Too many super-hero readers make the mistake of getting lost in the Summer Event Comics and California-based conventions, thinking that when fall begins there will be time to make their voices heard regarding whatever DC & Marvel have planned after
This Crisis Gets Finalized and
That Secret Facebook Invasion. See, if you're going to tell Marvel and DC Comics what you want, and you want them to listen (because
Oh Gosh They Really Do, Especially To Us Cats On The Internet), you've got to stake your claim early, when there's still time to hire people, and then fire people, and scan old copies of
Sugar & Spike for Showcase volumes, and have a writing summit to figure out how to make people care about—or at least
buy—
The Brave & The Bold. (Here's a tip: Lots of zombies and a story arc by Adrian Tomine.)
The business of This Ship Is Totally Sinking is always going to be one that's based in speaking the truth to the reader, just like The Watcher used to back when he told you why Wolverine would've made a bad Lord of Vampires, and it would be disingenuous to drop a little list of possible creative teams and the books I'd like to see them on—not only because Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso would refuse to take over a
Plastic Man relaunch, but because honestly?
Don't care. The most exciting super-hero books, for my money, are rarely the ones that I would've picked the creative for. If you'd told me back when I read
Preacher that Steve Dillon was going to someday draw the best Wolverine story ever, and it was going to be a goofy multi-part arc where he fought Deadpool and featured hallucinatory moments straight out of a Warner Brothers cartoon, I would've told you that you were crazy. (Actually, if you'd said that entire sentence, I probably would've believed you, because that is a pretty specific prediction.) If you'd followed that up and said that somebody was going to do a Spider-Man comic featuring the guy who did the art for a good portion of that horrible Clone Saga from the 1980's, and the comic was going to be set back when Peter Parker was at his wimpiest, and the whole thing was going to read like the episode of the
OC where they all rode around on a pier to Spoon's "That's The Way We Get By," I would've punched you in the kidneys and told you to get out of my apartment. If you went on to say I'd really dig the comic, for reasons I still can't explain other than "Geez, it's really solid genre entertainment, and it always makes sense," I would've apologized to you for the kidney punch and made sure you safely made it back to whatever nursing facility you'd obviously escaped from. Successful creative team choices? I'm not somebody you want handling your bets. If it was up to me, DC would just hire the ghost of Jim Aparo to draw
Batman forever.
There's got to be something on the list though, right? How about if I call out that it is time to give some super-hero that's Never Been Done Correctly a chance on an ongoing title?
Here's the problem: I don't really care about that either. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing that DC could do that would convince me that I should spend a second of my precious time with Hawkman, the Peacemaker or that mutant who Dazzles people with bad fashion sense—but all it took for me to be interested in
Catwoman was Ed Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke & Michael Allred. The same thing happened for
Iron Fist—and I know I'm not alone on this one—until Matt Fraction and, well, that Brubaker guy again, came along, Marvel Comics didn't have a chance of taking any of my Tolstoy money for Danny Rand and his silly powers. The next thing I knew, I was heading to the comic store looking forward to finding out more about characters with names like "Fat Cobra" and "Dog Brother # 1." While there will probably always be a few characters I give far more leeway then they deserve, solely because of the (admittedly ridiculous) notion that I've got some kind of personal investment in them after spending so much time reading stories where Batman fights people like the Cluemaster, the consistent theme seems to be that the greatest runs are always coming out of nowhere. Nobody expected Frank Miller to do the magic he did with
Daredevil, or for Grant Morrison to build his credentials on
Animal Man and the
Doom Patrol, but hey—that's exactly what happened.
Are you starting to see the theme here? In case I'm not painting it strongly enough, which I doubt, let me lay it out like I'm Joel Coen and this is
Blood Simple: The best thing that can happen in super-hero comics, any and every time, is the same thing that's happened in all of the comics listed above: Let the creators loose on the characters they want to tell stories about, the characters they
have to tell stories about, and you're going to end up with some quality work. Sure, you're also going to end up with some terrible, derivative work—I'm looking in your direction
Moon Knight, and I'm not smiling—and sometimes you're not going to find the audience for great work—and no,
Brave & The Bold, I'm thinking of
Gotham Central and
Wildcats Version 3.0—but if every couple of years, DC & Marvel could come up with a couple of ideas that stuck? A couple of titles that popped up out of nowhere and took off with enough success to build a respectable library? Who wouldn't want that?
There's always going to be a segment of the super-hero audience that buys everything they can afford, regardless of quality—the type of people who invest their joy in the ideas of shared universes, continuity and all the rest of those Crisis-y, Civil War-esque type things. That's their prerogative, and while I can't pretend I understand or share the mentality, that doesn't mean there's anything particularly wrong with it—people can spend their time and money doing whatever they want. But for those of us who are just looking to see something fresh, or interesting, or just plain fun—this is what you should be crying out for: Writers to be doing something they really want to do, and the freedom to do it. Maybe it won't work for your taste—maybe it won't be on your favorite spandex hero, maybe, and Oh Man This Is Where You Have To Be Mature About It—maybe it won't be from your preferred publishing house.
But that's how you get past comics you just sort of like, and how you get to something that reminds you why you're part of this little hobby in the first place. You stop checking people at the door and telling them where you think they should sit. These cats are grown-ups—they'll figure it out.
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
