"We really want to inject new life in our characters and line," DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio told USA Today. "This was a chance to start, not at the beginning, but at a point where our characters are younger and the stories are being told for today's audience."“I certainly wouldn’t buy a DVD series of a hit show and start at Season 7,” Jim Lee said. “I would want to go back and start from the beginning.”
"The approach is very much about who they are behind the masks and how they interact together and how these personalities mix," Geoff Johns told USA Today of the title (JLA)
Those are just some of the initial quotes pertaining to DC Comics "New 52" prior to its launch at the close of August with Flashpoint #5 and the new JLA #1. In the ensuing 2 months, and now entering month 3, the numbers have been good, and DC finally trumped Marvel in sales with the real numbers still coming together due to returns/digital sales/international sales. There's been critical praise & critical hate, creator praise & creator hate, and a fair share of controversy when it comes to the subject of sexism & DC's overall portrayal of its female characters (who are largely written by men).
But none of those subject matters are what I'm choosing to write about tonight because quite honestly, I could give a damn about sales figures, the sexism issue isn't one I would choose to address yet, and I'm not looking to heap praise on any one creator or condemn anybody just yet. I will give a quick plug to what my faves thus far have been when I'm done, if only to maybe turn a reader on to something they haven't picked up yet, but that's not my issue of import right now. What concerns me, obviously as indicated by the title of this blog, are the concepts of accessibility and continuity...
I know I've pointed it out before, but that right there was the first comic that was ever purchased for me. Actually, that's probably not accurate as I can recall my grandmother picking me up some black & white paperback collections of old Amazing Fantasy & Spider-Man stories from garage sales when I was really young. I remember reading the 1st appearances of Spidey, Doc Ock, & Sandman, among others, as well as Peter's first pow-wow with the Fantastic Four, but I'll be damned if I can find this old things online anywhere. Anyway, let me get this train back on its track...
That was the first comic book of my COLLECTION, the title that started this nearly 30 year obsession with fantastical characters, crazy alien worlds, mutants, batmen, and lately odd swamp creatures, Dada-inspired villains, time-warping secret societies, and at the very moment before I started typing, an odd city named Opal. I am happy to say that I actually still have that very issue, well 2 copies of it actually, but I am still in possession of that first dose of Claremont/Silvestri/Green greatness with a cover that's barely attached at the top staple, but refuses to give up the ghost after all these years. I tried to find it to put a picture up along with this blog, but pulling it out would require digging through a closet filled with nearly 30 long boxes. Needle in the haystack and what not...
It was an amazing read to 8 year old me, and who knows how many times I read that single issue during my flight from Denver to Lansing, or how many times I continued to read it in the months after my dad first got it for me. It was colorful, exciting, descriptive, but one thing it was certainly was not was ACCESSIBLE. I downloaded the issue & read it over before I started this (I own 2 copies so I don't feel too bad, plus that whole 30 boxes thing) just to insure that my memory of the contents was accurate, and yeah...it's potentially just as inaccessible as I recall. That is if you're an adult...
So blow that page up & read it...maybe it's your first time ever seeing it, perhaps you're like me and have been over it a million times, but if it is your virgin read, especially if the World of X is totally alien to you, then tell me what the hell these two women who essentially appear of similar age are talking about. First timers & X-Novices should wait a few pages when Rogue talks about Mystique being "more my folks than my natural parents" and tell me you're not a bit confused. And that's just the tip of the iceberg...See this issue is both preamble to the coming "Fall Of The Mutants" arc that enveloped all three X-Centric books (yes once upon a time there were only 3) but also serves as post-script to the story that brought our merry mutants to San Francisco (yup, Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker weren't the first ones to bring them to the Golden Gate City...shame this didn't get referenced in their very Claremont-influenced run).
There are layers upon layers of back-story built into damn near every panel of this issue from the Storm,/Naze/Forge triangle to Madelyne Pryor's history to Havok's morose attitude to Longshot's naivete; I could likely find something referential in every sentence given the style in which Chris Claremont writes. I can safely say that this is pretty dense material now that I'm looking back on it, the type of material that I imagine DC Execs would have looked at in 2011 and promptly decided was too inaccessible to new readers.
But looking back on it...thinking about how I was 8 years old, picking up my first X-comic probably because I thought the cover was cool, with absolutely zero knowledge about any of these characters to go on, and I still took tremendous joy in those 23 pages. Accessibility wasn't something that crossed my mind and dense history wasn't something preventing me from finding enjoyment in the story unfolding before me. I think it would be safe to say that it is BECAUSE of that dense history that I truly became a comic book fan.
Why is that you ask? Well I'll tell you...
It's because I was a kid and I actually used my imagination. I filled in the blanks myself to a degree, and let my curiosity about this brave new world flourish to a point where I harrassed my dad constantly to take me to the comic shop (the late Capital City Comics on Michigan Ave represent) to dig up whatever back issues I could find. I had this driving desire to fill-in the blanks, to do my homework so to speak, and learn every iota of information I could about these odd X-People. When Uncanny made reference to the original X-Men (Who?What?) I felt obligated to figure that story out and X-Factor became a part of my rotation; Classic X-Men issues gave me the backstory I needed from the early days of the "All-New, All-Different" while I worked my way backwords from #224, eventually meeting in the middle about the time Classic hit #175, and essentially having a complete story from the debut of the new team. It spun out into the 1st volume of New Mutants and the 1st Wolverine on-going (2 series I proudly own every issue of) as their stories sprung up or tied into whatever was going down in UXM. It's easy to see how I went from reading one comic to five in just a matter of a few months. Hell, if you take that "I need to know it all" mentality out on a long enough timeline, it's pretty easy to see how I was collecting something like 20-30 different books a month at one point.
Point being, I MADE the books accessible to myself even at a young age because I was hungry for information and didn't NEED the author to give me every detail of every relationship or every old story; if I cared enough I could track it down, otherwise it was written clearly enough to know that a past existed and I could use my 8 year old imagination to piece it together. It certainly helped in the beginning that Chris Claremont is very expository in his writing, the infamous thought bubble speeches listing all of Wolverine's attributes as he leaps into action, or Havok pointing out in every speech that Madelyne Pryor is his brother Cyclops' wife & he'll watch out for her. The more cynical, jaded readers will look back on Claremont's style and mock it, but damn if it didn't make every issue feel ACCESSIBLE to a new reader.
The dialogue may not have been the most natural 100% of the time, but it's a damn comic book and even reading it now, it doesn't read forced or out of context. The moments in which this expository dialogue is spewed are relevant to one another, Rogue is talking about what Mystique told her for example and mentions that she was raised by her in the process, Dazzler puts on a light show using her powers which allows Wolverine to remind her (and tell the new reader) about the current mutant climate, I think you can understand what I mean. It was a fine line to walk between informing the new readers without making the long-timers feel beaten over the head with information they already possess, but Claremont did it expertly once upon a time.
Now it's not cool to write like that anymore, thought bubbles are passe, and even Claremont jumped the shark on his own style of writing with X-Treme X-Men, forgetting how to make it work like he did in the past. But just because there isn't a writer who does his job in a style that makes the work easy for this apparent "I need it now" mentality, doesn't automatically make the books inaccessible to new readers, it simply means that....like I did when I was 8....people have to put in some EFFORT, interact with their hobby, and track down the missing pieces of the puzzle themselves if it's that important to them. And it is easier than ever to get that information if you really want it.
25 years ago the trade market barely existed, now...especially with Marvel Comics...you'd be hard-pressed to find a major moment that isn't collected in some fashion AND with the prolification of the Omnibus collections for the major books, it is even easier to sit down and read every issue of Uncanny X-Men ever written. It blew my mind this week when I saw a fellow customer at my local shop buying a Claremont/Jim Lee Omnibus that covered every issue of Uncanny X-Men between Inferno & X-Tinction Agenda including a random Classic X-Men issue from the Dark Phoenix Saga. Marvel has, or is in the process of, making essentially every X-Men issue ever available in TPB or HC, nullifying a great deal of the back issue market, but making it so damn easy for a real collector....no that's the wrong word...a real FAN to fill-in all their storyline blanks.
DC Comics isn't so hot at this in my opinion, and I'm basing this solely on the Batman family because that's my main vein of knowledge, but I don't think they truly take advantage of the collections market as well, or as quickly, as they could. For example, the Batman Inc. Hardcover comes out at the end of November and collects issues 1-7. Well issue 7 was released in June, so we waited 5 months for the collection. Conversely, FF #5 was also released at the end of June and the first Hardcover collection of ishs #1-5 was released in September. This is just one example, but on the whole, Marvel seems much quicker on the ball to release the collections than DC AND seems much more willing to dig into their back catalogue for trades. Doesn't logic dictate that when Dick Grayson took over the Mantle of the Bat after "Final Crisis" that DC reissue the "Prodigal" arc where he stepped up to the plate before? Doesn't it seem natural that some serious Catwoman stuff would already be getting solicited in prep for "Dark Knight Rises"? I know they are dumping out some random collection of Bane stories, as well as reissuing Knightfall just a couple months after pulling Vols. 1 & 2, but Catwoman seems to be a big part of this too.
And speaking of Knightfall, does anyone else feel like something is seriously missing in that collection with none of the AzBats Knightquest: Crusade & Bruce's Knightquest: The Search stories included? It just jumps from Bruce being broken & heading off to find Shondra Kingsolving and JPV in his armored suit to Bruce healed and training to fight an uber-crazy AzBats. Damn it DC, collect Knightquest!
So now that that tangent is over, I'll get back on track. Point of all this being that it is largely easier than ever to make comic books accessible to yourself with the Trade/HC Market and online research via whatever Wiki pages you can dig up. Although I must admit that half the fun in my younger days was digging through back issue bins at the Motor City Comic Con looking for that one random issue of X-Men or Batman that was missing from my run, and the feeling of accomplishment when you finally found it after checking a dozen different boxes. Then you pay for it, and suddenly there's a dozen copies that appeared out of nowhere at someone else's table, and they're cheaper too!!! Now, largely to due storage space restrictions, I play the same game with collections and get that same exhiliartion from finding Batman "Broken City" in Hardcover for 75% off, or filling the holes in my Grant Morrison collection at 50% off cover price (Vampirella & DC One Million!!!) at Wizard World Philly this year.
There's work involved in being a true fan of this pop culture niche, and enjoyment should be found in that work. Sometimes it can be infuriating to get to that reward, sometimes it is easy, but it should always be fun. If it's not fun, then stop doing it...or at least stop reading the comic(s) that's sucking the fun out of it. When you started reading, probably as a youth, it was because of the fun and excitement and imagination packed into every page. As we get older though, we start to impress our aged thoughts onto these pages and likely take a lot of that fun-factor out ourselves.
Questions of logic, realism, continuity, and possibility aren't something we care about when we pick up that first comic...it's a fantasy world after all, no different than sci-fi or swords & sorcery movies; our every day rules don't have to apply. It is only as adults that we start to impress those ideas into the pages, that we start to question how accessible this is for other adults...but isn't the whole point to bring in new, YOUNG readers, not more adults & lapsed readers? Don't we need fresh blood to carry this hobby, this passion of ours into the future? And if you're a parent or shop owner trying to open up the doors to a curious kid who has questions about what he's reading, how much trouble is it to help an eager mind get their answers from the plethora of sources available both in-print and online?
I don't think the answer is in reboots, after all two of the most critically acclaimed runs in recent memory are Grant Morrison's "Batman" & "Batman & Robin" as well as Rick Remender's "Uncanny X-Force" and those are complete continuity porn. Same goes for the whole basis of "X-Men Legacy" when it first started, the current direction of "New Mutants", it's safe to say that a large chunk of what Marvel is doing is 90's retro as a matter of fact. A Venom solo book, Carnage solo books, a Scarlet Spider book, an Age of Apocalypse book...all sounds very continuity based to me, so maybe it's just Marvel going in the opposite direction of DC. But that steers this talk into the continuity realm and I want to save that for part 2 of this blog since I've already been wordy enough.
So to sum it up, go buy trades & HC's, go dig through some back issue bins, put the work in to learn your comic book history, don't let them convince you that comics are inaccessible. Let me quick address that Jim Lee quote I opened up with regarding TV seasons; TV season sets are the equivalent of TPBs & HCs, you can always watch the current season while simultaneously getting yourself up to speed with the collections. How many people do you think have watched Dexter or Breaking Bad from S1E1 versus how many people started in the middle of a later season and played catch up?
You know, al those words up above here and I think I could have summed it all up in three words: Accessibility is overrated...
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