Writin’ About Writers
I came across this article thanks to Mr. Benito’s Twitter.
It’s a long article, but I invite you to check it out when you can. It’s well researched, interesting, and examines an odd quirk of today’s comics industry. My short reaction is that it’s about half spot on and half malarkey.
The premise is that today’s comic book writers are given too much credit for the final product, often unfairly and at the expense of the rest of the creative team. I agree with that completely. I’ve lost track of how many reviews for Atomic Robo will heap praises on me, sometimes citing specific moments that they have no idea were Scott’s contributions! And then toward the end of the review they’ll mention off-handedly that the art was great too. Lame.
Don’t get me wrong, my pathetic little ego lives for those reviews, but it’s impossible to draw a distinct line between what Scott brings to an issue and what I do. The last page of our FCBD 2009 story is a perfect example of this. It’s the main punchline of the narrative, and it’s carried 100% by the art. Further, the joke itself, that there’s grenades hidden in an Igloo cooler, would never have occurred to me were it not for Scott’s original concept sketches wherein Dr. Dinosaur equipped himself with, among other things, a spatula and the cooler. And Scott wouldn’t have done that had I not explained Dr. Dinosaur as someone who has had to scavenge to survive and may or may not be completely out of his mind.
So, yeah, who the hell told that joke on the last page? I dunno! But I’m the one who gets a pat on the back for it.
Anyway, back to the article! The author cites comic book runs that are typically identified and marketed by the writers — either alone or so centrally that they may as well be. The author then posits that the quality of those works changed significantly when the artists changed. Therefore, why oh why is the artist so maligned and forgotten when he or she is clearly a major factor in those works? The author seems genuinely mystified by this phenomenon, especially given the low opinion he holds of today’s comics writers.
Well, here’s the answer. Ready? It happens because it behooves the publishers to create an illusion of continuity. The end.
If a run is popular, the cheapest way to keep it going is to remind everyone that Talent A is still on the book, so it’s still good, so you should still buy it, or you should start to buy it so you can see what everyone’s been talking about. More often than not, Talent A is going to be the writer simply because a writer can finish several scripts in the time it takes an artist to draw one. In fact, that’s why publishers are encouraged to market writers over other creators: one “big name” writer can carry several books at once while a “big name” artist is lucky to handle one title consistently. So, you unfairly elevate the writer on enough titles for enough years, and blammo, you create the myth that the writer is the most important part of a creative team, which further adds to the publisher’s benefit of continuing to market the writer, because they’re the ones who are important anyway. It’s this perfect little cycle. The myth is only reinforced by the industry’s desperate gamble to sell titles based on an individual issue’s “importance” to a character’s history. This “importance” is an entirely narrative function, and while I wouldn’t suggest that you cannot tell a story through pictures alone, the kind of melodramatic faux-importance we’re talking about is primarily carried by a bunch of words. So, again, market the writer to market the event to market the writer for the next event and on and on.
What bugs me about the article is that the author, having forgotten that there are realities of business tied to the comics industry as described above, then spends a great deal of time lamenting the sorry state of today’s comic book writers who somehow get primary credit for the final comic when these writers aren’t as good as, say, Alan Moore, who is similarly credited.
What?
I mean, maybe I’m reading into it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but is his complaint really that we don’t have enough Alan Moores? If so, I hope he never wins the lottery. “Only seventeen million? No, no, it’s fine. I guess…”
Not everyone is going to be Alan Moore. That’s what makes him Alan Moore. You should thank god there’s one of him at all. But no, the article seems to be crying out “Where, oh where, is the modern Alan Moore?”
Uh, Northampton, I think.
