Hang Up the Webs
(Comics, Writers, and the Spirit of the Game)
A guest column by Mark Bousquet

[Editor's note: thanks to Mark Bousquet for allowing me to represent
this great post from a recent private email exchange.]

I wonder (and this is where the rambling begins) if working in comics
desensitizes people to the stories and characters.  Maybe thats why so few
characters ever stay dead, once you're in the business for any length of time,
you lose all perspective of what's come before and only think in terms of
adding comic cliches to your body of work. 

Maybe once you've been working for Marvel or DC for any length of time you
start thinking in terms of only yourself and your own projects and you lose
any grasp of the scope of the entire universe you're writing in.  As readers,
we see it all as "Marvel", but to the writers and editors, they probably see
it as their books and then everything else. (We probably should all try to
appreciate people like Kurt and Waid and Kesel all the more for continuing to
create - and not regurgitate - under such a system.)  Maybe that's just the
nature of the beast and it can't be helped.

Or maybe comics *would* be better off if Marvel and DC ceased to exist.  Force
everyone to be creative on their own and not just play with other people's
toys.

There's got to be a reason why certain events upset fans more than it upsets
the professionals that create them and I don't think it's just fans automatic
aversion to hyped-up "events" like Heroes Reborn or Magneto-Jordan.  An
aversion that, admittedly, oftentimes leads to condemning stories before
they've seen print.

But how can anyone read AMAZING 400 and seek to soil it in any small way?

When I read the end of PP:SM 97 my reaction is that Mackie and Macchio just
don't care anymore. I honestly and sincerely doubt that's true, but maybe they
just can't see the big picture anymore to realize what they did.  As I said
earlier, maybe you just lose perspective.  Maybe you just don't realize you
should be moving on and working on something else.

I'm tempted to say that it's the stench of Byrne, the man ruins anything and
everything he touches, but that's far too simple this time.  The disease is
spread far too wide and takes in too many people and too many comics.

Maybe Byrne's "God complex" effects everyone in the business.  That sense
that, damnit, you're going to "fix" everything you don't like.  Yes, there are
things that need to be "fixed", but sometimes you've just gotta let things
lay.  And I'd say that the memory of Aunt May is one of those things. 

For crying out loud, this is f*cking Spider-Man.  You know, the biggest
character the company has?  This isn't Byrne wrecking Vision and the Scarlet
Witch, this isn't a shitty movie by a nipple-obsessed nonsensical director,
this isn't even Marz/Dooley/Carlin pissing on Hal Jordan - this is the
franchise. This is like trying to remake PSYCHO.  People (fans) need to be
reminded how great a character is?  Get the f*ck outta my face with that crap.

Sorry, it's not us.  It's not the fans that need to be reminded Spider-Man is
a great character, it's the people who write, edit and publish the character
that need to be reminded.  I'm pretty confident that I know what makes
Spider-Man work and we sure haven't seen much of it in recent times. (The
JMD/Ross stories being somewhat of an exception.)  And Macchio can state, like
he did in WIZARD a while back, that fans need to get over the Spider-Clone
stories, but saying what you're doing is better than that doesn't neccessarily
mean that what you're doing is any good.

It's at the point where what I'm looking for from a Marvel Comic is: "Edited
by Tom  Brevoort" or "Edited by: Matt Idelson" and forget the rest of it.

It's time when Marvel Comics sheds it's skin and sends writers like DeFalco,
Mackie, Raab, Kavanaugh, Dezago, Byrne, Claremont, Hama, and their ilk out to
pasture and bring in the next crop of writers who have fresh ideas, talent and
respect enough for what's come before to not trod all over it.  Take Joe Casey
off of Cable and Huk and give him some real characters to play with.  Go hire
writers like Karl Kesel who manage to breath fresh air into tired, even lame
characters.  Go find that next great crop of writers instead of handing
assignments out to ex-editors just because you like to have pizza and beer
with them and you "owe" them for hiring you as an intern way back when.

No, let's piss off real talent like Kelly and Seagle and run them off the two
highest selling books the company has.  Company favorites like those mentioned
above will probably pick up the choice assignments and deliver more hack.

When you hear that Kelly and Seagle are leaving over editorial interference,
do you really come to any other conclusion than the ultimate plan is to hand
the books back over to Claremont?  Does that make anyone feel good? 

The more I hear about editorial interference with the x-books and see what
kind of stories the x-office likes to see hit the shelves, the more I'm
wondering if maybe Lobdell got a raw deal. Maybe Lobdell with a real editor
would be a decent writer - the guy, for all of his faults, has had moments of
coherency, something FF hasn't even had a whiff of since the opening monologue
of Ben in CC's first issue. 

Lobdell's biggest problems is that 1) he can't end a story to save his life,
and 2) his original character creations are almost universally ill-conceived.
Two things that a decent editor could fix pretty easily.  If, of course,
Lobdell would even listen, something I'm not sure he'd do.

And I'm sorry, but farming out Daredevil, Punisher, the Inhumans and Black
Panther to Event results in better writers, better artists and better
potential storylines than what we're seeing from most Marvel books these days.

Daredevil and Inhumans are two series that look like they're worth getting
excited about.  Black Panther doesn't look that great to me (why take him out
of Wakanda?), but Priest usually delivers the goods.  Punisher looks different
- not neccessarily good or bad, but different enough to look at, which is
something I'd never thought I'd want to do with a Punisher book again.

And there's the fact that under the Knights banner will be a Dr. Strange
project pencilled by Tony Harris.  Even if the four core Knight books sucked
eggs, it'd be worth it just to see this project.

The fact that Marvel would even consider cancelling a book like Deadpool,
which is making money - just not enough?!? - and is quality and is written by
one of the next wave of really good comics writers astounds me to no end.

Do writers and editors of comics burn out after five years?  Ten?  Fifteen?
Or is it the sad fact that most comics writers and editors just aren't very
good to begin with, and the majority of ones that are good can't sustain it
for more than ten years at a time? 

Or is it something that effects novelists as well, you start out good, build a
bankable  reputation and then just coast on past glories, content to let your
name carry you and your talent rot?  Talent needs to be continuously
cultivated or it will leave you.

: Any combination of Peter David, Roger Stern, Joe Kelly, or myself would suit
: me fine for writing chores.  Amazing art by Luke Ross, keep Romita Jr on
Peter
: Parker.  Nuff said.

Amazing by Roger Stern and Phil Jimenez.  Spectacular by DeMatteis and Gary
Frank or Pat Oliffe.  Web of/Sensational by Karl Kesel and Craig Rousseau or
Walter McDaniel.  I don't think any of those teams is ridiculous (it's not
like we're asking teams of Busiek/Pacheco, Waid/Madureira and Morrison/Lee.),
but they are all better than Mackie/Byrne.  And there are probably 100
different writer/artist combinations that we could come up with that would
deliver better stories ad/or better buzz than what we're going to get.

Peter Gammons, arguably the finest sports writer in the country, has a saying
he's used for a while now, "Baseball rises above the people who run the game."
That it doesn't matter how much the idiot suits try to wreck things, the game
is so inherently magical that it will find a way to overcome it all and remind
everyone just how special it is. 

The same could be said for Marvel, "The characters rise above the people who
run the company."  That doesn't mean that there aren't bad times, just that
when things look their bleakest, somehow, someway, the inherit greatness of
the characters will find a way to remind everyone just how great they are.

Corporate bottom line junkies like Ron Perelman or Jerry Reinsdorf or Don Fehr
or ToyBiz don't get it and they never will.  They don't love the game, they
just love themselves.  You can cancel the World Series, but you can't cancel
the game itself or the bond the fans have for that game.  Same with Marvel.
You can run the company and the characters into the ground, but you can't
erase the characters or the bond fans have with them.

Someday soon Spider-Man will get his Sosa and McGwire and the corporate suits
and creative eggheads will realize that singular moments and extended periods
of greatness can't be born of marketing gimmicks or business planning because
honest moments never are.

And it's the honest moments that are always remembered.

-- MBQ