#Comicsgate - The Culture Wars Hit The Funny Books!

[A nameless trool]

Savage Dragon is horribly written, so you aren't helping yourself by using it to defend Dragon Ball Invincible.

Up to Savage World it had a story that went somewhere and character development and a lot of characters with arcs. For a 90's comic that is a high mark for writing.

 

[GranDuke]

I don't want to spoil the series but your wrong on that. Or are you? You use the word subversive and Invincible came out in the days of Mark Millar and Ellis at Marvel and Didio at DC with Identity Crisis.

Would it be fairer to Kirkman was aligned with the zeitgeist of the time?

Yeah, zeitgeist makes more sense to me. I mean, if not for adaptation would anyone care about Invincibles? From what I remember it sold well for an indie, but wasn't a sales hit and I doubt that it really influenced anything. On the other hand, Ellis and Millar smeared shit on everything.

 

[Newman's Own]

Up to Savage World it had a story that went somewhere and character development and a lot of characters with arcs. For a 90's comic that is a high mark for writing.

I was an Eric Larson and Savage Dragon fan from the start. He was never a good writer.

Spoiler: How bad is he?

With Dragon it became very obvious very early that Eric Larson was writing with no plan from arc to arc and often from issue to issue. His habit of having characters tell the readers what happened off page through awkward exposition dumps (something he still does 30 years later) is lazy middle school level storytelling. His penchant for leaving dangling plot threads for years or decades only to summarily tie them up with perfunctory two panel explanations likely because he was getting letters requesting it exposes his lack of ability to organize and present a cohesive narrative. His themes have been ham fisted and preachy (read uncompelling). And his character development appears through characters describing each other rather than revealing their nature through their actions.

Eric Larson writes exactly how one would expect an artist who had no education or curiosity about the craft to write.

High water marks for 90s comics would be the early Sin City stuff, Justice League, Kingdom Come (God help us), Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Moore's From Hell and many other mostly non-cape books. Savage Dragon wouldn't make the top 100 for 90s writing let alone be considered any kind of "high water mark". Eric Larson's art has it's merits when he's trying but his writing is kiddie pool shit and always has been.

And I was a fan.

EDIT:

Y the LAST MAN is the next.

Y has been in development Hell since before Hollywood started mining comics in earnest.

I liked the series and thought it was a good match for an HBO type series but I'd hate to see the level of woke it would have now. It was to woke for me then.

In fact the series may be impossible to produce now. A future without men that turns into a dystopian nightmare is hardly what Hollywood producers are looking for. They'd have to retool it all so that women automatically solve all the worlds problems and fart rainbows and no one without blue hair is interested in that show..

 

[A nameless trool]

High water marks for 90s comics would be the early Sin City stuff, Justice League, Kingdom Come (God help us), Preacher, Transmetropolitan, Moore's From Hell and many other mostly non-cape books. Savage Dragon wouldn't make the top 100 for 90s writing let alone be considered any kind of "high water mark". Eric Larson's art has it's merits when he's trying but his writing is kiddie pool shit and always has been.

And I was a fan.

Don't mistake pretentious for good. From Hell and Kingdom Come were pretentious. Not pretentious AND good like Sandman, but then again Moore at his worst has more writing talent than the entire staff of Marvel at certain points put together.
Sin City was minimalist and stylist. Yes, high mark of the 90s. Garth Ennis was the GOAT and his Hellblazer was also as good.
I guess you are talking about DeMatteis' Justice League, which I have yet to read. But JDM (and Joe Kelly on Deadpool) are some of the bright exceptions. Most superhero comics were failing to do the basics back then, so SD was, at least, entertaining. Maybe I should re-read those early issues because I may have rose tinted glasses.

 

[Newman's Own]

Most superhero comics were failing to do the basics back then, so SD was, at least, entertaining. Maybe I should re-read those early issues because I may have rose tinted glasses.

Larson's first year or two of SD was his best. Or at least it seemed that way because it looked like he was going somewhere for a hot minute. By the mid teens I realized he had no plan and lost interest.

No regrets.

Alan Moore is pretentious. He's also a genius who can write circles around just about everyone in comics when he wants to. Kingdom Come may be pretentious but it also had a point and didn't make 5th grade narrative mistakes so it's heads and shoulders above Savage Dragon.

Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League is hilarious, well crafted and original in it's execution. It's well worth checking out but if the first trade isn't your thing none of the rest will be either. Justice League Europe is also excellent and features Bart Sears best mainstream work.

 

[Greed]

I don’t think Invincible is a subversion of superheroes. Omni-man is a subversion of the Superman archetype, and the ramped-up gore and violence is explicitly subversive of the “nobody ever dies or gets permanently injured” status-quo endemic to Marvel/DC, but the story itself is fairly standard faire and is more of a celebration of the genre than a subversion - the heroes are still heroes and good still conquers evil, just with more blood, guts and death along the way.

That's a fair assessment. I guess I should revise my statement about it being a "complete subversion in every way possible" to "it subverts a lot of individual tropes while telling a fairly standard superhero story". It definitely does feel like a celebration of the genre at times.

Invincible is best described as Kirkman's take and exploration of the superhero genre, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a subversion given how superhero values and conventions are supported within the text. If anything, Invincible is a subversion of the previous decade of post-Watchmen "superhero deconstruction" that became the norm in mainstream comics by giving positive, constructive and fresh takes on superheroes.

I can see this too. That may be the reason I enjoyed it. It was able to show me things I didn't expect to see, while never devolving into the cynical post-modernist slog I was anticipating.

Also, Kirkman's Walking Dead is a massive influence, if not the single biggest influence, on Frog's resumed Cyberfrog series so I think it's a bit off-base to assume he loathes Kirkman's work.

Oh trust me I know, I just took shit for pointing that out. I guess it could go two ways. He could perceive it's hyperviolence as being Watchman/Man of Steel-esq and hate it, or he could recognize the undertones of loyalty to family and the importance of male role models and respect it. He'd almost definitely be revolted by Amber if he watched the Amazon series, but then again he might fall into the camp that believes she's being written intentionally obnoxious to make fun of sjws.

I think you are thinking way too hard about Invincible, nothing is subversive there, its just standard superhero story.

While I've conceded that the story itself isn't subversive, segments of it certainly are. Having Mark attempt to rescue an old woman only to cause her far more bodily damage than if he'd just left her along is subversive. Introducing Battlebeast among a group of random thugs and having him unilaterally face fuck the entire cast in minutes without even dropping his name is subversive. There are other examples but you get the idea.

It doesn't really hit the skids until after wrapping the books first arc, which goes on for almost sixty to eighty issues and is a rip off of Dragon Ball.

I only started reading the comic after seeing the Amazon series, and I'm not very far, but from what I can tell it's definitely headed in that direction. Not that I mind, honestly.

 

[jspit2.0]

Don't mistake pretentious for good. From Hell and Kingdom Come were pretentious. Not pretentious AND good like Sandman, but then again Moore at his worst has more writing talent than the entire staff of Marvel at certain points put together.

Kingdom Come is hardly pretentious. I will agree though that From Hell is a miserable affair that should red pill anyone on Alan.

Sandman...is a mixed bag. It's got some interesting bits of structure. My biggest critique is that Dream is a non-character much of the time.

Sin City was minimalist and stylist. Yes, high mark of the 90s. Garth Ennis was the GOAT and his Hellblazer was also as good.

Bring on your hate. Ennis is not the GOAT of the 90s. Preacher is over rated as fuck, Hellblazer starts great and degenerates. Demon, Hitman, and his miniseries are actually pretty good and I'd take Hitman/Demon over either of those or the Boys.

For the 90s GOAT? Grant Morrison, Jim Shooter, or maybe Frank Miller.

I guess you are talking about DeMatteis' Justice League, which I have yet to read. But JDM (and Joe Kelly on Deadpool) are some of the bright exceptions.

For the love of....

There is DeMatteis' and Giffen at the beginning of the decade and Grant Morrison JLA at the end. Great stuff all around.

Most superhero comics were failing to do the basics back then, so SD was, at least, entertaining. Maybe I should re-read those early issues because I may have rose tinted glasses.

?

I dunno. The Flash's definitive stuff was in the 90s. Great Justice League runs. The Batman books were all great, Superman had solid books. Marvel had it rough from the Image creators departure until Reborn. Then they had a renaissance for three years? 1997 until late 99/2000

I picked up the Savage Dragon issues because I have a soft spot for most 90s Image titles. They started bad and got better. But Erik Larsen's early Dragon suffers from dialogue vomit, leaden prose, and tends to be very weird at times. That said, Larsen was spewing creativity. Those early books saw him take all the ideas he kept to himself at Marvel. Super-Patriot? Mighty Man? I think we can all see where he drew those from.

 

[Brother Maynard]

What the hell? Did Comicsgate get so bloody boring that this thread turned into a discussion about actual comic books?

 

[Newman's Own]

What the hell? Did Comicsgate get so bloody boring that this thread turned into a discussion about actual comic books?

Even ass cancer can get borings sometimes.

 

[Mister Dongs]

Richard trolled people more famous and talented than himself and got enough attention to become a minor E-Celeb.

Renfamous trolled people more famous and talented than itself and got enough attention to become a minor E-Celeb.

It's not unreasonable to say their trolling elicited similar results. What they accomplished with that result (very minor celebrity) may be different but that's a different discussion.

Since "what they accomplished with that result" was the entirety of my original statement, I beg to differ.

I'd argue that a good foil can force a person to revise, fully articulate and express their original thesis in dialectic where they otherwise wouldn't, making it stronger as a result, as well as serve as a good totem for people to rally against (as you pointed out). I'm reminded of when Poulter's porn history got leaked and, rather than be a moment of celebration within CG, only poured jet fuel on the internal conflicts going on within Comicsgate at the time with the removal of a common enemy to hate. In return for her years of unwitting service, Ren gained a few thousand followers on social media. Sounds like a good trade to me, despite what you and Strix claim of this being a net negative and cardinal sin of early Comicsgaters to respond. A badly managed foil results in something like TUG's fights with the blue hair in question, which resulted in TUG getting doxed and her tripling-quadrupling her social media presence. I do not recommend doing that.

Renfamous eventually caught on to this and, along with SJW comics twitter, decided to attempt an interaction embargo with Comicsgate and refusing to participate in dialectic in the hopes that internal conflicts would continue until the group atomized and collapsed (Weeb Wars was much more fruitful anyway). This was initially very promising, but in the long term gave as much breathing room as anyone in Comicsgate could possibly want to build their businesses, platforms and resolve any sort of conflicts with zero interference. Whether this will eventually develop into a new stage or will Comicsgate (continue to) move from initial conflicts to insularity & stagnation remains to be seen.

What the hell? Did Comicsgate get so bloody boring that this thread turned into a discussion about actual comic books?

Been a bit busy lately.

But since we're on the topic of writers and Comicsgate, Bill Willingham of Fables made this tweet.

https://twitter.com/BillWillingham/status/1429464308623286282

 

[Stupendus]

Y has been in development Hell since before Hollywood started mining comics in earnest.

I liked the series and thought it was a good match for an HBO type series but I'd hate to see the level of woke it would have now. It was to woke for me then.

In fact the series may be impossible to produce now. A future without men that turns into a dystopian nightmare is hardly what Hollywood producers are looking for. They'd have to retool it all so that women automatically solve all the worlds problems and fart rainbows and no one without blue hair is interested in that show..

It is streaming right now on Hulu it looks like.
I havent checked it out yet or heard any reviews and they already on episode 6 or 7 it looks like on their twitter page.
Not gunna rush to binge watch any time soon thats for sure.

 

[A nameless trool]

Alan Moore is pretentious. He's also a genius who can write circles around just about everyone in comics when he wants to. Kingdom Come may be pretentious but it also had a point and didn't make 5th grade narrative mistakes so it's heads and shoulders above Savage Dragon.

Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League is hilarious, well crafted and original in it's execution. It's well worth checking out but if the first trade isn't your thing none of the rest will be either. Justice League Europe is also excellent and features Bart Sears best mainstream work.

From Hell to Savage Dragon is Gourmet kitchen to Hamburgers. My entire point was that SD was a good hamburger when all other hamburgers were Spawn and Youngblood.

And I liked DeMateis even on his Clone War spider-man comics, so odds are I will like his JLI.

 

[Miniluv]

I mention this because think the main issue holding back comics is that it's mostly capeshit, and capeshit has become synonymous with the average person's understanding of comics. I'm tired of capeshit. For a long time now, some of the biggest sellers in anime and manga have been what fans refer to as the "slice of life" genre. These include high school romances, and whatnot. These are relatively light on action, but VERY HEAVY on character development. Good writing is paramount here. One of the richest manga-kas in Japan is Rumiko Takahashi. One of her most successful works is Maison Ikkoku. It's about a bunch of people living in an apartment complex. It's kinda like Seinfeld. There's no alien invasion, or super mutants, or anything of the sort.

So, yes, it comes down to writing, but I think more specifically, the problem is that the writing in comics is seen as stale because there's little genre diversification within the comics medium.

Interestingly, I think @FROG gets part of this insofar as he understands there is genre diversification in manga. He was talking on his stream about how there's cooking manga, and whatnot, and noticing one genre isn't trying to muscle in on another. It's a "big tent" industry.

Perhaps the issue is that Ethan is beholden to a genre that generally doesn't exhibit good writing. When he was asked what he likes in manga he more or less said "lots of speed lines."

It's always frustrated me that the medium of comics can tell literally any story and the culture that perfected them is dominated by one genre to the point where the average normie conflates that genre with the medium. Even more frustrating is the fact that the audience this genre targeted for most of its history no longer reads the stuff. It's absolutely baffling that the average 10 year old boy doesn't buy (or even care about) Spider-Man comics.

It's not as if kids just don't want to read comics in general. Manga is proof of that. Kids just don't give a shit about superheroes outside the context of non-comics media. The comics are not meant for them anymore. They aren't written simply and they aren't priced properly for younger readers to get a foot in the door. Manga has proven that people of every demographic will read graphic fiction they are interested in.

Maybe it's just me, but I see a weird dichotomy in the cultural role of comics in America these days. It seems like the average person still views comics as not just "superheroes", but still as something juvenile. Adults spend lots of money consuming superhero related media in theaters, but they don't go to comics shops. I guess it's because the average person's relationship with comics is that comics were something they read every now and then when they were kids. I don't think they realize that superhero comics aren't primarily consumed by children and haven't been for many years. I guess that's why the average person thinks of an adult that buys comics as some kind of manchild basement dwelling weirdo when they're actually the target audience and primary consumer of superhero comics.

 

[Newman's Own]

Since "what they accomplished with that result" was the entirety of my original statement, I beg to differ.

But you said that to argue @Strix454's point which was about the result of trolling (minor Ecelebrity) not accomplishment on the back of the result.

The irony in the situation is that Richard did very similar things in 2017 with comics pros with similar results.

Stryx was correct. You weren't even arguing his point though I suspect you think you were.

I'd argue that a good foil can force a person to revise, fully articulate and express their original thesis in dialectic where they otherwise wouldn't,

Okay Michael Eric Dyson. I stopped reading here.

 

[Newman's Own]

That said, Larsen was spewing creativity. Those early books saw him take all the ideas he kept to himself at Marvel. Super-Patriot? Mighty Man? I think we can all see where he drew those from.

Interesting case here.
Powerhouse - First appearance was in Spider-Man #15. 1990.
Rapture - First appearance was in Savage Dragon #4. 1993.

 

[Stupendus]

Interesting case here.
Powerhouse - First appearance was in Spider-Man #15. 1990.
Rapture - First appearance was in Savage Dragon #4. 1993.

I'll See your powerhouse and raise you Freak Force.

 

[Mister Dongs]

But you said that to argue @Strix454's point which was about the result of trolling (minor Ecelebrity) not accomplishment on the back of the result.

"You're not talking about the result, you're talking about the result of the result".

lol

It's not as if kids just don't want to read comics in general. Manga is proof of that. Kids just don't give a shit about superheroes outside the context of non-comics media. The comics are not meant for them anymore. They aren't written simply and they aren't priced properly for younger readers to get a foot in the door. Manga has proven that people of every demographic will read graphic fiction they are interested in.

If nothing else, manga has proven that an audience for graphic fiction is there. Hollywood has proven that an audience for superhero fiction is there.

Hardly scientific of me, but when I go to the local bookstore there's been an explosion of graphic novel adaptations of not just children's but also more mature fare. Book publishers are furiously taking anything that looks adaptable into a comic book and running with it. Simon & Schuster may not be able to make a movie adaptation of a great book, but they can bankroll a graphic novel adaptation of it to a comic reading audience that apparently exists.


https://www.businessinsider.com/cha...f-comic-book-industry-expert-analysis-2019-10

2 major changes happening in comic books could shape the industry's future — and comic shops will have to adapt to survive
...
Milton Griepp, the ICv2 CEO, told Business Insider that this change was due to two major shifts in the industry:

• The graphic-novel format is becoming more popular: Graphic novel print sales reached $635 million in 2018 and single-issue (or periodical) print sales were at $360 million. The gap between the two has been widening thanks largely to the book channel. Graphic-novel sales through the channel was at nearly $500 million last year, but at less than $200 million through comic shops.
• New types of content are becoming more popular: Children's comics, which are almost exclusively sold in the graphic-novel format, have surpassed superhero comics this year as the most popular genre, according to ICv2. "Superheroes have dominated the comics business for as long as I've been in it, but there are some amazing things happening with kids content," Griepp said at last week's conference.

emphasis added mine

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw...of-graphic-adaptations-for-young-readers.html

Old Stories in New Formats: The Growth of Graphic Adaptations for Young Readers
...
With the greater acceptance of graphic novels by schools and libraries, the old complaint that readers will prefer the (presumably easier) graphic novel to the original has not cropped up like it used to. In fact, quite the contrary seems to be true. “I tend to think that kids are like adults: if they like something, they want all the versions,” Saylor said. “Adaptations don’t necessarily replace the prose books at all. If you like the prose book, you will want the graphic novel and the streaming series.”

This has proved true with manga, Saylor pointed out, as manga sales have boomed because so many people were watching anime during the pandemic. “As we have seen with the Baby-Sitters Club, the prose books are going strong,” he said. “In fact, the graphic novels reinvigorated the whole brand. One doesn’t replace the other. It’s expanding on characters and series that are already beloved in some way.”

The bolded part is a very interesting point. Anime adaptations spur on manga sales. YA and graphic novel adaptations spur prose sales. Hell, even Garth Ennis' The Boys' went through the roof sales after the Amazon Prime Video adaptation, and that's a indie creator owned superhero series.

Yet after a decade of global blockbuster Marvel and DC movie adaptations of comic book IPs... nothing. People who like The Boys on Amazon order the omnibus, they're going to get a complete and accessible story. People who like the latest MCU film go to buy a copy of Iron Man, they get a boring, meaningless, contextless snippet of Patsy Walker scolding Tony Stark for being a cis white male while he mopes in a chair. The writer has to work with the dumbass Hellcat fan fiction/paean to white guilt that preceding creator Dan Slott selfishly used the Iron Man comic as a vehicle for while the artist was picked because he renders characters well but can't do action scenes so it's just 22 ad-filled pages of people sitting in chairs. There's no reason why Garth Ennis' capeshit like The Boys is able to leverage non-comic adaptations but Marvel and DC can't, other than Marvel and DC can't or simply don't want to make accessible material that gives the customer what they want to see.

So, how does Comicsgate line up with these trends in graphic novels?

For one, given all the complaining about superhero fare done by Comicsgate for views, in practice Comicsgate creators in general do not seem very attached to the superhero genre. Many of the most prominent offerings of conventional superhero fare (Kamen America, Lonestar, Red Rooster) aren't considered CG anymore, leaving Jawbreakers, Black Flag, Art Thibert's Black & White as well as the less conventional Graveyard Shift, Cyberfrog and the gay catbook as CG's superhero offerings, along with lesser known properties like Patrick Thomas Parnell's Ultra Star, RJ Shaw's Thomas Valiant, Twitless' Omega Girl, etc. This sounds like a lot, but it is in the minority when held up against all of Meyer's non-Jawbreakers work, none of which is in the superhero genre. Neither are Graham Nolan, Aaron Lopresti's, Mandy Summers', Charlie's London, Nasser's or Narwhal's work in the superhero genre. Or for that matter all the dumbass werewolf comics CG makes. The further down the ladder of one goes, the more avant garde, indie and less conventional it gets.

As far as the trend of customers flocking towards more accessible material goes, Comicsgate is, uh, certainly going against the grain here. In going on four years, Frog has yet to establish the post-1997 Cyberfrog universe beyond a prologue. Meyer actively made the Jawbreakers universe opaque and inaccessible to mask his flaws as a writer and then killed off his cast as if trying to hide the evidence after the fact. Cecil, Raging Golden Eagle and Dan Fraga failed to even provide a comic, which is the definition of inaccessible. Gonna have to dock points here.

 

[jspit2.0]

It is streaming right now on Hulu it looks like.
I havent checked it out yet or heard any reviews and they already on episode 6 or 7 it looks like on their twitter page.
Not gunna rush to binge watch any time soon thats for sure.

Well, let me know what you think when you do. Brian K. Vaughn always eluded me.

 

[Rupin]

Well, let me know what you think when you do. Brian K. Vaughn always eluded me.

I'd like to see Saga get adapted but he said that Hollywood would never be able to do the series the way he envisioned it.

 

[Newman's Own]

Well, let me know what you think when you do. Brian K. Vaughn always eluded me.

I just gave the first couple episodes a try. It's not good. It could be worse but I won't be wasting anymore time on it.