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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2015 23:28:34 GMT -5
There has always been a general desire to sell as many issues as possible, sure, but the bean counters weren't always involved in the day-to-day business of making comics. Where marketers and such have best served the characters is by way of outside merchandising. I know that toys, games, etc, was hugely influential to me as a kid when I was developing my love of superheroes. Still, there wouldn't have been any toys to make if there were no creators to formulate the concepts. I'm a bit puzzled at giving corporate suits any credit at all for, say, the brilliant concepts of Jack Kirby. Beyond employing creators like Kirby and overseeing the physical aspect of producing the actual comics, they played no part at all in the conceptual side of things. The only way you can give some of those guys credit for concepts was when obvious toy tie-ins were created. Virtually all of the great characters were created by professional writers and artists. It's not like they had marketers over their shoulder giving them design points. "Art", commercial or no, is the one area where the corporate masters can never lay claim no matter how they spin it. (Like when Shooter claimed in a testimonial that it was "Marvel" that wrote the X-Men, not Chris Claremont. Almost as if they had a cybernetic link plugged into his brain feeding him ideas.) When DC brought Kirby over in '70 it wasn't because they wanted Jack's ideas, it was because Marvel outsold DC and Kirby "was Marvel" so bring Jack over and you bring the sales was the idea behind it, not hey we can get great creative ideas form Kirby, but hey we can get great sales form Kirby, and then oh hey his Superman head isn't recognizable, so let's take this creative giant and have production redo the heads so it sells better...because creativity was their primary motivation? No, because you need to keep the character recognizable. And when the sales on Kirby's series didn't match expectations, they cancelled them and said hey Jack, try again (and again) until sales never met expectations after several attempts and Jack went back to Marvel in the mid 70s. Reading MoKF, Moench Gulacy-creative force, want to make Shang Chi better so let's get a more realistic costume concept and get rid of the pajamas-bean counters marketing says no-go back to pajama costume because it is what customers recognize and that is more important than creative integrity and realistic costuming-and they even tell people that in the letters page. Hmmm Dr. Strange isn't selling as well as our other super-heroes-make him more like the other heroes, give him a mask and more of superhero costume even though that makes no sense at all for the character as established, because well, yeah sales... DC licensing-let's get model sheets made to give to licensors-have Jose Garcia Lopez do them and hey once their done give them to editors and creative folks tomake sure the character's look stays true to how we are licensing them-oddly as we move into modern times (especially at DC) this changes and you get more creative freedom to move away from model sheets in the actual books, not less (things like Kelly Jones' Batman to early new52 costume changes not reflecting the existing model sheets-and later model sheets being redone to reflect creative changes not the other way around-something you would never have seen in the supposedly more creative freedom era of the Silver and Bronze Age. All these (and many more) are day to day business of making comics (as you put it) and were driven not by creative impulses but by marketing/sales/bean-counters. -M |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Mar 27, 2015 0:46:30 GMT -5
I think you're confusing after-the-fact marketing and manipulation with the initial creation of the concepts. It can't be argued that all of these characters, from Batman to the X-Men, started inside the imagination of the creators. The companies themselves get no points for having printing presses and distribution set in place. What good is any of that without creative people to give them a reason to exist? Unlike non-creative industries, comic book companies can't exit or function at all without creative people, at least initially, utilizing their imaginations and talents to formulate ideas and concepts.
Kirby as an asset that was outselling DC, and Kirby having really great ideas and artistic verve, isn't mutually exclusive. In fact, it's the exact same thing simply viewed from a marketing standpoint on one hand and viewed from a fan/art standpoint on the other.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2015 1:24:50 GMT -5
I think you're confusing after-the-fact marketing and manipulation with the initial creation of the concepts. It can't be argued that all of these characters, from Batman to the X-Men, started inside the imagination of the creators. The companies themselves get no points for having printing presses and distribution set in place. What good is any of that without creative people to give them a reason to exist? Unlike non-creative industries, comic book companies can't exit or function at all without creative people, at least initially, utilizing their imaginations and talents to formulate ideas and concepts. Kirby as an asset that was outselling DC, and Kirby having really great ideas and artistic verve, isn't mutually exclusive. In fact, it's the exact same thing simply viewed from a marketing standpoint on one hand and viewed from a fan/art standpoint on the other. And those creative people would not be executing those ideas if publishing houses weren't giving them an opportunity to put those ideas to market. Comics are commercial art. The artist job is to serve the client-i.e. the publisher. Joe Kubert writes extensively in How to Draw from Life the differences between art and commercial art for comics-in life drawing he gets to explore things, experiment, etc. in creating comics its about serving the clients needs and communicating the story not about creativity or artistic expression. The creative aspect comes after the commercial, not the other way around. The ideas and visuals created are created to be sold and make a profit. It is not after the fact marketing and manipulation. Master of Kung Fu exists because Marvel got the Sax Rohmer license and decided the best way to exploit it was to cash in on the kung fu craze of the early 70s, not because they had this awesome idea for a character that needed the Sax Rohmer license to bring it to life. Marvel exists not because Lee and Kirby had a bunch of great ideas looking for an outlet, but because Martin Goodman wanted to cash in on the sales success DC was having with the resurgent super-heroes. He provided the impetus for Lee and Kirby and Ditko to create the books that became the Marvel Universe. The marketing and manipulation created the opportunity for the creativity, it was not after the fact. Batman exists not because Bob Kane has this great idea for a character (Or Bill Finger or whoever), but because this strip that National had bought from these 2 kids form Cleveland sold well and the publisher wanted something like it to cash in on the success. Those 2 kids form Cleveland had an idea they wanted to sell to the syndicates (not just to create but to sell) and when it didn't sell they kept changing the idea until they had commercial success with it and sold it to National. The impetus for the creativity has always been to sell from the very origins of the medium in America. Yes the creative folks executed those ideas and created the comics we love, but the guiding hand was the business side-deciding what gets the chance sending creative folks back to the drawing board to come up with something with better sales potential, etc.etc. We want things to be great and rosy and have idealistic visions of how comics and the industry is/was when the comics we love were being produced. But if we look at the overwhelming tide of evidence of how the business of comics worked, that idealistic version doesn't stand up. The evidence tells a vastly different story than the one we want it to be, and it's hard to abandon the narrative we like, we've heard/told the story so long it feels true (and because we want it to be true we cling to that), except when one looks at the actual evidence, the stories of creators in the trenches, the glimpses behind the scenes of the business decisions that went on to make the comics we love, the actual narrative is a very different story. There's a reason a lot of big name and even middle of the road creators flocked to the early indy movement in the late 70s and early 80s (Star*Reach, Pacific Comics, First, Eclipse, etc.) before the event tide started with COIE and Secret Wars that people are pointing as this definitive turning point-it's because there they actually could have creative freedom and where the ideas and stories were the driving force and marketing came after the fact, in mainstream comics that wasn't the case even then no matter how much we want to believe it was. The cart was firmly before the horse and always had been. Let's use a test case for this-Star Hunters-and let's look at Michelinie's and DC's account of how the book came to be form the letters pages in the book before letters arrived. DC wanted to try some sci-fi books because sci-fi was heating up in the public eye. They let writers know they were looking for sci-fi pitches. Michelinie had an idea and pitched it, and then editorial/marketing reshaped the idea until it became something they thought would sell and thus Star Hunters (not the original name and not with the cast that Michelinie had originally proposed though fragments of the original pitch were still in there somewhere). That's not marketing and bean-counting manipulating after the fact, that's it guiding the creative process-we want these types of pitches, and then we will shape the pitch you bring into something we think is marketable-and that was the norm for the process with the big 2. Yes the ideas may have started with the creator, but the impetus to bring the idea to print, the final shape of the product being put out there for consumption-that's all guided by people above the creator on the pay scale. We may not want that to be the way it was, but that doens't change the fact, supported by evidence, that it was the way it was. -M |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Mar 27, 2015 3:59:17 GMT -5
In the end, I don't really see how we have much of an argument on how things were at Marvel and DC save for the importance we place on marketing vs creativity. At the core of the issue, the real driving force behind the popularity of Superman and Spider-Man is that they are imaginative characters that sparked the imaginations of readers. There wouldn't have been a "sci-fi craze" or "kung-fu craze" if there hadn't been something at the core of the concept that excited readers and creators on some level.
I have to say that you're wrong about Lee and Kirby not having good unused (or used) ideas that were then turned into the Fantastic Four. The FF was basically an amalgam of the unfocused monster stuff they had been doing up to that point and the The Challengers of the Unknown. A suit saying "Do something kinda like Justice League!" and Lee and Kirby turning in something that really wasn't anything like it, was rather clever and creative I'd say. Of course creators wanted to make sales, they wanted to make a living creating comics, but many of them did indeed care about what they were doing and I'd suspect wouldn't have been creatively fulfilled or happy doing anything else. I doubt that superhero comics was what most Golden Age, or Silver Age, creators really wanted to be doing, but nonetheless the genre provided them a creative outlet to explore. Just because what they were doing was commercial, doesn't mean that what they were creating was tainted or less artistic in a macro sense. Most creative endeavors balance an artists personal interests with a practical understanding of what's feasible in the market place. Even the great masters like Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and Milton Caniff knew this. It's hard to discount something as brilliant as Prince Valiant, and downplay the obvious passion Foster harbored for it, just because Hearst needed a well drawn adventure strip to help generate ad revenue.
My point is that the publisher's are simply latching onto a fundamental desire for creative people to create art that appeals to a particular audience that appreciates said art. Without corporate, people would still tell stories and create art. Without people willing to create art and tell stories as a way to earn a living, there wouldn't be a publishing industry or show business at all. The problem lies in the fact that capitalism in and of itself can't differentiate between pumping out widgets on an assembly line and pumping out Mona Lisa's. A lot of the stuff that we revere today was a commissioned, commercial, product centuries ago. We no longer care about who made how much money or how many people it helped employ. We only care about what it says to us as art.
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Post by Icctrombone on Mar 27, 2015 5:59:44 GMT -5
It's interesting that most, if not all , of Kirbys DC work failed to generate sales back then, but it is so loved today. I guess It was enough for DC to subtract Kirby from there Marvel company in order to lower their sales if not to increase Dc's sales. The business aspect IS the impetus for publishing these stories but I'm glad to see that the 80's did produce creator owned alternatives to the big two. Those creator owned properties are being realized today for Movies and Tv shows.
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Post by DE Sinclair on Mar 27, 2015 11:04:44 GMT -5
One thing I've always found to be true is if you want to enjoy sausages, it may not pay to look too closely into the process of making them. At the very least, you'll be disillusioned, perhaps nauseated. This also applies to comics. If you want to enjoy them as wildly creative artistry, then you may not want to know that much about how they're made. Making sausages and comics may be more similar than we want to admit.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Mar 27, 2015 11:33:06 GMT -5
One thing I've always found to be true is if you want to enjoy sausages, it may not pay to look too closely into the process of making them. At the very least, you'll be disillusioned, perhaps nauseated. This also applies to comics. If you want to enjoy them as wildly creative artistry, then you may not want to know that much about how they're made. Making sausages and comics may be more similar than we want to admit. Very true but hard to do. Comics are like an old time marrionette show When you were young it fascinated you and you could suspend you're sense of reality and be taken away to a fantasy land. But as you got older, wiser, experienced you begin to notice the strings attached, the shadows of the puppeteers behind the curtain. The stories are no longer original but reused from other shows or have gaping holes in logic. You can only watch them in small doses unless you want you're brain to atrophy Be that as it may, what turns me off most from Marvel and DC is they're blatent, manipulative attitude to pander to a diminishing number of hardcore fans with these events/deaths and resurrections/ re-numberings etc while pushing the limits on the prices they charge for it. I have sworn a sacred vow that those 2 companies will never see another dime from my pocket |
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Post by DE Sinclair on Mar 27, 2015 11:38:58 GMT -5
One thing I've always found to be true is if you want to enjoy sausages, it may not pay to look too closely into the process of making them. At the very least, you'll be disillusioned, perhaps nauseated. This also applies to comics. If you want to enjoy them as wildly creative artistry, then you may not want to know that much about how they're made. Making sausages and comics may be more similar than we want to admit. Very true but hard to do. Comics are like an old time marrionette show When you were young it fascinated you and you could suspend you're sense of reality and be taken away to a fantasy land. But as you got older, wiser, experienced you begin to notice the strings attached, the shadows of the puppeteers behind the curtain. The stories are no longer original but reused from other shows or have gaping holes in logic. You can only watch them in small doses unless you want you're brain to atrophy Be that as it may, what turns me off most from Marvel and DC is they're blatent, manipulative attitude to pander to a diminishing number of hardcore fans with these events/deaths and resurrections/ re-numberings etc while pushing the limits on the prices they charge for it. I have sworn a sacred vow that those 2 companies will never see another dime from my pocket Excellent analogy with the marionette show. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2015 14:05:33 GMT -5
Joe Kubert talks about drawing comics vs. life art in his book Drawing from Life, and he essentially says this (paraphrasing): drawing comics is fundamentally different than life drawing because when you draw comics you are not about art, you are about communicating the story and satisfying the client (i.e. the publisher) if that means taking shortcuts to make deadlines or sacrificing creativity for clarity of story, that's what you do, because it's not about being an artist, it's about doing your job for the client who hired you. It is, in essence, commercial art where the client's vision trumps yours. When doing life art, I can focus on the creative and artistic impulses I have and not worry about what someone else wants, but what I want. I can experiment and and take my time to try different things, it's where my vision trumps all.
Kubert was the consummate professional and teacher of art, and he understood the way the business worked. I don't think anyone could say he wasn't creative or artistic, but he understood the impetus in comics came not from the creators but those who hired the staff and freelancers to produce their product. Creativity was there certainly, but it was trumped by the needs and desires of the client, i.e. the publishers, marketing folk, editors, bean counters, etc. who guided the industry and shaped it.
-M
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Post by gothos on Mar 27, 2015 15:54:02 GMT -5
MRP said:
There's a good deal of truth in this, but I would add that on occasion professional editors may be stumping for a particular genre not just because they're watching current trends but because they both (a) like the genre, and (b) think they understand the genre well enough to make consistent money from it. In hindsight we might say that, say, Dean Mullaney is foolhardy to publish Doug Wildey's RIO, because at the time of that comic's publication there was probably zero chance that a western comic would make a lot of money. Maybe at the time Mullaney would've reasoned that occasionally old genres were revivified when they were jump-started by high-quality work, and if so, you could argue that would be the "trend" to which he was appealing. I just want to point out, though, that the editors aren't always completely passive; sometimes they try to create a trend, even if ninety percent of the time it doesn't happen.
Sometimes a project comes together just because it brings together what might seem to be complementary strengths of old professionals. I thought JONNI THUNDER was awful, and I don't think any then-current trend in fandom would have justified its existence. But I can see some minute logic in its creation: let's put together Giordano, who wants to do a detective comic, with Thomas, with his passion for creating new versions of old-time DC heroes. That might be foolhardy too, but it isn't passive.
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