Ambassador's Dispatch
January 14, 2001 vol.1 no.1
So. This is the year I turn 40? 40 years old and still - presuming I don't undergo some sudden change of heart or the damned thing doesn't simply stop beating shy of Easter - reading comics, and only now, finally, making a systematic and committed attempt at maintaining a website. Finally tying this sporadically-worked site into its theme.
Better now than never.
I know that two or three weeks into this I'll have an epiphany, realize I should have seen another angle and used a stunningly different title. And, you know what? If I do, I'll change it. This is my space, and I can do what I please with it, and the prerogative to change my mind is part of the package. So what if I look a little less the demi-god for it?
Thumbnail sketch of some significant and possibly telling aspects of my life, just so my being a middle-aged comics reader isn't all that defines me: Married since 1985, I have two sons. I'm the laboratory director for a consulting civil engineering firm. Prior to 1988 I was in more of a retail track as far as work went, managing a book store and later a video store. The absolutely worst job I ever had? Working in the last Jack-In-The-Box restaurant on the East Coast; happily there's better than 20 years between me and that minor nightmare. I generally keep a novel and a non-fiction book going simultaneously, so I can continue with each as the mood strikes me. (My current selections aren't ones I'm prepared to recommend very strongly at this early stage: Stephen King's Hearts In Atlantis and Aaron Lynch's Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society. These aren't the loftiest representatives of my reading list, but I like to cast around a little so I don't get locked onto too narrow a path.) When you fish about the site you'll get a better picture of my involvements as a comics fan... and all of that's quite enough for now unless you're buying me dinner.
The short version reason for this column and its title is that as with each of you, my life's made of me a separate world. My site - Orto's Embassy - and this column are my attempts to bring some of that world to you. If you get something interesting, entertaining, or - however remotely possible - useful from my efforts, then I'll be pleased. Even if you don't, though, the important thing for me is if I learn something from all this.
I'll try to stick to a central topic each week, but I'm sure I'll range widely within a single column most times, even if it's just via a few, disparate paragraphs tossed in after the main piece.
Those of us into comics - mainstream comics here in the US, at least - are a tiny minority in the larger scheme of things. Our comics industry remains the generally overlooked, retarded stepchild of the publishing world. Oh, sure, some will crow about how manga titles in Japan sell in the millions each year, and in Europe there's always Asterix the Gaul, and those are important points. They tell us that it's largely a matter of culture and image, and that it doesn't have to be such a small item here in the states. Many will say our mainstream comics are being held back by the continued dependence on superheroes, a genre which is notoriously difficult for outsiders to connect with, adults in particular... and they're right to some degree.
Still, I refuse to blame the superheroes.
(Quick aside: If this runs as I plan there'll be a heapin' helpin' o' links below. While I put them there to help satisfy your curiosity about each, where possible, and I hope you'll find something new and interesting there, I also hope you'll wait till after I'm done talking to start clicking away to other places.)
Sure, the fact that I happen to like superheroes (and the generally more interesting villains - there's a word one can never used in mixed company with a straight face, come to think of it) enters into my perspective. Even given that, though, there is and has been a wide variety of material out there.
We've had such excellent, non-superheroic items such as Howard Chaykin's excellent sex, crime and political intrigue with an SF twist American Flagg! (and I mean only the Chaykin version, not any of the ill-suited people who followed him on the later issues and its second series), Garth Ennis' recently-concluded, intensely character-driven and sustained Preacher (even if I found the ending lacking somewhat), and William Messner-Loebs' unfortunately-aborted Journey Saga, concerning a tough-as-leather man on the North American frontier of the early 1800's, the epic. The broad sweep of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. The many semi-autobiographical and dramatic graphic novels of Will Eisner also come to mind. Perhaps the ragged and nasty future of Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan is more to your liking? Or maybe the oddly charming medieval fantasy of Linda Medley's Castle Waiting works for you? Or the even more fantasy-based Bone, by Jeff Smith? (Each of those last two are currently from Smith's own Cartoon Books, btw.) Maybe Terry Moore's sometimes almost too-real Strangers In Paradise? The ongoing Cerebus by Dave Sim (and Gerhard, of course!), Robert Crumb's autobiographical comics, and even Art Spiegelman's Maus and Maus II, which made a splash in the mainstream media... even if, in retrospect, it had more to do with the biographical elements and the unspeakable horror of the Nazi "Final Solution" than any truly stellar talent of Spiegelman's. (And, if any of them thar is fightin' words, or you have any of a large number of other wonderful comics to mention, please, please leave comments in my guestbook on the main page and/or drop me a line.)
My point is, there are well-done alternate types of comics out there in the North American mainstream, and blaming the market dominance of the superhero for their lack of success is as suspect as blaming Gore's loss on Nader's run. The most validity it has is when one notes how the really big guns in the biz - and like it or not that's still largely Marvel and DC - probably aren't doing enough to promote the alternates... and even there it's a little weak. DC's floated the Vertigo line since the 80's, and that's often been a less than wonderfully profitable commitment. If they can remain solvent long enough, and Joe Quesada can keep the boys in accounting at Marvel distracted for a while, we might see such a non -superheroes move from them again, too - something we've not seen since the 80's and their Epic imprint.
I've belabored this. The bottom line is that more promotion - by both the companies and the fans - is what's needed. Look for something worth your time and talk it up in person, on chatboards... on your own site. Getting upset with the dwindling bulk of current comics readers not eschewing the plethora of capes and masks is a flawed argument. There aren't enough of us to turn the trick with our own wallets anyway. What's needed is to get the word to the Great Outside that comics are as valid a storytelling medium as film, and if they look they'll find something they'll enjoy if they can only overcome their prejudice against the medium.
So, stop blaming the superheroes.