Fill In The Blanks
As many of you can probably tell, I read mostly superhero comics -- much of DC's output, and a smattering of Marvel's. The reasons for this are longstanding and undoubtedly dull. However, the companies' approaches to their shared universes played a role. In the mid-'80s, when I was getting back into comics, Marvel's seemed impenetrable. By contrast, Crisis on Infinite Earths helped make DC's more accessible. Now I wonder if the situation isn't reversed.
This doesn't aim to be an essay about the economics of Big Company Crossovers 2K5, or an "I-Crisis vs. House of M" debate. Instead, perhaps the key word here should be "saturation."
DC and Marvel's major assets are its familiar, larger-than-life characters, but part of what keeps them larger than life is a certain sense of mystery. I'm not talking about secret-identity issues, although those are part of it. While these characters don't quite have lives of their own, they have developed their own shorthand behaviors. You know how Superman, Spider-Man, etc., should act, even if you don't read all eleventy-four of their monthly books.
In terms of "saturation," the eleventy-four books are part of the problem. Dan Slott wrote a very funny Spider-Man guest-shot in She-Hulk, and a very funny Spider-Man/Human Torch miniseries. Does this mean he should write Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four on a regular monthly basis? Maybe, maybe not. With She-Hulk and Spidey/Torch, Slott was free to riff on Spidey's shorthand and let the reader fill in the blanks. Likewise, in Hitman #34 (lovingly recapped by Dave Campbell), Garth Ennis got to examine the average person's conception of Superman without having to deal with Supes' monthly (or even weekly) accrual of baggage.
Not that the intensive, weekly approach is necessarily bad. For several years, the Superman books flowed into another from week to week, sometimes just maintaining subplots, but sometimes crafting a truly epic arc deserving of its length. Still, although the epics "Exile" (1988-89) and "Reign of the Supermen" (1993) were both set up by previous stories, they each took a step back from the status quo for fresh looks at what it meant to be Superman. Likewise, "No Man's Land" used each Batman book to tell its year-long, weekly story.
Still, those may be the exceptions that prove the rule. To me, more pages devoted to a character or story can also mean more room to get bogged down. DC is close to falling into that trap, if it hasn't already, by giving its readers too much Crisis for too long. In a way this is the flip side of what I talked about a couple of weeks ago, except here there may be too little time between issues to digest what's going on. As the payoff both to Identity Crisis' fallout and its own lead-ins' cataclysms, it's very hard to see how Infinite Crisis can live up to all the hype generated by these constant drumbeats.
The same may be true for Marvel's "Avengers Disassembled"/House of M/Deci"M"ation cycle, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't read any of it and don't plan to. Currently I'm reading Captain America, Fantastic Four, and (for the moment) Astonishing X-Men. Each is part of a "franchise," but none openly demands my loyalty to the rest of their respective franchises -- or even to the Marvel Universe as a whole. Like I said at the beginning, sounds like a role-reversal between the two companies; but it may just be my change in perspective. It may also be that I have picked the three Marvel books which have the least to do with the intracompany crossovers, and some Marvel fan who reads only Legion of Super-Heroes, JLA Classified, and Legends of the Dark Knight would feel the same way.
On the whole, I am still enjoying DC's characters, and am genuinely interested in its plans. However, these past several months have been an endurance test. Less buildup and less saturation might have given my old, weary brain more time to anticipate Infinite Crisis, and so let me fill in the blanks for myself.
This doesn't aim to be an essay about the economics of Big Company Crossovers 2K5, or an "I-Crisis vs. House of M" debate. Instead, perhaps the key word here should be "saturation."
DC and Marvel's major assets are its familiar, larger-than-life characters, but part of what keeps them larger than life is a certain sense of mystery. I'm not talking about secret-identity issues, although those are part of it. While these characters don't quite have lives of their own, they have developed their own shorthand behaviors. You know how Superman, Spider-Man, etc., should act, even if you don't read all eleventy-four of their monthly books.
In terms of "saturation," the eleventy-four books are part of the problem. Dan Slott wrote a very funny Spider-Man guest-shot in She-Hulk, and a very funny Spider-Man/Human Torch miniseries. Does this mean he should write Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four on a regular monthly basis? Maybe, maybe not. With She-Hulk and Spidey/Torch, Slott was free to riff on Spidey's shorthand and let the reader fill in the blanks. Likewise, in Hitman #34 (lovingly recapped by Dave Campbell), Garth Ennis got to examine the average person's conception of Superman without having to deal with Supes' monthly (or even weekly) accrual of baggage.
Not that the intensive, weekly approach is necessarily bad. For several years, the Superman books flowed into another from week to week, sometimes just maintaining subplots, but sometimes crafting a truly epic arc deserving of its length. Still, although the epics "Exile" (1988-89) and "Reign of the Supermen" (1993) were both set up by previous stories, they each took a step back from the status quo for fresh looks at what it meant to be Superman. Likewise, "No Man's Land" used each Batman book to tell its year-long, weekly story.
Still, those may be the exceptions that prove the rule. To me, more pages devoted to a character or story can also mean more room to get bogged down. DC is close to falling into that trap, if it hasn't already, by giving its readers too much Crisis for too long. In a way this is the flip side of what I talked about a couple of weeks ago, except here there may be too little time between issues to digest what's going on. As the payoff both to Identity Crisis' fallout and its own lead-ins' cataclysms, it's very hard to see how Infinite Crisis can live up to all the hype generated by these constant drumbeats.
The same may be true for Marvel's "Avengers Disassembled"/House of M/Deci"M"ation cycle, but I wouldn't know, because I haven't read any of it and don't plan to. Currently I'm reading Captain America, Fantastic Four, and (for the moment) Astonishing X-Men. Each is part of a "franchise," but none openly demands my loyalty to the rest of their respective franchises -- or even to the Marvel Universe as a whole. Like I said at the beginning, sounds like a role-reversal between the two companies; but it may just be my change in perspective. It may also be that I have picked the three Marvel books which have the least to do with the intracompany crossovers, and some Marvel fan who reads only Legion of Super-Heroes, JLA Classified, and Legends of the Dark Knight would feel the same way.
On the whole, I am still enjoying DC's characters, and am genuinely interested in its plans. However, these past several months have been an endurance test. Less buildup and less saturation might have given my old, weary brain more time to anticipate Infinite Crisis, and so let me fill in the blanks for myself.
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 3:46 PM
1 Comments:
Aw shucks!
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