So here’s my deep, dark, horrible secret: Despite posing as someone who’s extremely conversant with the history of superhero comics, I had never read the Chris Claremont/John Byrne Dark Phoenix Saga before this week. I had just never really been able to track down a TPB or reprints before.
Understand, between summaries and secondhand sources, I knew all about the storyline, down to specific panels I’d seen reproduced dozens and dozens of times elsewhere; it’s rather like how not every NFL fan might have actually sat down and watched the Ice Bowl, but you might know some of the big plays and significant stats, or at least that it is considered to be An Important Game.
Well, this week I sat down and watched the Ice Bowl of superhero comics, and I thought I’d write a little something about it. You don’t need me to review it or tell you that it’s good, because you already know, or you’ve already heard. But I thought I might venture an opinion about why it’s so good. I think it’s something that’s sorely missed in today’s superhero comics, and that is collaboration.
Because the Dark Phoenix Saga as we know it today, as a landmark in superhero storytelling, was really a happy accident. The original plan was that as a result of Mastermind’s interference, Jean would turn into the Dark Phoenix, a villainous threat to both the X-Men and the universe. Before she could do any major damage, the Shi’ar would then “psychically lobotomize” Jean so that she was no longer a threat, but the Dark Phoenix persona could come back every couple years as a big-time villain in the same way that Magneto or Doctor Doom were being used at the time. You get some drama, a small-to-medium-sized shakeup to the status quo, and seeds for future storylines; a very serviceable, if not exceptional, superhero story.
But then Byrne decided to up the ante and give Dark Phoenix some more villain cred by having her kill five billion inhabitants of an alien world when the star she consumes destroys their planet, and Claremont went along with it and scripted a still-quite-haunting haunting description of the alien civilization’s final moments. This ended up working even better than Byrne had expected, because Jean was now such a horrible villain that Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter demanded at the last minute that she die, because after ending five billion lives, the old “Oh, thank heavens I’ve been cured of my evil side and can’t be held accountable for my actions” bit was not going to cut it. Thus forcing Claremont and Byrne to scrap their original, “safe” ending and kill Jean off, thus producing some of the most particularly poignant melodrama superhero that the genre had ever seen.
Of course, you probably have heard this story already, but I bring it up to make my next point: This would probably have never happened in today’s comics industry.
The Dark Phoenix story that finally saw print was very much a collaboration between writer, artist, and editorial. Claremont on his own would have written a fairly standard superhero story, but Byrne took the initiative to add some risk, and they both were forced to move outside their safe plan by editorial interference.
But I don’t see that degree of collaboration in today’s superhero comics. I don’t believe many comics are done according to the old “Marvel Method” anymore, instead relying on a full script from a writer. But working from a full script, Byrne wouldn’t have the freedom to have Dark Phoenix wipe out an inhabited planet. Similarly, I wouldn’t imagine too many editors would do what Shooter did in stepping in like that so late in the game. If editors are not outright acting as showrunners and telling writers what to do themselves, they seem to be fairly hands-off. Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns, for example, seem to get very free reign; there doesn’t appear to be very much that’s been made off-limits to them. And anyway, these things are planned at big editorial/writer summits years in advance, so everyone’s on the same page from the beginning.
I have no doubt that these sprawling five-year plans lead to fewer headaches and better planning, but aren’t we sacrificing spontaneity? I think one way to get that back would be to stop taking such an auteur approach to superhero comics and spur collaboration by getting the artists to contribute more to the storytelling side of things.
It’s true that Claremont and Byrne disagreed on a lot of points during their collaboration, but each brought out something in the other that wouldn’t be present otherwise. Byrne the traditionalist seemed to be able to rein in some of the self-indulgent excesses that Claremont would become infamous for in later years; at the same time, Claremont the trailblazer was less interested in the comfortable status quo than Byrne and shook things up more than the artist might have on his own. Oppositional collaboration can be extremely fruitful; the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team was so effective precisely because they had two very different approaches.
What I am suggesting is that it’s possible that the popular writers are becoming too comfortable with the amount of creative control they exert in the industry today. If Geoff Johns, for example, was paired with an artist who was less inclined to go for the gore, or more interested in new characters than the Silver Age originals, the resulting synthesis might result in more interesting comics. Similarly, if Bendis was working with an artist who was given to designing elaborate action setpieces instead of talking heads, perhaps it would force him to move outside his comfort zone and grow as a superhero writer. Of course, the results could very well be terrible, but they might also be very innovative and bold. What if…? Right?
The Dark Phoenix Saga is one of the most influential stories in the history of the superhero genre. But perhaps the lesson to be learned from it shouldn’t have been “Killing off a longtime character makes for good drama,” but rather, “Sometimes Plan B turns out to be the better plan after all.”
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I think something else that helped the storyline immensely: the sense that the X-men were caught in something bigger than themselves. Sure, they ended up being the deciding factor, but this wasn’t a case of the superhero team being called in by the authorities to solve a problem-they were intimately involved with the situation, and definitely had a personal motive in trying to defend Jean Grey. You could certainly have a philosophical debate about whether or not Jean Grey as a person should be responsible for Dark Phoenix and her actions. But this wasn’t about proving a point, they were trying to save their friend’s life….and the Shiar who wanted to kill Jean Grey were trying to prevent her from eating whole stars. On that scale of magnitude, Xavier’s personal guarantee that Phoenix wouldn’t appear again is not enough.
Actually, I’ve always contended that Claremont has always had both good and bad ideas (look up what his original plans for Mr. Sinister were some time), and that it was editorial oversight that made sure we only got the best of him back in the 80’s. That’s why his returns to the X-Men have been so disappointing – we’re finally getting to see all of his unfettered excesses.
Speaking of Plan B’s, I know I’d want to see the Hugh Jackman fronted Wolverine movie where it’s revealed that he really IS just a hyper-evolved weasel.
Yeah, it’s been my long-standing opinion that getting to be big enough to either override editorial control or get editors who’ll allow them to go hog-wild has been what’s ruined my enjoyment of a lot of writers whose earlier, more controlled work I quite enjoyed. (Morrison, Millar, Johns, Bendis, etc.)
Sorry, but every comics writer I’ve ever talked to about the creative process will tell you that whether you write full script or not, you collaborate with the author. Most of the time, writers and artists will have story conferences before the script gets written, where the writer will outline the basic thrust of the story and bounce ideas off of the artist. No writer/artist team is simply the writer dictating their ideas to an Art-Bot, even with a full script process.
Likewise, the editors are more hands-on than you probably realize. You say Geoff Johns “goes for the gore”, but DiDio is a big believer in selling DC as an edgier, more adult brand. He actually wanted to kill off Nightwing in “Infinite Crisis”, but Johns and Mark Waid talked him out of it.
Basically, the kind of collaboration that goes into “Blackest Night” is the same kind that went into “Dark Phoenix Saga”…but frankly, Claremont and Byrne were at the top of their game then, and when they were on, they were two of the best.
What I find fascinating is Shooter’s position, which definitely would never happen today: “The moral integrity of the story is more important than maintaining our intellectual property.” What, someone who murders billions should be punished? How quaint. That would never happen today (especially at DC…see Hal Jordan, Captain Atom, etc), as creators seem to want the soft core porn of seeing their heroes become bad-ass mass killers without ever having to suffer the consequences.
I’ve always liked the sequel to the Dark Phoenix saga that culminated in X-Men 175. Sadly, it was totally undermined by subsequent events, but that and the time Kitty pretended to be Dark Phoenix to screw with The Shi’ar were lovely moments that built so well on the original story.
Marvel had established in its universe that humanity had an evolutionary potential/destiny to become unto like gods. High Evolutionary, Him/Warlock, Rick Jones. When Jean Grey, already possessed of cool psionic powers, it was purely plausible that her evolutionary switch could be accidentally flipped and gain powers to shake the cosmos. And it made for gripping, nail-biting suspense to see if poor, human Jean could cope with that much power.
The ending was poignant, dramatic and fulfilling.
BUT IT’S HARD TO REMEMBER THOSE DAYS after a couple of decades of ridiculous retconning, ludicrous spinoffs and hack writing. Their original idea was to have a recurring villain like Dr. Doom? Doom doesn’t get half the ink as Phoenix the Great Bird of the Galaxy, Phoenix Jr., Dark, Darker and Darkest Phoenix ad nauseum.
I think one thing is clear. A lot of the classic heroes have been worn down to the nub. Dark Phoenix was a classic in part because it was released back when the X-men were relatively new and novel. Dark Phoenix was released 30 god damn years ago. People were still exploring the space in the X-man universe. Now it’s very fleshed out. We know which characters are enshrined in cannon and never going away. People have vested a great deal of emotion in any given character.
Ultimately, the problem with X-men was that the story was never allowed to grow legs and move on. And that same problem could be said of any number of long running comics. You can’t do anything radical with the X-man plot because it’s so god damn old. We’ve seen so many time traveling plot foreshadowers and watched so many main characters get axed and resurrected and going evil and turning god and going insane and getting back benched and leaping to the rescue again that the setting has gone stale.
The best recent comics in the X-man history have been ones where the artists were allowed to get more daring – completely rebooting the universe in House of M or Age of Apocalypse – and telling radically alternate story lines.
Ultimately, people want to read X-men but they don’t want to read the same old X-men. And it’s the nostalgia among the writers that is really killing the medium.
John Seavey is correct. Anyone who thinks writers have carte blanche in the creation of a comic needs to go back to “posing as someone who’s extremely conversant with the history of superhero comics”.
My favorite aspect of the story was that the X-Men were essentially in the wrong, aiding and abetting a mass (and I mean MASS) murderer. But she was their friend, and that was good enough for them. It added whole new levels of morality to the comic book universe, in my experience. Of course, that was before Geoff Johns revealed that it was really a giant yellow space bug… Uhm, wait a minute. Well, you get the idea.
Why is collaboration that takes place at a writer/editor summit considered less valuable than collaboration that takes place in mid-storyline?
If Byrne had suggested he blow up a planet, and Shooter had suggested Dark Phoenix needed to die, in a summit meeting months beforehand, does that make the story less entertaining?
Having the (pencil) artist discuss the plot with the artist is fine, but the artist doesn’t determine the story content unless he decides to draw scenes, or entire sequences, that weren’t specified by the writer. If that happens, he is altering the plot, at the very least. If the writer is a craftsman who attends to small details, such inventiveness by the artist could very well damage the story. What looks good visually doesn’t necessarily make sense in terms of story logic.
I agree with Mr. Zyduck’s point that the “Dark Phoenix” saga provided readers with a sense of drama that is absent from practically all Marvel (I can’t comment on DC) storylines now. There’s no sense of progress in any series I see, and progress in UXM is practically impossible, since the creators are deliberately trying to recycle material from the ’70s. The writers might be making things too easy for themselves, Bendis in particular, but the solution, IMO, would be for editors to force writers to be creative, or to get other writers. If you look at Bendis’s stories, for example, he has relied on idiot plots from “Avengers Disassembled” (implicit, in the Avengers supposedly not noticing Wanda’s insanity) to the “Illuminati” retcon (the Illuminati stupidly threatening the Skrulls) to the NEW AVENGERS ANNUAL #3 plot (Barton taken captive after foolishly setting out to kill Osborn by himself) to SIEGE (Osborn, et al., manipulating Volstagg, who has been historically written as a comical buffoon, not as a dramatic character). Idiot plots are elementary writing mistakes that should result in summary rejections — but Marvel’s star writer has arguably based his career on them.
SRS
The lesson I take away is that the creative process can follow many different paths.
In movies, you certainly see examples of film makers that exercise tight control. Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed, and starred in all of his pictures (I believe) and Alfred Hitchcock would plan his films out in such detail that he didn’t bother looking through the camera because, to his way of thinking, the film had already been made.
But, on the other hand, Casablanca was famously produced by a thousand cooks and Citizen Kane was only possible because Orson Welles, the great control freak, formed such powerful partnerships with the screenwriter and the cinematographer.
I wish I knew what the formula was for deciding when you stand up for your singular vision and when you seek a true give and take. Maybe the best you do as a creator is to have someone you trust that can help you to sort it out.
My favorite aspect of the story was that the X-Men were essentially in the wrong, aiding and abetting a mass (and I mean MASS) murderer. But she was their friend, and that was good enough for them. It added whole new levels of morality to the comic book universe, in my experience.
Agreed. One of the many nice touches of the DPS is that the Shi’ar and the Imperial Guard aren’t acting as bad guys. Their actions are perfectly valid and defensible, and if the story had been told from their point of view, I suspect few would have had a problem with their intent (well, other than the ‘super-heroes don’t kill’ rule, which was obviously much more in play at the time).
Fun factoid: the alien from Avengers vol 1 #4 – the one where Captain America was thawed from the ice – was of the same race that Jean fried when she was Dark Phoenix.
“And it’s the nostalgia among the writers that is really killing the medium.”
I love how you can say that with a straight face at the end of a screed about how everything BUT the shit you’re nostalgic for has been utter shit not worth the paper it’s printed.
Heaven forbid fans ever take any responsibility for the state of the medium rather than blaming the big bad bogeyman whipping boy du jour!
I can’t swallow Shooter’s assertion that this represented some kind of deep moral principle. He did, after all, go on to defend Byrne’s later decision to have Reed Richards save a dying Galactus as The Right Thing To Do, and Galactus has a much higher body-count.
And Shooter was still in charge when they decided to resurrect the original X-team and Jean Gray got brought back, which led to all the tortured rationale for her not really being Dark Phoenix, which pretty much undercut the drama.
As someone who was reading Marvel at the time, Shooter’s tenure in the top spot was painful, at best.
The Dark Phoenix saga issues were the comics that made a life-long comics reader out of me. They really don’t write them like that anymore. Always glad to hear someone singing its praises.
You say Geoff Johns “goes for the gore”, but DiDio is a big believer in selling DC as an edgier, more adult brand.
Worse, he’s a big believer that upping the gore and killing off reams of minor characters is selling DC as an edgier, more adult brand and not a lamer, more adolescent brand.
This is completely true. The reason there are bad comics is because the fans buy and support them. No other reason.
Tenken347: Terrible secret #2 – I’ve always kind of liked Claremont’s idea of Mister Sinister being a stunted child. It’s at least as good as what his origin turned out to be, I figure.
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.
Wasn’t the end of Final Crisis a last-minute editorial mandate, in exactly the way Justin is suggesting? And you know how that turned out.
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.
“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.”
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 you make a very good point. The idea of a synthesis, a collaboration between artist/writer is indeed paramount. In fact, the best collaborative team we’ve had in the last decade was Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas. Neither one was particularly impressive singularly (as recent years have shown), but for the 5 years or so they were working together almost EVERYTHING Marvel was putting was gold, or at least, exciting if not good. From the early years of the Ultimate line to Ennis’ Punisher and Morrison’s X-Men, we got all manner of interesting ideas. Once Jemas was fired by Avi Arad, Marvel began playing it safe; retconning the X-Men, giving Loeb and Bendis free reign, and so on. Collaboration is important. I’m fortunate enough to know some comic artists, many of whom lament the situation that the writer’s have total authority over the story, to the point that the artists are puppets and the editors, entrenched in company-wide crossovers, lack any real power to do anything. Smaller fiefdoms of collaboration allow for wholes to be better than the sum of their parts.
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.
I agree, I think ‘the Marvel Method’ really was a great way to tell stories, where the artist was free to visually express a story that the writer summarized. I don’t think Jack Kirby’s work would have had nearly the energy that it did had Stan handed him a full script. If you look at older comics they are very dynamic, whereas now they have the photographic look and it can be very still in the worst situations.
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.
The aliens Dark Phoenix killed also showed up in a very old Hulk story, where a stranded one was mistaken for a Medusa.
Of course, a counter-argument for returning to the “Marvel Method” of scripting can be summed up in two words: Jeph Loeb.
I’m actually not a big fan of the “comics are failing because they’re too nostalgia-based, what are needed are radical changes” argument that some people have advanced; my feeling is that you can only make so many big, radical changes before you do something that utterly kills the series by making it impossible to keep telling stories (witness Aquaman, who had “radical change” after “radical change” until he no longer had a supporting cast, a setting, a rogues’ gallery, or a right hand. Oh, and he was dead.) At that point, the only thing to do is backtrack, and those stories are always terrible.
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.)
[…] The Mighty God King [a Toronto national treasure] details why he believes the answer to better superhero comics be found in “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” […]
Well, I think we can agree to diagree about Blade Runner. I don’t think the voice over adds anything (really, do we need to be told the term “Skinjob” is prejorative?). Ford’s owned up to sandbagging the VO on purpose so it wouldn’t be used in the final cut in several interviews. Check out the latest “Final Cut” edition.
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.
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.
Perhaps DC comics might be written for old-time fans, but a major problem at Marvel isn’t that. Screenwriters and other part-timers are writing stories while knowing very little about the characters and relying on plots that might be okay for films, but don’t work well in print. Another problem, of course, is the chaining together of weak events. “Dark Reign” should never have been done.
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
Zifnab, the problem isn’t so much people buying things that they hate as it is fanboys deliberately lowering their standards and cultivating blind spots so they can continue to buy stuff that isn’t very good. Let’s face it, there’s an element of this in all nerdish or passionate cultural pursuits (like when you continue to buy a beloved band’s CDs even when they stopped being good a while back) but comics are absolutely the worst for this. People keep buying the comics because they “want to support the character” or “they want to keep up with the big events in the Marvel universe”. As long as the comics aren’t utterly and completely terrible, fanboys can justify it to themselves. Heck, sometimes even if the comics ARE terrible fanboys will continue to buy them for the reasons listed above, then bitch endlessly about them, seemingly getting enjoyment from complaining. The comics nerd mindset is kind of screwy, I’m afraid.
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.
[…] The Mighty God King [a Toronto national treasure] details why he believes the answer to better superhero comics be found in “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” […]