In case you haven't noticed, your friendly neighborhood Ship Captain is doing double duty this week, with my screeching tones playing harmonically alongside the likes of Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler, who stopped by to waste a portion of their life talking to me at the recent New York Comic Con. Thankfully, we stuck to discussing their work on their creator-owned comic
Mysterius the Unfathomable published by Wildstorm and steered clear of discussing things we might have argued about, like whether lead is a good vitamin for babies or why I prefer my tuna not to be dolphin safe.
If you haven't listened to it, you really should—not because I'm interesting, let me guarantee you brother, I am not—but because both Parker and Fowler are open and honest artists working in a medium that usually prefers its creators to speak at length mostly about information easily available in Diamond's solicitations catalog. They've got stuff to say, and they say it well.
My favorite part of the interview was where Jeff and Tom started talking about the portion of their contract that specifies that any communication regarding
Mysterius with the book's editor, Ben Abernathy, has to be circulated among all of them. Since neither men work in some sweatshop office from the roaring 20's, that just means all emails have to be cc'ed to the other two, regardless of content. Maybe it's a question for Jeff, maybe a note for Tom: either way, everybody involved in the project knows about it.
Now, I didn't find this particularly interesting in and of itself—as the idea was being described, I remember thinking to myself "Well sure, that's expected." After all, if you're working in a medium like comics, a medium that is wholly dependent on words and images working in tandem with each other, then of course you're going to need the writer and artist to talk to each other. That's obvious, right?
Apparently not. If you heard the interview, you'll notice that Jeff Parker assumes the opposite. He assumes that I, regular comic reader and sometimes comic blogger, "wouldn't be surprised" to find out how this isn't always the case. That sometimes an artist does have questions about the script, but these questions get filtered through an editor who decides—for whatever imaginable reason—not to mention them to the creator on the other side of the comic construction fence.
I'll be totally honest. I have always assumed that there was less interplay between the creative team when companies like DC or Marvel were dealing with books that need to be pushed through quickly, books that end up with a credits page listing multiple inkers and two or more pencil artists. Sure, I figure those books don't have as much background conversation, since most of the time they're deadline books. But otherwise, the idea that a comic book's artist or writer could end up watching a work that has their name on it get shuffled off to a printing press or the Adobe coloring lab without them having a chance to discuss a problem, concern or question regarding the basic mechanics of the comic?
That's completely absurd.
I'm sorry, but for me, this has to be the most ridiculous thing I've heard about comics in a while. A comic book isn't just a little dependent on the interplay of word and image. It's
wholly dependent. I don't claim any high comprehension of aesthetics, but I've read enough comics to know that they're a hell of a lot more than just some words tacked on a picture, and when a work is in the position of having two different individuals responsible for those two necessary parts, those two integral pieces from which all other aspects of its place as art stem from, I'd wager good money that communication between the two is an intensely important part of the collaboration.
It would be the height of folly for me to extrapolate a huge criticism out of Parker's statement—he didn't specify any creator, publisher or comic, and I can't imagine he would have done so if I'd thought to press him on it at the time. Our conversation was about
Mysterius, and that's what we wanted to talk about. And since then, I've already turned that statement into an excuse and acclaim for my own reasons—in my mind, comics I don't like are automatically getting filed in an imaginary box called "no communication books" whereas works I do enjoy, respect and admire—works like
Criminal, freaking-shut-up-already
Watchmen and
B.P.R.D.—are getting placed alongside
Mysterius as comics I feel confident are definite artist/writer collaborations.
Yeah, I'm doing that, and it's completely subjective. Here's the thing about that: I don't know if that's in the slightest bit true. I don't know, and neither do the majority of people reading these things—we don't know if these comics are getting stamped out as if they were a burrito mailed around the country to get filled with its various constituent parts.
There's no real way for me to tell how much of a disservice this does to the reader, the idea that some comic books get put together like this. I don't know if comics I like get made like this, and I don't know if comics I find distasteful aren't.
The only real thing it says is this: any editor or publisher who contributes or participates in this sort of condemnation of the artistic collaboration that creates a form of comics? Any writer or artist who sits back and allows their half of a project, their work, to be treated like this? Anybody who looks at the questions of one of the two primary forces behind what turns a comic into something more than a book of words and pictures?
They're the ones that people should be upset with when it comes time to get worked up about something. More so than any comics naysayer who criticizes the medium as juvenile trash, more so than any unsuspecting mother who throws out a dog-eared collection of Frank Miller's
Born Again series, more so than any emotionally twisted comics blogger, more so than any financially weak distribution system—those people are the enemies of this art form, and those people are the ones who are actively destroying the potential that comics could, and should have.
People like that. They'll send this art form into the sewers of oblivion and they'll tell you it's in your best interest while it happens.
Don't believe them for a second.
Tucker Stone's writing may be found in print in Comic Foundry and online at The Factual Opinion, where he frequently reviews new releases.
This Ship Is Totally Sinking is © Tucker Stone, 2008
