Just something I was thinking about today, don't know why, think it may have been inspired by trawling the comics blogs (and if it was, I apologize to whoever inspired it that I don't know to credit you for the idea) - the big two, DC and Marvel, are in fact doomed to obsolecense and the future does in fact belong to indie comics production.
Now, if you know me, you know that the vast majority of what I read in comics is from DC or Marvel (usually DC) and so, from me this is a relatively huge statement. This is like the Vatican having said 'You know, Galileo's got some fresh new ideas' or Henry VIII telling Thomas More 'I really shouldn't try to force you to support me in this divorce against your religious beliefs, Thomas.' With the exception of books like Age of Bronze (which Singer got me into) I'm pretty lax in my indie comics buying. So why am I saying this?
Retaining ownership of characters is the death-knell of the 'studio' system that DC and Marvel have created (I'm deliberately comparing the Big Two to the movie studios here, and I'm aware it's not a completely apt analogy that many of you will deservedly pick apart, and I'm also aware that many independent comics are created by studio set-ups of their own) and profited by all these years. One example that comes to mind is Marv Wolfman's creation of the character of Nova, which wasn't any great shakes by any stretch of the imagination. Still, Marv sued for ownership of the character and ultimately didn't get it, and Marvel's used the character in several series of his own and two New Warriors books to my knowledge. However, no creator today would willingly hand over control of a character he or she liked as much as Wolfman seems to have liked Nova: instead, he or she would hold on to that character for his own use, much as Mike Mignola did with Hellboy or the way Todd McFarlane made a billowing cape and a deformed face in his Spawn book into a merchandising empire.
What I'm arguing is that without new characters, the 'shared-universe' milieu that each of the big companies exists in will be doomed to death by strangulation, and it's patently absurd for a creator to allow his or her best work to become owned by a corporation unless he gets a pretty sizeable buyout in the process. The Wildstorm/DC sale come to mind. I can't imagine either DC or Marvel being able to make deals like that repeatedly, and I look on the future and consider what will happen if the next Gaiman decides to save the concepts for his Sandman book instead of using the minor characters of the DCU to start it. To a degree DC's set themselves up for this future with Vertigo: they can always move to a creator-owned imprint set-up if they want to, while their own properties dwindle into a pit of nostalgia (aging children of the baby boomers snapping up the comics they enjoyed as a child, although I honestly think most of my generation is geared towards Marvel even as my preference goes towards DC) but I have a hard time seeing how Marvel will do likewise, since they tanked their Epic line. I give full credit to Bill "I Wrote Marville" Jemas for that idea, I think it was pretty forward facing and gutsy and could have become the next wave for the company.
Maybe I've just eaten some bad chicken, but I'm wholly serious here: without new characters, the Big Two will just keep degenerating, and it makes less sense all the time for a creator to hitch her wagon to these companies in exchange for control over her brainchildren, when instead you can come in, push around the same blocks as every other creator working in the assembly line, pick up your freelance money, and try and build enough of a name and rep to eventually attract readers to your own creations. The other way to go is paradoxically much the same: establish your rep on your own creation first, get a name, get a job working for Marvel or DC, and use the fame generated by playing with their toys to drive readers back to your wholly owned creations, ala Kirkman or Bendis. I mean, Kirkman's big idea was to revamp the 2099 line? Bendis' actions as a writer have been to create interesting tensions in Daredevil and then back away from their consequences, to rewrite the Lee-Dtiko and Lee-Romita years on Spider-Man, and to destroy and recreate the Avengers. His own new creation, Jessica Jones, to me seems like Jessica Drew with the serial numbers filed off. (The fact that Bendis has Jessica Drew back as Spider-Woman in his Avengers has not been lost on me.) Either way, this does not bode well for the lumbering colossi of the comic book world. Books like Millar's Wanted (Secret Society of Super-Villains done gritty) or Alan Moore's excellent work on the horrible Rob Liefeld creation Supreme (wherein Alan wrote the Superman stories that should have been happening in Superman at the time) are also signs that nowadays, creators don't even have to work in the corporate toyboxes to make use of their toys, a further problem for them.
The big two can't survive if they don't own the characters, ultimately. They can't survive if they don't get to own new characters. There would be no reason today for an Ann Nocenti and Art Adams to do Longshot at Marvel as a part of the Marvel Universe: nothing in that limited series required it to be set in Marvel's continuity. Yet look at how many X-Men stories Claremont managed to squeeze out of those characters: without a constant influx of concepts, these universes will eventually close in on themselves, like black holes whose gravity creates an inescapable event horizon of insider knowledge and self-referential storytelling devoid of anything unexpected.
That's why, eventually, independent production of comic books will be the death of the big two. Let me be frank here: this is not something I especially want to see happen. And I'm sure there are factors like exposure, a desire to be part of a grand tradition (why else would Grant Morrison so happily create new villains in his runs on All-Star Superman or New X-Men) or what have you that can and do stem or slow this process. But I'm not liking the trend as I see it in terms of how it will affect the comics I enjoy reading, although I really can't and don't want to argue that creators shouldn't hold on to their characters... imagine how rich Len Wein would be if he owned that annoying midget with the claws?
Posted by Matt Rossi at January 14, 2005 5:01 PM