The Big Project Unveiled (Prepare To Be Disappointed)

(For all non-comics fans reading this, which is pretty much everyone as far as my regular readership goes, you’ll probably be inclined to skim over this entry, if you even read it at all. I wish you wouldn’t, but I recognize that you will no matter what I say or hope. I will ask you, however, to click on the link to Figure 2 because, though it doesn’t look as good as it possibly could, I am unspeakably pleased with it. It cracks me up every time, and I think it’s something that can be enjoyed by anyone, comic fan or not. Anyone who isn’t easily offended by bad language and perverted sexual practices, at any rate.)

I know that when I write entries that delve deep into comic book-related issues I’m writing for an extremely small group of interested parties (basically Scott).
However, when I write any sort of entry I’m writing for extremely small group of interested parties anyway, so I figure, “What the hell.”
So in that spirit, and knowing that it will cause most of you to tune out, I’m going to write about comic books.
Most everyone who knows me knows that I love comics. I grew up reading them and kept on reading them after I grew up. I’m of the opinion that it is an ideal storytelling medium for pretty much any kind of story, as has been proven again and again by various writers and artists throughout the years.
Of course, the nature of the medium makes it an ideal format for telling stories of the fantastic, such as the adventures of super-powered costumed adventurers. Though, as mentioned, you can tell any kind of story in comic form, super heroes have historically been, and remain, the bread and butter of the industry, and they’ve been, and remain, my favorite genre.
Sure, growing up I read my share of war, horror, and western comics, but my primary interest was super heroes, and even as I got older and came to enjoy some of the more sophisticated fare, I never lost my love for the spandex-clad crowd.
Not surprisingly, the general public also associates comics with super heroes, not even realizing that there is a whole other world of stories out there, and having a view of comics that colored more by stereotypical representations in other media, they naturally assume that comics are juvenile.
And in large measure, they’re right. The major comic book companies will tell you straight up and without a trace of remorse that their target audience consists of adolescent boys.
So people say that comics are for kids, and, for the most part, they’re right.
However, most publishers also put out material aimed squarely at adults, and even their mainstream works are, ideally, written in such a way that they have the elements that appeal to boys, but have other elements that people of all ages can enjoy.
So in that respect, it’s unfair to dismiss comics as juvenile.
Still, throughout the years there has been one thing more than any other that has contributed to the public perception of comics being for kids: the cheesy, over the top dialogue.
Some time ago Scott and I had re-read some old comics from when we were kids and were just stunned by how bad they were. As Scott put it, “Why did we ever like them?”
Of course, that’s a result of the hindsight that comes with age and experience, and it’s also due to the fact that in the intervening years, comics, even mainstream comics, have matured considerably, and that things like dialogue, plots, and characterization have gained considerable depth, and, for the most part, lost the cheese.
This has been the result of many factors, not the least of which is the infusion of fresh blood as new, younger creators have come into the industry.
What they bring to the table is a wealth of experience as comic fans, having grown up reading the adventures of these characters and developed a real affection for them. They’ve also, as Scott and I did, looked back on some their beloved adventurer, saw the writing, and thought, “Yeesh!”
In essence, these were people with a wide range of influences and ideas from the world outside of comic books who looked at the work that had been done before them and realized that while much of it was wonderful, much of it was…not. Not feeling the need to adhere to the old rules about how things “had” to be done, and being much more able to feel the pulse of the fan base, they began to make changes in the way stories were told, exploring new themes, adding new layers of complexity and meaning, and, thankfully, updating the dialogue.
(This sort of effect can be seen in other media as well, such as television and movies. It can kind of be summed up as the difference between a generation that grew up watching MTV and the generation that might say things like, “I don’t know what’s with these kids today with their rock-and-roll music and the MTV.”)
I am of course glossing over a major portion of comic book history, and I don’t mean to show any disrespect in doing so; I’m simply trying to keep this as brief as possible. I will add, though, that this is hardly anything new; it’s exactly the sort of thing that Stan Lee did back in the 60s when he changed the face of comics forever. This is all merely a continuation of his work.
One other change that occurred, and this is simply my view of things based on things I’ve seen and read, is that many people working in the industry in its earliest days were doing so rather unwillingly. Working in comics wasn’t what they wanted to do, it was just where they ended up. I’m not suggesting (okay, maybe I am just a little) that their work suffered as a result of bitterness. Rather, my point is that the newer generations of comics creators were people for whom working in comics was a life’s ambition.
Instead of people working in comics in the hopes of breaking into some other media, you started having people who were working in other media in the hopes of breaking into comics. These fan-creators brought with them a lot of enthusiasm and love for the medium, along with the desire to make it into what they’d always wanted it to be when they were kids reading comics.
Every comics fan has had the thought that starts out, “If I were making comics…”
These particular fans were the ones who had the ability to put that thought into action.
(Well, within the boundaries of editorial guidelines and whatnot. I realize that reality is probably not quite like the fantasy, but again, for the purposes of brevity, let’s just pretend that’s a given.)
So, in many ways, comics improved. In others…well, that’s a subject for another day.
At the very least, most comics did away with the over the top dialogue, or, more often than not, monologues. You had characters who talked the way people actually talk.
Kind of.
Certainly more like people actually talked than they had before.
And this, at least, was pretty uniformly a good thing.
Kind of.
I recall a class I took in college in which we discussed “realism” in writing.
The professor contended that you don’t want realism in writing, you want mimesis.
Reality would be impossible, or at least really irritating, to read. After all, realistic dialogue would be full of umms and ahs, and pauses, and repetitions, and various kinds of misspeaking that would prevent an economic and natural flow. Sure, when someone is nervous, you’ll throw in some of those vocal flubs as part of the dialogue, and it works, but would you want to do it all the time? Would you want to read that?
Think about how a teenage girl talks. Allowing for the use of the word “like,” it would take you seven pages of straight dialogue to express one idea if you wrote her “realistically.”
No, mimesis – or life-likeness – is preferable, creating an illusion of being natural and “real” without interrupting the flow or impeding the pacing of the narrative.
The one writer who is arguably the hottest property in comics, one Brian Michael Bendis, is apparently unaware of this distinction, though, and tends to opt for the “realistic” approach.
It obviously serves him well, since, as mentioned, he is extremely popular.
And I’ll say up front that he’s also extremely talented. I’ve enjoyed many a Bendis story (I positively adored Alias, which has no relation to the TV show of the same name).
Ultimate Spider-Man, one of his biggest hits, remains a favorite.
So yes, very talented.
Except…
His dialogue drives me insane.
I have to say that for a long time dialogue has been important to me. I could – and still can – forgive bad art in a comic more easily than I could bad dialogue.
Even as a kid, long before the “British Invasion,” which saw an influx of UK-based creators into the American comic scene, bringing about a revolution in how comics were written and perceived, and which did much to improve the quality of dialogue, bad dialogue irritated me.
Now, much older, and “spoiled” by a wealth of wonderfully-written, crisp dialogue, when I encounter bad dialogue, I find myself cringing more than ever.
And the effect of bad dialogue is, I think, cumulative. I had really enjoyed Bendis’ work for a long time, but over time it just began to wear on me.
Even so, it remains some of the most popular work out there, and, as Scott will point out, there is a lot of good in there, some real nuggets of great dialogue, or wonderful little scenes, which make the bad so much harder to take.
I guess I have to liken it to Seinfeld (though Bendis’ dialogue seems more reminiscent of another 90’s sit-com, Mad About You, as many of his characters seem to talk like Paul Reiser.). People love the show. Universally praised.
And yet, for me, a little goes a long, long way. I can only take so much Seinfeld. If forced to watch a marathon of episodes, I’m sure that by the end of it Jerry’s life would be in danger.
And why? The dialogue. Sure, it’s (arguably) funny, and it’s a great back-and-forth (which is where much of the humor lies), but how much of it can one person really be expected to take?
So it is with Bendis.
See Figure 1 for a visual aid that illustrates the problem.

Figure 1


Bear in mind that this is really light compared to what you might actually see in a Bendis-scripted comic. Sometimes you get whole pages of nothing but dialogue like this, or two-page spreads that have talking heads – if there’s room for anything other than word balloons – spouting out paragraph after paragraph of an expository monologue.
This is to say nothing of the fact that every single character, regardless of color, gender, or age, talks pretty much exactly the same way (usually with a vague undertone of contempt towards whomever he or she is talking to, unless he or she is in panic-mode, which is the other emotional state of Bendis-written characters).
I could say so much more about his writing, but I’d best move on before his violently loyal legions of fans track me down and kick my head in.
I mentioned that comics have seen an influx of fan-creators, people who grew up reading and loving comics. Overall, it’s a good thing.
The one problem you can run into, though, is what I call the Fanboy Effect.
Take Robert Kirkman, creator of the wonderful and popular Image Comics title Invincible.
Invincible is great stuff, and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of it immensely.
Based on his success at Image, industry giant Marvel Comics (which, by the way, is who Bendis primarily works for) wooed him over to do some work for them.
He began writing a revived version of a classic Marvel comic, Marvel Team Up.
(As an aside, Andy, the titular virgin, can be seen reading an issue of MTU in one scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin.)
Based on his work on Invincible, I thought I’d enjoy MTU.
…
It’s clear that Kirkman is a huge fan of the characters who appear in the book and that he has a blast working with them.
However, that doesn’t necessarily translate into good stories or dialogue. The basic problem is that there are things that, as a fan, he’s obviously always wished that, for example, Spider-Man would say. So he has him say it. And it’s not as cool as it must have seemed in Kirkman’s head.
The worst bits are the comments made about the dynamic of character relationships. There are aspects of the personal and professional relationship between Spider-Man and Wolverine, by way of example, that as fans we understand. Here’s what’s important: these are things that we tacitly understand. We don’t need them explained. But Kirkman does explain them. He actually has the characters take the time to engage in “humorous” expository dialogue to let us know what we already know without needing to be told, and which new readers should be able to pick up on from their interaction without the writer having to stoop to such tacked-on, hacky methods.
A lot of people didn’t like the movie The Last Action Hero (mostly, I think, because they didn’t understand that it was supposed to be a parody), but anyone who ever saw it will likely remember the scene in which the kid from the real world with the “golden ticket,” who is the biggest fan of the movies, is sitting in the office at the police station in the movie world watching protagonist Jack Slater argue with his Captain.
The kid is smiling and enjoying the moment because the Slater-Captain dynamic is one of his favorite aspects of the movies.
When asked why he’s smiling, he explains, “For all the arguing and yelling you two do, you’re really the best of friends.”
That moment, in a nutshell, is the Fanboy Effect. It’s a moment in which the writer inserts himself into a scene and obtrusively comments on it, explaining what he thinks, why he likes it, and attempting to put into words why you like it.
It’s obnoxious and it’s unnecessary, and in addition to generally making for bad dialogue, it’s amateurish, something along the lines of what you might find in bad Fan Fiction.
Another result of the Fanboy Effect can be attempts at making characters talk “like me and my friends do.”
(That he goes for naturalistic dialogue in this way is, I think, a large part of Bendis’ appeal. Fans can say, “When Bendis writes, Spidey talks just like me and my homies do!” “Word up, g!” Or something. There; I’ve contributed my own bad, out-of-touch dialogue to the discourse.)
Again, this is born out of thinking, as a fan, that it would be cool to have a character say some particular thing or other, then, as a creator, getting the character to say it.
Filmmaker Kevin Smith, a lifelong comics fan, has been guilty of this on more than one occasion, as he has ventured into the world of comics writing, resulting in scenes in which you find Superman and Batman talking to each other rather like Randal and Dante.
Works great in Clerks. Not so much in Justice League.
See Figure 2, if you’re not easily offended, for an extreme and exaggerated example of this (Be advised that, in addition to being crude, this image is HUGE.)

Figure 2


Okay, nothing he ever wrote for mainstream comics was quite like that, but in general, there were interactions that wouldn’t be out of place or out of character in his movies, but within the comics they didn’t fit, and for the most part, I have enjoyed the comic work that he’s done.
And that’s the thing, ultimately. Overall, I’m pleased with the changes that have taken place in comic book writing, and I have enjoyed much of the work written by the creators mentioned here, but that’s what makes these problems stand out so prominently and makes them so grating.
There is a lot more that I could write about, and I could have written something much more in-depth with the material I did write about, but I’m sure this has gone on more than long enough, and ultimately the whole point of the entry was to showcase my “Imaginary Story” in which Superman and Batman debate the finer points of A2M, because the thought of it just cracks me the hell up.
(And yes, I probably could have done a better job on the art on said piece, but it was taking long enough as it was, and I just wanted to get it done, and as long as it worked to get the basic idea across, I had to decide that it was good enough. Besides, it was my first attempt at ever doing a full comic page in god knows how long.)
Anyway, this was all meant to be a tongue-and-cheek, good-natured jab at people who are far more successful and driven to put their talents to use than I am, so any comic fans out there reading this should just take a breath and realize that I’m not actually attacking their favorite writers maliciously so much as I’m plucking their noses a little in a small, petty, bitter, and envious way. Okay?
I just want to make sure that my comments about Bendis don’t end up cracking the Internet in half or anything like that.