thoughts from an empty head

Like an itch that never really goes away, my recent posts on the current plague of the comic book crossover (one of which has been chewed up by the blog monster when my site went Chernobyl) had something tugging at the corner of my memory, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The storylines that I harangued against – CIVIL WAR (and its sequel SECRET INVASION) and FINAL CRISIS – vexed me so, almost as if I had seen them before, which, given the cannibalistic nature of comic book writing, probably would be a safe bet.

I looked back through the crate of comic books I still had, searching for a clue to what I had missed, when the penny dropped.

ASTRO CITY: CONFESSION.

Yep, here it is. Over 200 pages of complete and total awesome. Imagine some mad genius taking all of the strum and drang of CIVIL WAR and SECRET INVASION, boiling away the shite and polishing the gleaming metal to a brilliant luster and then adding a moving coming-of-age story to the mix. THAT is CONFESSION. All the ideas and mega-fights you ever wanted to see, plus stuff that makes you think long after you’re done reading the story.

Oh, and did I mention the 1/2 issue included at the end?

Sixteen perfect pages that show how to write a coda to a universe-changing event. Oh, and it was given away as a promotion. As a lifelong comic book reader, I say that, if DC can do no better with all their many hundreds of pages to compile a suitable coda to CRISIS than this little gem, then they can hang it up and sell the company for scrap.

Two major crossovers, done in by a 208-page graphic novel that I’d be willing to bet that precious few comic book readers have even heard of.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

You know what the best day of my life as a comic book fan will be? It will be the day that Joe Quesada finally gives up pretending to be a competent editor at Marvel Comics and starts a goat farm in Fumbuck, Idaho.

It’s not as if I was a big fan of the daily Spider-Man strip, but good gravy, man, couldn’t you keep your greasy mitts off the one source of non-stupidity in your entire product line? Everything has to be reset back to the late 70s for your own perverse amusement?

Well, at least Daily Strip Peter didn’t make a deal with Mephisto.

Yet.

Via io9.

Maybe I just got too old.

That has to be it. I just outgrew them. Had to happen sometime; everyone I know who isn’t a fan says that it happens eventually. We all fall out of love with things we once found thrilling or exciting.

So when did I fall out of love with comic books?

Looking at the collection taking up residence on the bottom shelf of my bookcase, I see plenty of comics there. SCOTT PILGRIM and CONCRETE and FAX FROM SARAJEVO and ASTRO CITY and TRANSMETROPOLITAN and DMZ and Y: THE LAST MAN and … and …

Huh. Not too many Marvel or DC books there on my bookshelf, are there?

I have exactly two DC books here on the shelf: WATCHMAN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, both of which were written in 1986. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of DC, is it? I think the last series that I truly enjoyed from DC was JSA, and the last JSA trade paperback I picked up was PRINCES OF DARKNESS. So, you’ll forgive me if I say nothing more about the Distinguished Competition until later.

I also have two Marvel books on the shelf, and they, at least, were both written in this century. The newer of the two, J. Michael Straczynski’s THOR, is a treasure, and proof positive that, given the right material, JMS can write a fine comic book.

And then there’s the other book. Hardcover edition, and a bit of a large beast, really.

PLANET HULK.

I say this with no exaggeration: PLANET HULK is one of the finest stories that Marvel has ever done. It is arguably the finest Hulk storyline ever written. The ideas are not new, but done in such a way that, by the time the story ends, you can’t help but feels Bruce Banner’s rage at the unfairness of the universe around him. You want him to smash all those that, once again, set him up for tragedy. You want him to succeed.

So why does this book bring out the beast in me towards the House of Ideas?

In short, PLANET HULK, the self-contained, multi-part, all-in-one-book story, led right into what I feel is the biggest problem with comics today, and the sole reason that I haven’t spent nearly the amount of money that I would have in any other situation.

A crossover.

Another freaking crossover. Another slapped-together, five-issue, poorly-drawn, shoddily-written, let’s-have-the-heroes-wail-on-each-other wankfest. In the case of the Hulk, PLANET HULK bled into the abysmal WORLD WAR HULK, which was five issues of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, attached to 5,000,000,000 other associated issues that really had nothing to do with the story. WWH was supposed to be the epic denouement, the final battle between a man fully enveloped by rage and the people who cannot bear to deal with him anymore, a proper ending for an epic tragedy. This was supposed to be the War to End All Wars.

And, just as regular as the tides, Marvel pulled stupidity from the jaws of a good story and gave the readers the bird once more. 14-issue excellent-story-that-we-are-going-to-use-as-a-wetnap, meet half-assed 5(+5,000,000,000)-issue yes-we-are-money-grubbing-fools crossover.

Sidenote: do you really think that the whole Marvel Zombies line of stories is an accident? Hell’s bells, if ever there was a idea that perfectly encapsulated the malaise that is draped over the House of Ideas and its Distinguished Competition, there it is: the good old heroes, zombified and hunting anything with a brain, so that said grey matter can be ripped apart, digested and shat out, and the carcass can repeat the cycle, hunting for the odd cerebral cortex as well. No brains needed here, kids!

DC is no better, really. How many storylines can they slap the name CRISIS on, anyway? FINAL CRISIS, COUNTDOWN TO CRISIS, INFINITE CRISIS, CRISIS IN MY COLON, CRISIS THIS, CRISIS THAT – all in an effort to correct a minor oversight way back in 1985 and milk that CRISIS cow for all its worth. End sidenote.

One can be forgiven in mistakenly thinking that time had moved backwards to 1992. (Wait, did they just kill Batman? Well, let’s start taking bets on how long it will be until (a) four mysterious new Batmen rise to take his place and (b) how long it takes DC to jam the real Bruce Wayne back into his cowl.) Maybe we can also bring back gold-foil, die-cut, pencil-variant, super-duper-five-foot-long-gatefold covered, only-one-million-printed issue #1s back as well. And then Wizard can tell us how much our collections will grow if we take our special books and jam them into specially made condoms bags and boards to protect our “investments”.

Yeah. Good times.

So, with all the whinging I’ve done on this subject, what do I want from comics?

I WANT A GOOD STORY.

Yeah, I know, comic books are a visual medium. You know what else is a visual medium? Magazines. Do you know what happens to most magazines? Sometimes you cut out an article or essay or photo, and then said magazine ends up in the recycling bin. In other words, garbage. Which is exactly what comic books that rely more on art (or artifice) than a proper tale are – brightly-colored trash, to be taken out with the empty bottles and plastic tubs.

But proper stories, on the other hand, are a delight. You save those magazines, because you always want to remember the great story you read or the awesome photo essay. You even look up the author or photographer to see what other work they’ve done, and maybe you even buy a book or two with their name on it.

And that’s what I want: proper stories. Tragedies, comedies, and every tale in-between. I want stories that challenge my thought processes, stories that make me laugh out loud or tear up with remembrance. Something I can treasure and learn from, even if it is in a format that most people believe is a child’s plaything.

It would be easy to blame the writers, of course, for the dearth of proper stories. They do have the responsibility of churning out decent stories, and with few exceptions, the last two decades of Marvel and DC have been a giant pile of MEH punctuated by moments of fleeting wonder. But churn them out they do, so I can’t totally fault the writers, as they at least made the effort.

Who is to blame for the current miasma in comics?

I blame the editors, frankly. Whose job is it to make sure that Writer X’s extra-special Wolverine-dies-again story doesn’t come a-cropper to Writer A’s team-up of Wolverine and Spider-Man in the same month? The editors. Whose job is it to ensure that someone tells Writer Q, “No, you can’t write a story where Marvel Boy fellates a pony”? The editors. Whose job is it to tell Writer M that they need to pitch a different story because the one they submitted sucked, no matter who is doing the pencils? The editors.

Basically, whose job is it to be the adults and say NO? The editors.

And what have the editors done for us lately?

They killed Captain America. (What’s the pool on when Steve Rogers is coming back, anyway?)

They had Spider-Man’s marriage annulled via a deal with the devil. (Good luck shoe-horning THAT into the next movie.)

They turned the Marvel heroes into either (a) the new brownshirts or (b) the new underground radicals. Which promptly got reset because, hey, wasn’t Tony Stark right all along? FREEDOM WINS, BEE-YOTCHEZ!!!

Until it all gets reset in the next crossover, which WILL BE OUT NEXT SUMMER AND IT’S GONNA BE AWESOME IT WILL TOTALLY CHANGE THE MARVEL UNIVERSE JUST YOU WAIT!!!

Uh huh. Right.

And so, I’ve more or less given up on my love affair with DC and Marvel. It was nice while it lasted, and you never forget your first love, but I’m more or less done with them.

Which is why I’m glad I discovered that I still love indie comics. What would I do with QUEEN AND COUNTRY and LOVE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE and PLANATES and SOULWIND and CHANNEL ZERO and DOKTOR SLEEPLESS and PERSEPOLIS?

Probably write my own.

…

Hmmmmm …

(And just for the record: that THOR TPB? I bought it primarily because Thor finally kicks Tony Stark’s smarmy brownshirted ass all over New Orleans for what happened in CIVIL WAR. Hey, that porn-stached SOB had it coming.)

So, let me get this straight: a “beloved hero” died, another “beloved hero” came back from the dead, and the old Thunderbolts routine is getting recycled again, this time headed by a villain who came back from the dead in one of Marvel’s worst storylines ever.

Which, of course, will all be reset at the end of the next 12-issue crossover extravaganza, along with the attendant 500-issue-spinoffs in other books.

The thing some people do to make a buck.

Nice to see nothing has changed over at the House of Ideas. I’ll stick to my indie comics, thanks.

(Just for the record: PLANET HULK HC. Best Hulk storyline ever. Too bad the follow-up sucked. Oh, and the last THOR tpb. Say what you want about Straczynski’s run with Spider-Man; his arc on the Thunder God’s book has been top notch.)