Barbelith Underground > Comic Books

let's just say I'm as excited by those X2 posters as the nexy geek, and it has a lot to do with reading slightly naff Jim Lee X-comics as a kid, but I would be kidding myself - KIDDING MYSELF - if I thought that made Rogue a deeply important cultural archetype.

i agree with your general point that the characters being discussed for Epic pitches (e.g. M.O.D.O.K. and Power Pack*) are not important parts of contemporary cultural mythology, but not with this specific point. you'd be kidding yourself not to think that the X-Men are not major cultural icons, at least as a team/concept. most of the individual members, such as Rogue, whom you mentioned, are less culturally significant on their own, but on the other hand certain other individuals on the team (most notably Wolverine) are major pop culture icons. in any case, the X-Men as a superhero team have massive name recognition for everyone i know under the age of 30 or so, even non-geeks. i work at a brokerage firm (not exactly a hotbed of comic-book culture), and lots and lots of people were talking about X2 before and after it came out, and they all had a basic familiarity with the major characters and their powers and such and such. they aren't quite on the level of Superman, but that doesn't mean they aren't a significant part of the culture. i think you could also make an argument that while Superman is more widely known across all age ranges, i think that the X-Men are considered far more culturally relevant in younger demographics - most twentysomethings know who Superman is, but very few give a shit about him.

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as far as the more general debate-

i agree that the importance of the Epic call for open submissions is probably overstated among its supporters. if you really want to make comics, you don't need permission from Marvel to start trying, and it's kind of silly to think about the Epic thing as if it's some sort of revelation from heaven. the world for aspiring comics writers and artists isn't significantly different now than it was before the Epic thing was announced in any realistic sense.

however, i'm less enthused about the way a lot of people in the DIY camp and the anti-superhero folks seem to be clinging to some antiquated notions of authenticity and creativity. i don't buy the model of art-making where the artist summons up Meaning from the depths of the soul or what-have-you. that's just Romantic-era baggage from the days of the tortured soul starving in a garret for the love of art and truth and beauty.

no one pulls anything they create from thin air, and no one infuses their work with meaning. anyone who writes anything, paints anything, plays anything, is drawing on other people's work at every step, whether they acknowledge it or not, and their work can only have meaning in the context of the big meme soup of culture. as such, the idea that one person's DIY non-superhero comic is more "real," or more "true," or more "authentic," or somehow essentially superior to another person's run writing The New Adventures of Power Pack, is, frankly, horseshit.

i don't believe for a minute that, say, Frank Miller's work on The Dark Knight Returns is any less brilliant or any less artisically valid simply because he was working with characters that he didn't invent himself, in much the same way that i would never argue that DJ Shadow's Endtroducing is anything less than a masterpiece because every sound on the CD is a sample of someone else's work. you work with the tools that suit what you're doing, and if that means a character that's been written by a thousand different people before or a Dizzy Gillespie sample, than that's what it is. it doesn't make you any less creative, it doesn't make your work any less personal, to draw on other people's work, or, rather, to draw on other people's work overtly.

* by saying that i don't think Power Pack is a major part of American cultural mythology, i am in no way implying that i don't absolutely fucking adore Remembrunt's ideas on that front

Pitching to Epic