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Haus: Could lead times have something to do with it? I mean, if we're looking at the big two, they are always out of date - Chris Claremont's Dazzler was a long time after disco had had its floruit, and don't get me started on Vibe... which I can see as a combination of factors, but especially the long time it takes to go from concept to first solicitation, and also that there are so few people in charge of what gets done - how many senior editorial staff are there making decisions about the comics that take up maybe 90% of the shelf space of the average comic store (DC, Marvel, Image) and how does that compare with movies, TV or books? - so a degree of encrustation might occur. So, by the time something has gone from solicitation to commission to release, the cultural moment has passed and there isn't really anything to build on?
Dazzler, Vibe, Grunge, the Roller Disco Devils: comics have always been behind the times. What's the comics equivalent of the punks that turned up on Juliet Bravo in 1983? I guess 2000AD was already pretty punk. Anyway, yeah, comics are usually hilariously slow to follow trends but as far as I know that's not because of lead times. I'm not an expert on the production of comics and I'm aware some on this message board are, so please contribute if you can help, but I can't imagine it taking more than six months from an established publisher - DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, even Top Cow - deciding to produce a pirate comic to having the first issue on the shelves. You've got to find a writer, artists, etc and get them to do their stuff, yeah, but wouldn't that time enable a couple of issues to be completed? Hasn't Civil War been done on a schedule about that tight?
The big companies, however, like most big companies aren't run by cool, happening guys who know what's going down on the street. Most of them are so out of touch they'd still use the kind of phraseology employed in the previous sentence. That's probably a better explanation for why most mainstream stabs at trends come across so very badly. I remember a 60s Superman story about hippies hypnotizing everyone on a beach, and wasn't coolness of any kind usually linked to drug addiction in 80s comics? The writers, editors, publishers of this stuff are trying to follow fashions they're not involved in and don't really understand, and it comes across badly.
That's not a problem in the indie sector. Street Angel, Scott Pilgrim, Blue Monday don't fall into the same trap. They reference the hip world and trends within it (pirates vs ninjas, even) without being out of date. I'm not arguing that any of those titles are exactly what "the kids" are into right now, but they don't embarrass themselves. The lesser distance between creator and publisher might have something to do with that. Deadline, publisher of Tank Girl and others that was founded by the creators IIRC, even managed to capture a cultural moment or two.
Which leads me to another genre question: where's all the mad rappers at? Hip hop and comics enjoy decent links. Hip hop people read comics. Jay-Z named his comeback album after a comic. Why can't I go out and buy The New Adventures of Tupac Shakur? That shit would sell to whole comprehensives full of kids here in Britain. They don't read comics; they'd read hip hop comics. The goth kids read that graphic novel about Kurt Cobain, and the gangsta kids would buy whatever crap 50 Cent stuck his name on. There's a 50 Cent computer game and a Fiddy movie. But because comics have allowed themselves to be a specialist interest, the industry has blocked out lucrative and creatively promising areas of diversification.
sleaze: I think if we start looking too closely at genre we are going to miss the more important notion that, as the title of a certain comics website has it, comics should be good - engaging, interesting, maybe even innovative.
I'm all for innovative comics. Break the panel wall, the fourth wall and every other wall for me. But right now creators have the choice of being indie and creating their own, pure work which can be an extremely long and uncommercial road, or trying to make whatever ideas they have fit into the genre of superheroes so they can get paid. Genres can be limiting, yes. The popularity of the Western in movies allowed a number of directors to make sly, subversive films which undermined the very tenets of the genre. That's been done and done with superheroes. It's not been done in almost any other genre you can name within comics.
A wider spread of genres represented in comics doesn't stop comics being of quality. It would enable them to reach a wider audience. Wouldn't that be good? |
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