“I want [Marvel and DC] to stop catering to the perverted needs of 45 year old men, I want to stop seeing Batman F***king Black Canary, I don’t want to hear Batman swearing, I don’t want to see him feeding a boy rats. I don’t want to see characters getting raped in the a**, I don’t want to see characters who have been straight for 60 years become lesbians overnight because the writer’s too stupid or uncreative to come up with something decent. I want to see new characters for a new time, and when the industry of superhero comics realizes it’s sights to the young people it was meant for, I’ll be there with both arms and feet outside.”
-Darwyn Cooke, on why he’s not interested in going back to Marvel or D.C. anymore.
I can’t say I disagree, at least not wholly. I love Marvel comics, don’t get me wrong. And I appreciate D.C. (even if I barely read it). I also understand that it is difficult to come up with surprising or interesting changes of events that will move product, and desperate times call for desperate measures. That was the impetus behind the Ultimate line and All-Star Batman and Robin, both of which committed just about every one of the acts on Cooke’s hate list.
And, frankly, I really like reading new (and even bizarre) takes on standards. It’s kind of like the comic book version of a cover song. Sometimes, you get a Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams,” which is fun to hear a few times but gets old fast. Other times, you get Hendrix covering Bob Dylan or Aretha’s R.E.S.P.E.C.T., and it takes over the playing field. The Death of Captain America comes to mind—does anyone really want to see Steve wield the shield again? I don’t think so.
On the other hand, what Darwyn Cooke, who has created some of the best Justice League work of all time, seems to be saying is that comic books don’t have to resort to cheap sales tricks and “events” to stay artistically valid. And I agree with that. Geoff Johns’ extended Teen Titans run and his work on Superman; Brian Michael Bendis’ Daredevil and then his New Avengers books; John Byrne’s Fantastic Four; Garth Ennis’ Punisher MAX; Roger Stern’s Spider-Man . . . Comic book history old and new is replete with examples of writers who emphasized story over event, substance over style, and created lasting, important works of art using well-established characters who left the run not-all-that-different from the way they came in. Other than being more beloved than before.
Of course, selling those books is getting harder and harder, and that’s what Cooke seems to be missing.
Or is he? Maybe Marvel and D.C. don’t need to move so much product? Maybe art is for artists and art lovers, not Hollywood studios and toy designers? There’s another parallel here to the music industry: In the 1980s and ‘90s, the record studios made a lot of executives—and even some artists—rich. When the bottom fell out, the music changed–whether it was due to illegal downloading or a bad business model or emerging competing media or a combination of all of the above in a perfect storm. Music is coming back to being a local thing, a live thing, an indie thing. Sure, execs will always try to have their hands in the pockets of teeny boppers and teenage girls (and their parents), but tried-and-true bands are finding that if they are willing to live humble, the internet is a distribution boon—a way to promote their own live shows. Comic books clearly need to find out how to survive in this new world. They, too, need a new business model. And maybe part of it is being willing to be humble, as Cooke suggests: Look less for the next big bang and focus more on creating indelible characters. Stan Lee was all about that in the beginning—making the ordinary extraordinary, and trying to create a love and excitement that would be infectious to a small target audience. Lee, Ditko, Kirby, Buscema and the other greats had no idea that what they were doing would survive and thrive to the next century and beyond.
One last thing about Cooke’s comments: Lots of folks are saying they were anti-gay, to which I say: “Huh???” He didn’t say he didn’t want to see gay characters in comics—hell, he created a gay couple in his work on The Spirit—he said he didn’t want comic book creators to use homosexuality as a manufactured method to boost sales. Come on, guys, let’s read it in context and not fly off the handle at the mention of a hotbutton word.
What do you all think?
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