Another installment of The Basement Tapes, another confused reaction for me. This time out, Joe Casey and Matt Fraction talk about the end of the writer-driven era of mainstream comics.
Wait… there was a writer-driven era of mainstream comics? And it’s over? Damn it!
Sarcasm aside (for now), the problem I typically have with these columns crops up again. Casey and Fraction don’t do much to define their terms. They name-check the “writer-driven era” and put its peak in the early 2000s, dropping a few names along the way, but they don’t really stick with the idea. They also don’t convince me that there really was one.
Some of the names dropped – Brian Bendis, Warren Ellis, and Grant Morrison – still get name-above-the-title treatment, at least in terms of marketing. Honestly, would Ultimate Nightmare get anywhere near the attention it did if Ellis wasn’t writing it? Do I even need to list the examples of the leeway Bendis seems to get as a star writer? As long as there are star creators, writer or artist or both, there will be at least something of a star system.
Casey makes the following observation, which is blindingly obvious on its face and strangely telling at the same time:
“I guess I figure that — in the mainstream — the publishers are always there. They are the perennial Beast that must be outsmarted and somehow thwarted in our endless quest for Lasting Art (even in the area of capes and tights).”
And that’s the nature of work-for-hire, isn’t it? No one going into corporate comics should reasonably expect a free hand, should they? (I’m talking about expectations in the realistic sense, just looking at the overwhelming evidence of history.) And that’s the nature of corporate comics – it’s always going to be publisher driven, though they’ll incorporate whatever fads (name writers, hot artists, big events, retro, etc.) they think might prove profitable at that time. You don’t have to like it by any means, but it’s a little disingenuous to pretend it comes as a surprise.
I don’t think there’s a predictable cycle to these things, and I agree with something Fraction said:
“I’m having a lot of trouble discerning just what exactly is going on, to tell you the truth. If anything at all, honestly: if there’s a trend I don’t see it and I certainly don’t feel it. Is it about Superstar Creators? Maybe here and there, but it feels closer to the end than the beginning. Is it about Superstar Characters? Sort of, but it’s just gonna get marginalized down to two or three books per company, per line. Tie-In? Not if ‘Elektra’ is the harbinger of things to come. Realism? Grim and Gritty? Re-reloaded?”
For me, the question is whether it’s ever really been any other way. Marvel and DC will always throw a bunch of different things at the wall to see what sticks, even if they’ve got something going that’s working particularly well. It’s just the nature of the beast.