12-29-07

Marvel-ous DCinosaurs
By J. Dalton
History is, in one sense, a story written to help us understand and judge the events of the past. It simplifies, it glosses over, it makes connections, and labels rights and wrongs. Two stories from two different people may be so different as to be unrecognizable as memories of the same event. What follows, then, is not an "accurate" history anywhere outside of my own memory. These are the events as I remember them, and I leave my biases woven amongst them.

Let me take you back to the end of the 1990s. It was a dark time for comics in this part of the world (i.e. North America). Comics shops were closing all over the place. In the town where I lived, half of the comic shops folded in the space of one year. We went from six to three. In 1996 Marvel Comics, publisher of more than half of the continent's comic books, went bankrupt. It would take until the end of the decade to recover financially. Word on the street was, comics were in danger of disappearing as a medium.

Much blame was and has been spread around for comics' near-death experience. The most obvious target is the back-issue speculator's market. At the time, every comic geek religiously packaged his (and invariably it was his, not her) mint-condition comics in plastic bags with backing boards and stored them in specially-made cardboard boxes. Comic books were an investment! A quick look through the Overstreet Price Guide or Wizard Magazine would confirm that old comics were worth big money. damaging these comics or even *gasp* throwing them away was unthinkable. In fact, if one issue of New X-Men #1 was a guaranteed investment, wouldn't it be smarter to buy five copies instead of one? Well, no. Because economics doesn't work that way. Those old comics from the 1960s were worth money because most people had thrown away their copies or left them to get moldy in an attic. The speculator market collapsed, comics shops closed, comics readers became disillusioned, and comics publishers fell into the red. DC probably only survived because it was owned by Time Warner.

But there was enough blame to share around, and the Big Two weren't about to accept sole responsibility for fueling the back-issue bubble. I kept reading comics throughout this period. More than that, I only read superhero comics, only Marvel comics, and largely comics beginning with the letter X. Everything I knew about the industry came filtered to me through the lens of Marvel letters columns, Bullpen Bulletins, and the unashamedly pro-fandom Wizard Magazine, and I kid you not, the sum total of that input left me with the impression that comics were in trouble because the once-loyal fanboys were turning to video games, manga, and the internet instead of reading comics. I wish I could find specific quotes to demonstrate how this viewpoint was pushed forward, but all my old comics and Wizard Magazine issues are in Victoria in sealed plastic bags in specially made cardboard boxes (and I'm in Abbotsford). In hindsight I expect it was a very subtle impression superherodom was giving off rather than an organized propaganda campaign. I've since talked to other former "fanboys" who never got that impression at all.

But here's the thing. Manga IS comics. That's what "manga" means. Webcomics are NOT evil. Only certain webcomics reviewers. It may be only a coincidence, but I read Scott McCloud's least popular book Reinventing Comics at just the moment I was starting to realize how limiting it was to keep myself tied to the Marvel machine. I was never going to get a job at Marvel Comics, I didn't even really want a job there, the X-Men movies were doing a better job with Storm and Wolverine than Chris Claremont was, Japanese comics were loads better than either, and then Scott McCloud came along and said something to the effect of "F*** the Big Two, all you need to make comics is a photocopier and/or a website!" and I took him at his word. I canceled my subscription to the last few X-Men spinoffs I was still reading (I'd missed a bunch of issues by moving to Taiwan and back anyways) and registered my name as a domain on the internet. For me, comics were saved in 2001 by manga and the internet.

Seven years later the Marvelous DCinosaurs are getting by, largely it seems by selling the rights to movies and television shows and theme parks and action figures. But at least the threat of bankruptcy seems to be completely gone. the comics industry has been "saved." The number of comics shops in Victoria now sits at a stable four. Even more exciting, book stores everywhere are stocking up on graphic novels. Book publishers are looking to get in on a growing trend, Japanese comics are cheap and plentiful (though the number of really good manga available has sadly not kept pace), the internet is overrun with crappy comics, and the not-so-crappy ones are making the jump to simultaneous pixel and parchment versions. Girls read comics now. Kids read comics. Even old jaded elitists like me read comics. All is right with the world.

At least that's my version of events. Marvel's version is still quite different. In the back of the Marvel graphic novel Origin, which was only written so Marvel could make sure they got to tell Wolverine's definitive origin story before the movies beat them to it, Bill Jemas (president or whatever of Marvel) has this to say about the employees he was meeting with one day in 2000:

"This group of editors was, and is, the best in the business. These were the same men and women who would turn Marvel (and the comics industry) around in the next 18 months. But that morning, they were a quiet bunch. To be fair, and to make a long story short, this team had stuck with Marvel through thick and thin. The thin was the bankruptcy, when Marvel employees had to survive the deepest depression in the history of the comics market and the tender mercies of Carl Icahn. Conditions like that make you learn to keep your head low, so when Joe (Quesada) asked for hot new ideas, he got a lot of cold blank stares and SECRET WARS III, and INFINITY GAUNTLET IV. This was a very uncomfortable scene and way, way too embarrassing to watch."

So in the end they did the secret origin of Wolverine instead. That was their hot new idea. These were the people who "turned things around." The entire world-wide comics industry. Single-handedly. Apparently.