Conan (real Conan)

[InzeladunMaster]

Come on, guys! Fyrestryke's all inspired and fired up, and some of you give him negative comments? Let's squelch his enthusiasm, shall we?

I am excited that you have found Howard and enjoyed the story you've read. I am also glad you are enjoying the comic, which employs a lot of current Howard scholarship and a surprising amount of research in its writing. The comic is fine, and displays a pretty good understanding of the character and the setting. The Hyperborean storyline gave a pretty nifty tip o' the cap to Clark Ashton Smith, one of Howard's pen-pals and an excellent author. The recent issues have done a good job of linking some of the early (chronologically speaking, in terms of Conan's life) stories, and did a great job of adapting Howard's work.

 

[thormagni]

Comics should be able to tellthe story in pictures alone. I have several comics (Matt Wagner's "Grendel") that go for several pages without a word of dialog -- and not a single fight -- and the story is more concise than any I've ever read.

Oh geez. This is another one of those subjects where you can just wind me up and watch me spin on and on like a top.

At one point in my life I was a complete art junkie. If it was drawn by George Perez, John Byrne, John Romita Jr. or a few others, I was all over it. Then, in the mid 90s I really got into a writer kick, realizing that the name of the author on a cover was a much more reliable gauge of whether it was going to be a good book or not. Good writers put out good books, even with terrible artists. A great artist with no story has nothing to illustrate worth looking at, or so I thought.

Now, I'm somewhere in the middle. Kurt Busiek told absolutely brilliant stories in Kingdom Come and Marvels, but without the amazing paintings of Alex Ross, it wouldn't have been the same story. And Brian Michael Bendis tells an awesome story in Powers, a superhero crime noir book, but without the dark, brooding artwork of Michael Oeming, it just wouldn't be the same.

I guess what I'm saying is that my very favorite comic books stories couldn't have been told either by just the artist or just the writer. I mean, the one that touched me the absolute most in my life was a relatively short story written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Brent Anderson in his Astro City universe.

In the story: A man has been having dreams about a woman he loves, even though they have never met and she doesn't exist. The supernatural "hero" the Hanged Man reveals to the man that what has happend was that during a giant cosmic event, reality was realigned and the woman he knew and loved in that old reality never existed here. The man is given a choice, he can either keep his memories or give them up and be fully brought back "reality." He elects to keep those memories and the Hanged Man reveals that this has happened to many people and none of them ever want to give up those precious memories.

There is no fight, no battle, except for one splash page in flashback showing the cosmic battle which happened off screen. And I am not doing it justice, but it was a truly moving story. Unbelievably powerful, really. But there is no way to tell that story without the artist and writer working together.

 

[thormagni]

Although, on a bit further reflection, I think I still fall more in the writer camp than the artist camp. While I would prefer a good mix of the two, if I had to pick one over the other, I would choose a great writer with a poor artist, over a great artist and a poor writer any day. I mean, I still consider it to be "reading" a comic book...

See what you guys started? Now look what I've done.

 

[InzeladunMaster]

Interestingly, the current Conan comic is written by Kurt Busiek, whom you mentioned several times in your posts.

 

[thormagni]

Interestingly, the current Conan comic is written by Kurt Busiek, whom you mentioned several times in your posts.

Yah, he is the same guy I've been mentioning, but he is not the SAME guy if you get my meaning. Busiek had a succession of health problems over the years that slowly sapped his ability to concentrate on his writing. He always said that it never really affected his mainstream comics writing because those books didn't really require all that much concentration (Bob's point, I think) but it became harder and harder to really focus on the true story-telling stuff like Astro City or the big projects he was doing back in the mid 90s.

Essentially, at first they thought he was having sinus problems because of constant illness and headaches and such if I remember correctly. They did massive operations on his sinus, which never really fixed the problem. Finally, years later, he found out that he was suffering from mercury poisoning. Last I heard, they were going through some steps to leach the mercury out of his system.

Anyway, I have been afraid to pick up any of his non Astro City stuff in recent years. Mainly because he only releases Astro City books when they meet his high former standards, even if it takes him months or years to get the story done. And I worry that his mainstream comics stuff would fall so far below his previous high marks that I would be disappointed. You guys will have to let me know which camp his Conan work falls into.

 

[thormagni]

And hey, I was doing a search for Busiek's health problems and came up with a photo of him chilling out with Matt Wagner in Portland. So obviously, the answer to our conundrum, is like all good superhero crossover stories... they wouldn't fight anyway, because they are both on the same side.

http://www.bigredhair.com/mercury/dan.html

 

[InzeladunMaster]

Although, on a bit further reflection, I think I still fall more in the writer camp than the artist camp.

I am definitely in the writer camp. I have a hard time considering any comic as high art, either in writing or drawing/painting/inking/colouring. There are better venues for artists to show their stuff. Comics are just a way for them to earn a living.

A comic should be something that can be rolled up and read and beat up. I wish comics would go back to its original target audience - the kids. They were a lot more fun to read when that was the focus. Instead of just telling a fun story, comics are now expected to be high literature and high art, it seems. Instead of each issue being a self-contained and fun story (like the original Star Trek series), each one now has to be a WB-like teen-trauma-drama soap-opera, with cliff-hangers, traumatic events in the characters' lives that change them forever (yet doesn't), and simply isn't as much fun as the old days.

 

[thormagni]

I think there has to be room for all sorts of storytelling under the comics umbrella -- from the kiddy/kiddy TV show based comics, to the teen melodrama to the cutting edge adult-targeted comics to the XXX adult sex comics. Personally, I am looking for more complex, darker adult stories with complexity and character development. I'm really not too fond (anymore) of the bash-em up, fight of the day superhero comics of my youth, instead preferring more story- and character-driven narratives.

I do get a little concerned when they mix the types of storytelling within the same general comics line. For example, Marvel has come out with an Ultimate series of comics, where they restarted all their characters back at the beginning and are telling their stories in a 21st century way. Ultimate Spider-man (by Brian Michael Bendis) and Ultimate Fantastic Four (by Warren Ellis) are both aimed firmly at the teen market, complexity wise and are outstanding books. I think they have been great successes. However the Ultimate X-men and Ultimates (the rethinking of the Avengers) are substantially darker comics, with the Ultimates being one of the darkest superhero comics out there with themes including sex, alcoholism, domestic abuse, murder and government conspiracy. Why mix those together in the same line?

And I do think the problem with comics artist-wise is that it really is one of the few media where an artist gets to really engage in sequential story-telling that the public can see. A movie storyboarder gets paid better than a comic book artist, but no one gets to see his stuff outside the movie studio. In fact, I really can't think of any field outside of comics where an artist gets to develop a theme for dozens or hundreds of pages. For them, comics are their only outlet.

All that being said, I do think comics sales are slipping for several reasons:
1) As IM said, most really aren't aimed at kids anymore, they are aimed at adults who want an adult spin on the things they enjoyed as children. Thus there is no real easy entry point for new readers.

2) They are too literate for the average man on the street. Look at the million copy sellers of the 1940s and 1960s and you will find that they really are poorly written and poorly drawn, as a general rule. Yes, they were inventive, but they contained nothing resembling a logical plot. Today's best comics contain themes and content that is not pure pablum, so it is less attractive to the "ordinary" reader.

3) There is incredible competition from television, the Internet and video games that didn't exist when I was a kid. Why read a flat, two-dimensional comic when I can read a comic on the Internet that has been enhanced with sound effects and rudimentary animation?

4) Comics are stuck in a superhero rut and, really, movies and animation can portray superhero action much better than the printed page. The Teen Titans cartoon is a good example of this. You get so much more energy from the cartoon than from the comic.

5) The comic book companies used to be all about making comics, now they are simply idea factories for the movie studios and their larger corporate owners. I mean, if I rememeber correctly, Marvel made more profit from the Spider-man 2 movie and toys than from all of its comics sales in the past few years. DC Comics are one tiny arm of Warner Brothers. I don't know what Constantine will make on its opening weekend, but it will probably be substantially more than all the Hellblazer comics ever sold, I suspect. Their primary value to an investor is as the holders of the rights to hundreds of marketable characters you can sell in movies, cartoons, lunchboxes, toys, trading cards and sticker albums.

This last reason may be the most devious really. As IM said, nothing really changes in the comics anymore. Why is that? In part, because the companies want to keep the characters marketable for future ventures. The only place you find real invention any more is outside of the company-owned character lines. So they want to find writers and artists who can keep the characters alive and interesting without changing them too much. It is a tough line to walk and I think it is usually easier to just come up with the "fight of the month" and save the real creative energy for the outside projects.

 

[InzeladunMaster]

I'm really not too fond (anymore) of the bash-em up, fight of the day superhero comics of my youth, instead preferring more story- and character-driven narratives.

I prefer novels for this sort of narrative. When I read a comic, I want a simple story.

I do get a little concerned when they mix the types of storytelling within the same general comics line. For example, Marvel has come out with an Ultimate series of comics, where they restarted all their characters back at the beginning and are telling their stories in a 21st century way. Ultimate Spider-man (by Brian Michael Bendis)

I LOVE the Ultimate Spiderman!

All that being said, I do think comics sales are slipping for several reasons:

All of your reasons point to an easy answer, I think: Make the plots kid friendly, sell them at grocery stores and get adults to buy something else (graphic novels, novels, movies, etc.). Comics should get kids interested in reading. Marketing mainstream comics to adults has the problems you mention. Marketing them to kids again... hmmm.

 

[thormagni]

All of your reasons point to an easy answer, I think: Make the plots kid friendly, sell them at grocery stores and get adults to buy something else (graphic novels, novels, movies, etc.). Comics should get kids interested in reading. Marketing mainstream comics to adults has the problems you mention. Marketing them to kids again... hmmm.

I think that is easier said than done though, for a couple reasons.

First, assuming comics companies are already spending all of their available capital (i.e., the available money they have to spend for authors, editors and artists is already going out the door for the current crop of books,) they would have to almost entirely throw out their existing customer base (guys in their 20s and 30s) in the hopes of drawing back the kids who have no interest in comics anyway. Otherwise they have to try to keep the existing lines going, while paying the startup costs for a whole other line of books, in essence finding two 12-year-old readers to replace me as a 30-something reader.

It might make sense in the long run, grand scheme of things, but in the short run it would be suicide. I mean, I really like the Ultimates. If I picked it up tomorrow, and the adult themes, language and content had been reduced to stories for 12 year olds, would I pick it up again? How long would it take the 12-year-olds to recognize that this book was written for them? Let's say they just cancelled Ultimates, so they could concentrate resources on the new line of kids comics. They lose me as a reader and there is no guarantee they are going to pick up those two 12-year-olds they need to grow their market, plus how much disposable income does the kid have compared to me? It is too much risk to give up that short-term profit.

Second, it is really hard to convince teenagers that something is cool enough that they want to invest time and energy into it. Teens generally get their cues from television, magazines and other teens, all with the illusion that it is teens making these suggestions to other teens. They want the illusion that these fashion trends are self-generated. For example, if they see a popular teen actor wearing a fur-lined parka in every episode of a TV series, they are going to want a fur-lined parka. Soon teens everywhere are wearing fur-lined parkas and thinking it is cool.

Comics companies would have to make a concentrated effort to somehow get their product in front of the eyes of teens through venues outside the normal distribution channels. It is really easy to market comics now. You send out advertisements to comic book stores, advertise in comic book magazines and send out advance copies to get good word of mouth. Dropping advertisements in YM magazine, or using Time Warner's pull to get the cool kids to read comics on the WB just hasn't been done.

If anything, kids have really stumbled into manga and are buying those left and right. I was talking to a young teen at Waldenbooks a few weeks back and she and her friends were spending $50 every couple of weeks on manga books. That's why Waldens has put in two whole rows of this stuff and relegated trade paperbacks from Marvel and DC into a tiny shelf mixed in with the collectibles stuff. I can't make heads or tails of these books, which is why kids love it. Plus for $10 you can get a nice, solid little book you can put on your shelf, compared to spending $10 on three or four floppy comic books. Plus American comics are stuck in the terminally uncool superhero groove...

Which is another sign of how clueless comic book companies have become, or of how little actual comic book sales actually matter to them. With all the new fans brought in temporarily by projects like Smallville, or the Spider-man, X-men, Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, Catwoman, Punisher, Constantine etc. etc. movies, why haven't comic book companies been able to capitalize on that? I mean, when X2 hit the screen why wasn't there a brand new X-men title tied to the movie continuity ready for the new fans to check out? Same with Spider-man? Or Constantine? Where is the new series titled "Constantine" with the character based in LA instead of London and looking like Keanu Reeves?

Nowhere, that's where! Why is that? Either comic companies are pretty sure that they are not going to be able to turn the Constantine/Spider-man/X2 fans into regular comic book readers, so why bother? Or they are so scared of running off their long-term fans, that it isn't worth the risk. So they are willing to suffer a slow death from strangulation than take a chance on breaking free from the chokehold.

And as far as the sophisticated stories being relegated to novels and graphic novels, and left out of comics, well, I think the comics have shown that they are very capable of handling those sorts of stories. The problem is that it is a fairly small target audience. But they can sell books like Authority, Planetary, Ultimates, Powers and the entire Vertigo and Marvel Knights line of comics to people like me. As long as there are enough people like me buying them, I think it is a big enough niche market to keep feeding.