I honestly feel like comics today are capable of so much more than what they are currently achieving. I know a lot of people today will disagree with me, but I feel like someone who's grown with comics and seen things change. I think comics technically today could blow old comics away. But one thing I think old comics blow current comics away with today is with imagination.
Today comics seem to be set in an atmosphere of realism. I think everyone appreciates realism in comics and we want comics to feel realistic. But I don't need my comic to read like movie, tv show or mini series. I don't always need to feel like everything takes place in a modern world where things are humanly possible. Comics always took me to a place farther away than that. Where things we no longer humanly possible. To put it mildly, if it can be recreated in movies or tv shows, then it probably isn't using enough imaginations. It's been feeling like a long time since comics felt like they were taking me away from the real.
How many times today do building come to life? How often do we visit something so unimaginable as a Negative Zone? I don't feel like I'm visiting these kind of realities anymore. Instead I feel like I've been reading believable circumstances with superheroes existing there. And I think it's deadening things just a bit. The imagination side of it seems to be lacking. I used to take this for granted. Now I miss it. Where did it go?
I certainly feel like comics are capable of bringing me there again, but does it really want to? Do the publishers, writers and artists want to go there? Do the fans want to go there? I'm probably in the minority, but I know I want to go back there. And I want to go back there with the talent and technology we have today. Because who knows how far we could go today if we let today's imagination run wild. Unfortunately, I feel like yesterday's creators just had more imagination.
I think the problem is that when creators do these kinds of stories now of days the books are considered stupid, corny, and/or kiddy (as someone said about the Stan Lee/Boom Studios books) by the very fans who want them! And when they don't sell it's back to gritty realism.
ReplyDeleteI think that both Marvel's MC2 line and Alan Moore's run on Supreme were highly imaginative but MC2 was (and probably still is) considered a "kiddy" line and Moore's run on Supreme got great critical acclaim but failed due to Rob Liefeld's piss poor management and overgrown ego.
The Stan Lee/Boom titles are also considered "kiddy" and dismissed by both fans and critics, who then turn around and ask this same question.
So my question is: if you won't support and buy books that feature highly imaginative worlds, places, and characters because you consider them kiddy, corny, and/or stupid, then why should creators and publishers make them?
I think there is a difference between kiddy books that do this and books I want that go into a deeper realm of imagination. I never even realized the Stan Lee Boom books got way into imagination because I never made it far into any of the books before having to put it down because they were too kiddy or I just didn't like the character or concept. I never got to the imagination side of it because the books didn't feel mature enough for me to want to read.
ReplyDeleteI never read the Supreme series so I can't make an informed comment on them. Usually if I had a turn off with Image it was because they were giving me pose covers and plastic feeling interiors, but that's a subject for a different time.
Back in the day, I never felt like a little kid when the Fantastic Four went off to the Negative Zone, when Dr. Strange had realities I couldn't imagine. Or any other sequence where it looked like comics were taking to a place that was hard for the human mind to wrap it's head around because it wasn't what was outside my front door. I don't necessarily need to go to the Negative Zone to feel this way, but I do want comics to seem like anything is possible. Lately it seems like everything is a movie and involves only things on an earthly realm that could easily be recreated on a movie set.
I would love to see creators today, with today's technology and talent take on anything that they can imagine instead of viewing it like it could be recreated for a movie. I want them to sometimes make comics that would be almost impossible to do in movies. Certainly not every comic, but we need more of an infusion that anything is possible in comics like it used to be. Comics used to take the unbelievable and make it believable. Sometimes that was the pure beauty of comics. They were doing what no other media could.
I also don't want to think that Stan Lee's Boom Studios work and Supreme books are my only choices for this kind of subject matter. A long time ago this kind of stuff could happen with just about any comic at any time. It didn't necessarily need to happen, but it was nice to know that any title could slip into a new dimension of imagination any time it wanted to.
I think it's gotten to an extreme in the other direction where it can't happen. I don't need for it to swing back to the other extreme, but I would like to see it be able to swing in that direction if it wanted to. I want comics to return to a realm where anything is possible.....and believable.
Another thing how do you top something like the Negative Zone without it being considered a rip-off?
ReplyDeleteHow many surreal mystical realms can characters like Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate, and the like can transverse without getting to the point where if you seen one, you seen all of them?
I'm not a big fan of alternate realities because they headache to figure out. Simon Furman did something similar to the Negative Zone in The Transformers with something called the Dead Universe where Nemesis Prime, Galvatron, and their flunkies were hanging out and all it was a really cloudy black ground and he never explained what the Dead Universe was about. As a concept I hate the Dead Universe because there was about the concept that appealed to me.
When I first read Alan Moore's run on Supreme I hated because it's the antithesis of Watchmen and it celebrates classic Silver Age Superman stories, ideas, and concepts and the same with his 1963 (which is practically a love to letter to Silver Age Marvel Comics).
As I've gotten older I found them a great read and under-rated classic (along with it's sequels Supreme: The Return and Judgement Day) that is really imaginative, fun, and yet doesn't insult my intelligence and shows how much fun a comic book can be.
I don't want to get hung up on the Negative Zone because that is only one example and not exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want to recreate the Negative Zone or Dr. Strange's mystical dimensions. I want to recreate the imagination that used to be so easy for comics to achieve. I only reached for the Negative Zone because people easily visualize that as a reference. But I don't want every comic or character to have a negative zone. I want a return to imagination.
ReplyDeleteTake a look at a few of the pictures that I used for this blog post. The top one is a Machine Man pic where Machine Man enters the mind of an individual thought to be mad but in reality he was seeing what was happening or about to happen and was trying to warn people. When Machine Man tapped into his mind the view was awesome!
The second picture is from Ditko's Charlton The Thing series from the 1950s. I don't own the comic so all I have is this picture, but that alone brings a far out view of something with imagination happening on earth. Some giant worm is terrorizing the city. Yes, today this would be considered dumb. But why is it that this was proper 20-50 years ago and no longer a suitable place to go? Sure beings attack earth all the time now. But it's losing it's sense of awe when it happens now. I think it can be more imaginative now than it is.
The Fantastic Four example is perfect because you have a living moving building complete with windows and tenants hanging out the windows as a villain. Try recreating that in a movie. It would be awesome if done right.
The Starlin is kinda just a generic space situation, but having Death and Drax and Thanos head just takes it to a different level of surreal.
The Dr. Strange at the bottom is just some psychedelic place that Dr. Strange can go to often. But it shouldn't just be limited to him.
My point is. We don't need to rip off the Negative Zone. I don't need to see that again. Leave that with the Fantastic Four. My beef is these are supposed to be comic creators and the imagination has been slipping as the years go by. It don't need to be dummied up like the super simple Silver Age. It needs to be moderned up. Where creators can take us to places we havent been before.
If they can't do it, then maybe they just don't have the imagination to pull it off. This is just one area I think new creators are lacking. Some are outstanding story tellers and make great creations on that level. But the sense of the impossible happening in comic books being reality is not as present as it used to be. And that's all I'm asking for. Bring back the sense of impossible is possible.
Comics used to go where movies and tv couldn't. Now comics seem to want their books only to be made into movies and tv shows. Great on that level. They've managed to make it where it can be done more easily. But comics need to remember that its still comics and shouldn't lack for imagination.