Even if people are, on the whole, genuinely enjoying superhero comics right now (which I doubt–I’ve seen more than one essay on the comics blogosphere talking about how blah superheroes are currently), it just means that the majority of comics fans have no taste. William George’s point stands: people are buying and supporting shitty comics. The “why” almost doesn’t matter.

There’s also the problem of low expectations. Do a Google search on “New Avengers Annual #3″ and “idiot plot”. The weak plot was easily the worst problem with the issue, but I’m practically the only person to point that out. Are such plotting problems so routine now that they’re not even considered worthy of comment?

SRS

This is completely true. The reason there are bad comics is because the fans buy and support them. No other reason.

Um… no?

Comics aren’t sold until they’re produced. And they generally aren’t read until they’re sold. You’re generally not aware of whether a given comic will suck or succeed until you’ve purchased it.

I think Penny Arcade just ranted on something to this effect: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/12/14/

Perhaps there’s some niche marketing going on where people buy comics they hate, but I’m not seeing it. Series that do well get the initial sales and then get a large chunk of revenue later on from the reprints and video game/tv show/movie spin offs and such.

Suck and sales figures tend to have an inverse correlation.

As for the current thread, doesn’t this just go back to the ‘conflict or limitations encourage creative thinking’ argument transposed from the usuall technical or financial limitiations in corporate entertainment (film, TV, to a lesser extent theater) and putting them into an editorial context?

Jaws is better for not seeing the shark that never worked. Star Wars was better for implying the galactic empire. Most forms of entertainment are better because of “you can’t do this or that” to get around creatively. I think this sort of approach would be of most benefit to Loeb, but I don’t know how editoral imposes a “no more dumbass sequences like Wasp being eaten alive” rule without rewriting all his scripts.

Now, on the one hand there are a lot of celebrated comics based on the “this is going to get cancelled, so do what you want with it approach.” The best examples I can come up with are Steve Englehart’s Captain America run and Frank Miller’s Daredevil run. On the other hand, strong editorial control might have made DKSB readable, although I doubt it.

I do agree with you, Justin, that the editors and writers sometimes seem to be a little too sympatico (although again, what you see in the final version and what you read in interviews isn’t always reflective of very real conflicts behind the scenes; few writers will go public with a major argument with a powerful editor.) But that’s generally a function of the editor, not the writer; it’s usually not that editors are rubber-stamping the work of their favorite writers (although that’s the only explanation I can imagine for “Spider-Man: Reign”…) More often, it’s that editors hire someone who’s going to do the kind of work they want to see. Geoff Johns is the kind of writer Dan DiDio wants.

I still think the stagnation can be put down to a few simple causes; comics written for existing comics fans instead of a general audience, comics padding out their storylines in order to re-release them as trade paperbacks, and comics being too focused on the metaplot, and less on writing good individual stories. An individual issue rarely needs to stand on its own in order to sell in today’s market, and that results in weaker comics.

And Bass…the problem wasn’t the narration. The suits were right, it was needed and gave the film a wonderful noir feel. The problem was that it was added too late, and that Ford tanked the voice-over work (possibly on purpose, if the rumors are correct, but we may never know.)

I think what blew it was the whole “big name artist” thing in the 90s and Image, where the pencilers would blow off what the writer wanted to do and draw panels of gritted teeth (I think that’s how Mark Waid described it.) So then artists getting that much creative input was considered a bad thing.

However, don’t confuse that with ‘spontaneity’. Yes, all forms of art are rife with examples of the “last minute save”. CHINATOWN was a mess at its test screenings until Roman Polanski was finally convinced to change the score. MEN IN BLACK was an incoherent failure until a last-minute editing decision. But for these we get I AM LEGEND. A fine movie that had it’s ending neutered at the last minute. Or BLADE RUNNER, where the studio decides to force in a happy ending and useless monologuing.

It’s not about spontaneity. You can’t plan to be lucky. Preparation and accepting what good ideas arrive when they do is the key. Collaboration, as you say. Having someone next to you who says, “That’s a great idea! How about if we do this to it too!” People who work together. Not people who fight and argue and tell you you’re rubbish, nor those who just say “yes”, but those who BUILD on the ideas.

That’s how Chuck Jones did all those wonderful Looney Toons. He and everyone would sit in a room throwing ideas up at the wall until they had a cartoon. They called them “Yes” meetings. No one was allowed to say “no” or anything negative.

That’s the kind of collaboration, and I suppose spontaneity. But it’s rare.

That would make sense if they’d had some way to contain him, but simply healing him and sending him on his way never worked for me. And then we got the idiotic rationalizations for why Galactus is so integral to the cosmos it was better for the universe to save him.

I think the issue is more specific to “editors who know how to do their job”. There actually seems to be too much “moral interference” in comics from editorial right now (I don’t know all the details–I guess no one does who wasn’t there–but I thought the fact that Marvel relied on a continuity-shredding deal with the devil to make Spider-man single again, instead of the more logical angle of having the Parkers get an old-fashioned trial separation, was due to a conservative streak at Marvel editorial?) and not enough editors who know what’s going to make for a tight, entertaining story (or make for a good comic). I don’t think writers like Johns are allowed to run rampant because they have so much power, I think it’s because once they’ve proven they can sell comics the editor seems to feel like they can let them off the leash.

John Seavey: If that’s how they say it goes, then that’s how it goes. It just seemed to me that the nature of fill-in artists and rotating creative teams would inhibit forming a really solid writer-artist combo with storytelling give-and-take.

As for the editors, I think the thing there is that the writers and editors *are* in sync so much that there’s none of that oppositional relationship I’m suggesting might be interesting. Johns and Didio seem very sympatico to the point where it feels like there’s very little one could suggest that the other would be opposed to.

Mikael: Well, “carte blanche” is a bit much; JMS walked off Thor because he didn’t like what editorial wanted him to do. Nevertheless, it still feels like a small group of writers under the editor in chief at each company are steering the whole ship with very little denied them, and I just wonder if perhaps it’s causing stagnation and the resultant ennui a lot of comics bloggers have been on about lately.

Roel Torres: Had Byrne, Claremont and Shooter been able to work the whole thing out in advance, it *wouldn’t* be inherently better or worse. They just probably wouldn’t have, since the decisions that nudged the storyline to what it ultimately became seem to have been made relatively on the fly, just to see where they could take this thing. The Dark Phoenix Saga they likely would have planned at a summit probably wouldn’t have been so ambitious; Shooter might have halted the “wiping out an entire alien civilization” thing out in the first place, who know?

fsherman: I dunno, I’ve always bought that story. If nothing else, Reed is technically only *indirectly* responsible for Galactus from this point on, and saving him is a typically superheroic act of mercy. Dark Phoenix was a main character who flipped out and killed that planet for funsies, so it’s slightly harder for her to go back to being a good guy. I wouldn’t expect Shooter (or anyone else) to have a sort of set-in-stone code of superhero ethics; he was probably just taking it case by case, and the Dark Phoenix thing is a bit more cut and dried.

Heaven forbid fans ever take any responsibility for the state of the medium rather than blaming the big bad bogeyman whipping boy du jour!

This is completely true. The reason there are bad comics is because the fans buy and support them. No other reason.