Joel Phillips
Aug 12, 2004, 05:23 pm
<img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/columns/ritlogo.jpg" align=left width=115 height=100 border=0 alt="Reeding Into Things">By Joel Phillips
I Love the ‘80s
I’m a funny sort of comic book fan in that I manage to find something to love about every era of comics. I can talk endlessly about the grandiose layouts of the Golden Age serials, or the marvelous escapist nature of the Silver Age and it’s willingness to truly embrace the concept of a shared universe for its characters. I could talk about the glorious growth of independent press that the industry experienced in the 1970s, and the second renaissance of small press we are in the midst of right now. Heck, if pressed I could even find something nice to say about the dreaded 1990s… but I don’t have the time to think of something right now.
What makes me a funny sort of fan is that I can also manage to find something to hate about every era of comics. Golden Age comics are riddled with stereotypes that would spark nationwide protests today over their insensitive treatment of a wide variety of groups. Silver Age comics routinely embarrassed themselves by embracing the worst aspects of pseudo-science, and by attempting to have middle-aged men write 1960s teenage dialogue on a regular basis. The rise of independent comics, now and then, created a generation of readers and writers who incorrectly assumed that independent meant “good”, ignoring the hard reality that many comics remain underground because they are simply BAD. And I certainly could find something awful to say about the 1990s… but I don’t have the time to narrow it down right now.
But then we come to the 1980s, the decade that gave the world Reaganomics, “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirts, and hair bands by the metric ton. So I have no trouble in saying there is no shortage of things to hate about the 1980s.
There’s just nothing to hate about their comics.
Some may say that the Silver Age is the height of comics, but they are denying the greatness of the 1980s. Perhaps we feel the decade has not been long enough in the past to be elevated to the top of the heap. Perhaps since many of us were either born or began reading comics at this time (or both, like me) we feel we are incapable of being impartial. I don’t know, but the time has come to give the eighties it’s due… not simply as a bygone era we remember fondly, some nostalgia trip back to our younger days, but as an era whose comics stand head and shoulders above any other’s.
What made the ‘80s so great? And why have we had such a hard time touching that greatness since? Three things the decade had going for it:
Depth of Commitment. The 1980s included some fantastic writers helming the big time franchises, and many of these runs stand as the greatest those titles have yet seen. Just at Marvel alone the ‘80s brought us Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Walt Simonson’s Mighty Thor, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four, Peter David’s Incredible Hulk and Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men, among others. What do all these runs have in common? Length. Of those listed, Miller’s run is the shortest, and it’s still more than thirty issues (non-consecutive). Simonson approached 50 issues, Byrne lasted over 60, Claremont lasted the entire decade (not to mention five years before and two after), and Peter David began his run in 1987 and lasted another 11 years.
And that’s the difference: depth of commitment. The commitment of writer to franchise and of company to writer. These days a run that lasts twenty-five issues is considered a good tenure, and even that is longer than the modern norm. The problem with that is that shorter runs mean a shorter creative investment, and less return on that investment. Just as each writer’s run is part of the larger run of the series and its characters, it is also its own beast. There are tones, moods, themes and characters built by a writer that are lost by the next, whether by conscious or unconscious changes in style. Thus the shorter the run, the less depth can be given to new characters, the less development there can be of new ideas, and the less growth there can be all around.
What changed? The industry changed, for one thing. Sales ain’t what they used to be, which means companies are less interested in growing a writer and their work over time. Companies changed, for the above reason and also because their focus has changed. Movies, TV shows, and merchandising, things which were far less prevalent in the past, are now arguably more important to comic book companies than the comics that spawn them.
Also, I believe that writers have changed as well. They seem to have a shorter attention span, at least for things not of their own creation, than the writers that preceded them. Today’s writers seem only interested in what they can do to muddle with characters-as-concept, but they are rarely even interested enough in that to explore those concepts to their fullest (see my second point below). If you doubt that there is a different work ethic, you need only look at the exceptions to the rule: they’re all the guys we were talking about in the 1980s. Peter David still turned in 60+ issues of Captain Marvel, and would have done more had Marvel not pulled the plug. Claremont is back on the X-Men, and if you remove the brief Eve of Destruction interlude, he has been a constant presence on an X-Men book for over 60 issues now. Their ability to remain interested, to continue to have something to say, hasn’t changed.
Depth of Imagination. I’ve complained endlessly about comic book writers not having anything new to say, and re-writing the same old stuff… that’s not what I’m talking about here (although I could, since it does apply). I’m talking about the impulse to redefine that which already exists, to take something old and make it new by seeing it another way. There was no shortage of this in the 1980s. Miller did it with Daredevil, and with Batman in Dark Knight Returns. Alan Moore did it with Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman did it with Sandman, and the entire DCU got the treatment with Crisis on Infinite Earths. These were all new versions of things which were old and familiar, and they were made grand again. This wasn’t like some Ultimate title, where you just retold an old story; these were truly new versions of old creations. There’s barely anything connecting Swamp Thing pre-Moore to Swamp Thing post-Moore, and that’s because Moore grew something new. And we got to watch.
Do comic book writers and/or companies have less imagination than they did in the 1980s? Well yes and no. Too many, I think, have resigned themselves to recycling old tales, just as too many readers have resigned themselves to reading them. The problem is that those who ARE interested in tinkering and trying something new are interested in “fixing” things which companies do not believe are truly broken. Look at the history: it’s always old, washed up properties that get transformed into something new. Something successful is too valuable to tinker with. Yet all the creative energy, all the impulse for change, is directed at those properties that resist that change to the greatest degree. So the best we ever get are half-hearted and short-lived attempts at saying something new with something old; rather then some bold new approach on a little-used property, which could be that next big thing.
Depth of Variety. There was a ton of stuff out in the 1980s, and almost all of it with the same level of promotion and circulation now only within the capability of the elite few companies and their hottest titles. Even before the age of the Internet, comics outside of Marvel and DC were managing to get the attention of a wider reader base than any time before (or, arguably, since).
And those readers who wandered off the beaten path wandered into a hell of a time to be a comics fan. One of the first, best indie-series, Cerebus, has hitting its stride, and had yet to become bogged down in the rhetoric that would eventually sour many fans to Dave Sim’s work. The truly innovative Love and Rockets began in the ‘80s, changing the way an entire generation of readers looked at what comics could do with love and sex. The ‘80s also brought us a little funny animal book that would eventually go on to some modest success, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and some graphic novel about cats, mice, and genocide called Maus.
Is manga your kick? Lone Wolf & Cub and Akira, probably the two most critically acclaimed of all manga titles, were both circulated in the West for the first time in the 1980s.
And even if you stick with the Big Two, you find an incredible wealth of variety. In the ‘80s the outside license was king, with Marvel bringing home the bacon with Conan, Transformers and G.I. Joe, to name a few.
Do big, tragic events get you? The ‘80s brought us Crisis, and it’s culling of some popular DC figures; the impactful Dark Phoenix Saga; the rise of the graphic novel with The Death of Captain Marvel; and the fans voting death for Robin II, Jason Todd.
Oh yeah, and there was also this crazy British guy with bushy hair… he wrote a couple of mini-series that some people think are pretty good: Watchmen and V for Vendetta.
The depth of variety point is the one that makes the whole thing make so little sense, really. The improbability of so much great stuff, representing such a wide array of tastes, being produced in a single ten-year span… it’s rather impressive. How did it happen? Could it happen again?
Sure. It can always happen again. Will it? I don’t know, and I confess to being pessimistic. But before the 1980s will have to give up their crown, we’ll have to them their due as the greatest era for comics to date.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Been a slow two weeks for me as a comic reader, so I’m a little light with recent recommendations. I’ll take this space to pimp Queen & Country, from Oni Press, which is the best spy comic of all time. If you like spy books, political intrigue, timely subject matter, or just well-fleshed out characters and comics that engage your guts and your brains with equal energy, you need to see what all the fuss is about. Last week saw the release of issue #26, which is the perfect jump on point for new readers. You can read the review here (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=29564). Check it out!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.
I Love the ‘80s
I’m a funny sort of comic book fan in that I manage to find something to love about every era of comics. I can talk endlessly about the grandiose layouts of the Golden Age serials, or the marvelous escapist nature of the Silver Age and it’s willingness to truly embrace the concept of a shared universe for its characters. I could talk about the glorious growth of independent press that the industry experienced in the 1970s, and the second renaissance of small press we are in the midst of right now. Heck, if pressed I could even find something nice to say about the dreaded 1990s… but I don’t have the time to think of something right now.
What makes me a funny sort of fan is that I can also manage to find something to hate about every era of comics. Golden Age comics are riddled with stereotypes that would spark nationwide protests today over their insensitive treatment of a wide variety of groups. Silver Age comics routinely embarrassed themselves by embracing the worst aspects of pseudo-science, and by attempting to have middle-aged men write 1960s teenage dialogue on a regular basis. The rise of independent comics, now and then, created a generation of readers and writers who incorrectly assumed that independent meant “good”, ignoring the hard reality that many comics remain underground because they are simply BAD. And I certainly could find something awful to say about the 1990s… but I don’t have the time to narrow it down right now.
But then we come to the 1980s, the decade that gave the world Reaganomics, “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirts, and hair bands by the metric ton. So I have no trouble in saying there is no shortage of things to hate about the 1980s.
There’s just nothing to hate about their comics.
Some may say that the Silver Age is the height of comics, but they are denying the greatness of the 1980s. Perhaps we feel the decade has not been long enough in the past to be elevated to the top of the heap. Perhaps since many of us were either born or began reading comics at this time (or both, like me) we feel we are incapable of being impartial. I don’t know, but the time has come to give the eighties it’s due… not simply as a bygone era we remember fondly, some nostalgia trip back to our younger days, but as an era whose comics stand head and shoulders above any other’s.
What made the ‘80s so great? And why have we had such a hard time touching that greatness since? Three things the decade had going for it:
Depth of Commitment. The 1980s included some fantastic writers helming the big time franchises, and many of these runs stand as the greatest those titles have yet seen. Just at Marvel alone the ‘80s brought us Frank Miller’s Daredevil, Walt Simonson’s Mighty Thor, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four, Peter David’s Incredible Hulk and Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men, among others. What do all these runs have in common? Length. Of those listed, Miller’s run is the shortest, and it’s still more than thirty issues (non-consecutive). Simonson approached 50 issues, Byrne lasted over 60, Claremont lasted the entire decade (not to mention five years before and two after), and Peter David began his run in 1987 and lasted another 11 years.
And that’s the difference: depth of commitment. The commitment of writer to franchise and of company to writer. These days a run that lasts twenty-five issues is considered a good tenure, and even that is longer than the modern norm. The problem with that is that shorter runs mean a shorter creative investment, and less return on that investment. Just as each writer’s run is part of the larger run of the series and its characters, it is also its own beast. There are tones, moods, themes and characters built by a writer that are lost by the next, whether by conscious or unconscious changes in style. Thus the shorter the run, the less depth can be given to new characters, the less development there can be of new ideas, and the less growth there can be all around.
What changed? The industry changed, for one thing. Sales ain’t what they used to be, which means companies are less interested in growing a writer and their work over time. Companies changed, for the above reason and also because their focus has changed. Movies, TV shows, and merchandising, things which were far less prevalent in the past, are now arguably more important to comic book companies than the comics that spawn them.
Also, I believe that writers have changed as well. They seem to have a shorter attention span, at least for things not of their own creation, than the writers that preceded them. Today’s writers seem only interested in what they can do to muddle with characters-as-concept, but they are rarely even interested enough in that to explore those concepts to their fullest (see my second point below). If you doubt that there is a different work ethic, you need only look at the exceptions to the rule: they’re all the guys we were talking about in the 1980s. Peter David still turned in 60+ issues of Captain Marvel, and would have done more had Marvel not pulled the plug. Claremont is back on the X-Men, and if you remove the brief Eve of Destruction interlude, he has been a constant presence on an X-Men book for over 60 issues now. Their ability to remain interested, to continue to have something to say, hasn’t changed.
Depth of Imagination. I’ve complained endlessly about comic book writers not having anything new to say, and re-writing the same old stuff… that’s not what I’m talking about here (although I could, since it does apply). I’m talking about the impulse to redefine that which already exists, to take something old and make it new by seeing it another way. There was no shortage of this in the 1980s. Miller did it with Daredevil, and with Batman in Dark Knight Returns. Alan Moore did it with Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman did it with Sandman, and the entire DCU got the treatment with Crisis on Infinite Earths. These were all new versions of things which were old and familiar, and they were made grand again. This wasn’t like some Ultimate title, where you just retold an old story; these were truly new versions of old creations. There’s barely anything connecting Swamp Thing pre-Moore to Swamp Thing post-Moore, and that’s because Moore grew something new. And we got to watch.
Do comic book writers and/or companies have less imagination than they did in the 1980s? Well yes and no. Too many, I think, have resigned themselves to recycling old tales, just as too many readers have resigned themselves to reading them. The problem is that those who ARE interested in tinkering and trying something new are interested in “fixing” things which companies do not believe are truly broken. Look at the history: it’s always old, washed up properties that get transformed into something new. Something successful is too valuable to tinker with. Yet all the creative energy, all the impulse for change, is directed at those properties that resist that change to the greatest degree. So the best we ever get are half-hearted and short-lived attempts at saying something new with something old; rather then some bold new approach on a little-used property, which could be that next big thing.
Depth of Variety. There was a ton of stuff out in the 1980s, and almost all of it with the same level of promotion and circulation now only within the capability of the elite few companies and their hottest titles. Even before the age of the Internet, comics outside of Marvel and DC were managing to get the attention of a wider reader base than any time before (or, arguably, since).
And those readers who wandered off the beaten path wandered into a hell of a time to be a comics fan. One of the first, best indie-series, Cerebus, has hitting its stride, and had yet to become bogged down in the rhetoric that would eventually sour many fans to Dave Sim’s work. The truly innovative Love and Rockets began in the ‘80s, changing the way an entire generation of readers looked at what comics could do with love and sex. The ‘80s also brought us a little funny animal book that would eventually go on to some modest success, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and some graphic novel about cats, mice, and genocide called Maus.
Is manga your kick? Lone Wolf & Cub and Akira, probably the two most critically acclaimed of all manga titles, were both circulated in the West for the first time in the 1980s.
And even if you stick with the Big Two, you find an incredible wealth of variety. In the ‘80s the outside license was king, with Marvel bringing home the bacon with Conan, Transformers and G.I. Joe, to name a few.
Do big, tragic events get you? The ‘80s brought us Crisis, and it’s culling of some popular DC figures; the impactful Dark Phoenix Saga; the rise of the graphic novel with The Death of Captain Marvel; and the fans voting death for Robin II, Jason Todd.
Oh yeah, and there was also this crazy British guy with bushy hair… he wrote a couple of mini-series that some people think are pretty good: Watchmen and V for Vendetta.
The depth of variety point is the one that makes the whole thing make so little sense, really. The improbability of so much great stuff, representing such a wide array of tastes, being produced in a single ten-year span… it’s rather impressive. How did it happen? Could it happen again?
Sure. It can always happen again. Will it? I don’t know, and I confess to being pessimistic. But before the 1980s will have to give up their crown, we’ll have to them their due as the greatest era for comics to date.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Been a slow two weeks for me as a comic reader, so I’m a little light with recent recommendations. I’ll take this space to pimp Queen & Country, from Oni Press, which is the best spy comic of all time. If you like spy books, political intrigue, timely subject matter, or just well-fleshed out characters and comics that engage your guts and your brains with equal energy, you need to see what all the fuss is about. Last week saw the release of issue #26, which is the perfect jump on point for new readers. You can read the review here (http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showthread.php?t=29564). Check it out!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.