The Column this week is by Guest Columnist Michael "I've had a letter
printed in a Marvel Comic for about 15 months in a row now" McClelland!
Thanks, Mike!

I think that Kurt Busiek and John Byrne represent two extremes of comic
book writing.

John Byrne is the cornerstone (possibly the progenitor) of the movement
that prefers to rewrite classic stories and give them a few twists and
turns. Basically they just retell the same stories again and again, but
shake up the casts, or the powers, or the attitudes. They call it updating
or fixing the characters. But to me, this is an extremely lazy and empty
form of entertainment. I do not enjoy it. The same thing is happening in
movies where they pull an old TV show from the 70s and blow it up into a
ridiculously bloated movie with none of the charm or panache of the
original show, just better effects and updated characters. Boring. This is
killing both industries, as people lose respect for the medium and
confidence in it to produce anything new or worthwhile. The "creators"
cite demographics, or artistic yearnings or nostalgia, but in the end it's
just easier to rewrite a classic story than it is to come up with
something original.

The sad part about this trend is that some of the young fans see these new
comics with the hip talking and dressing characters and think that this IS
new and original, even though it is simply a rehash of stories that were
told better 30 or more years ago.  Then, when they do encounter a book
that uses characters that have organically grown from where they where 30
years ago and are capable of sustaining new fresh stories and situations
because they have the benefit of a past with depth and character
development, the young readers mistake this book as a throwback or a
rehash because the characters don't look radically altered even though
they are involved in new story lines.

But how long can the mainstream comics industry continue to fool its
readers? How long before these kids see their new hip comics updated into
newer hipper comics and realize that it's really just the same classic
plot being retold yet again.

Shakespeare said there were only nine plots. I think it was nine anyway, I
could be wrong, feel free to correct me, but the point is he said there
were only a limited number of plots. So then, isn't every story doomed to
merely be a rehash of an older tale?  No, because a plot is not all there
is to a story. Out of those nine plots Shakespeare was able to create
dozens of original and unique plays. Writers from that time have continued
to find new and fresh ways to use those plots t tell brand new, never
before experienced stories as varied as Robert Bloch's PSYCHO or
Capote's IN COLD BLOOD or Clarke's 2001. There's a big difference in
making a movie about a crazed killer and giving it a life of it's own, as
DePalma did with DRESSED TO KILL, which played with the audience's
expectations and used them to trick and fool the audience, and simply
doing a frame by frame remake of PSYCHO with new actors and a "90's
sensibility" as is about to be inflicted on a bored and apathetic public.

On the other hand, there is an all too small movement in comics
spearheaded by writers like Kurt Busiek. He is using the past as building
blocks to the future. He does not follow the trend to retell the same old
stories with a few updated twists, or worse, ignore the past altogether.
As a reader I don't want to turn my back on the past, but neither do I
want to live in it. Busiek is telling brand new stories that have grown
out of events from the past. His characters are shaped by their histories,
but not trapped in them. For instance, in AVENGERS #10, Hank Pym
is reluctant to remind himself of his traumatic days as Yellow Jacket,
but that doesn't mean he has to be the eternally unbalanced hero in
perpetuity. His past is a part of him, but not all of him.

In AVENGERS #10, which has been the best of the series to date, Busiek has
given us a wonderful tribute to AVENGERS vol 1, #150-151. The story
follows a structure based on those classics and is filled with in-jokes
and tributes and asides. But Kurt isn't rehashing any old stories or
retelling a story "his way." He is using the rich history of the Avengers
to give us a totally fresh, wonderful, new story. This is one of the
reasons why I think Kurt Busiek is Marvel's strongest and most important
writer. His AVENGERS will be considered a high watermark of 1990's comic
books.

Busiek understands that readers must be given new stories and not just
stories that appear to be new. He knows that for every classic story that
has been told (and retold ad nauseam) about Superman or Batman there is a
fresh new one that can be told if one is willing to dig or sweat or work
hard enough to find. He knows that a different perspective, a new angle, a
fresh situation is always going to be available in this ever changing
world and each time a new one is discovered there a dozens of new stories
flying free waiting to be captured by someone with enough gumption to
chase them down. It's easy to take an idea that has already been captured
and slap a new coat of paint on it and proclaim yourself a genius for
rediscovering the "roots" of a character or story, but it isn't so easy to
hunt down your own new and untried concept.

So instead of deciding that THE AVENGERS should start over in 1998 and
retelling Stan's first 12 issues with hip lingo and cool new costumes and
a few surprising cosmetic changes and one or two conceits that needed
fixing from those primitive issues, Busiek has chosen to give us 12 brand
spanking new issues that are the culmination of all that has come before
(even the "bad" stuff; even the stuff he doesn't necessarily think was a
good idea). It's all in there and it is all being used to determine what
happens and because of that he's got new stories to tell, because the road
the characters have walked down have given them miles of new
possibilities.

During Heroes reborn when many of the major Marvel Heroes were out of
action, Marvel apparently needed a new super team to fill a void left by
their absence. Instead of deciding this was the perfect time to retell the
first 12 issues of the DEFENDERS, or rehashing the best elements of that
title's run and telling it the way it should have been told if written by
"better" writers, Busiek decided to come up with a brand new team all his
own. He gave us the THUNDERBOLTS, a team of already established villains
who have brilliantly decided to pose as heroes. Wow. A brand new idea. One
not ripped off from Stan or Jack. How did he manage to take already
established Marvel characters and put them into a new situation that
hasn't been used and reused a dozen times? How could he do a title called
UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN and not simply retell the best of the
Lee/Ditko SPIDER-MAN? How did he find new stories to tell that fit between
those classics? How could he take a project like MARVELS, which was
essentially a retelling of the first 10 years of Marvel continuity and not
simply retell the most classic stories? Instead he managed to find a brand
new character with a brand new story -- a story that was affected by the
events of Marvel's rich history, but still had a life of its own. How did
he pull off these seeming miracles of finding new stories when apparently
some of the biggest names in the business can do little more than tell the
same few stories again and again?

That's a good question. The only answer I can think of is that he simply
made the choice to do so. He made a decision not to follow the quick and
easy path. I for one hope he is rewarded for it, because if he isn't, it
may be a good long while before anyone else dares to venture outside the
safety of the insular village that mainstream comics has become.

Michael C McClelland
    Hate-Monger