I've never actually read one of Steven Grant's comic books, but his Permanent Damage columns at Comic Book Resources offer some of the most astute commentary on comics, or even the media or politics, that I've ever been fortunate enough to read on a regular basis. This week's thoughts were no different:
Grant on CBR, Dec. 19
Back in the early '60s, original modern comics fandom, guys like Roy Thomas and Jerry Bails, who grew up with Captain Marvel (the Shazam variety) and the Justice Society Of America declared the 1940s "the golden age." They were wrong.
This is the Golden Age.
Unfortunately it's the Golden Age of Fanfic. American comics today are mostly fanfic. What is
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and
LOST GIRLS if not fanfic? Plundering old works – yes, I know all the terms like deconstruction and homage – was once considered a cynical marketing ploy; now it's virtually required. The underlying theory is that it generates resonance, the same way length is theorized to generate resonance, or the interweaving of storylines from multiple titles and overlapping characters is supposed to generate resonance. In alt comics the use of pop imagery and autobiography is supposed to generate resonance. "Resonance" is the holy grail of fanfic, the idea that you and your reader can share the same experience because you're both intimately aware of the
characters being written about. All these things are supposed to generate a satisfying complexity that will please your reader/customer and bring him back for more by implying a
collaborative experience – the myth of which was a much-cherished lynchpin in Stan Lee's pitch.
He also correctly identifies the twin engines driving most of American comics, both corporate-owned and independently published:
Grant on CBR, Dec. 19
Since at least the mid-'70s, the comics industry has been mostly a playground built on self-indulgence, on the glorification of ego on the one hand and of nostalgia on the other. And why not? What else did we have to work with? But both ego and nostalgia are built mainly to play to kindred souls, and both come with inbuilt defenses (over-defenses, really) against outside criticism; nostalgia suggests the critic is too stuffy to tolerate simple, time-tested "fun," while ego declares the critic is too hidebound/ misinformed/ unintelligent/ biased/ myopic/ plebian/ bourgois/ cantankerous/ stuffy/ unappreciative/ misguided/ petty/ self-serving to acknowledge the genius of the work. You'd think nostalgia and ego break down along business plan lines, with corporate comics – the ones with the most back history and having the most to gain economically by exploiting it – enforcing the former and self-created independent or "alternative" comics enabling the latter. It's not so simple. While it's fairly easy at this point to envision the medium evolving into a version of H.G. Wells' Eloi and Morlocks from
THE TIME MACHINE (which are the ugly, cannibalistic Morlocks and which the fair, ephemeral Eloi probably depends on your P.O.V....) the current reality of the medium is a knotty blur. There's certainly enough ego to go around both "branches" of the business, and more than enough nostalgia. But the problem it's time to consciously grapple with is our continued tendency to treat the medium as a private club only those with the proper credentials can enter, and both "mainstream" and "alternative" comics are prone to that, and it's entirely tied up with ego and nostalgia too.
Do yourselves a favor and check out the rest of his musings. They're really quite good.
