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Comics theses.
Mar. 24th, 2009 10:19 amThis is another old-journal repost, made after the Spider-Man: Brand New Day ridiculousness, and my utter weariness with DC & Marvel's year-in year-out spam of GIANT GROUNDBREAKING CROSSOVER EVENTS. If you're not interested in comic books as a storytelling medium, this post will bore you. Otherwise ... I'm hoping for a bit of rambunctious discussion. I have a lot to say on this subject, and this just scratches the surface, so expect more later this week. Okay. Too much introduction already. On with the post!!
I really really really want to found my own imprint of comics. This is not a new thought for me, admittedly- I want to work as a comic book writer, ideally, and after all the shit with DC's infinite crisis, and Marvel's Phoenix titles, I decided that while I'd still jump at a chance to work on any existing comic, under any conditions, there are some things I really want out of comics, and only a new imprint could do them.
Here's my Comics Theses 95, so to speak:
1) One book per team. No more Uncanny, Astonishing, Extreme X-Men; no more Amazing spectacular Friendly Neighboorhood Spider-Man. One concept, one title. Period. If you have more stories to tell than a one-book-a month rate can handle, publish two a month. Stop this shit where readers have to buy six monthly titles to understand the context of a single scene.
2) A clear timeline. One book per team/character/whatever makes this a lot easier. Start every book off with the date and time of the first scene. A set timeline makes all your continuity juggling easier, because you know, at any given time, where every character is. It doesn't have to advance at a steady rate from book to book- one comic could cover ten minutes and the next a whole month. But there's no going back. Which leads to:
3) No retcons, no regrets. Dynamic characters, changing worlds, storylines that have permanent impact. This is the most important, most central tenet to this list. Make risky choices, change the lives of the characters forever. It raises the stakes of every story, and makes everything more exciting, I think, when there's something real to fear. No magic wand will ever make all the problems vanish. Life will be messy and complicated. Isn't that great? And so, of course:
4) There are established rules for character death. This rule started off as dead means Dead, but honestly I think that robs a little bit of storyteling magic from what's available. What I want is to know that when I see a beheaded corpse, that individual is forever a corpse, unless previously established methods of resurrection are relevant. So maybe there's a place for undead, and definitely when your hero dies in a fiery explosion and nobody sees the remains, you can still wonder. But even a casual reader should understand when somebody's mostly dead instead of all dead, and that the only thing you can do with a guy who's all dead is go through his pockets and look for spare change. And, if it needs to be said, "all dead" should be the more common kind of dead. With clear rules like this in place though, there's only one more (I think logical) step:
5) One source for superpowers. If your superpowers come from cosmic rays, so do everybody else's. If they're a genetic mutation- well hey, there are many ways to mutate genes, from radiation to difference at birth, but nobody's going to pop up who's a god from another dimension, or who got his super-strength from a magic jewel, or what have you. One continuity, logical in its consequences. There's still room for variation, but the rules of the world need to exist, and to mean something. Some things (like erasing twenty years of continuity) should not be possible at all.
Does all of this make sense? I can be a bit inarticulate some times, and since my objective here is to inject some sane world-building into comics, it would be a shame if that were the case here. If it makes sense, then, tell me: does it sound as good to you as it does to me?
I really really really want to found my own imprint of comics. This is not a new thought for me, admittedly- I want to work as a comic book writer, ideally, and after all the shit with DC's infinite crisis, and Marvel's Phoenix titles, I decided that while I'd still jump at a chance to work on any existing comic, under any conditions, there are some things I really want out of comics, and only a new imprint could do them.
Here's my Comics Theses 95, so to speak:
1) One book per team. No more Uncanny, Astonishing, Extreme X-Men; no more Amazing spectacular Friendly Neighboorhood Spider-Man. One concept, one title. Period. If you have more stories to tell than a one-book-a month rate can handle, publish two a month. Stop this shit where readers have to buy six monthly titles to understand the context of a single scene.
2) A clear timeline. One book per team/character/whatever makes this a lot easier. Start every book off with the date and time of the first scene. A set timeline makes all your continuity juggling easier, because you know, at any given time, where every character is. It doesn't have to advance at a steady rate from book to book- one comic could cover ten minutes and the next a whole month. But there's no going back. Which leads to:
3) No retcons, no regrets. Dynamic characters, changing worlds, storylines that have permanent impact. This is the most important, most central tenet to this list. Make risky choices, change the lives of the characters forever. It raises the stakes of every story, and makes everything more exciting, I think, when there's something real to fear. No magic wand will ever make all the problems vanish. Life will be messy and complicated. Isn't that great? And so, of course:
4) There are established rules for character death. This rule started off as dead means Dead, but honestly I think that robs a little bit of storyteling magic from what's available. What I want is to know that when I see a beheaded corpse, that individual is forever a corpse, unless previously established methods of resurrection are relevant. So maybe there's a place for undead, and definitely when your hero dies in a fiery explosion and nobody sees the remains, you can still wonder. But even a casual reader should understand when somebody's mostly dead instead of all dead, and that the only thing you can do with a guy who's all dead is go through his pockets and look for spare change. And, if it needs to be said, "all dead" should be the more common kind of dead. With clear rules like this in place though, there's only one more (I think logical) step:
5) One source for superpowers. If your superpowers come from cosmic rays, so do everybody else's. If they're a genetic mutation- well hey, there are many ways to mutate genes, from radiation to difference at birth, but nobody's going to pop up who's a god from another dimension, or who got his super-strength from a magic jewel, or what have you. One continuity, logical in its consequences. There's still room for variation, but the rules of the world need to exist, and to mean something. Some things (like erasing twenty years of continuity) should not be possible at all.
Does all of this make sense? I can be a bit inarticulate some times, and since my objective here is to inject some sane world-building into comics, it would be a shame if that were the case here. If it makes sense, then, tell me: does it sound as good to you as it does to me?
