So if Friedrich’s claims are overstated, I don’t much care. I don’t even have an opinion about whether he should have won his case. I can’t pretend to have an understanding of 1970s copyright laws, film rights, or Marvel’s contracts. Legal stuff pretty much baffles me.

What does interest me is that one of the guys who unquestionably was involved in creating “Ghost Rider” is a senior citizen in bad health who, according to Neal Adams, is in danger of losing his house.

In a perfect world, when a corporation turns an old character into a movie franchise, the original creators, legal rights or no, would be brought into the fold and given some form of token involvement and small financial reward. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Thus, creators (or at least those with legitimate claims for being co-creators) often sue. They also rarely win.

This case, however, appears to go far beyond that. Friedrich didn’t just fail to win; he lost. The notion that any corporation would attempt to recoup money from someone in his position is unconscionable.

I guess what I’m getting at is that Friedrich doesn’t have to be a saint for us to be outraged by this. Nor do the guys at Marvel have to be demons. (I’ve always had a pretty favorable impression of Joe Quesada, for example.) The final judgment still remains outrageous.

Even if the court system is tilted so far in favor of corporations that Friedrich’s lawyers felt they had to agree to the $17,000, the corporation should still waive the fee. And those of us who are interested in the comics industry can pressure them to do the right thing.

Likewise, you’ll notice that the Marvel officials are very careful in their language when they say that he can still sign official merchandise and he can still sell his autograph. What they don’t say is that he can put up a sign that says, “My name is Gary Friedrich and I co-created Ghost Rider.” Of course he can sign official merchandise and of course he can sell his autograph. He just can’t add the one thing that makes his autograph special or valued.

And I certainly think that Bissette is right when he says they are establishing a precedent here. Can someone like Eric Powell sell a sketch of Bizarro at a convention without going through DC’s legal offices? (I actually doubt that he would want to–just using an example.) Obviously, artists do this sort of thing all time. But now, if one of the corporations wishes to make life difficult for a specific creator, don’t they have precedent to bust them?

Again, the outrage isn’t that Friedrich is a saint and is being martyred. It’s that the judgment renders inhumane punishment on an old man with no money, it redefines truth and reality (Friedrich was unquestionably a co-creator), and it provides the corporations with far more wide-reaching power than they have exerted before.

All of which is to say, I think the initial outrage remains justified. So long as we don’t give in to the romantic desire to see everything in black and white, the morality and ethics within the grey scale still seems pretty clear.

I’ve gotten to the point where Damian is actually my favorite Robin even though my wife resents him for replacing Tim Drake. He’s just so delightful as this evil little kid that one can’t help but root for. Genetically, he should be the most perfect human alive and because he was raised by terrorists, he can’t help that he has an evil streak.

You’ve got two weeks to read Morrison’s Batman and Robin run (three trades, 16 issues, not tough) because after next week, I’ve got some major spoilers.

I don’t think there’s any doubt about forgetting Robin in this multi-part column, Cody. Frankly, I’m seeing this piece evolve into a contribution towards the evolution of Robin, and I think there is some real potential for some longer-term possibilities with this piece. What really stands out in my mind is that Grayson’s relationship to the Robin persona never really ended when he moved on to become Nightwing. In many ways, as you seem to point out, he serves as a bridge between the later Robins and Bruce/ Batman. Sometimes he’s successful in helping ease the new Robin into place (Damian) and other times, his role places him in conflict with others who do not “meet the standard” (Jason Todd/Red Hood). Of course, I still maintain Tim Drake as a personal favorite, but I know nostalgia factors in heavily here. :)

I haven’t read the Morrison / Quietly contribution to this mythos, but your article is giving me reason to think it might be worth checking out some time.

That’s totally it. That, in a nutshell, is what I was trying to get across.

His work doesn’t merit a spin-off because “Watchmen” was already spinning off of something, with the intention of doing it better and hopefully inspiring people to try new things and take risks and use their imaginations instead of going back over the old stuff again and again.

However, it would seem that “Before Watchmen” was made because DC said “These characters earn us money, find another way to cash in on them. Bring in some fan favorite creators and make some new books.” “How many books?” “Literally, like 40. 40 new Watchmen books. All in the same year. One week apart. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Just flood the market with these things.” “And what will they be about?” “About? Who am I, Billy Shakespeare? Just print the damn books, Seymour!”

The difference is in the intent. Moore had a story, he used the proper channels at his disposal and eventually he saw that story turned into a physical artifact of amazing complexity and endless fascination. This is art, or as he and Aleister Crowley would say, magick. And yes, he made a pretty good amount of money from it. DC had a property and they are using it to sell a product and make more money. That is called capitalism. The inclusion of fan-favorite creators to create said product is purely incidental.

Here’s a relevant quote from Moore himself: “The alchemists used to have these two principles that they could more or less divide the entire universe up in to, and these were referred to as ‘Solve et Coagula’. ‘Solve’ is to take something apart and examine it – it’s analysis. ‘Coagula’ is to put it back together again – synthesis. Analysis and synthesis… Solve et Coagula… and to some degree, the analysis, this is deconstructionism. This is what we were doing with Watchmen.”

(I’d also like to add that in “The Mindscape of Alan Moore,” the author says that for him the most important aspect of Watchmen was the storytelling, which made the story feel like a simultaneous event than a linear progression from start to finish. This is another “baby” that I am worried DC is “throwing out with the bathwater.” Just another point that I think I might have left out of the original piece.)

As for Indie comics, I’m wanting to start with the more well-known alternative titles like Persepolis, Ghost World, Habibi and Blankets, etc. I also want to sink my teeth into some of the stuff that Image is putting out right now. A twitter friend of mine also recently put out the first issue of his comic, SCAM, which I hear is doing very well and I’ve yet to get my hands on a copy.

Thanks for the reply, Cody. I wouldn’t mind doing some more point/counterpoint stuff in the future if you have any topics in mind.

“From the audience: Do you actually own Watchmen?

Alan Moore: My understanding is that when Watchmen is finished and DC have not used the characters for a year, they’re ours.

Dave Gibbons: They pay us a substantial amount of money…

Moore: … to retain the rights. So basically they’re not ours, but if DC is working with the characters in our interests then they might as well be. On the other hand, if the characters have outlived their natural life span and DC doesn’t want to do anything with them, then after a year we’ve got them and we can do what we want with them, which I’m perfectly happy with.

Gibbons: What would be horrendous, and DC could legally do it, would be to have Rorschach crossing over with Batman or something like that, but I’ve got enough faith in them that I don’t think they’d do that. I think because of the unique team they couldn’t get anybody else to take it over to do Watchmen II or anything else like that, and we’ve certainly got no plans to do Watchmen II.”

So it’s a self-contained work that they didn’t want to see used by DC and had no plans on reviving after it was complete. I’m not sure of the point you were trying to make in your awkwardly worded sentence about Moore’s argument evolving, but I hope that this goes toward clarifying the issue.

On a personal note, since the argument you made was at least partially a personal attack, I’m not sure what I did in my piece to get you so riled up, but whatever it was I am sorry I did it.

It’s also worth mentioning, I think, that Joseph Patterson had a reputation as being a rather enjoyable man to work for – he midwifed dozens of successful comic strips (Though perhaps none AS successful) besides Dick Tracy, mostly because he knew where to let his artists work, and where to step in and make sure it would sell.

He was a great editor.

So, perhaps the heightened anxiety over what DC is about to publish is well-deserved. The more I think about it, the more I do see these prequels as being superfluous when I consider the real strength of Watchmen was in the simple fact it needed no backstory–everything you needed to know was built into the book. Moore and Gibbons demonstrated a certain economy of words, ideas, and images that got the job done… so why add more?

For now though, it’s a waiting game.

I hardly expected Justice League #1 to be Citizen Kane. I did kinda expect it would make sense, both logically and in terms of comics storytelling. (Its basic premise and certain key plot points were so illogical that they should have lead to sacking of editors.) I expected this in addition to bringing the obligatory exciting action scenes. That was obviously expecting too much there, and that’s fine. I’m okay with stupid fun comics existing, whether I read them or not. But that’s not what Justice League #1 was billed as. And I definitely was not holding it up to some unrealistic standard. My standard was more Die Hard than Citizen Kane.

The problem with “Before Watchmen” is that no one could even claim, “meh, it’s a rush job, but I hope it’s fun and exciting enough — and hey, more Dr. Manhattan!!!” That’s a completely untenable position, for a prequel to Watchmen. And it won’t be used by DC, nor its creators. That might be a retreat position for Justice League #1, but it’s not available for “Before Watchmen.” It’s just not.

Consequently, if you think I was tough on Justice League #1, I and everyone is going to be at least as tough on “Before Watchmen.” And of course, they should be.

That’s not prejudging the work. Nor is debating the ethics of publishing it to begin with — which doesn’t require that the work itself be shit.

But man, if “Before Watchmen” comes out with characters doing totally illogical things that wouldn’t pass muster on the revived V TV series, the way Justice League had, be prepared for DC and “Before Watchmen” to be raked over the coals for years to come.

And I think that’s entirely fair.

I’d only add that the “new 52″ and “Before Watchmen” are quite different beasts. It’s one thing to point out that the quality of the “new 52″ is lackluster, if not often embarrassing. But it was transparently a “boost DC sales” idea, synergized with day-and-date digital, and all the claims to quality and diversity and telling bold and new stories now looks like the most cynical of marketing ploys. That’s fine.

But I don’t think “Before Watchmen” can be judged by these same low standards. It’s not, you know, a Jon Lovitz movie. It’s just not.

There’s a record here. “Before Watchmen” is not being launched in a vacuum.

If DC wants to set off this firestorm about its corporate practices, it has the right to do so. But if the results look anywhere near as lackluster and ill-considered as the “new 52″ proved to be (as a whole, of course… no need to point at exceptions), DC’s going to be looking like a vile, evil parody of a corporation. One with absolutely no concern for telling good stories, whether art or entertainment, but simply pushing sales and apologizing later.

It’s there and only there where we might part ways, Cody. Because you might say, well, yes, DC’s goal is to sell, and it’s obviously quite content to build hype, sell lots of copies, and wind up with egg on its face, so long as it can still repeat this cycle. But every single one of these cycles for five years have run exactly this way, and at a certain point, someone’s got to point this out. It’s one thing to run a crossover or a relaunch with these transparently cynical corporate values. It’s quite another to extend that philosophy — the “fuck storytelling, fuck quality, just generate buzz and apologize later” philosophy — to Watchmen.

Keep in mind that the only reason most of this product sells is because it’s made to seem artistic and entertaining — it’s product, Cody, but it’s marketed as all art is marketed, on the basis of artistic merit (which includes fun narrative). It’s simply not marketed like a Snicker’s bar. The selling of art requires selling people on that art’s merit, even if that’s merely competent, fun stories. When you lose the public’s confidence in such claims, you’re nowhere, even as a commercial enterprise.

So yeah, fine, DC’s doing this. I’m not prejudging, I swear. I’m actually not even against it. I’m just not for it either.

But it can’t be ignored that DC’s taking a real risk here. And that if it doesn’t do better this time around, it’s going to be in a really untenable position. Because while the underlying reality might be commercial, as you’ve pointed out, art is sold as being bold and valuable and historic — and DC’s no exception. Those are words DC can’t use again (without public snickering) for at least a decade if this turns out to be as ill-judged as the “new 52.”

So we’ll see. “Before Watchmen” might turn out to be brilliant. It might turn out to at least be new and interesting. It may or may not be totally ethical to do at all, but these other creators — who are all quite talented and competent — may well produce interesting and valuable work, even if it’s unethical. Plenty of creative teams have been unethically treated, only to have their successors do worthwhile material in its own right. I’m perfectly able to compartmentalize those two judgments.

But if “Before Watchmen” turns out to be crap that can only be justified on the basis of a Jon Lovitz movie, then DC’s then made it very clear that any brilliance or lasting worth in Watchmen was the result of Moore and Gibbons, for which DC (at least today’s DC) deserves absolutely no institutional credit whatsoever. DC would effectively lose the argument with Moore, in public, 25 years later. And show it was everything Moore said it was. That’s the risk here for DC, and it shouldn’t be ignored, nor this risk removed by claims to corporate monetary interest.

If the prequel’s good, it’s good, period. Whatever the ethics of its production, the work stands on its own. But if it’s safe and tame and disposable, the whole project is going to come off as a transparent strip-mining of a classic work to generate short-term sales. And no one should take such a company seriously again, when it claims it’s on the cutting edge of anything or that it gives a shit about anything other than the dollar.

Which you might say is already the case. But the fact is that DC doesn’t pretend to care only about the dollar. It talks about doing bold artistic things and telling good stories. As does any movie company or any artistic enterprise, even if it’s also (or even primarily) commercial. When that public faith in artistic quality is lost, the hype-sales-disappointment cycle at last fails… or deserves to. Or at least a company becomes a laughing stock.

Sorry to prattle on. I agree with everything you’ve said, which has been quite smart and careful. I just want you to acknowledge the very real risk involved — and that even if art is commerce, commerce entails public confidence in one’s claims and one’s products, which DC is currently holding onto by a thread.

Personally, I don’t care that much whether it’s commercially successful. I’m invested in comics-related popular news stories that show comics as an artform (e.g. a story on Persepolis and Iran) rather than simply any and all popular press attention. But that’s me, and I recognize others have other views — that attention and sales are automatically good for the industry and thus the medium. But the medium isn’t the industry, and I have little loyalty to the later but great loyalty to the former.

I do accept that there could be artistic merit in the prequels. I am worried that they’re being rushed in vast quantity (by a company with a really poor track record for doing so… “new 52″ anyone?). It smells already (as the “new 52″ did, pre-press). But suspicions aside, it’s the work itself that will ultimately have to be judged, and that’s not yet available.

Of course, that’s a separate argument from whether this should exist.

Most comics don’t aspire to be “good art” but rather, they exist to entertain an audience. This goes for all media. Not every movie made has to be Citizen Kane nor should every movie aspire to be that.

I watched the movie “Heckler” and while I didn’t agree with all of it, Jon Lovitz made a great point about how when the movie “Benchwarmers” came out, it was critically panned and deemed “immature” but he was okay with that because it was a movie made for a specific audience (pre-teens to teens) and featured humor that would appeal to them. He knew his audience, it appealed to his audience and the critics that didn’t like it were probably judging it from a different standard.

Of course, Before Watchmen shouldn’t be given a pass and it should be scrutinized, but let’s do that when it comes out.

Again, I’m not personally mad about this. Just saying there’s a difference.

I’m not “mad” about “Before Watchmen,” BTW. Not at all. I’m just saying that we’re talking about a lot of things that, while true, aren’t relevant to the point. And the point is that DC has the right to do this, even though it’s against the spirit of the contract Moore negotiated. No one’s disputing that. The question then becomes whether it’s ethical or wise.

Pointing out that Moore based his characters on preexisting ones is correct and smart, but it doesn’t say anything about whether a whole series of Watchmen prequels makes sense or not — or in what way.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34915

Batwoman and Swamp Thing aren’t innovative?

But to sort of bounce off of your reply above, I think the reason why I don’t want to read it is that to actually do a prequel featuring the Watchmen characters does a disservice to the original work. The original work’s use of motifs and tropes were for a specific purpose in the narrative. Every time a trope was used, like a flashback, the key idea was that it wasn’t repetition. It was an advancement of plot through a slight change of the trope. Like, for instance, the idea that we see the Hiroshima Lovers throughout the series, but in the end we finally get a Silhouette of Dan and Laurie making love in the Hiroshima Lovers pose as a reaffirmation of life instead of a “death wish” that came from the onslaught of the creature appearing in New York.

The repetition in the flashbacks work precisely because we aren’t sure what came before. We get these bits and pieces from other people as the story progresses, but our “breakout” moment is when, on Mars, the crystaline structure that Jon had been creating is destroyed by a “nostalgia bottle.” Sure, that can be a metaphor for continuity. But it is also moment where we, as readers, have put together the flashbacks into a sequence where we realize the true meaning of the structure of the flashbacks: the Comedian is Sally’s father.

To actually show us the incidents in these characters’ past defeats the purpose of the flashbacks in the Watchmen series, thus negating the impact of Sally’s revelation. The whole story leads us to that revelation where Sally realizes her life has meaning and Jon realizes that he can actually break out of his self-determining prison (which is illustrated brilliantly in different panels towards the end where Jon “breaks” through the 9-panel grid).

If we, as readers, know what happened in the past fairly immediate past, then Sally’s revelation becomes moot (as well as Ozymandius’ reveal that he’s the figure behind the deaths). If they were to do any “times past” story, I would’ve rather they just focused on the Red Circle pastiches of the Minutemen. At least it wouldn’t screw up the revelations in the actual Watchmen book.

I bring this up because it seems–in part–that the creators involved with this project opted for the latter: Move forward with creating something new from the old.

Sure, I would be far more interested in what Moore and Gibbons would do given the chance; but that’s not going to happen, so there’s no point in pursuing that train of thought. However, you do ask, “What’s to gain from this?” I’m not sure if my response to your question is exactly on the mark, but I think there is some value to some thought about why one might read these prequels–though I don’t find there to be a need to excessive circular discussions on the matter. But it’s worth asking, “Why should I buy this comic?” or an even better question: “What am I interested in buying this comic?” I’m hesitant to offer an answer because it’s such a subjective question, but I’d be curious to know the reasons others come up with and as equally interested in know what answers to those questions they found from the comics themselves.

But as it seems you are pointing out here–we really have to wait until the book come out before we can dig make any firm decisions on the matter.

(And I agree with the point you mention about DC–too much too quickly does not bode well for quality)

Again, just my personal view. But not entirely a matter of taste.

Yeah, Cody, I thought often of our in-print-only fight over Justice League #1… and Kevin’s writing against people losing track of comics as art. We really go at it, and we’ve got a bruising, direct culture here at Sequart, where we really fight it out intellectually. What’s funny is that, when we talked on the phone during all that, we agreed about most things… we were just writing passionately about where we disagreed. I hope the outside world understands this culture we have, and doesn’t perceive infighting, because if it did, it would look like Sequart’s coming apart at the seams! Whereas the truth is that we have this culture of disagreement and challenging each other, as long as it’s not personal, which I think is actually perfectly in sync with intellectual culture.

Since that’s what we’ll get, I’ll judge them on their own merits, while holding my nose just a bit — and reading a friend’s copies, instead of buying my own. But it’s more smart comics that I really want.

But what if Moore had, and no one had used those characters since — they basically ended with Moore, which is why DC and Moore switched to new characters. Then we’d be more or less in the same boat now. Because the real argument isn’t so much that these are Moore and Gibbons’ characters, which is true enough, but that this is a classic work that doesn’t need a follow-up, much less 30+ issues of prequels.

Ultimately, though, all this talk of Shakespeare and Alan Moore’s process has to do with intent, and I don’t personally find that informative here. Whatever Moore’s intent, Watchmen is what it is now, just as Shakespeare’s revered now but wasn’t in his time or for a century after his work.

The question, I think, ought to be “what is gained by doing this?” We may or may not get some interesting, artistic prequels. We may also sully a classic graphic novel — and for what may be very little reward, artistically. But those should be the terms of the debate, once the dust and important caveats about intent — and whether DC has the right to do this — have settled. It’s how we’ll judge “Before Watchmen” in years to come, not just today.

In my personal opinion.

I agree that an extreme “it’s capitalism, silly!” argument is out of sync with our mission statement. I actually think Cody wasn’t quite making that point, though. I think he was just poking holes in the idea that Alan Moore’s intentions were as pure as we sometimes think in retrospect. He said that this does represent a screwing of Alan Moore, but that the results may well have artistic merit themselves. Which is a pretty moderate statement, I think. And perfectly in tune with New Criticism and its idea of taking the work on its own merits. If it were produced by a serial killer, to cash in on his crimes, it might still have artistic merit. Whether we feel comfortable reading it is something else entirely.

Cody also pointed out that this could be a boost to comics, which I think is fair but which doesn’t concern me too much. It’s a boost to DC, certainly, but I’m not too excited — personally — about people flooding into comics shops if what they’re buying isn’t good art. And the jury’s definitely still out on that score.

What’s really worrisome here is how DC’s doing so much so quickly. And it doesn’t have a good record of managing quality when it does that.

“That was not my intent and I hope you guys will accept my apologies on that.” – No need for an apology. We’re having a discussion and all opinions are welcome. If I ever came off as rude, I apologize as it was not my intent, but rather, a product of text being without intonation.

“Mike’s piece was about aesthetic objections, about DC subverting the author’s “intent,” as I read it. The fact that Before Watchmen is going to make a lot of money shouldn’t ever enter the equation as a valid reason in an aesthetic argument. And Sequart has, and will always be, a venue for aesthetic arguments.” – Maybe I made the argument into what I wanted rather than directly addressing the aesthetics, but it’s difficult to argue about the aesthetics of Before Watchmen because it hasn’t come out yet. To dismiss the projects because you think they won’t be worthy of study is a bit presumptuous and I didn’t think I would have to make that argument simply because it seems self-evident; one can’t judge the aesthetic quality of something that does not exist.

“For the record, I do hold the same standard for Siegel and Schuster, and for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko comics. This is why I don’t read superhero comics anymore. This is why I really don’t have a dog in this fight other than the fact that I felt we were losing sight of what Sequart’s function was, a function that I feel I had a hand in forming. And this is why I will never darken these door again.” – That’s awesome that you stand up for your principles and I absolutely mean that with all sincerity. I think it might be a bit extreme to leave and never return because you and I disagree. Most people disagree with me because my brain was corrupted to a Marxist way of thinking when I was in college and I see things differently than others do. Hell, Julian and Kevin pissed me off so much that my wife forbid me from being on the internet because I would just get furious and take it out on her (http://www.sequart.org/magazine/4608/how-not-to-relaunch-a-universe-a-review-of-justice-league-1/).

I hope you know that you can submit articles and we’d be more than happy to post them. If you’d like to change the course of the conversation, we are always more than happy to oblige. We are absolutely always open to submissions of all kinds, so please write the kind of article you’d like to see on here and we’ll run it.

There’s nothing really innovative about it. When it first came out, people kept on stating how this is basically ripping off Marvel’s Squadron Supreme, another popular book that came out at the time.

What was innovative about this story was the story telling and the use of motifs:

1. The watches in various panels counting down to midnight as the story progressed

2. The repeated motif of the Hiroshima Lovers that are echoed throughout the story.

3. The often half-written “Who Watches the Watchmen” graffiti around New York

4. The background New York characters and the background of New York that interact with supporting characters leading into the creshendo scene that destorys New York.

5. The dual narratives of the Pirate Comics bleeding into the actual storyline.

6. The text pieces in the back that add or comment on the narrative in the comics.

7. The use of quotes as titles and then using the whole quotes in the end that echo the events in the series

8. The effective use of the 8-panel grid that allows you to really control movement and pacing as well as creating “the mirror” scenes in issue 5 where the first 16 pages are echoed in the last 16 pages.

9. The use of similar flashbacks from different perspectives in order to paint the whole picture of the incident (this is also why I think the prequels are not necessary: the whole thing is that we aren’t sure what happened in the past. If we’re told through these flashbacks what happened in the past, that defeats the whole purpose of the unreliable narrators telling you the story. It would be like a prequel to Chinatown where we have Evelyn Cross being raped by her father, Noah. It ruins the whole story to read the prequel. This is also why Alan Moore was probably going to a Minutemen story so you could do something with completely different characters).

___

These are the things people should’ve taken away from Watchmen. You can see some people learned this lesson. Warren Ellis’ Stormwatch pays a loving homage to Watchmen in his Jenny Sparks issue that really evokes the style and colors of Watchmen. Ed Brubkaer does Warren Ellis one better in his last Incognito issue where examines criminals in the same way Moore examined heroes and creating an almost mirror image of the Rorsearch goes to jail issue of Watchmen. Keith Giffen’s V4 Legion of Superheroes used the 9-panel grid as well as the use of text pieces to build suspense and to hint about narratives that would be coming in the story. Alex Robinson’s Tricked really takes the lesson of intertwining-yet-independent character narratives/dual narratives of different stories that weave into a culmination that ends in a tragedy. JH Williams’ work (from even before his Promethea work with Alan Moore) was very inspired by the design and use of color in Watchmen to display emotion, motifs, and narrative threads.

I just wish people took away the design lesson of Watchmen than the lesson of “These Characters are Cool.” They aren’t cool. The only reason they’re interesting is the intricate way they used motifs to echo flashbacks and flash-forwards. The important thing in Watchmen isn’t the story, but the way the story is told. If more people figured out the motifs and created new tricks from what Watchmen pioneered then we’d have a richer medium.

It doesn’t matter if Shakespeare borrowed ideas. What matters is that his plays could work in so many different visions. Sci-fi Tempest? Black Macbeth? Nazi Richard III? Samurai King Lear? Great! Why not? Do you wanna a prequel of Hamlet? There is one, written by John Updike (I admit that it doesn’t work as well as Samurai King Lear). It’s not the end of the world. Sometimes it breathes new life into the old work. And that’s wonderful.

Hell, Shakespeare even works when he’s rubbing elbows with that candy-colored clown we call the Sandman!

Because people are still creating new ways of using Sherlock Holmes, we all know who Professor Moriarty is, even if he only appeared in one single short story by Conan Doyle.

We don’t need to know about what Vincent Vega was doing before Pulp Fiction, but… We didn’t really need to know about Don Corleone’s young years either. But we’re damn lucky that we have it!

Yeah, sometimes it doesn’t work. Like Psycho IV. Fine, but since it’s unnecessary it can be easily forgotten or despised.

The new work has the right to exist, and we should all judge it accordingly. Some of it is crap, it always is, but we gotta at least be open to the possibility that a new vision may bring something interesting. And if it doesn’t, fine. The original wasn’t destroyed. Miley Cyrus recently covered a Dylan song, and for a good reason (Amnesty International). Ouch! But so what? I still love the song. And I can think of at least two great covers of it.

And here’s the thing: We read comics! And mainstream superhero comics is all about different talent providing different visions. Think on how many different visions we got of the X-Men over the years. Claremont alone was responsible for quite a few of them, very different from each other. Again, not all of them work, but so what? How many people wish that the X-Men had remained in the Lee-Kirby phase forever?

Yeah, we don’t need to know what Ozymandias was doing before Watchmen. I agree. We also don’t really need to know what Matt Murdock was doing before Frank Miller. I started reading DC just after Crisis (the original, the one that matters), and at first I believed that I didn’t need to read any pre-Crisis work (I was so wrong). I never read Leifeld’s Supreme. Has anyone?

If we don’t welcome change, new talent and new visions, then what? Wouldn’t we miss a lot of stuff that gave us so much pleasure over the years?

You know what? First I bought the series. Then I bought the trade paperback. And then the Absolute. I spent a lot of money with the same old thing. I won’t run to buy the new series. But I may buy it, if I think it’s worthy. I just think that it can be. Hell, I hope it is. And if it’s not, okay, it’s just another bad comic, that’s all.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/04/posner.htm

Essentially, Shakespeare is shown to be directly lifting passages (in addition to general content) from other sources; the difference however, is that he is not “slavishly copying” and is improving the source. Of course, that’s a subjective assessment of his work based many years after the fact. Other writers did the same but were less successful in their “improvements” and have rightly been forgotten. So I still assert that there is literary precedent for picking up where one artist / writer left off; unfortunately, only time will really tell if these “improvements” will last.

@Cody: You’re essentially proposing “Finger” as the new “pharmakon”? Interesting… :) So those writers nominated for the writing award but lose out to a lesser peer would essentially be fingered out of their Finger?-)

I’m hoping that you might be able to complete this series for us. I am gripped and want to know both what happens next but also how Schuiten and Peeters tie up their themes. I love these essays.

Thank you,

Charles

OK, seriously though I think that things jumped up to about a 12 here and we need to all bring it back down to about a 2 or 3.

Listen, everyone here has a damn fine point. Yes, Moore did make money off of Watchmen. This cannot be argued. However, he also had a high level of a certain aesthetic that was almost completely counter intuitive to how comic books were done at the time. (lots of words, no true main characters, lots of tertiary materials to build the world but can also be argued distracts the “entertainment” reader – please don’t read that anymore than in the same way Hickman makes the joke in The Nightly News)

Now, to Alan I would say you raise some interesting points. But, I would also argue that Shakespeare considered it as influence or reaction and not outright plagiarism. To which influence is the ingredient that makes works great and not outright theft. This does not discount that he was entertainment, but he was also something of an egoist, so wasn’t he attempting in his own ability to put on a great, elegant spectacle of a play?
I could be very wrong on this point.

To Jeff, I would say I don’t always agree with certain points of the comics are for capitalism idea either, but I can say that it is, and I have to be emphatic here, NOT Sequart’s stance on anything. By now we should all know and it be clear to see that Julian Darius’s mission is, and only, to further comics are an art form.

Trust me, no one at Sequart is making money off of our endeavors. These are labors of love. We are not paid money for these articles we post weekly. Often times we write these at a loss to our own money and time we could spend with friends, family or just reading. Instead we all try to form some cohesive stance on a subject or book that we want to discuss the implications.

But, even if the argument is comics are for capitalists, then I would still invite this argument in the door. Why? Because it is another side of this coin that SHOULD be told, even if I disagree with it almost 100%. It is a bit like cutting the oppositions mic because you disagree with them.

So, Jeff, I would hope you continue to brighten our doorstep because we need voices like yours, Mike Greear, and Alan Williams. You are all adding to a great debate that must happen.

But, if we are going to continue the debate, we must all understand the other person has a right to their opinion and a certain modicum of civility. Not to say it wasn’t civil, just, let’s temper the tempers from super nova to “I am annoyed”

Thanks all!

Mike’s piece was about aesthetic objections, about DC subverting the author’s “intent,” as I read it. The fact that Before Watchmen is going to make a lot of money shouldn’t ever enter the equation as a valid reason in an aesthetic argument. And Sequart has, and will always be, a venue for aesthetic arguments. If not, then it may as well be Newsarama, at which point we’re all screwed.

For the record, I do hold the same standard for Siegel and Schuster, and for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko comics. This is why I don’t read superhero comics anymore. This is why I really don’t have a dog in this fight other than the fact that I felt we were losing sight of what Sequart’s function was, a function that I feel I had a hand in forming. And this is why I will never darken these door again.

Part of treating comics “as a legitimate artform” is to have open and serious debate, as accompanies other media. This debate sometimes involves views contrary to Sequart’s own stances. In the past, we’ve even published pieces saying that comics shouldn’t be treated as a serious art.

That is, oddly enough, part of taking comics seriously — we believe passionately that comics can stand up to such scrutiny, and ideas offered in the process might be important to remember going forward, even if we don’t agree with them. I’ve published a great many things I didn’t personally believe in, because I believe they raised worthwhile points of view, and this policy will continue. It is crucial to Sequart’s mission. A legitimate artform requires a serious debate.

The downside of this approach is that these debates are bound to be contentious, as intellectual debates often are. That’s a good thing. And “Before Watchmen” obviously elicits especially passionate responses.

I encourage everyone to remember that, whatever our views on a particular issue, we’re all on the same side when it comes to the fact that comics deserve such discussion.

Part of this discussion, as with that of any artistic medium, entails a consideration of how art and commerce overlap or are at odds with one another. Such discussion occurs in virtually every other medium, and it’s entirely in sync with taking comics seriously as a form of art.

It is entirely normal, for example, for serious critics of Twilight‘s artistic merit to also argue that those books’ sales support systems of distribution that also allow customers to encounter more artistically worthwhile work. It is also entirely normal for other serious critics to disagree with this and disdain Twilight‘s artistic merit. Or to object should a movie studio decide to make a sequel to Citizen Kane, even if it did support movie theaters. These are entirely legitimate positions and subjects for serious discussion and debate.

Awareness of the fact that the artistic and the commercial both exist and are related but not identical with one another — this is a prerequisite for serious discussion of art.

Taking comics seriously as an artform involves recognizing the commercial. Artistic production does not occur within a vacuum. And work produced for commercial reasons may well have artistic merits — or else much of mainstream comics wouldn’t qualify as artistically worthwhile.

But this serious discussion should not involve treating comics only as a product, nor confusing commercial wisdom or foolishness with artistic merit or lack thereof. Similarly, the legal right to do something is obviously not the same as a moral right.

Again, I think we probably all agree on these things. I don’t think anyone’s crossed the line above, and I see a great deal of intelligence in many of the points that ostensibly disagree with one another. This is very much what I hoped for, in creating an organization where comics could be discussed with passionate intelligence.

But I’m a tolerant guy who can note what’s a good point, even when if I think it’s part of an argument that ignores certain salient facts. (That I don’t want to ignore such facts is part of why my own writing here tends toward the lengthy.)

But not everyone is such a tolerant lover of vigorous debate. Many, in fact, might take offense. Or drop by and conclude that Sequart isn’t the place for passionate intellectual debate but rather a sort of free-for-all in which the intellectual points might get lost.

So I encourage everyone to tone things down a bit — and to write in a way that, while no less passionate, is a bit more obviously respectful to one another.

Thank you.

Also, they call them “fingers” but they don’t “fing” anything!

It is further presumptuous to believe that all of the minis are crap without reading them first. I’m willing to believe that none will be as good as the original, but I’m optimistic that they can be incredible. And you know what? I’m further willing to believe that a few of them could be considered “Art.” I’m willing to believe that a few might even be worthy of study. I don’t know for sure that they are going to be incredible, but you don’t know that they are going to be terrible.

The argument your presenting of “corporation versus artist” is too simplistic. Remember, without DC, Alan Moore never would have been able to do Watchmen in the first place. Without Charlton comics, Moore never would have had the characters to craft the story. Yes, he created a great story, but he was as dependent on DC and the corporation as they were of him, so don’t treat the situation as an “either/or” situation.

Art can still be created even with corporate involvement. Watchmen is a perfect example of this. Sandman too as well as many other comics. Looking beyond comics to other art forms, we can see that making money and making art aren’t separate ideas. There are plenty of movies put out by major production companies that make a lot of money that can be considered Art. Just because something make money doesn’t mean that it’s not Art.

@ Jeffrey: I fail to see how the organization is promoting DC’s right to make money? I see some individuals who assert this, but I’m not entirely sure they are speaking on behalf of the whole organization. Still, I think Cody is just trying to look at things from a pragmatic point of view–if they don’t make money, then they can’t create comics. How many qualified actors perform in the big budget movie so they can do the artsy / indie flic?

I’m not sure these Watchmen prequels will be of interest to me, as I feel the strength of Watchmen was that readers had everything they needed to know handed to them in each issue. That said, it doesn’t mean that others aren’t going to want to try their creative “hand” at working with new material. As far as comics is concerned, Moore and Gibbons created something that was on par with some of the great literary works. And just as Moore wanted to try his hand with the characters from the greatest Victorian lit, it only stands to reason that later creators would want to try and follow suit. And FWIW, it doesn’t seem to be too much of a leap to assume there was a good possibility Moore and Gibbons would have revisted Watchmen had they been able to reacquire the rights to their collaborative creation.

Your response about using Finger interchangeably with being screwed had me laughing out loud! Too bad I was reading it on my Kindle Fire while rocking my youngest to sleep! LOL The comments following become even more disturbing (and hilarious for it). I’m sorry to say, however, that I’m not entirely sure Bill Finger would find the humor in it, but I guess that’s one of the challenges of having that for a last name. :-)

That’s from your mission statement, fellas. Nothing about being devoted to promoting comic books as a legitimate product or for promoting DC’s right to make money. If you’re going to use the “it’s caplitalism, dummy” argument to defend the corporation over the artist, then you forfeit the right to call anything on this site art.

Why does any comics fan raise a stink about something like this when that person can simply NOT ORDER / BUY IT?

I’m not calling Mike (or anyone in particular) out, I just don’t understand the fervor all haters are expressing. DC is legally presenting a product, you can choose not to buy it.

Next?

Something that has bothered me about comic fans for quite some time now is this idea that there was a time period when comics were produced for any reasons other than commercial interests. In short, comics are made for money. They’ve always been made for money. They exist to make money.

Yeah, Watchmen is a book that has a lot of meaning and Sequart could be a website completely dedicated to Watchmen for a year and still not run out of things to say about it, but make no mistake, Moore and Gibbons weren’t writing it out of altruistic reasons. They didn’t do it because they just HAD TO TELL THIS STORY. They did for the dolla dolla bills and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Money is important and while I won’t go the Gecko route and claim that “greed is good,” I will say that there is nothing wrong with how DC is going about making “Before Watchmen.”

DC is a company that employs many people.
In order to pay those people (many of whom aren’t remotely as wealthy as Alan Moore), they have to make money selling comic books.
Watchmen is a recognizable property that could be further developed to make more money.
Fans will purchase Watchmen comics for sure and hopefully, it will bring in new readers as well.
Fan purchases mean more money for the company which will pay their employees.

Now, let’s address a few specifics.

“it only further re-enforces everything that Moore was trying to say is wrong about the comics industry with Watchmen.” While this is certainly one interpretation of how one could read Watchmen, I’m not sure that I’ve ever read a quote from Moore saying that this is the main idea that he wanted to get across. In fact, quotes I’ve found have said the opposite. From the Onion A.V. Club:

“I can’t really claim to have any intelligent master plan. I probably didn’t even realize that I was deconstructing superheroes until I was about halfway through Watchmen. Afterwards, it seemed a lot more obvious, but at the time we were just trying to do a cleverer-than-usual, more-stylish-than-usual superhero comic. But two or three issues in, it had become a sort of semiotic nightmare that I still get hounded by literature professors over to this day. It obviously, halfway through the telling, became a very different sort of animal.”

http://www.avclub.com/articles/alan-moore,13821/

So, don’t try to play the “he had a master plan” card here. Furthermore, the real reason Moore had a falling out with DC is that:

“But by 1989, Mr. Moore had severed his ties with DC. The publisher says he objected to its decision to label its adult-themed comics (including some of his own) as “Suggested for Mature Readers.” Mr. Moore says he was objecting to language in his contracts that would give him back the rights to “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” when they went out of print — language that he says turned out to be meaningless, because DC never intended to stop reprinting either book. “I said, ‘Fair enough,’ ” he recalls. ” ‘You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/movies/12itzk.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Was Moore screwed? Yeah. No doubt.

But so were Siegel and Shuster in the creation of Superman and no one is saying that Superman should stop publication.

Bill Finger was screwed over too by Bob Kane in a way that was worse than Siegel, Shuster, and Moore ever thought about being screwed (to the point that I think that anyone who gets screwed in comics should be labelled “Fingered”) and that sucks too, but Batman is still going to be published.

Ultimately, this argument is going to boil down to a moral dilemma between moral absolutism versus utilitarianism (funny, it seems that I’ve read that theme some where before).

Was it wrong for DC to Finger Alan Moore? The moral absolutist would say “yes” and it is further wrong to screw over anyone else that has ever been screwed and therefore, I will stop reading superhero comics because they exploit the creations of everyone involved.

If you believe this way, that is absolutely fine and your morals should be commended and admired. To only read creator-owned work because of your moral principles is admirable to me.

However, the utilitarian would see that Fingering Alan Moore serves a greater good even when we don’t consider the facts that Moore had the opportunity to write these himself years previous and that he refused:

1) This project has already generated buzz for the comic industry just by being announced and because it involves the creators that it does.

2) This has the potential to bring in new readers.

3) This has the potential to make a lot of money and considering that the industry has been hurting the past few years (the New 52 not-withstanding), anything that brings in more money is a good thing.

4) The integrity of the original work won’t be compromised because it still exists and can still be read. It certainly can’t be any more compromised than it already has with the film and with parodies like this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w

I think it would be presumptuous to believe that the moral absolutism route is somehow more beneficial than the utilitarian route. After all, the utilitarian route affects more people than the route of moral absolutism.

Damn, I know that this type of dilemma has been presented before, but for the life of me, I just can’t remember where, but it sure seems like the person who followed the moral absolutism code of ethics was killed or deatomized and the utilitarian had achieved something great but at the price of moral integrity. It also seems like someone in an owl costume was pissed but couldn’t do anything about it.

It will come to me later today, I’m sure.

Finally, Mike, you concluded with “Instead, I will be looking into reading more independent comics with the hope that some day original comic work will be more important than rehashed commercial gibberish” and I think this is absolutely great. More independent comics should be supported, but more importantly, they should be written about and I honestly do look forward to your findings and the writing you’ll be doing about independent comics.

What independent titles are you thinking of getting into?

Although I agree 100% with your arguments and responses to the ones we’ve been hearing from the supporters of it, I’d like to see Sequart attempt a devil’s advocate position. Is there ANY reasonable argument to be made which could put this in a positive light? If there is, I think you guys could make it?

One comment on the discussion thread even tries to compare the use of Watchmen characters for the spin-offs to how Shakespeare purportedly borrowed his ideas from Plautus. Imagine that. Time Warner, the company that wanted to lobotomize the Internet a few weeks back, being compared to Shakespeare. By a consumer. I think it may be time for me to go on my own Dr. Manhattan-esque quest for intelligent life elsewhere among the stars. I am having very bad luck finding it down here among my peers.

Funny you should mention the Shakespeare stuff, considering I’m at least one of the people who brought it up.

Shakespeare, for all we hail him as “great literature” these days, was also a playwright who had to write works that brought in audiences and kept them coming back. In other words, he worked in 16th- and 17th-century England’s entertainment industry, which as I recall is still clearly part of popular culture. The last time I checked, the comic book industry is a part of the entertainment industry, which is still clearly a part of popular culture. In writing his plays–you know, those things that had to bring in an audience–he sometimes pulled in work from other sources as his inspiration. Ever heard of The Menaechmi? It’s the play on which Shakespeare based The Comedy of Errors, only Shakespeare took the “identical twins confused for each other” and doubled it so that there were two sets. Thing is, Shakespeare didn’t just retell The Menaechmi; he made the audience hyper-aware of how much coincidence has to be involved for this kind of comedy to work. Isn’t that rather similar to what you’re claiming Moore did?

They say that not only is DC justified in doing whatever they feel like doing with these characters in the name of making money, they applaud them for sticking up to “whiny fanboys” who bitch and moan while defending “sacred cows.” What these people seem to forget is that with Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were making a statement. A statement doesn’t need a spin-off, and it doesn’t need a prequel.

Funny, I thought Moore and Gibbons were writing a comic book.

I’d take your argument more seriously if Moore himself hadn’t written Watchmen-related prequel-style material for the DC Heroes RPG, and if several sources you can find through a Google search (you do know how to do a little research to back up your facts, don’t you?) indicate that Moore’s stance against using Watchmen characters elsewhere didn’t seem to have evolved over time from a rather varied set of arguments that were a lot less oriented towards the artistic merit of what he did and a lot more oriented at getting a bigger piece of the pie.

And I find it hilarious that either of the polarized sides of this argument thinks it’s got the moral high ground to claim that the other side is demonizing them. Are you really that naive?

When you run off in search of the “intelligent life” you think you can’t find here on Earth, see if they can teach you how to do some basic research to back up your assertions–and, for that matter, see if they can teach you how to read for comprehension instead of reading to find a springboard for a rather baseless rant.

Great series here! I find fans of Batman all-too-often malign Robin, so it’s good to see him get a little time in the spotlight. I’m a little hesitant to award as much credit to Dick Grayson as Phil Jimenez (which seemed a little too grandiose for my liking), but I do think he plays a foundational role in the Batman mythos. It’s well worth pointing out the dichotomy between Dick and Jason, as you do, as it also serves as a sort of parallel between Isaac / Ishmael from the book of Genesis. One son is favored with the blessing of the father–in this case, Batman–while the other is essentially cast off with conflict arising between the two (though in this instance, Dick would be the “first born” despite his natural pairing with the biblical Isaac). Jason Todd, being the cast off Ishmael, returns from the dead / wilderness a much more hardened warrior–one who seems to stand opposed to his father and brother. Though there is reconciliation between the two tribes, it’s an uneasy one borne out by the continued conflict today between the two peoples. So too is there a tentative truce with the two Robins, as you point out, but the hostility is never displaced. Clearly, it’s an arc that is played out throughout literature and culture for thousands of years and is certainly present here.

We might have killed Jason Todd off (count me as one who made the call!-), but I do think this is one instance where bringing a character back from the dead worked quite well to help us better understand Dick Grayson and see him progress as a character. Further, I think it reinforces the notion that Bruce Wayne’s crusade, over the years, transcended his own need for vengeance.

You’re right that the bonds between Thor, Balder, and Loki are an excellent story and easy to understand without knowing anything else about the Ultimate Universe . . . however, it’s the fourth issue that throws everything off. If a new reader were to pick up the fourth issue, he or she would be confused because it relies so heavily on Mark Millar’s run on The Ultimates.

So, the first three issues are great for new readers because they are accessible, but they aren’t so good for readers who have diligently followed the Ultimate Universe but missed the solicitations that it was an origin story and the last issue wraps up the arc in a satisfactory way for readers who have followed the Ultimate Universe, but new readers would be confused at the rest. It’s an odd conundrum for sure.

IC brought in the tie ins in an attempt to flesh out story and to have characters situations spin off into other titles or to see the repercussions of events in IC within a separate title. So the tie ins were more “plot/character” directed.

BN pushed the gimmick of the main series (old characters rise from the dead) out into all the tie in minis and tie in series. Not all of them referenced the main event and the main event referenced even fewer in return. So the tie ins were “gimmick” directed.

FC used the theme of the event as the over arching connective tissue, with very few of the ties actually referencing the main event (with the exception of those penned by Morrison and FC: Submit), but the “idea” of “evil wins” being the element that made them related. So the tie ins were “thematically” directed.

I think the ordering that I presented here (IC – BN – FC) is the same order as most to least meaningful in terms of their necessity to the universe as a whole and therefore the same order as publisher returns, or decreases in profits (working off the assumption that the more meaningful a title or tie in the more likely the fans will pick it up).

Personally, I prefer the FC approach, where there is little to no explicit connection between the tie ins and the main series, that the artists have the freedom to create what they want within a very broad and loose theme. This resulted in a number of satisfying self contained stories (i.e. FC: Revelations) and other stories that were able to maintain their original series’ creative vision and flow (i.e. FC: Rage of the Red Lanterns). The obvious argument here is that the FC banner becomes less and less meaningful and is just a marketing strategy to hook the already hooked a little more. But once we open the individual book I think we are smart enough to independently evaluate the content within. This approach overall leaves maximum room for good stories, not just in the main event (that doesnt need to mention irrelevant character beats or situations) but also in the tie in (that usually dont impact much at all) and even ongoing series (that will usually have their own story they are trying to tell at that time).

The third option, BN, is my least favourite, because it tries to have its cake and eat it too. It is explicitly related to the event through the use of the gimmick (in this case the dead rising) but doesnt necessarily need to reference the event or visa versa. The result is that we get dozens of tie ins and crossovers that are all trying to address the same plot and character issues, those being the plot of dead rising and the character beats of unresolved grief. There are only so many times we can see a dead character return before the novelty/impact wears off, the character beats become repetitive and the resolution becomes tediously predictable. It corners the artists with an illusion of creative freedom. (during BN Morrison did a thematic tie in with an issue that saw Batwoman and clone Batman being raised from the dead via a Lazarus pit……again, thematic connection was the best option).

I understand that this list is purely subjective and that the “World building” appeal of direct cross overs and tie ins certainly has its audience, I just prefer artists to be given as much freedom as they can within the corporate universe structure. It doesnt always result in good stories, but I believe it is much more likely to than editorially mandated tie ins.

Disclaimer though is that every issue/series/event/tie in is a team effort between the editors and the artists. Every series has editorial mandates upon it, just to varying degrees, and it is up to the artists to make a story work within those restraints. Its just part of working in a corporate universe.

I’ll say this: You won’t see some of these new readers in the sales figures. Justin buys all of his comics through Comixology or the DC Comics app on his iPhone. Sure, paper may be superior, but a bluRay is typically superior to, say, streaming something over Netflix, but that doesn’t stop my Roku. It’s convenient, and to a new reader, there is no perceived loss of quality between paper and digital. Of course, we have yet to see what digital sales figures look like.

But here’s the problem, and it’s a problem that Justin sees as well, and that’s format. I bought him, as a gift, a subscription to the Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited service and gave him a few good stories to read. The first book I picked up when I started reading, like you, was Uncanny X-Men, although about 100 issues earlier, and the problem was there at that time as well. Days of Future Past was a better, and more intricate story than, say, X-Cutioner’s Song, and it was told in two issues of one series instead of 12 issues across four series. And the New 52 is the worst offender today. Since I started reading in September Daredevil has run a three-issue arc and a one-off in four issues, but Batman: Dark Knight is just now getting to the villain. Every Marvel book I read has finished a story, but only, what, two or three DC books have, and Scott Snyder is saying that the opening arc of Batman is going to run 11 issues. Eleven? That’s practically Watchmen! And I like Scott Snyder. I like Batman, Swamp Thing, and Severed. I like Scott Snyder so much that I bought the first trade of American Vampire, and I pretty much hate modern vampire stories.

Fans don’t just need a starting point. They also need to know that they can stop at some point. They want to know that, in the near future, they will get a complete story. I find myself yelling at comics that use less than six panels per page these days, because it feels like they’re just dragging stuff out. You can sell non-comic readers with an affinity for superheroes on short arcs and one-offs.

Your problem with the accessibility of the comic is directly related to your understanding that it fits into a linear continuity that you are already aware of from having read the first volume of The Ultimates. If I were to pick up this comic without that prior knowledge of there even being an “Ultimate Universe”, I could read through it as the story of the origin of (Ultimate) Thor, with the mystery inherent in the story being about how/why this Thor person is in captivity and how he will get out.

Along with that, the narrative deals with Thor’s relationship with his kinsmen, Loki and Balder, and their relationship as it evolves over time. Millennia, sure, but there’s still a pretty well constructed breakdown from scene to scene of what’s occurring when.

With that in mind, the use of “NOW” as a means of establishing that one sequence of events takes place in this individual book’s present is actually quite useful for helping with accessibility. If that same modern sequence were labelled as “2002″, it might be a little more confusing to a new reader as to why the narrative is set at that particular time period, rather than simply in the present. Especially because what happens in The Ultimates doesn’t necessarily matter in this particular storyline.

Accessibility is definitely a problem in superhero comics, but it’s hardly as bad as people often make it out to be, and this is certainly not the book to be labelling as largely “inaccessible”. That’s even considering that it’s part of a whole other imprint that has its own continuity that is very different to the regular Marvel Universe’s canon.

Thank you for the qualification. And for reading and commenting!

For instance, though I didn’t care for John Byrne’s “de-Kryptonization” of the Superman titles i the 1980s, I like to think I could have accepted this as a valid vision of Superman if Byrne had gone that extra mile to make me think “Superman, child of Earth” had his own identity. But I don’t think Byrne put that much mental effort into reworking the Superman mythology. IMO he just wanted to riff off the old Superman without feeling constrained to follow its storytelling priorities.

Try though I did, I could only find one nit to pick at:

“It is innocent, in its own way. There’s no nobility, no sense of purpose beyond the personal fetish. Yet there’s no condemnation on offer. Rather, Miller lays bare the super-hero’s psychology, much as Alan Moore did Night Owl’s in Watchmen, but he remains appreciative of the genre’s simple, stylized beauty — which he very much highlights.”

I would only qualify this to say that this lack of nobility is largely characteristic of Miller since the early 1990s. I’d say that his 1980s does ground the superhero in the noble actions of attempting to save lives. That aspect of superhero activitiy becomes increasingly irrelevant following SPAWN VS. BATMAN, which gives us the first real incarnation of “the godamn Batman.”

“I’d argue that a mere story (no matter how complex it is, like superhero comics) can only become mythology once they’re removed from the control of one person or a small group of people, and instead become shaped by society at large. In that sense, superhero comics could never qualify, since although a huge number of writer/artists were involved in shaping and developing any of their properties, the final say comes down to a single corporate body, who have certainly kept a tight leash. On the other hand, Bram Stoker’s Vampire monsters and Romero’s Zombies have become mythologies since they’ve become public domain, nobody can strictly ‘control’ them anymore and the concept is free to blow in the wind.”

I can understand the temptation to believe that greater creativity flows when “the concept is free to blow in the wind.” However, I don’t observe that to be the case.

There may well be a tendency of corporations to keep a tight leash, but not all of them do so. For the first four years of the so-called Bronze Age, Marvel Comics had an amazing period of wild creativity, precisely because the editorial reins were loose in those days. It’s nearly impossible to imagine Steve Gerber’s talents flowering had he first worked under the auspices of Jim Shooter.

In addition, some creators do their best work under strict conditions, or in alliance with a strong co-creator or editor. Arguably John Broome was one of these. From what I can tell few of his independent prose works are well-remembered, but he seems to have found his creative metier under editor Julie Schwartz. He moved out of comic books close to the dawn of the Bronze Age, and never so far as I know attempted to work for Marvel. But if he had, his type of creativity would’ve been hugely out of step with the way Marvel did things then. Broome’s DC-buddy Gardner Fox tried to do so, and the results weren’t pleasant.

Again, as far as I’m concerned, one first has to look at the work itself and suss out whether it has levels of greater complexity, and only second suss out the process by which it was produced.

“Is it enough to call anything with a complex evolving reality (grown not from a single author, but multiple authors) a ‘myth’? Because then certainly The Bold and the Beautiful, Neighbours, and other very long-running soap operas could be classed as mythologies.”

They would only be myths (or “fictional myths”) if their content had a symbolic complexity akin to that of real myths.

“Also, do you believe there is any credence to the notion that the commercial nature of these comics (the driving force behind any all story decisions) excludes them from the realm of self-shaping myth?”

I don’t give it any credence. The idea of such an exclusion seems to have been most promulgated by Theodor Adorno, whose writings about pop culture are both blinkered and poorly researched. It’s become a popular trope, however, in that many people have absorbed the notion even without having read Adorno.

“That kind of organic mythology is how I suspect classical myths came to be, rather than anything resembling the constructed mythology within commercial comic books, so it seems to me that they don’t belong in the same class.”

That organic form might– emphasis on “might”– apply to folklore, in that those are tales being passed from one preliterate tribe/village to another. But in the case of the Big Myths that inform archaic religion, we’re talking about organized priesthoods shaping the stories. In some cases they may have simply elaborated folktales into religious forms, and in others they may have devised their own myths, whether to manipulate followers or to make intellectual sense of the world.

My take on early “organic mythology” is different from yours in that I believe it was still somewhat determined by the same sort of “popularity contests” that determine success in the world of commercial work. It’s true that we usually don’t know the names of the bards and ollaves who helped disseminate many of the stories, except for those who come very late in the tradition (Homer, maybe Firdausi). But for me the process is very comparable in that the audience ultimately decides that, say, Indra rather than Varuna excites their imaginations.

More on this later.

Speaking of New Years, I just finished reading the entire bible in one year and at this time last year while I read Genesis I read R. Crumbs version along with the NRS version. It added an entirely new and very human take on the text I was reading.

I can understand peoples feelings that he fell short of what is essentially an impossible task but I think he did a pretty damn good job.

I really can’t recommend this book enough. Another great help to me was the Brick Testament: The entire bible in legos! http://www.thebricktestament.com/

The Sodom and Gomorrah example is particularly haunting as it brings to light one of my issues with the Bible – the idea that God could be so cruel and vengeful, and so many people are simply okay with this. It’s interesting to consider what the real reaction would be today. If a city were obliterated today, people would rush to create relief funds and provide help because it is the right thing to do.

Placing the emphasis on the humanity of the Bible as Crumb seems to have done reminds us that if the events of the Bible did occur, they happened to people just like us and that is incredibly frightening.

I was also interested in the way these events affect the businesses’ bottom line. Perhaps it would be interesting to looking into this data at some point. I know “The Comic Chronicles” [http://www.comichron.com] covers much of the sale figures.

Anyhow, great show thus far, and I’ll be looking forward to checking out the second half later today!

Thank you so much for your comment!

I agree about the power of Moore’s final couple issues. Two of my favorite super-hero comics ever, period. If you want super-hero action, there’s #15… devastating. And if you want super-heroes and politics, that final issue is so lyrical, precisely as you say… beautiful and sad and a work that stands the test of time. Take that, crap comics! :)

Thank you again, Miguel!

Gotham Central was a really interesting (anti)superhero comic by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, whose final arcs were horrifically mangled by the effects of Infinite Crisis (down to having certain lead characters simply ‘disappear’ and their long-developed arcs forcibly jettisoned).

That kind of editorial override became part of the reason why I’ve basically stopped reading any DC or Marvel comics.

I’d argue that a mere story (no matter how complex it is, like superhero comics) can only become mythology once they’re removed from the control of one person or a small group of people, and instead become shaped by society at large. In that sense, superhero comics could never qualify, since although a huge number of writer/artists were involved in shaping and developing any of their properties, the final say comes down to a single corporate body, who have certainly kept a tight leash. On the other hand, Bram Stoker’s Vampire monsters and Romero’s Zombies have become mythologies since they’ve become public domain, nobody can strictly ‘control’ them anymore and the concept is free to blow in the wind.

I’ve liked your introduction. It cleared up some things for me: I had no idea the final Miracleman issues Moore wrote were written after Watchmen. That makes the final issue even more powerful to me. So that would have been Moore’s final word on superheroes if he hadn’t returned to them with 1963. It’s one of the most lyrical and terrifying things he ever wrote.

Wasn’t the Santa Claus mythology somewhat created or propagated by corporations?

Also, you make a great point about two more or less contemporary characters.

Is it enough to call anything with a complex evolving reality (grown not from a single author, but multiple authors) a ‘myth’? Because then certainly The Bold and the Beautiful, Neighbours, and other very long-running soap operas could be classed as mythologies.

Also, do you believe there is any credence to the notion that the commercial nature of these comics (the driving force behind any all story decisions) excludes them from the realm of self-shaping myth? For example, the first Thanksgiving began as a real event and grew into a mythic event as each generation subtly builds on the legend and shapes it until it no longer represents reality. That kind of organic mythology is how I suspect classical myths came to be, rather than anything resembling the constructed mythology within commercial comic books, so it seems to me that they don’t belong in the same class. Just riffing here, what is your opinion?

I do reserve the right to hold seemingly contradictory views: for example, that Holy Terror possesses quite a bit of artistic merit, but that it’s also Islamophobic and dangerous.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Mariano!

Also, if any character gets away with anachronistic costume features, it’s Superman. The point is that he’s a boy scout, a throwback. If he were not, in fact, a Golden Age superhero, he would totally wear something that looked like it was from a Golden Age comic book, because that’s the type of guy he is and that’s what makes his character different from Batman or Flash. So it seems to me that besides the costume being iconic, it makes sense to keep the classic look.

I have problems with fictions that try only to carry a “message”, that wish only to impose a viewpoint that is intended to be correct, which is not always necessarily political. They are just an illustration of what the author knows for sure to be True. That’s why, for example, I find Paulo Coelho to be an awful writer, because he comes with his hands full of truths and all his work reduces itself to just a few one-liners. The same happens with Ayn Rand. Art must raise questions, not give answers. Quoting Tzvetan Todorov, Truth must be the horizon, not the starting point. When an author comes with his hands full of answers, I doubt he is an artist.

That is why I doubt Holy Terror’s artistic merit. It seems to just only say “Muslims are bad, let’s kill them.” There seems to be no investigation of the human soul, no confronting of the contradictions involved, no doubts, which are the essence of literature. That is why Holy Terror is just propaganda, and why propaganda is not good literature. I tend to think that if you want to state your ideology on any given subject write an essay, or give an interview or whatever. But literature is for the things you don’t understand, it is the Empire of Doubt, as argentine writer Carlos Gamerro has put it.

Probably all that I’ve said is wrong because I haven’t read Holy Terror. And I’m sure that pictorically there must be some merit, Miller after all is a great artist, but just not a great writer. Although maybe he used to be.

I hope my point was clear. English is not my first language and I tend to babble a lot…

And while your mostly right about the Death of Spider-Man title having little to do the over arching plot of this book, the actual Death of Spider-Man plot made almost no sense with out me having read it. I really would have apreciated Miller and Bendis maybe clarifying things in each of there books a little more. (I imagine people who read Avengers vs New Ultimates where just as confused as people who read Ultimate Spider-Man.)

People, check out his Punisher (the movie) piece too. Hilarious.

This reminds me of Robert Altman’s movie The Player: “I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we’ve got something here.”

Oh, so Marvel is going to prove that comics are a legitimate art form by turning them into another art form? If you strip the art away, you don’t have comics, you have novels. Explain how that’s going to legitimize comics? I’m dying to have that explained to me.

“The prose tells us exactly how Superman spoke. Without these words, how could the reader know that his voice was hoarse after battling a bony, killing machine? How can anyone prefer the image of Superman’s death to the line, “With a sigh he closed his eyes. then the last spark of a life that had burned bright with heroism flickered and died” is just beyond me.”

While I realize it may be beyond you, I’d much rather be shown something and come to the conclusions on my own as opposed to being told how to interpret something–show versus tell. It’s something I stress with my writing students. In this example, the artwork shows the reader the state that Superman is in and relies upon the viewer to do a little legwork, to use his or her imagination and add those flourishes such as “hearing” the tone and emotion of Superman and Lois’ voices.

Don’t get me wrong: I respect your opinion of the difference between the written and graphic novel. In my field of English literature, I encounter *many* people who either don’t “get” or appreciate comics and graphic novels. For some, it has to do with the very reasons you mentioned. However, I tend to bristle a little at over-generalizations such “There’s nothing wrong with comics, per se, but average people just simply can’t understand them.” The reality from teaching my developmental (read struggling) English students is that comics ARE a form of reading where they can excel. Many non-developmental students also truly enjoyed the experience of reading comics as well. The benefits are pretty straightforward too: Without the difficulties in comprehending the plot, students are free to explore more critical elements of the work. I never expected students to truly be able to discuss the nuances of the early years of the U.S.-Iraq war, but when placed in the context of Brian K. Vaughan’s “Pride of Baghdad,” these students were able to engage each in higher-level cognitive thinking where they hadn’t been able to do so when they were assigned the previous readings on the subject. There certainly are a number of people who just aren’t “in to” comics, but I’d be very hesitant to say “average” people are unable to understand them.

On a basic level, I don’t think the book presents anything resembling a point nor a consistent (nor even an interesting) point of view. The conceit of the typical Miller superhero vs terrorists is betrayed very early into the story, a conceit which I was honestly fascinated and curious about given the strong tradition of superheroes vs foreign enemies in comics, particularly against Nazis. Potentially, if ANYONE could deliver the same satisfaction of Captain America punching Hitler, its Miller. Needless to say, he fails to elicit that kind of response.

He simplifies the enemy into generic thugs, creating a ‘terrorist mastermind’ who lives in a lavish James Bond-esque underground lair, etc, all necessary to give his ‘hero’ something he can actually accomplish within the typical tropes of superhero comic. The ‘enemy’ here in no way represents realistically the terrorists as they exist in our reality, turning them into something close to Dr Doom and his henchmen, which lessens the impact of the work drastically. Also, Superheroes face up against terrorists in just about every comic anyway (certainly the Joker and his ilk qualify), the only difference here seems to be that these villains aren’t American.

The take-away I get from this book and Miller’s brief comments on the topic, is that he strongly and genuinely believes the only rational response to an ideologically opposed enemy is to abandon our own morals (abandon everything which, in Miller’s estimation, makes ours a superior civilization).

If we ARE to read it as propaganda, Miller has failed to establish just what it is we’re defending. His image of the west as presented in the opening chapters of this books is as depressing, nihilistic and sexually oppressive as that of his enemy (just look at that skyline). If I’m supposed to be shocked at the horrific violence of the nail bomb, would it not have been more effective to NOT first treat me to a dozen pages of positively presented sexual violence (something which Miller assumes we’re all getting off on)? Why is Catwoman’s ass more lovingly and patiently rendered than the page of rushed portraits of the dead? All of the storytelling devices we’ve seen Miller master in his career (the use of pacing, the carefully controlled punctuation of splash-panels, the subtle use of dialogue and exposition) are forgotten here. The ONE promising series of panels I noted seemed botched in execution (Miller juxtaposes a trio of moronic American theatre goers whooping at a screening of Transformers with a trio of moronic Islamic men stoning a woman). I understand that he wants to expose our apathy, but he does nothing further with the idea. For a book which has taken SO LONG to write and draw, it seems incredibly rushed, and focused more on the mechanics of the plot and the compositions of the poses rather than the themes he seems to want to explore.

I think Miller HAS a point of view, but either he’s incapable of expressing it coherently in the narrative form and genre he’s chosen, or its a viewpoint which is internally inconsistent. I just wish he’d written this piece without the dumb action, jettisoning the useless superhero plot in favour of something more akin to how Dave Sim currently writes Glamorpuss. I would happily read Frank Miller’s unabashed thoughts accompanied by his idiosyncratic and striking images, or even a long and well-reasoned rant.

I forget who mentioned it, but someone brought up the point that while we may not have a desire to keep hard copies of our mainstream, in-continuity trades, there will most certainly be a place for hard copy graphic novels such as The Photographer, American Born Chinese, Contract with God, and on and on. Why is this? Comics and graphic novels are getting a significantly increased amount of “air time” in college classrooms. And for literature courses, you really can’t compare the hard copy with the digital. Let me unpack that statement a bit.

For OUT of class study, digital books can be great, and this can include digital comics. However, they have two hamstrings for IN class study that–I believe–makes the hard copy a must. First, annotating in a digital copy of a book–comic or language-centric–is far more cumbersome. The result is students can fall behind and get lost trying to take notes and keep up with class discourse. It’s not impossible to with a digital copy, but it’s certainly a distant second best. Second, flipping back and forth between multiple pages isn’t particularly difficult… when dealing with a hard copy. Try this sometime with a digital book. I did this over the summer in one of the doctoral courses and I absolutely struggled to keep up and failed miserably. While it was a great learning experience for where each medium flies and flops, I really just wanted a hard copy at that moment.

Ultimately, I do think we’ll see a major shift in the production and distribution of comics in their monthly format. We’re seeing it in other forms of printed media (magazines, newspapers, etc), and I see no reason comics will change all that much. However, I think graphic novels are a different animal and generalizing the same results to them from the monthly floppies is an inaccurate comparison. Graphic novels are most certainly here to stay even if their sister publications will be undergoing significant changes in the near future.

I love the new venture! The topic of discussion is one that’s become quite relevant for me given my wife recently buying me a Kindle Fire for Christmas (and allowing me to play with it for a few weeks upon its arrival). While I was a hard-and-fast paper guy before, I’ve begun opening my mind to digital reading in the past year (I received a Kindle Keyboard last Christmas).

I agree that the reading experience is different; however, I’m not sure I’m so willing to place a higher value on one experience over the other. I agree that reading comics on my laptop is not anywhere as enjoyable for a number of the reasons mentioned: You have other distractors at your finger tips, the scrolling pulls you out of the reading experience, etc. However, I find much of this mitigated by the Kindle (and iPad–I have an iTouch, so I can fairly generalize on both here).

The touch screen swipes are actually easier than turning a page allowing me to experience the art even faster. Further, I enjoy the automated zoom feature which only allows me to experience the comic one panel at a time. Sometimes, I find I can lose some of the details of a smaller portion of a panel when I’ve been exposed to the entire two-page spread. What if my panel isn’t as visually stimulating as what’s on the half-splash on the next page? I could easily miss a subtle, nuanced detail or piece of important dialogue. Digital comics help keep me focused. This has been my experience using Comixology’s app, and compared to others (i.e. Marvel, Boom, Dark Horse) it is far less buggy and so much more smooth in its use and feel.

Now, I’ll grant the fact that readers may lose some of the “epic” splashes as you have to zoom out to take it all in–and thereby lose some of the detail of the picture (at least, you will on the Fire. I can’t speak for the iPad). Still, each medium has it pros and cons and thus far, I am not seeing one out balancing the other. I wouldn’t normally consider myself a modern comic reader. I collect vintage books, and these–along with all of my trade paperback and graphic novels–take up the bulk of space in my comic room. The notion of adding even more comic boxes isn’t in the least bit appealing, particularly if I am only looking at it as reading material. However, given the ability to have access to new material without taking up any space and for reduced pricing (I buy the sale and back issues for about 1/2 price of the monthly cost), I’m far more willing to consider being a little more current in my comics reading.

The only real drawback that I see to this new medium is the demise of the local comic shop (LCS). I’ve always enjoyed having a place to browse around for comics, being able to chat about this particular story arc, or knowing there was a place to scout around for new vintage collections brought to market. Online buying has already provided a major dent to this experience, and I suspect the success of digital comics will only continue to shrink the number of LCSs out there.

They just also make the promise to fulfill the shoes of the concept and provide meaningful content as well. And the ability to do that is what makes the narrative successful.

As you said, there’s nothing wrong with being batshit crazy, just if the only thing the narrative has to offer is batshit craziness.

The same rules apply to any graphic novel or long-format work, it’s just usually less of a problem because the author has all the time they need to get to the ending. It’s when one has a finite page space and a long story to tell that problems like these become of major importance.

As for postmodernism, I haven’t read Chris Ware much, so I couldn’t speak to how well that particular book works. However, there’s not anything particularly wrong with being non-linear, there’s only something wrong with being unintelligible.

That sort of segues into the discussion of “What if a work is intentionally difficult to understand in order to emphasize some point in the narrative or establish the appropriate mood?” – which is another discussion entirely.

Per usual, another solid article. I think the formalist approach you take here provides a clear and concise method to understanding why, by and large, many comics tend to leave readers feeling a little flat with the incomplete writing.

I’d probably say that it’s worth pointing out this problem is something writers & artists working within the monthly comic format, as opposed to telling their story in a graphic novel format, must be especially aware of considering the numerous breaks in the narrative.

While I’d be curious to hear what others think, I wonder whether or not this formalist treatment of narrative completeness would work when applied against a more postmodern graphic novel, such as Chris Ware’s “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth”? There are multiple narratives taking place at various times and it certainly leads to reader confusion quite a bit. On the other hand, I know postmodernism doesn’t advocate chaos without purpose; certainly, Diablo #1 does not seem to demonstrate a rationale for its multiple narratives which are broken down and introduced in a non-linear manner. As such, I’d like to think it would not fall under the “protection” of postmodern in its approach, and more likely (as you suggest) it is simply poorly constructed.

From this analysis, I believe that we can conclude that one of the problems with many comics is that the writers are interested in throwing twists and ideas and keeping readers guessing rather than giving them a story or a human element to cling to.

I often read interviews by the likes of Matt Fraction, Nick Spencer and Jonathan Hickman, and their method of promoting their work is amping the “Weird, crazy bat-shit, mind-blowing stuff” in their stories; it’s like they’re desperate to sound awesome, clever and brilliant. And well, I have a non-fiction science book by string theory sciencist Michio Kaku next to me full of that stuff, so I don’t really need comics for that. Not that I object to crazy, batshit stuff. But I expect fiction to give me more than that.

Perhaps it’s the only way of attracting the readers’ attention in this age of short-attention spans: show them flashy, big, loud things, but keep the mysteries going for as long as possible and don’t give anything away, until it’s all a tangled mess of loose ends without a logical way of tying them up.

It’s the Lost school of writing.

But I don’t think that’s a substitute for actual storytelling and characterisation.

That said, I’m sure if I flipped carefully through Holy Terror I would find more than one at least decently constructed panel, maybe a riveting action sequence or two (Frank’s good at those), and possibly some good dialogue. I’m doubtful on the last one because I’ve actually never liked Miller’s dialogue, due to it all sounding very stilted and mostly the same, but it could happen.

I *wish* I could remember the exact quote and source, but my mind is failing me. Grading exams does this to you after a bit. However, I’m reminded of a something I read somewhere that essentially said many writers have the ability to write a powerful line or two; truly great writers do it on a consistent basis.

Considering this idea–which I rather like–against Frank Miller’s efforts in “HT,” I’d say there is arguably some artistic elements present, but it’s not enough to make it a work of art. He might have one or two lines or panels that provide a flash of brilliance, but I don’t think it’s enough to consider the work as a whole anywhere near so.

It’s usually counter-productive. It can be ugly. And creating a “teachable moment” is usually a lot better option.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m fine with campaigns to get people fired. But when it’s transparently selective, it becomes very ugly very fast.

I actually don’t think criticism of the depictions of Holy Terror need really be P.C. at all. I don’t think pointing out the text’s problems, or its agenda, need be “politically correct.” It’s just responsible criticism. I’ve said myself its implications are dangerous.

I also agree about 9/11 being too far in the past. And I’m sick of it being used for political gain and to short circuit analysis.

My sole point is that there is artistic merit here. I’m wowed by quite a lot of the art and even dialogue / captions in Holy Terror. I’m also really troubled by its politics, and I think it’s a lot more dangerous than “slightly racist.”

You’ve read different reviews than I have. I’m sure that’s my fault. Most of what I encounter is pretty liberal, and the reviews I’ve read have been largely dismissive of Holy Terror or focused on its troubling politics. I was trying to play Devil’s Advocate here and make a case — which I do feel strongly about — that art with politics we may find reprehensible may be artistically vital nonetheless. If I’ve misread the terrain, as I suspect I have, I’m sorry. It’s certainly not my intent to add my voice to those shouting that any criticism of racist or Islamophobia content is equivalent to P.C. censorship. Very much not my point at all.

Thanks again for your comments. It’s been helpful.

Is there any room in what you’ve said to say “this is a stunning image” or “this is a brilliant line of dialogue?”

I think so because it fails on its own merits – it fails to sufficiently communicate the intended message. The intended message does not necessarily have to be a persuasion – that always fails in a narrative. Persuasive narratives are always flat, and almost never actually persuasive. Rather, the point of a narrative is to reveal, to make the audience understand and empathize with the viewpoint, logic, and meaning of the message. What to do afterwards is up to the viewer – authors attempt to show truth, not preach it.

That’s why we’re moved by some Christian and Buddhist art. It’s why we cheer at the cathartic climax of the action movie in which the hero gives the villain his comeuppance. We understand – that doesn’t mean we’re going to become Christians or Buddhists, or go beat up some bank robbers. But we get it.

Holy Terror fails on that level. No communication, no understanding.

Qualitative judgements of what Holy Terror is communicating is not what I’m after. Regardless of my opinion on the politics of the book, I think as a work of art, as a story with an intent to communicate – it fails.

Sure, the comparison between Imus and Chris Rock creates a double standard (sort of…) but it is commonly understood that people are allowed to appropriate negative slurs to use in their own language. My wife can call her sister a bitch, but I can’t. It is okay (sort of…) for a black guy to say nigger, but not a white guy. Same thing… Except I don’t know many women, black or white, that are okay with being called “ho.” And while it might be okay for a black guy to call his friend a nigga, it’s not okay for, say, Barack Obama to refer to Herman Cain as “my nigga.”

Frankly, when I hear white people complain about black people saying nigger, I presume that they’re thinking what Homer Simpson said about the word queer; “That’s our word for making fun of you!”

Now, to stay on topic a bit, I do see a lot of manipulation of political correctness. I’ve read a few different reviews of Holy Terror, most of them well written and saying the same thing;it’s a boring story, the art is a bit of a mess, and it’s a bit racist (although they’re never that cut and dry and they usually have one or two nice things to say about the book). Inevitably among the first commenters on these reviews is someone who is claiming that the reviewer is just too PC and doesn’t get it, or is just trying to attack the book because it is controversial. It’s an unfare argument, putting the writer, or anyone who agrees with the writer, in a position of trying to argue that they’re not just trying to toe some PC line.

And I wanted to clarify a point; I’m not simply arguing that Miller’s work doesn’t work as natioanlistic propaganda; I’m also arguing that the event is so far in the past and Miller has pulled his story so far away from reality that it doesn’t work as cathartic propaganda either. It may have worked in 2002, but not now.

I take your point, and you make it well. I respect your opinion. I do feel the need, however, to respectfully disagree on principle.

I think shit thrown on a canvas, while not necessarily great art, can indeed be a legitimate expression of artistic freedom. I assume we all accept that, at least when such an expression is considered unacceptable art. So yes, I do think there’s artistic value in pushing the limits. I further think there’s value in continuing to reestablish those limits, especially in defiance of public taste, because freedom not used tends to be lost.

That doesn’t mean I have to like it, nor do you. I actually think it’s quite dangerous, as I said many times.

I’m not saying there are no morals, just that it’s dangerous to apply them as a metric by which to judge art. (I couldn’t agree more that human morality stems from evolution. But the idea of demonizing a group has been morally normal throughout human history, if not throughout all of human evolution. It’s not at all “natural” to object to that. This only demonstrates the inherent subjectivity involved.)

Of course, we should object to artistic depictions that objectify whole classes of people, especially innocent people (like roughly 99.9999% of Muslims). But I stop when this politics also necessitates that we find no artistic value in the given work. That’s a kind of puritanism, a throwing of the baby out with the bathwater, that I think goes too far. And is simply inaccurate, in this case.

That was really my main thesis here, and I think it’s rather a moderate one — although important.

Again, thanks for your comments, as always. I hope I’m not being too much of a dick. Not my intent.

The thing you’re forgetting about Imus is that the left really went to war against him. He was public enemy #1 for a week. Everyone lined up to condemn him, and several prominent Democrats publicly campaigned for him to be fired. Yes, his show lost advertisers, but you’re forgetting why.

Of course, I thought Imus’s comment was awful. But he’s a comedian, paid to be offensive on the fly, he and others (Howard Stern, anyone?) have said a lot that’s questionable, and Imus apologized very quickly, from what I remember. He soon went to meet to talk with the students he’d slurred and apologize personally. He also didn’t have a record of racism in his personal life — quite the opposite, in fact. What he said was was wrong, but to single him out like that and campaign for his removal — as if that would mean a victory for the forces against racism, when all of this debate over his prospective firing actually obscured the fact that no serious discussion of race ever occurred… that was horrific to watch, frankly. And it was totally counter-productive to anyone who cares about racism, unless the point is to simply silence racists and make them hostile towards what they likely already perceive as a politically correct establishment.

All a conservative had to do, in the wake of the hounding of Don Imus, was to play a 30-second clip from any Chris Rock special to demonstrate a double standard. How was campaigning for Don Imus to be fired helping the cause, then? It didn’t; it set the cause back.

I don’t often see people doing what you describe, using racial invective and then blaming the P.C. police. When that happens, it’s usually one idiot who no one takes seriously, and he’s laughed at. And one person invoking X doesn’t mean X isn’t real.

I don’t recall anyone significant saying the furor over Mel Gibson’s remarks was “the demon of political correctness.” No, his remarks were just vile, and people said so. The most anyone said that I heard is that he’s not Hitler and shouldn’t be banned from work.

Does the right manipulate the fear of political correctness? Of course! But that doesn’t mean it’s never a legitimate concern.

The problem with the un-PC lobby is that it’s too broad. Every time a white dude calls someone a nigger and gets creamed in the media he blames the demon of political correctness. I don’t see it as such. I see that as a natural reaction to hate-filled language.

Colin addresses the text’s Islamophobic implications with great precision, and I agree with 99% of what he says. He doesn’t address Holy Terror‘s artistic merit (outside of one reference, in a caption, to how the terrorist bomb explosion sequence is moving), so there’s mostly little overlap between our two works. And crucially, Colin doesn’t make the mistakes I criticize in others, such as confusing fiction for non-fiction advocacy, or claiming there’s no artistic merit to what Miller’s done. Rather, he concerns himself quite precisely with the text’s implications, and I don’t disagree with him. I just have a different take, a different concern, which I don’t find mutually exclusive with his.

One point Colin makes, which I concede completely, is that Miller’s claim not to know anything about Islam is bunk. Colin proves that’s not the case quite convincingly, which is something I hadn’t contemplated. Colin also demonstrates that Miller doesn’t quite have the courage of his convictions, when it comes to his public comments about Holy Terror, which is a useful note to my claim that Miller’s made himself, as an artist, into a kind of uncompromising, Randian figure.

These are very important to note, and I encourage everyone to read Colin’s take on these matters.

I guess we can go down that road and declare there are no morals, no ethics, etc., but I don’t see where that’ll lead us. Humans are moral creatures; it’s evolutionary useful. So’ll always be guided by our values. You can say art is immune from them, but it’s not, because without values people can’t even begin to properly function in society, make choices, etc.

But the fact remains: in general, great writers don’t behave like Miller, in their writing and outside it. I’ve yet to read a great writer go on such an ignorant tirade, or show such xenophobia in his interviews. In their personal lives? Sure, they’re horrible people. But at least publicly they show some decorum. And for me there’s no way of turning Miller’s rants into a statement of courage and boldness and artistic freedom.

I’m not arguing against that. I never said Miller should be deprived of of his rights to write this garbage. But I disagree that just because it’s vile, un-PC and mean-spirited it’s a reason to praise it for its boldness.

Nothing shall be accomplished in politics if we don’t, as a precondition, provide this place for art and ideas. That must always come first.

I’m being quite serious when I say that this is intrinsic to the entire democratic project, if not the project of the Enlightenment itself. The right to distribute pornography means your right to religious speech is protected, as is the right of the scientist to propose out-of-the-box hypotheses. Equally, the right of the K.K.K. to spit its historically revisionist bile ensures these same rights, as well as our own right to get history and race completely wrong.

Yes, that bile should be condemned. But we shall only change minds when we have this discussion, not when we drive views underground.

That freedom of speech does stop when it urges people to kill others. But then, Miller’s work simply doesn’t do that. It is fiction, period. Ugly fiction, perhaps. But it doesn’t cross that line into a non-fictional endorsement of killing people. Indisputably.

The fact that I even have to say this illustrates why this article was so important.

As for whether Miller’s text “transmit[s] anything of value about the human condition,” of course it does. Even if we take it as a paranoid, racist fantasy, or as an exhibit of the brain shutting off in response to the trauma of 9/11, it meets this criterion. I’ve seen the work of people in mental institutions, with little grasp on reality, praised as teaching us about the human condition. Is our hatred for Frank Miller so great that our own reasoning faculties have been shut down, precisely as we accuse his of being?

Again, I’m not defending Miller’s politics. I’m not saying we shouldn’t point out the text’s implications, which I repeatedly called “dangerous.” I’m saying that this very inability to process the artistic merits of something with which we disagree is profoundly worrying.

Where I’m very much aware that I’ve failed is in pointing out where Holy Terror succeeds artistically. I would like to do so in a later writing, but it didn’t fit here.

It really wasn’t my argument that the text has artistic merit simply because it defies political correctness. I do think transgressive art does so, and I thoroughly respect that. But defying P.C. might be brave in some cases, yet not produce vital art. Holy Terror is vital, although I agree I haven’t shown how, beyond what you’re addressing. I did assume that people would see that, but it was also beyond the scope of this particular piece.

Having said this, I feel obligated to say that, while I don’t think simply being un-P.C. makes something good art, I’m sympathetic to those, both on the right and the left, who see political correctness as something to resist. I support, in general, the desire to be sensitive, and I even more strongly support the desire to have representations of minorities reflect reality, rather than stereotypes. But we simply cannot permit ourselves the delusion that political correctness hasn’t ruined lives and warped psyches.

If we are to criticize religion for damaging people with sexual repression, surely we can admit that gender feminism damaged many — especially American intellectuals — far worse. We raised a generation of men to hate themselves and see themselves as inherently born evil, including as rapists, and we’re reaping the consequences now with the cultural backlash in favor of an unapologetic, objectifying male sexuality. In the annals of political doublespeak, surely “feminism is the radical belief that women are people” merits a high ranking — it’s as transparently manipulative and silencing in its intent as dubbing your own policies the only patriotic options. For a good long time, the left in America was the leading champion of speech restrictions and “free speech zones.” And while I thought Dom Imus’s comments deserved discussion and rebuke, he didn’t deserve firing for them any more than Bill Maher deserved firing for his comments after 9/11. I’ve experienced a lot of this nonsense first-hand, and I feel obligated to point out that political correctness has an awful lot to account for.

That doesn’t mean I think it’s worse than the lunatics in the Tea Party. It also doesn’t mean that those objecting to political correctness are as thoughtful about it, nor as strong in their defense of free speech, as I am. I do recognize these things.

But understanding this history demonstrates that having a place for the non-P.C. is of vital importance for not only political discourse but the republic. Condemn and discuss, certainly. But excoriating an un-P.C. work as inherently artistically worthless because of that fact is a vile, vile thing to do.

(I know you’re not doing that, Danny! You don’t see artistic merits, regardless. That’s utterly your prerogative. I’m just trying to explain why some would be inclined to leap to the defense of the politically correct.)

As I said in the piece (I think… I cut to much, it’s hard to remember), I’m not saying “poor Frank Miller.” You can’t take a stance like this and not expect criticism.

I appreciate very much your final paragraph. Few things make me more queasy than saying what I have here, because I am very concerned about the text’s politics. And Islamophobia in particular. And the fearmongering that has been disastrous politically.

But at the same time, I can point to a good dozen sequences in this same text that I find stunning and brilliant examples of the comics form. That puts me in a very odd bind. And while I support those who have stood up to point out the text’s Islamophobia, I felt a need to stand up and defend its artistic merit, which I felt was being ignored.

Hm, yes, that’s probably an exaggeration. It just gleefully exalts the murder of lots of people without considering any moral consequences.

It’s not very meaty stuff for me. I can’t really see any value in this book; I don’t think there’s any boldness about being un-PC unless it’s clever or has a point. I mean, the author is free to write about what he wants. But don’t expect me to praise him for things I find worthless.

But this sort of approach to dehumanizing one’s enemy is meant explicitly to better enable one to commit acts of atrocity. And Miller uses the text to push this agenda. I’d say using his text as a vehicle for this agenda opens the gates to such criticism.

Heaven help me for going in this direction, but Nazi Germany adopted many traditionally accepted forms of art to push its agenda. Further, it used these products of art to portray a particular group of people in such a way that the populous would be mobilized to act against them. While I’m sure that the film, radio, literary, and other artists of Nazi Germany created works that can be analyzed as art, how many do we still see studied and appreciated today?

Obviously, I am in *no* way suggesting we look at Miller as a Nazi. However, I do find some similarities in using art to dehumanize one’s enemy in order for the individual experiencing that art and taking in that message to either commit the act of violence, or at least condone it. In this regard, I do believe (after having now finished the book) that this is Miller’s aim: Numb the reader to condone and support such acts of violence against fundamentalists.

On a personal note: I spent 6 months deployed in Baghdad during 2003-04 earning an Army Combat Action Badge (CAB) following my deployment. One of the biggest difficulties I recall facing while deployed and when upon my return was the conflict over the human nature of our enemy. When we dehumanize the enemy, it is easier to commit inhuman acts against him or her. Look at the horrific events of Abu Ghraib. We dehumanized these prisoners, and then some individuals stopped seeing them as humans worth *some* level of humane treatment.

For my part, any work that presents a narrative–in an uncritical manner–that carries with it these sorts of behaviors is one that deserves the sort of criticism Frank Miller is earning with “Holy Terror.” For what it’s worth, Julian, I hear you when you say that this is not a work that you’ll be recommending to others as a good read :) Instead, it is the point that we need to allow works from ALL backgrounds have the opportunity to be voiced, and I won’t argue that point. I just feel no sympathy for Miller in the backlash that he has rightly earned with producing this sort of work, which I believe is a lazy appeal to fear and ignorance through out-of-date mode of storytelling that is behind the times.

But DO keep posting articles like this! If we don’t stop and think about what makes our comics worthy of artistic consideration, we’ll never be able to communicate this others and be willing to accept anything as art. As you point out, sometimes we need to be a little uncomfortable at times if it helps spur us to think more critically.

My problem is that I don’t feel that Miller is successful in creating a piece of propaganda. As i see it, there are two basic forms of propaganda; nationalistic propaganda and cathartic propaganda. Miller seems to be going for the second, but lets take the first type first. Triumph of the Will would be a pretty good example of nationalistic propaganda, a piece of work that promotes the superiority of your nation. Nothing about Holy Terror seems to do that. In fact, it’s not really even set in any United States that we know. It’s set in a fictional analogue of New York City that we can only presume is in the United States. This becomes a key point in discussing the second type of propaganda, the cathartic. Miller’s problem is that he’s creating a fictional work about a fictional Muslim enemy (a fictionalized version of al Qaeda) getting beat up by a fictional hero in a fictional city in what I can only presume is a fictionalized version of the United States. More to the point, the book was published ten years after the event that it seems to be fictionalizing.

To compare Miller’s book to the propaganda of the 1940s, you would need a book in which a hero from Central City, USA fights off an invasion from space after Teutonic aliens destroy a military installation. And you would publish it in 1951.

Now, you can point to the racist caricatures of the 1940s and say that Miller is aping them in his portrayal of the fictionalized al Qaeda, but that ignores years and years of preexisting racism in comics. We already had the Asian stereotypes in comics before comic propaganda came along; we just got lucky in the fact that we had a preexisting stereotype ready to step in. If we were attacked by the Ivory Coast we would have had caricatures of Little Black Sambo getting decked by Captain America and Bugs Bunny.

But if your propaganda comic doesn’t work as propaganda, what have you got? Can it be art for arts sake? That depends on whether we want to consider propaganda art in the first place. It is a functional work, so in essence it is defined by its function in a way that other works of art are not. If, say, a piece of propaganda was used to try to get more people to join the army and no one joins the army, did that piece of art not fail?

But that doesn’t mean that propaganda can’t be art. Triumph of the Will pops to mind. So does Birth of a Nation and The Little Dictator. What I find most interesting are the people who defend Holy Terror simply because it’s not politically correct. I have yet to see anyone who makes a real and convincing case for its artistic quality. Even you at one point refer to the book as “detestable.” and simply being un-PC does not make something art.

More and more I’m inclined to T.S. Eliot’s words about art and originality; he contended the purpose of art was to recapitulate what we already know; trying to come up with new things to say would only lead to perversions.

I’ll gladly prefer safe ideas; just because they’re safe doesn’t mean they’re not necessary anymore. I think a narrative about slavery makes a lot of sense in our days of savage capitalism.

Miller’s comic book is a perversion. Just because it’s not safe, just because it’s bold, it doesn’t mean it really transmits anything of value about the human condition.

I’m not a Christian, but I’m moved by a lot of Christian artwork.

The Sistine Chapel never urged me to kill people. I think it’s worth distinguishing between visual arts and literature, which deals directly with ideas. We can make the same point about Picasso’s art; sure, “Guernica” is ugly to look at; but there’s being harmlessly ugly; and then there’s being an ugly text that promotes killing people.

But let”s be honest: if the movie were promoting the death penalty, it wouldn’t have gotten half the critical acclaim it did. Why shouldn’t good art also promote good, socially responsible ideas?

That’s a common tactic in propaganda: make the enemy look as evil as possible to dehumanize and objectify them.

That doesn’t excuse such a depiction. It’s repugnant, actually. But that’s the real criticism, if you’re going to go after Holy Terror‘s politics — this false equivalency that allows us to dehumanize, not that the text is “advocating killing people.”

But again, it’s art. It’s wild art that takes place in an exaggerated fantasy world, which obviously has only a passing correspondence with our own. I’m not sure that such a work of art can really advocate anything, much less killing people. It presents a narrative, and a narrative with dangerous political implications. But I’m not sure that’s the same as “advocating,” in the way you’re using it.

However, that doesn’t negate that it’s wrong to judge a work of art according to one’s own ideas of what that art should be, rather than what that art is. That’s how you get people complaining that an action movie should be less of an action movie.

An artist makes art for his own reasons. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, and it’s got to be judged on its own merits, or lack thereof. Those initial reasons aren’t relevant anymore, and the text is what it is.

A lot of times, an artist who tried to make a social point buries it so well that it’s not even obvious to readers and is ignored by critics. But much of what readers and critics like is the result of the artist’s intentions, however filtered through a narrative. That doesn’t mean we should ignore that narrative and instead focus on the artist’s intentions. It means we should recognize that the artist’s intentions — which could be as mundane as dealing with death or personal issues — went into this product and are interesting, but they don’t come out in ways that are necessarily controlled or even reflective of those original intentions.

I’m definitely not saying artists should only care about “Art,” divorced from politics or material circumstances. I think that would be absurd. I’m just saying that, if we found out Lolita was intended as an argument for pedophilia or against pedophilia, it wouldn’t change that it’s a masterful, beautiful work — and that, even if we do want to examine it on that issue, it’s conflicted, whatever the artist’s intent.

In response to another point, I’d very much like more artists to feel free to express their racism and sexism. Not because I agree with it, but because I believe these views are out there (if not widespread), and most people simply don’t express them because they know they’re politically incorrect. If we’re going to end racism and sexism, we’ll end it because people do feel free to express those views, and the rest of us will explain why they don’t make sense.

I lived in Hawaii, and people are openly racist there in ways that would appall mainland Americans. But one soon realizes that it’s not really hostile — it’s just stereotypes, and they’re no more prevalent than they are anywhere else. Once they’re expressed, they can be addressed, usually in very friendly ways. So one has to wonder: isn’t the fact that racism is usually so hostile reflective of the fact that it’s repressed and left to fester? We all have stereotypes in our minds, and the way our brains develop them is actually quite rational and serves an evolutionary function. Better then, I think, not to repress them, so that they can be corrected instead of allowed to fester into a hatred of society’s “double standard” against expressing such views.

Thanks for making me think!

Excellent point about the difference between ’40s propaganda and Miller’s work. Of course, Miller would probably say that’s a failing on our parts. And I agree, judged by what you’re saying, Holy Terror fails. It’s not going to change anyone’s mind.

The basic error I see you making is that you assume that a transgressive work’s desire to wake the reader has to succeed. But that’s not how art is judged, purely by whether it presents a coherent argument that succeeds in convincing. I don’t think that a transgressive work has to succeed in “waking” its audience to succeed artistically. That’s never been true. All that matters is that there is a deeper agenda to the work. And even that isn’t strictly necessary, in terms of its art. But if you want deeper meaning, it’s there. Whether it convinces us is irrelevant.

That’s a very restrictive definition of art, and it’s not one to which I subscribe. It’s incredibly reductive.

From this, you assume that Miller’s talking to those who are already convinced. Except that this is obviously a work read by a general audience, much of which has objected strongly to it.

If you’re looking for a circle jerk, there are lots of movies and comics that present really safe ideas, like about how terrible American slavery was, or countless Lifetime movies about the horrors of domestic violence. Fine, I agree with those agendas personally, but if you’re judging art on the basis of whether it convinces or is a circle jerk, those are a lot safer, a lot more circle-jerky than Holy Terror. By miles.

Now, personally, I don’t think America’s at war with a great enemy. I think we’re at war with a petty, largely impotent enemy — one willing and able to do horrific acts, yes, but acts that are asymmetrical precisely because the enemy is so weak and outgunned.

I think we are at war with a far greater enemy: ourselves. With our own values and our future as a democracy.

Which makes judging Holy Terror on the basis of whether it convinces us all the more dangerous. Of course, it doesn’t. Nor should it. Rather, we should all collectively retort how the work might successfully invoke the fear of 9/11 but utterly leaves out the fact that, in the big picture, a lot more innocent Muslims have been killed by the U.S., since 9/11, than U.S. citizens died on 9/11 itself. That’s a fact not in dispute. Nor is it in dispute that American Muslims face widespread discrimination — cases of which have made me weep. I couldn’t be more concerned with that. These are things we should all but saying and saying loudly.

But to put that on Frank Miller, or to argue that he shouldn’t create art that addresses these issues unless it reflects these facts and unless he’s able to convince us we’re wrong… that’s absurd. That’s nothing but subjecting art to an ideological test, and that’s repugnant. Democracy shall not survive by the left putting art to its own equivalent of a knee-jerk pledge of patriotism. We must not dodge theocracy by implementing political correctness. Neither is a world I want to live in.

So you see, the question isn’t and can’t be whether it convinces. A hell of a lot of the art I most admire doesn’t “convince” me politically. I’m not a Christian, but I’m moved by a lot of Christian artwork. I’m not a Buddhist, but I’m moved by Buddhist artwork too. I’m not a vigilante, but I’m moved by revenge stories. The question simply can’t be weather we think these works a full and accurate political argument, nor a depiction of reality when they’re sometimes obviously fantasy.

I do realize that all of this may be the result of me being inarticulate, in the line you quoted about “waking” the reader. But again, that’s only to say that transgressive art has deeper meaning. It’s not to say that it ought to convince us of it.

I agree that the world’s not black and white and that Miller’s text works emotionally, rather than making an argument. I only would add that even though we might not like the emotions on display or the reason for them, there’s nothing illegitimate about an appeal for emotion, which has to be judged on its own terms, rather than any readers who would have preferred a rational argument leading to a different conclusion.

I agree with you, Forrest, about Miller taking an anachronistic model in the super-hero propaganda story. But I don’t think he or the work itself is really trying to make an argument, any more than the stories of old were. Whether we are moved to action or not shouldn’t be the issue — otherwise, we’d have to judge Dead Man Walking by whether it made us campaign against the death penalty. It didn’t. Art rarely does.

That doesn’t mean the intentions of the artist: it’s obviously possible for an artist to produce something that reflects his or her unconscious assumptions or structures. At best, the artist has a unique and useful insight into the work’s intent, but his or her opinion is hardly definitive and must stand on its merits.

I studied the intentional fallacy and art for art’s sake at college, like any other good literature student, and although it held me in a thrall for a while, it means very little to me these days. The Art for Art’s sake is a very convenient excuse for artists who feel they’re under attack from society, like Oscar Wilde felt (and later was), but it can become ridiculous. I was reading an interview by the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka the other day, and the poor man was complaining how the problems of Nigeria take away all his time to writer proper artistic literature. It seems if Nigeria weren’t a country rife with corruption, social inequality, crime, etc, apparently he wouldn’t write about those mundage things. He does because of his social consciousness. Apparently, if he could he would write about artistic things. But, I wonder, what the hell is artistic art? Plays about poetry? Novels about sculpture? Poems about architecture? It’s all very fuzzy.

Then I’m reminded of something José Saramago wrote in one of his diaries. One day he attended a writers’ conference; he was in his seventies by then, and there were lots of young novelists in the group. And all those young novelists, when asked if they thought art should be socially responsible, rushed to declare no!, art must only true to itself. But then they were asked, did they want their art to change the world? Of course! And Saramago observes how those young novelists had contradictory views about art: on the one hand, art must only be true to itself. On the other hand, they expect their art to have the power to change the world. But how can artistic art achieve that if it’s not concerned with the world but with that lofty thing called Art?

Then I’m of course fascinated by the fact that, although most writers defend art for the sake of art, most of the good ones, the ones universally praised, can’t stop writing about real world questions, moral issues and social matters. I refer as an example Mario Vargas Llosa, whose almost entire body of work is one long exploration of South American politics. His latest novel, The Dream of the Celt, is even about a civil rights activist.

I just think that art for art’s sake, although useful once, is something that doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Sure, writers, perhaps under cultural and academic pressure, pay lip service to it, but deep down they really want to write morally indignant books with the intention of making the world a better world. But they’re too ashamed to admit it.

But if writers only care about Art, if they’re such amoral people who worry more about language and worldplay, and all those artistic things, then why don’t we have more writers advocating the death penalty, praising capitalism, freely expressing racist and sexist beliefs, condoning pollution, etc? Isn’t that transgressive? Isn’t that bold? But strangely enough, most writers are left-leaning, not to say down-right communist, idealists with utopian agendas who are also socially and politically active in the real world.

Sure, Tropic of Cancer was a transgressive novel, it upset a lot of people; but certainly we can agree that advocating the freedom to fuck a lot is not the same as advocating killing people, yes? Even Curzio Malaparte, who was a Fascist, as in he was friends with Mussolini’s son-in-law, had sumptuous dinners with Nazi officers and had safe conducts to visit Jewish ghettos, managed to write one of the best anti-war novels ever. So I don’t think there’s any way to excuse or condone Frank Miller’s “boldness.”

“It doesn’t mean that I can’t see, as a reader and as a critic, that Miller’s being intentionally offensive, intentially one-sided, intentionally shocking, as a way of trying to wake the reader to a reality he believes is being ignored.”

I disagree because I find this aim to be a foolish one. It doesn’t communicate what he wants it to communicate. What he has communicated with this book is, as he said himself that, “America is at war with a great enemy.” And as he further expounded, the second part about how nobody seems to give a damn, and America is too affluent to wake up and care.

That’s the message he’s trying to send, right? That’s what he believes. He’s said it, we believe it.

His book doesn’t send that message. It fails to convince the reader of the importance of what he’s saying, precisely because it is so one-sided, foolish, ungrounded in reality, and offensive. The propaganda comics of the 40s that he’s pulling from were not designed to convince the reader of the wisdom of Captain America punching Hitler, they were designed to simply satisfy the cathartic urge the reader already had for somebody to punch Hitler.

These kinds of comics fail to communicate or convince, they are merely exercises in schadenfreude for people who already hold such an opinion.

Is that bad? I think it is. Because what the work then really amounts to is, pardon my crudeness, a circle jerk. That’s all it is. He hasn’t woken up the rest of the world to his point of view, he’s essentially just walked over to all the people he already knows share his opinion and has said, “Hey, we’re so right, aren’t we?”

And the people who share his opinion reply, “Oh yes, we’re very very right. Why can’t the rest of the world see how right we are?”

And that’s where it stops. No attempt to understand other people, no attempt to broaden one’s experience or thought process, no attempt to even communicate with anyone who doesn’t already think that Islamic Fundamentalists ought to all die a horrible death and are unequivocally evil.

No communication, just self-affirmation.

It may still be art, but it sure as hell isn’t good art.

First off, great article! The downside is in trying to pick a point to begin a response.

I certainly appreciate the comparison to WWII propaganda and Miller’s work. I guess there is a part of me that thinks: “Those old forms played upon fear… upon emotional responses with far less–if any–regard to appealing to the reason.” And I have to then ask why would Miller opt to avoid an appeal to reason? I’m not going to jump to the conclusion and say he isn’t being rationale (though I’m ready to do so at a moment’s notice!-), but I do find this to be a flaw in his thinking. If his intent behind his graphic art was to stir political action, then don’t we have to judge his work–in part–upon the way he communicates his politics? This may just be my personal opinion, but someone who appeals strictly to one set of senses (emotion or reason) is taking a cheap way out. Crafting an argument that calls out both the reader/view’s critical thinking and emotional intelligence would take more effort. From what I’ve read of “Holy Terror” thus far (1/2 way through it), I’m not finding as much of an appeal to reason as I am an appeal to fear. As you rightly point out: In this genre of propaganda, there is no room for gray–just black and white. And wouldn’t the world be “easier” if issues were merely black and white?

I fully agree with the notion you bring forward about being critical in our critiques of both Miller, and artwork as a whole. I tell my son: “Take a No-Thank You bite before deciding you don’t like something.” He’s a toddler, so we’re still working on it. :) However, I’d like to think I’m encouraging him to make an informed decision about why he disagrees with something–something that will stick with him later on down the road. In like fashion, it IS important we understand our rationale for branding a particular book as being of “lesser quality.” We need to experience works like Miller’s in order to understand why they are or are not art before casting reactionary judgment.

Perhaps the real fault with Miller’s latest offering is that it is anachronistic in nature. He (wrongly) assumes he can pick up an outdated mode of communicating his politics–the WWII comics propaganda model–and successfully argue his points. While he may be successful in communicating his thoughts, I’d argue that he ultimately fails to achieve any sort of substantial foothold in the mind & beliefs of his readers. We no longer live in a world of “black and white,” and hopefully, Miller will take this into consideration the next time around…

As for English versions, there are authorized English translations available in text form, which can be read alongside the French originals. Still, getting those French originals to the states involves paying international shipping, which is rough… not to mention the French cover prices are themselves astronomical to U.S. minds.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s “Dead Memory” explores some similar thematic territory, makes me want to go back and re-read it.

These days, I actually prefer to read the limited, ending-planned-ahead, creator-owned series from Vertigo and Image, etc. I really don’t have any patience anymore for those static characters and their faux changes.

“We can even get kinda deep with it and say that the superhero represents the qualities in us that are eternal, and can triumph over anything, even death.”

There’s a fine essay by Umberto Eco where he argues that the value of literature is exactly that it reminds us of our mortality. All great protagonists die. The fact is, humans can’t triumph over death, and most of our existence is trying to ignore that truth. Literature shows us the honest, brutal truth. Superheroes just throw sand into our eyes, like all kitsch that pretends to be art. They’re here to comfort us, not shows the truth.

“Or we can just be straight up about the whole thing and say, “look these are kids’ stories, no one dies in kids’ stories. Go watch Schindler’s List if you need to be all bummed out about death and stuff.””

This discourse, of course, is undermined by the fact that most writers will furiously argue that comics are not for kids anymore! They’re serious, mature, sophisticated, smart now! And why they can barely address the emotional impact of death. It’s really pathetic.

Nice article. My condolences for your grandmother.

I always enjoy reading your work too, Julian, and everyone’s contributions to the site. It’s a superb place to be!

As for Miller, it’s true that I love Mazzucchelli. But I’ll defend Sin City. My take on Miller is that he’s more a visionary than a philosopher, and I think that even Miller’s worst stuff presents some kind of distinct, remarkable vision — even if I find it overdone or politically disturbing.

I also agree with you about Morrison being an exception. I do appreciate several of the works you’ve mentioned in the last 10 years, but I’d still strongly argue that the last five years in particular has been a real downturn, in terms of quality.

But yes, yes, yes, and to nothing more than this: “When will we see creators actually try to play with the medium itself rather than just dazzle us with hyperbolic fight scenes and meaningless deaths of big characters?” That gets at the essence of it rather succinctly!

I’m so glad you liked the article, and I’m even more glad you cared to comment. Thank you, Thomas!

If I learned anything from this experience, it’s that even bad comics can be made good if you read them enough and pick them apart.

Well . . . maybe not good . . . but at least they say something.

Furthermore, I learned that as bad as the ultimate universe has become at times, it is still better than the regular Marvel U. by far.

This is a fine observation, a problem I have also noticed several times reading modern comics. There’s so little space per issue, it’s disturbing how much pages are wasted on trifles. What’s remarkable is that Watchmen is a very tight, economic comic book, and yet each issue had 28 pages. That’s 7 more pagens than modern comics. And yet they’re more wasteful with less space.

Excellent article, David!

I always enjoy reading your work, Andrew.

I don’t think decompression needs to be a pejorative, however. It’s often used that way, but I take it simply as a description of spacing events out. Plenty of decompressed stories have little ostensibly happening, but a lot going on. And that’s the way it should be used — not simply four pages to throw a punch. Unless it’s full-on manga. That’s my take, anyway.

Thanks again for the article!

I know that’s a little logic-chopping there, and I think I know what David essentially meant. But let the debate begin anyway!

I think a reason issue #2 is so crucial is because without all this information, we wouldn’t be understanding why all the characters are acting they way they do in respect to the Comedian. Blake is a very important character in the book, even though he’s dead before it begins.

I wouldn’t even call Watchmen decompression. Decompression implies that events are drawn out – that’s not at all how it happens in Watchmen #2. Only important events are drawn out. It has slow parts and fast parts – if anything, it’s a healthy mix of both compression and decompression.

But maybe I’m using the terms wrong. What precisely does compression/decompression mean?

Excellent work.

I don’t think it matters what Frank Miller personally thinks, not at all – I couldn’t care less. But what he writes matters. What he chooses to put out there as a work matters, and what it says and implies matters. When that is a shallow, narrow-minded, prejudiced view of a particular group of people, and worse yet, an advocation to kill all of them without even knowing the slightest bit about them (or, as his comments have evidenced, how long we’ve really been involved over there) – that matters.

And it makes for a terrifically bad story.

Making art that some people like is no excuse for writing terrible stuff. As an entertainer and full creator, half his responsibility is in the art, half in the writing. At the very least, the writing has failed awfully. The art?

I would contend that it too has failed, but I’ll have to look into that more thoroughly and get back to you.

I’m fascinated by the horizontal format he chose to use, to give room to his panels. I think it’s sad that ten years after the rise of widescreen, Miller just comes along and says, “Sorry, boys, you’ve been doing it all wrong; this is how you do real widescreen.” In your face, Porter, Quitely and Hitch.

And I’m *not* being satirical.

Miguel– I can believe that, as some artists have testified, Stan might not have contributed much at the outset. (Then again, we shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of employees don’t like their bosses and may exaggerate the things he did or didn’t do.) But the point of my essay is that even his after-the-fact collaboration is still collaboration.

Say it’s true, as John Romita asserted, that Stan had no input into plotting the first two-part Kingpin story in SPIDER-MAN. Stan is still providing the “voice” of the characters old and new. That’s an element that Romita, for all his skills in other departments, couldn’t emulate.

I think that even on certain works not associated with Kirby and Ditko, Lee did a lot of average work coupled with a handful of above-average tales. He was not, I’ll admit, a creative genius in terms of inventing new characters, but that goes along with the priorities of being an editor first, which means paying more attention to the work others produce than your own.

On a related note, Jim Shooter produced a fair amount of solid average stories when he worked purely as a writer. During his stint as Marvel’s chief editor, he produced SECRET WARS and a smattering of strories ranging from so-so to awful.

If you actually look at Bianchi’s body of work, he didn’t even make many comics in Italy before moving to America. He was primarily a cover artist and an illustrator for rock band CDs. And his main influences are American comics.

Mario, thanks for mentioning Germany Year Zero. Great film.

About Habibi, I guess we all liked it, but none of us was completely satisfied with it. No one here seems totally convinced, or moved, by it.

“So where are we supposed to be looking for it?” – Within Lundgren’s stone cold stare. His eyes say more than any of my words could possibly convey. Furthermore, the lack of fight choreography is a perfect example of subtext. It is brilliantly planned because it isn’t planned. The beauty of the non-planned fighting is that it was planned to not be planned and the fighting is natural which is all part of the plan. And while you may argue that this is not subtext but rather visual aesthetic, I would argue that it is both. It is visually appealing because it isn’t appealing.

“An avenging angel metaphor is not at all unique, breathtaking, or novel in the action film genre.” – But the Punisher in this film isn’t a mere avenging angel. He is Christ himself – returned to slaughter the wicked. Furthermore, because he is a superhero, we have a beautiful metaphorical connection of the edgiest hero of the time (the Punisher) and the world’s first super-hero (Jesus Christ).

” the evidence presented here for its quality is generally based in hyperbole, and that’s never convincing.” – It’s the only thing that anyone should ever need to be convinced.

Yes, people will spend a lot of energy worrying over pointless things (I do it alot!) but their actions will almost always show the course of action that causes them to expend the least amount of energy outwardly.

I didn’t say you need a strong antagonist, however. Some stories function without a single person opposing the protagonist, but every truly sublime story has well developed forces of antagonism – the environment someone is in can be the force of antagonism.

And that is the case in Habibi. But take the forces of antagonism here – we have the unfair world of this fantastic landscape, with industry, slave trade, decadent sultans, and a huge water dam that runs the whole thing. These may all exist in a real place, but in the book they are poorly tied together, and the information given about the penultimate cause (the dam, and how these people are really doing this to themselves) is relayed to the reader through flat exposition from a flat supervisor character who has no real reason beyond convenience to tell Zam this.

This makes the different forces of antagonism seem disconnected and disjointed, as they are all presented in a very one-dimensional, non-real way. (The review about already talked about how unbelievable the character of the Sultan is.) This hurts the credibility of the situation, because it feels not like a real situation, but a constructed one that just happens to come along at the right time to serve the author’s needs – that doesn’t happen in real life.

All the building blocks of great forces of antagonism are there in Habibi, they’re just not quite put together right.

Your mention about their relationship is another concern – but I think it would actually be resolved by integrating that plotline more thoroughly into the world around them, by making that world around them make more ultimate sense.

We realize, of course, by the end, that the dam is the reason for all their troubles, but how so? The effects of such a thing aren’t really tied in well with the rest of the story – the setup of that idea isn’t layered into the previous tellings.

Hm, I’m beginning to agree with Forrest. He did try to do too many things. Good read nonetheless!

The fact is, Lee without his artists, was always a mediocre writer; Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby and others, without him, still managed to create masterpieces. To me it’s clear where the talent truly resided.

True, but it *can* make for some solid humor! I think Miles is taking more of a satirical approach here.

Yes, tragedies have a cause. Always. I agree. However, I disagree with the idea that this cause must always be developed, explained or even presented. It depends on the story you’re telling.

About humans only using the necessary effort… Well, some people spend a lot of time worrying too much about things when there’s no real necessity, but okay. I’ll accept that.

However, this only means that the problem should be big enough. You’re in a situation. Period. Is it really necessary, every time, to develop the cause?

Parents who have children with special needs often spend the first months wondering why it happened to them. And, at least the best of them, eventually realize that it doesn’t matter! You gotta deal with it. The child is already there, how are you going to raise it?

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant gets into lots of trouble just because he resembles a spy who doesn’t even exist. What could be more arbitrary than that? It’s a very silly reason, but James Mason wants to kill him and he has to stay alive. The problem is big enough. The cause is completely absurd.

But again, we agree, in Habibi that’s pretty well done. The problems are big enough.

What I don’t understand is the need for a strong antagonist. Not always, not if the situation is strong enough. Not here.

Habibi is part of a huge tradition of social stories in which you present a world, you present a character that suffers a lot, and if the audience is willing to accept the character as a victim, great. The audience is supposed to feel pity. Now, before you roll your eyes and say: “but this is crappy melodrama”, let me remind you that some of the finest films ever made are exactly like that: Umberto D, Bicycle Thieves, Nights of Cabiria, Pixote… If memory serves, they all have developed protagonists, big problems and one-note antagonists. And yet, they all work.

For me, the biggest problem with Habibi is that, although it has two great characters, I don’t think the relationship grows naturally. It’s a very tricky situation, they’re mother and son, sister and brother, wife and husband all rolled into one. That’s something that I don’t think Thompson resolves as well as I would like him to. It bothers me a little the idea that the castration is only there because the author didn’t want them to have sex. It upsets me that when they become “adults” they suddenly look the same age. She immediately sees him as an adult!

“While some would decry the film as lacking subtext, these people simply aren’t looking for subtext in the right places.”

So where are we supposed to be looking for it? Your argument simply jumps off from this point to talk about how great the fight choreography (or non-choreography) is. While that’s an admirable quality, it’s not subtext. It’s visual aesthetic.

Did you mean by that statement to refer to your previous paragraph about the Christ aspect? An avenging angel metaphor is not at all unique, breathtaking, or novel in the action film genre.

In truth, I’ve not seen 1989′s The Punisher, so I will refrain from saying if it’s good or bad. But the evidence presented here for its quality is generally based in hyperbole, and that’s never convincing.

I think you are both on to something there!