Don’t (Won't) Get Fooled Again

Death in the comics is a rare and momentous event, being that comics, especially superhero titles, make a repeated point of defying mortality and even ignoring the age of their central protagonists, month after month, year after year, now on into the 21st century. I’ve written at length about the now institutionalized practice (read stunt) of killing off legacy characters to drum up noise for a title. I still think it’s a weak and cynical trope, and all it really indicates is a lack of imagination on the part of editors and writers. Recent case in point: Johnny Storm, The Human Torch of Marvel Comics, who just met a violent end this month.

As a reader, and sometime comic book artist/creator I don’t have an issue with death in stories, -but I’m not referring to death am I? –Again I’m talking about a stunt; a gimmick conceived to generate buzz, even fury in an indifferent audience. The editors at Marvel have already rationalized, in public statements, that someone such as I wouldn’t even be writing about their comic title if they hadn’t killed off Johnny Storm, -that’s true. Truer still is the fact that I’m still not writing about how good their comic book is, or even buying it again now that Johnny is dead. It’s the leveraging of a death as a scandalous hook that is problematic for me as a reader. I wasn’t reading Fantastic Four comics because “nothing was happening.” -I wasn’t reading Fantastic Four because the stories hadn’t been strong in years. This is the case with many superhero titles at Marvel and at DC, and the solution that seems to be repeatedly pitched on an almost annual cycle is the sudden unexpected killing off of a character, -with no intentions of really keeping him/her out of the world of the “living,” even for very long.

The problem stems from everything related to the event-structured story arcs across titles (DC’s Blackest Night event being a notable recent exception,) to the increasingly puerile shock-driven stories in superhero comics. Ultimately the culprit is a confluence of tired-minded staff writers, and at least the perception in the mind of the audience, of a character’s exhausted potential.

A friend told me yesterday “But superhero comics are supposed to be sensational…” to which I responded; “They’re also supposed to be good.” And I really meant that. Comics, particularly superhero comics, have never been a laughing matter for me. In a post-Watchmen world, -(the world we've all lived in as writers or fans of comics whether we like it or not since 1985,) the standards are supposed to be higher. There have been several watershed moments in the superhero genre. From the earliest work of Will Eisner on the Spirit, to the Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories of the early seventies, to the work of Chris Claremont on X-Men, on to Frank Miller’s work on Daredevil, and further on to Alan Moore’s work on Swamp Thing, we’ve always known how good comics could be, leading up to the explosive work done in the 1990s and beyond By Ellis, Ennis, Busiek, Ward, Millar, Morrison (and Moore all over again.) Writing is the key to all good superhero stories and it is only strong, sophisticated storytelling and character development that allows this genre to rise above simple power fantasies, which is what they are at their worst, and what they degenerate into far too often.

“Johnny Storm’s not going to stay dead anyway,” my friend said over the phone.
-And that’s the problem.

Nobody likes being played, and while kids and older dedicated readers may rush to the racks to buy up multiple copies, they will soon feel as cheated as I did 20 years ago, when Jean Grey returned from the dead, invalidating the significance of one of the longest and most meaningful story lines ever created in comic books up to that point. The death of Phoenix, which was in truth the suicide of Jean Grey, was a singular moment in superhero fiction that was the culmination of a long story told in various background events and subplots strung across many years. The ascension, corruption and then mortal capitulation of Jean Grey was writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne’s illustrated speculation about the nature of power and the dissolute psychology that attends all supremacy, real or imagined. This story was all the more important in the world of the 1980s where two nations, and possibly just two men, held the ability to destroy the world in their hands. That was a meaningful, well written story. It made the X-Men into a superhero comic book of note. It was also a best seller for Marvel.

"There's nothing like a dead superhero to dredge up press and sales," wrote Scott Thill of WIRED on the Underwire blog. And he’s right; nothing sells like death, even the fatal demise of fictional characters apparently.

The question remains, will the inspired/angry fans lighting up the internet care about this latest predictable resurrection in waiting… as they cared for Superman, Batman, and Captain America?


Those were stunts too.


I refused to go along then, and I keep getting told it has more to do with my age than anything else… curiously I haven’t outgrown the need for a good story, or a meaningful adventure with a profound ending. So here’s an idea for a stunt that Marvel and DC should try: Free writers up to write good comic book stories…


Just try it, it used to work all the time.
-SJ

Frank Frazetta Didn’t Paint Heroes

I can’t say exactly when I first saw a Frank Frazetta cover, but I’m pretty sure those were the earliest works I was exposed to, -his covers. For artists of my generation, he was always there, part of the squad of old master-like forbearers in popular illustration like Frank Paul, James Bama, and Alex Raymond except Frazetta’s work was darker and it was otherworldly in just about every calculable respect.

Frazetta’s Conan is still the definitive characterization of the barbarian: Always a brutal, homicidal would be-king at rest. Frazetta didn’t paint heroes; his sensibilities were too sophisticated and “knowing” for that. Frazetta had no innocence about him as an artist; it seemed he was barely holding back all the sex, fury and violence that were not allowed in the actual pulp novels, comic books and movies he was commissioned for. Frazetta painted protagonists; That in and of itself was a radical proposition and a welcome relief from the commercially established smooth-edged imagery that had at its core an insistence on clear, absolute differentiation between good and evil or the hero and the villain. Frazetta’s work was too nuanced and cavernous to entertain naive distinctions like those. His work was called “adult” at a time when maturity was not the number of an age, but the indication of certain knowledge of the world and oneself. Frazetta’s paintings and imagery demanded that one consider the world inside of his pictures. In a very real sense, he was asking viewers to step forth and meet his world and he made no attempt to make it a safe trip for anyone. Frazetta’s work didn’t reach out; -it asked that you make the effort to walk in.

He had an incredible ability to seduce and frighten with his imagery simultaneously. If you dreamed about running your hands along the body of some voluptuous princess in one of his paintings, you had to contend with the idea that you didn’t actually want to be where she was standing. Some of his paintings appeal vigorously to our erotic longings, -but all of them scare.

For illustrators however, Frazetta posed another type of terror: mediocrity.

I grew up in an era of explosive virtuosity among comic book artists. This was in the aftermath of the aesthetic contributions of Neal Adams and in the wake of the various innovations that he brought to comic book illustration. After Adams, the late 1970s and early 80s became an era of extreme accomplishment in pure draftsmanship exemplified by artists like Brian Bolland, George Perez, John Byrne, Milo Manara, Marshall Rogers, Michael Kaluta, Jim Aparo, Arthur Adams, John Buscema, Michael Golden, Walt Simonson and a few others working in mainstream comics. As an adolescent trying to investigate work that would offer useful examples to learn from, the greatness of these artists was strangely demoralizing. Some of these artists were better story tellers than others, some had strong cinematic sensibilities, while others could express a speed and violence that rattled the pages in your hands, -still others gave you an extraordinarily authentic sense of time and place, as did John Byrne whenever he showed us midtown Manhattan. But all of them were incredible masters at their individual style of execution, and on their own terms, they were arguably perfect... Unless you compared them to Frank Frazetta.

Frazetta was not classically trained, -but classically minded. While there were always gifted painters in the fantasy genre in the time of my youth and earlier, (scores of them shuttling between the world of commercial advertising on Madison avenue, like my personal favorite Basil Gogos) only Frazetta maintained a sustained and unique presence, expressing that haunting sensibility that communicated the disquieting notion that sex, fear, love, power, death, hunger, regret are all present, at all times whether we want them all there souring a “fantasy” or not. The living darkness in Frazetta’s imagery and his skill at moving paint were but the invitation, the psychological world within was the destination.

In my teens, as I wondered in frustration at the work of George Perez who could make debris and wreckage look beautiful, and John Byrne who had figured out how to draw liquid metal, and especially at Brian Bolland who drew so decisively and precisely it made me angry... There was always Frazetta. Even my gods, had a god it seemed, and that made me feel better. On Monday, Frank Frazetta died at age 82.

Frank Frazetta, who was still untouchable by greats like Boris Vallejo, Richard Corben or Gaetano Liberatore, always sat in some distant hall of heroes in my mind, working ever harder, year after year, sending us all turbulent dispatches from his imagination, until his mortal body and health began to betray him.

If Lovecraft, Blake, Donatello, and Rembrandt could have sired a child…

And so it goes. Another master of the fantastic leaves us to join his creations, ascending into a place in our imagination.

-SJ