It's funny; I actually mentioned the reason why I stopped collecting in my multiply blog, but that was only incidental to a review I wrote of Arnold Arre's "The Mythology Class." Considering I've been a fairly regular comic book collector for over twenty years by now, though, I figure I could expound on the topic a little more than that.
There was a time when mainstream comics were a storytelling medium, and to be honest, it wasn't even that long ago. Marvel Comics put out a lot of good stories, such as both volumes of The Ultimates, Mark Millar's 12-issue run on Spider-Man, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, and about the first two years of J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man, to name a few. Sometime around 2004 or 2005, however, the mandate over at Marvel comics changed, and I can only say for the worse.
Events took precedence over actual storytelling, and suddenly the overriding concern at editorial appeared to be to either establish new status quos, or completely destroy long standing ones. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, except that in doing so, they basically destroyed a simple principle of storytelling that says that any story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
No, three major Marvel 'event' miniseries (and possibly more that I haven't really kept track of) basically followed the pattern of beginning-middle-total anticlimax. Civil War was unabashedly designed to 'change the face of the Marvel Universe' and in that it did its job, but ending on a rather unsatisfying note, with the now-dead Captain America basically copping out of the fight. Of course, this gave rise to several dozen "Civil War Aftermath" and "Civil War Initiative" books, only one of which I actually enjoyed (Dan Slott's Avengers: The Initiative, which I reviewed here). World War Hulk, which started with everyone's favorite green giant dishing out some much-deserved ass-kicking around the Marvel Universe, ended with a similar cop-out, that is, with some half-hearted explanation on how Hulk's misery wasn't really the fault of Marvel's 'heroes' Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Stephen Strange and Black Bolt.
Oh, and Hulk ultimately lost his 'world war,' mainly by default. Similarly, a plethora of new books were launched from the non-ending of this series as well.
Probably the most heinous example of a narrative anti-climax I've seen, however, has to be Neil Gaiman's take on the Eternals, a miniseries which is beautifully drawn and peppered with some lovely dialogue...but in which PRACTICALLY NOTHING HAPPENS. There's long been talk about a sequel/ongoing series to follow this story up, but it severely disappointed me that someone like Gaiman would even agree to write a story that would basically just "set up" the characters without actually having them DO anything. Thinking about it, Gaiman's name on the series was just one big marketing push for an obscure property that Marvel's been unable to sell for years. Eternals didn't have to be some big marketing push the way Marvel's other properties were, but it sure as hell read like one.
So in short, comic books of the last three years are no longer created with the intent of telling a story and keeping the fans entertained, but with ensuring that the stories are so open-ended and thoroughly unsatisfying that people will HAVE to come back for more. Well, I for one am getting off this particular bandwagon. Oh, wait, I already have.
Sure, there are a lot of comics out there that aren't guilty of this shameless ploy, like All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, which apparently tells stories in single or two-issue arcs and will do so until its twelfth issue hits stands sometime in 2010 (which is sad considering it started in 2005), or The Twelve by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston, or even Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's take on The Fantastic Four, but I'm not in any hurry to pick them up because I've really been worn down by all the stunts. The beauty about ASS is that the back issues aren't that hard to scrounge up, and well, as far as the two Marvel series are concerned, they'll probably look even better when collected.
Though I still sporadically collect toy cars, now I'm more into my blogs (including this one), my writing, and my multiply account. It's always nicer to create things rather than just consume goods, all things considered.
2 comments:
i have to agree that marvel and dc have had these stunt story arcs with huge let downs for some time now, but it doesn't mean they don't put out some good ones too once in a while. i actually liked the 'planet hulk' storyline, and the 'sinestro corps war' was pretty good too over at dc. but yeah, sometimes i'm annoyed that i feel i just threw away money collecting some of these titles.
What I could really get into are some of the comics produced here, like the stuff by Gerry Alanguilan and Arnold Arre. They're all self-contained, original, and resonate with me more, especially Arre who loves to re-create, time and again, the UP undergrad experience. I'll probably start collecting comic books again sometime in the future, if and when their orientation changes a bit.
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