Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 227
VACATION ALL I EVER WANTED
It’s a three-day weekend here and we’ve decided that instead of fighting traffic, we’ll treat ourselves to a local hotel and some nice meals. Should be a good time. Hope your weekend is going well.
THERE IS POO UNDER THAT GOLD PLATED AWARD
Comic writer Rick Remender announced he has signed an exclusive contract with Image Comics.
The comic book industry loves press releases. We can’t get enough of them. Something about seeing yourself in the Hollywood Reporter really thrills comic folk. So I’d forgive you if you glossed over the announcement that a creator is continuing to work with the company through which he’s experienced his greatest successes.
But you’d be wrong to turn the page to another announcement of a comic being optioned that will never become a film. No, stay on the Remender news long enough to catch the biting details.
“I’ve recently turned down very generous offers to write X-Men and Batman, and while flattered, that would ultimately be a step backwards artistically, and not where my heart is at,”
Goddamn, what a flex.
These are the titles everyone wants. So much so, theres’s a circle of vultures doing endless laps around the Bat office at all times. The backstabbing and politicking creators engage in to land those titles is legendary.
So it’s very funny that Remender would be offered that gig and turn it down. Right now some mediocre talent that has been passed over five times for that position is stabbing his/her DEADLY CLASS plushies.
“A step backwards artistically.” This is wakeup slap to both the creators who supplicate themselves for a chance at these titles AND the readers who buy them as a reflex without the enjoyment they used to get. Why are you settling?
“Image takes no OWNERSHIP, so my partners and I co-own 100% of our properties. It’s short-term vs long-term thinking. You want to build your own house? Make something that your children will inherit? Image is the only place. This contract is me saying that I bet on myself. I bet on my collaborators. I bet on our characters, stories, and owning what we make. Exclusively. With all we’ve got. Like our lives are on the line.”
Now this is all true and there’s just no debate. A number of creators have done well for themselves at the Big Two and hopefully they invested that money well. But it’s not the same as ownership. I don’t care as much for the “what will I hand to my kids'“ angle as I resonate with the “so nobody tells me what to do” aspect. Even if you take away the indignity of being a worker when you have the option of being a boss, answering to editors is just a neutered state no matter how you look at it.
But as much as I’m pro-Remender and obviously pro-Image, I think we’re gonna come back to my old hobby horse of “yeah, very happy for you, but what about a new model built on those ideals?”
The class of creators Remender graduated with had a predictable relationship with corporate comics. They all, to varying degrees, got taken for a ride by the Big Two WHILE benefitting immeasurably from the exposure. Careers went on steroids when they took those corporate gigs, but the corporations made a billion off these guys and threw them peanuts.
That faustian bargain was the pathway for many. And it’s a touchy subject. Because you can’t say Marvel made Remender. He was a grinder for a long time before that, and if my memory is ordering things correctly he had some notability from FEAR AGENT. But you’d also not be telling the full truth if you minimized Marvel’s role in his career. As bleak as this sounds to us fans, it seems readers retailers needed the Marvel cosign on Remender to put their trust in him.
How well does this system work in 2023? Well, it still applies to a degree, although it’s weakened to the point that anyone relying on it is brain damaged. It would be rude to name colleagues, but there’s a few ‘high profile’ Marvel creators who not only bricked in the creator-owned sphere but actively hurt their careers.
As an independently-minded creator, I would push back on the necessity of the indie→Big Two→creator-owned-payday. You know this. But the fact that it doesn’t even work anymore really highlights the need for a different approach.
We need a new ladder.
And we need creators who haven’t had Marvel-related success to reject these offers. Remender isn’t lying, he’s betting on himself at a time he coulda done Big Two hack work for big money. It’s significant that he make the decision he did. It’s ultimately a win for him and Image. But he’s got the resumé to take some risks. We need younger creators make the same commitment. I’m not suggesting ‘say no to all Big Two work’ but I am saying that the expectations of readers and retailers won’t change until some exciting young creators change it.
Or, put more succinctly, whoever told you you need to write AVENGERS: KANSAS CITY for the privilege to someday make a living IS A GODDAMN LIAR. You’ve heard me say it all before. Sorry. Sorry. Broken record.
I don’t wanna be Dave Sim. I’m in comics to make quality comics, not put a revolution on my back or even beat a drum. But something has gotta change or quality creators will find themselves wasting their lives alongside the jobbers. And as confidence in the Big Two slides off the side of a shit cliff, the upside potential for creators quietly dies… so what better time for said change?
Anyway, Remender saying no to BATMAN is beautiful. Saying no to X-MEN is what Hickman shoulda done. It’s a wonderful thing that Remender would opt NOT to undercut himself creatively even if the money was great.
Now let’s hear the same confidence from a 30-year-old with three credits to his name.
BUILDING ON THAT IDEA
I know some of you don’t follow the mainstream comics scene. I urge you to not rely on me. Explore some outlets and get a balanced view if this stuff interests you.
But here’s the lay of the land as I see it:
Rich people, as you might imagine, have a leg up here. There’s a number of comic creators who are funded by generational wealth and get to play a different game than the rest of us. This, obviously, shapes the circles they swim in and the professional recommendations they can rely on. Weirdly, they are corporate-minded by nature and even though they see the Big Two as stepping stones they cannot fathom circumventing those stones.
Creative people forced to navigate a broken system is a large bloc of comics professionals. These types just wanna make good work but find themselves caught up in endless bullshit. “I’ve gotta get on this publisher’s good side” or “I’ve gotta get in with this editor” or whatever. Supplicant bullshit. To compete with the next group on this list, these people have to join the fray or watch opportunities pass through their hands.
Actual real-life vipers constitute more of the comics industry than you’d think. There’s some really sociopathic corporate-brained weirdos out here. You’ll see these people fail (at least nominally) upwards because they’ve always got an angle. These are the ones with Machiavellian mindsets cutting each other’s throats at every turn. These are the ones sending blind items to comic news sites in an effort to manipulate the market. On the unpleasant-but-within-the-spectrum-of-normal-human-behavior end of things there’s those undermining their competition for specific gigs. And on the holy-shit-what-rock-did-this-snake-slither-out-from end you’ve got those using Discord/Twitter to torpedo careers of perceived enemies.
The nutballs, both good and bad, occupy a massive swath of the creative pool. These are the types that venerate Big Two comics or hate them passionately, with no inbetween. They are so under-funded or off-putting or just plain untalented that giving them purchase in the creator-owned space is tricky. I think when creators are just starting their careers they are paranoid they could be these guys. But weirdly, these guys are never concerned they might be who they are. You’ll catch them being bitter online with zero self-reflection on why OBLONG: THE NEURODIVERGENT VIGILANTE wasn’t a resounding success on Kickstarter.
That ‘Creative people forced to navigate a broken system’ group? That’s the circle we need to gain a backbone. There’s people in that space doing good work or are at least capable of it. And they are, generally, not insane or emotionally malformed. These are the ones that need to say “I’m crawling up the indie ladder only to stay focused on indie work, because that’s where my heart is.” The fixation on the pipeline and the traditional way of doing things has gotta stop. When I first got into comics, I woulda written ANYTHING just for a chance to get in print. I get it. We all felt this way. Now that I’ve got credits I’m proud of, I’m not knowingly putting blotches on my record. If an opportunity isn’t right, it’s not in consideration. This group has credits. They can have some self-confidence.
That’s it. Would you rather be stepped on or would you rather be Remender?
NOT UNDERSTANDING THE ASSIGNMENT
There’s an awful lot in the comic commentator realm about current mainstream writers being a bad fit for action-oriented comic books. Everything ends up feeling slice-of-life or clubhouse or memoir. There’s some debate on if this is intentional on the part of editors or if many are just confused about the nature of their business.
I think there’s some presentism at work here. It’s just not accurate to say this is a new circumstance. Yeah, it FEELS very much a modern problem. But reading ZATANNA: COME TOGETHER from 1993 tells a different story. First and obviously the Esteban Maroto art is gorgeous.
Fantastic acting and endless style. EVERYONE is sexier than they have any right to be. The ugly people are handsome.
But, man, this Lee Marrs script. It’s not just ‘not a great fit.’ It’s DEEPLY confused on the matter of telling a story. It’s impressionistic and feels like pieces of a character’s day rolling over each other. Which I suppose is something, but not what anyone picking up a ZATANNA comic was particularly seeking.
Marrs comes from underground comix and it’s obvious. But, look, they couldn’t have hired her with the expectation she’d change her spots for a four-issue series. It is what it is. A cool(ish) experiment that is at least memorable if not strictly speaking enjoyable.
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
My manager hit me with some “would you like me to take these meetings” regarding LEADED GASOLINE this week. As with all Hollywood stuff, it will almost certainly amount to nothing. But it got me thinking about how as much as I don’t care for the details, I can’t be mad at this aspect of the comics ecosystem. Because for all the disappointment at the ‘is this a comic or a Netflix pitch’ era, sometimes the Hollywood options on these books brings them outta the red and makes it possible to BUILD. And maybe that’s the disconnect. The creators who think Hollywood is an end goal embarrass themselves with what feels like pump-and-dump schemes. But as a guy who wants a career where I build reader trust over the course of multiple series, the few grand for an option is appreciated to help balance the books.
THE END
Thanks for letting me chew your ear off in text. I don’t mean to come off as an attack dog for creator-owned work. I don’t mean to force the idea that anyone working in corporate comics is a hack. I just think until we establish the primacy of creator-owned work in reader/retailer minds, we’re not looking to the future in any real way.
Stop being scared. Do for self.
