances or new detectives. The moment you don’t need new characters in genre stories, the genre is as dead as Latin. It’s not a crime that superheroes don’t age, but it’s a problem that superhero series don’t more often age and die and get replaced. Imagine if Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski and other modern (well, relatively) PIs couldn’t get an audience because Sam Spade and Race Williams were taking up all the shelf space. If you’re writing X-Men and your metaphors are about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, that’s not all that much more modern than if your metaphors are about the Red Scare and McCarthyism. Ask yourself new questions, and put the results in your stories. Steve Englehart juiced up Captain America by asking what Captain America meant to the early 1970s. What does he mean now? What does Superman represent to the world? How does that, whatever it is, fit into the world today? Same for Batman, same for Wonder Woman. Tell stories you couldn’t tell ten, twenty, fifty years ago. -- Kurt Busiek

Comments

[laughing_tree]

He's referring to the late 90s, post-speculator boom, which is after the days of McFarlane Spidey.

I don't know what the CBR thread you're citing is meant to show. The reasons given there for leaving comics are hardly exclusive to the modern era but rather span eras, and only one of them, retcons, has a connection to the absence of change you're talking about. And even there, some retcons revert a change, but others *are* change. And the last reason on that list -- the end of Silver Age style stories -- is about precisely the opposite of lack of change.

The ratings for a hit TV show today can't hold a candle to a hit TV show from a few decades ago, but nobody says TV is dying. The reason is the Balkanization of TV -- there are more shows, more channels, so the audience gets divided up between them. And that's something that should be kept in mind for comics, as well. That's why numbers alone really don't really prove anything. To borrow another Busiek quote:

"I remember when being a comics fan meant you could buy everything Marvel, DC and Warren put out each month. Good, bad, all of it. Nowadays there are more good comics coming out than any but the most dedicated reader can keep up with. More bad, too. Nowadays is better than thenadays."

You said:
"I cannot conceive of a reasonable argument that would suggest that creating kid friendly comics and distributing them digitally would not be a good idea."

Both those are being done. Perhaps imperfectly but there's a pretty big gap between "there are things the industry could be doing better" to "comics are dying."

[goattoucher]

First, I -often- hear that broadcast television is dying, because FCC restrictions prevent them from doing, saying, or showing many things that cable and streaming channels can show readily. Also, because broadcast commercial television relies on advertising for income, and the value of advertising is greatly reduced by the advent of DVR technology.

So, while our current culture has been called "the second golden age of television" due to the quality of the material available, the old delivery system is, in fact, dying, and we will probably see it gone within our lifetime.

As for comics, I don't think "comics are dying" so much as "comic publishers are undermining themselves".

[laughing_tree]

But in this analogy we aren't talking about broadcast TV, just TV in general.

[goattoucher]

We're talking about content delivery systems and revenue.

Cable and streaming services produce new content, readily available without interruptions and without content restrictions. The shows end when they are over, and new shows replace them.

Broadcast television is going by the wayside because or content restrictions, an outdated revenue model (commercials), and shows last for -decades- with little change because that is what the core audience wants. Big Bang Theory is the Batman of broadcast television. It goes on and on, and nothing every really changes.

[laughing_tree]

But however endangered broadcast TV is, TV itself is in no danger. Likewise, the idea that however stale Batman is is some huge problem that risks "killing comics," as you put it, doesn't fly with me.

[goattoucher]

"Killing comics" was not the best phrase. Consider comics like the energy industry: renewable energy is the way to go, but these companies have billions invested in the old way of doing things. Rather than start to change the paradigm now, they resist in an attempt to wring every last drop from the figurative turnip.

Publishing companies have a lot of money invested in printers and brick and mortar stores. The repercussions of not moving to digital publishing are obviously not as dire as continuing fossil fuel use, but the future of the industry and the genre would be better off if they would start coming to terms with digital distribution sooner rather than later.

The cost reduction of producing comics would free up funds to establish kid friendly titles. The combination of kid friendly comics available through digital media at a lower price point that $4.99 an issue would open up the youth market, which would turn into the mainstream comics market with time. New readers means more money, which means more and better quality comics, which means a better hobby for us all.

[laughing_tree]

I'd say the publishers are making the transition, with books like Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl, which I understand sell better digitally than in print.

I mainly took issue with the doom and gloom tone of your comments. It's a tone that seems to have been around as long as I've been reading comics, and yet the medium's still here and flourishing. With so much good stuff coming out and available, more than at any point in the medium's history, I just get frustrated when people insist said medium's in crisis just because the Big 2 heroes they grew up with don't scratch their itch anymore. The whole point of the original Busiek quote is the pointless and dangerous restrictiveness of keeping those characters at center.

[goattoucher]

It's hardly flourishing. We are in a golden age of superhero movies and the sales numbers today are just now starting to match the numbers of the late 90's -slump-.

The reason we have the embarrassment of riches that we do today is because digital distribution reduces the entry cost of new publishers. Most of the most interesting and exciting comics aren't coming from the Big Two. At while we might use those comics to "scratch our itch", the Big Two are Big for a reason: more people read those stories. You aren't going to be able to sustain the industry based on admittedly high quality comics that only sell 10k copies a month.

And I agree with Busiek: we need heroes to adapt and change to reflect the culture. Superheroes in the big two don't do that, because nerds of our generation don't want them to. They want the same, decade after decade, and they want the stories less and less appropriate for children (via mature themes and graphic content), producing another obstacle to new readers.

If I seem "doom and gloom"y, it is because it seems obvious that changes need to happen, but the Big Two are reluctant to make them.

[laughing_tree]

"We are in a golden age of superhero movies and the sales numbers today are just now starting to match the numbers of the late 90's -slump-."

See what I said about Balkanization. Plus, now there are also the digital and trade paperback sales to consider. Comparing single physical issue sales alone no longer says much, nor does it paint the whole picture.

There are more good comics available today, catering to a greater range of tastes than ever, than in any other era of the medium's history. I'm hard pressed to not consider that flourishing.

"Most of the most interesting and exciting comics aren't coming from the Big Two."

Yeah, but isn't that what should be the case? Isn't it right and proper that it's the newer stuff created for today rather than the stuff created for yesterday that is the most vital, the most relevant, the most interesting? We've come back to the point of the original quote there, which you agreed with.

You agree that we shouldn't keep clinging to the outmoded ideas designed for yesterday's audience, yet at the same time you view the diminishing relevance of those outmoded ideas not as their right and proper fate finally catching up to them but rather as some abnormal crisis that endangers the medium. That unless these old characters created for readers in the 40s and 60s continue to thrive, it's a problem. There seems to be a contradiction there.

[goattoucher]

The fact that the most exciting comics are not coming from the big two is a problem because these companies lack the budgets to adequately market these books, so, unless you are already in the hobby, you are unlikely to know that they exist.

As for old characters, I like them well enough, but I find more than a few of them dull, and I find the fetishization of the 80's that Johns and Quesada engage in to be -maddening-: taking what little progress has been made for these characters and completely negating them.

One of my least favorite popular characters is Batman. He suffers from three important problems:

1: Due to his iconic status, many fans will not tolerate change. Batman must continue to be Batman the way he has always been Batman. Batman Inc.? -Great- idea. Fans hated it and it went away.

2: Due to his popularity, any unpopular moves will result in loss of revenue. Batman cannot change. The classic elements of his rogues gallery cannot change. The editors are paralyzed by the fact that any move they make away from the status quo would likely have -profound- negative revenue results, so everything must remain the same.

3: Because he is popular, he must be -everywhere-, which results in him regularly moving away from the street level heroism he was created for, into cosmic level adventures (where he must not only participate, but be a key element of success), and then back to the street level. He fights Two Face one day, is key to the defeat of Darkseid the next, and is back to being legitimately threatened by the Scarecrow the next.

The creative gymnastics necessary to make this happen are mind-boggling, and stretch the suspension of disbelief beyond the breaking point. The most common (and most aggravating), method is to turn everyone into jobbers compared to Batman. Heroes like Green Lantern and the Flash save the world and cosmos regularly in their own books, but are bumbling half-wits when they are the same room as Batman. If I had a nickel for every time Batman just pulled a GL's ring off their finger in the last fifteen years... I'd have a lot of nickels.

This enforced status quo is -terrible-. It makes for by stories and a static universe. Batman stories regularly call back to twenty year old or older stories that would leave new readers scratching their heads.

But these characters are necessary to the industry. They are hugely popular, and form the fiscal backbone of the publishing companies. The problem is that they aren't for new readers: they are for established readers. Further, because a comic with a bat on the cover is a sure-fire money maker, the company is more likely to create another Bat-Book to satisfy the current audience than risk it on a new book to attract a new audience.