CHIMAERA COMICS

This is a fragment of something I posted on my ANDREW FOLEY WRITES THINGS blog today. Something about this particular passage feels potentially... significant (?); I think it may be the beginning of a personal manifesto for my work in the Chimaera Superhero Universe.

I look at the doomed super-universes of the early '90's and see missed opportunities galore--here were dozens of character concepts creators could have done literally anything with. The bulk chose, or were forced, to regurgitate the same tired superhero formulae of the previous thirty years, relying on collectible gimmicks rather than good or interesting or experimental storytelling to stay afloat.

"More of the same" didn't work for the smaller guys, and it seemingly stopped working for the Big Two eventually, as well. As never before, it feels as though nothing at Marvel and DC is sacred. The risks that could have been taken by those with nothing to lose in the '90's have instead been embraced by editorial regimes that, if the world made any kind of sense, would instead be striving to maintain the integrity and consistency of their trademarks--not just because there's cash to be made from having the comic versions of Spider-Man and Batman be recognizable to the audience that paid millions of dollars to see the movie versions of those characters, but because those characters should rightfully be part of the fabric of western (pop) culture.

Conventional wisdom is that non-Big Four superheroes are a dead end in the mainstream comic market as it currently stands. Chimaera and Arcana are challenging that wisdom. The success or failure of the Chimaera Superhero Universe will hinge on three elements: promotion, quality work, and an audience looking for something different than what they can get from DC, Marvel, and even Image.

As I say, this is is certainly not a coherent or cohesive statement of an "indy-hero" philosophy; if anything, it's the beginning of something, and it might ultimately turn out to be nothing at all. But it did feel like something worth placing here, where those with an interest in Chimaera can check out the so-called thought processes of one of the studio's creators. If nothing else, it'll be easier to find again here than in the middle of a meandering blog post.

Foley

(cross-posted on ANDREW FOLEY WRITES THINGS, as all this creative navel-gazing likely will be.)

THE CHIMAERA CHALLENGE, PART TWO

In a previous post, I said “The success or failure of the Chimaera Superhero Universe will hinge on three elements: promotion, quality work, and an audience looking for something different than what they can get from DC, Marvel, and even Image.”

Of the three, the one I’m most concerned about is the first, because promotion takes money. I’m not sure how much money the various parties involved are willing to expend on marketing the books; my personal experience with small press publishers leads me to suspect the answer is “not much, if anything.” Which could be fine if it’s established as being the case up-front and the Chimaera brain-trust can find money elsewhere. The Free Comic Book Day project could help out a lot, but assuming everything works out as it’s tentatively planned, FCBD’ll still be seven or eight months too late to help the first Chimaera books coming out the gate.

I shouldn’t worry about this, and I’m sure George is sick of my talking his ear off about how important this is, but, again in my limited experience as part of the small press, promotion’s the ball that always seems to get dropped, and it’s the most damaging ball to let bounce away from you, especially early on. You can have the best book in the world but this is a loud, loud business and getting people to notice what you’ve got isn’t easy. Just ask anyone who’s worked the small press area at the San Diego Comicon. Then duck, because recalling that horror is probably going to trigger an explosion of homicidal rage.

So, promotion gets bums in the seats. What’s going to keep them there is quality work. George has a history of hooking great artists up for Chimaera projects--hell, SILENT GHOST artist Brett Weldele is up for an Eisner for his work on that book and SOUTHLAND TALES. That's always a big plus in a visual medium, though not, I like to think, the be-all and end-all of a successful book. Of course, I’m a writer, so I’m naturally defensive about the absolutely critical role I play in things and likely to overestimate my own importance…

Comic writing is a trickier proposition than art at the best of times. One look at a page tells you whether or not you like an artist, while it can take several pages (or these days, several issues) to get a handle on a writer. In addition to the stories being executed with a degree of professional competence, the notion of quality writing in Chimaera’s superhero universe is going to some degree be entangled in the final element of success. As the First Creators on the various Chimaera books, it’s the writers’ job to concoct characters, stories--an entire universe, really--that provides a superhero audience with something they want, but which isn’t being provided by the Big Three.

This is part of the reason the conventional wisdom regarding superheroes is that it’s not worth trying to do them outside Marvel, DC or Image--the market has spoken (at least as far as giving Valiant, Defiant, Malibu and any other number of superverses the finger) and therefore the readers are getting what they want. On first blush, the current upward sales trends for the Big Two seem to support that (though I personally believe sales are being artificially inflated via instant collectability stunts like variant covers and a slump is on the way.) (The cup is never half-full. NEVER.)

So what can Chimaera bring to the table that Marvel, DC, and Image aren’t?

When George first described the future first press release for the CSU, he originally wanted the first line of the PR to be something along the lines of “Remember when superhero universes were fun, exciting places to be?” And when working on TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE, TALES OF STUPEFICTION (changed the name from Spooky Tales), and Chimaera’s Canadian Champion Contingent, I’ve always come back to “fun” as the requirement for whatever I contribute to the Chimaeraverse.

There’s at least two reasons this is potentially problematic.

To be continued. If I feel like it.

Foley

This started as a post on something other than Chimaera's Challenge, and from the outside may appear to end that way too. I can't help feel that it's relevant to my perception on the Challenge, so I'm posting it. Call it Chimaera's Challenge #2.5 or ignore it altogether.

From the AFWT blog:

To paraphrase (because I don't have the exact quote on-hand) Joss Whedon, "I don't want to create characters people like. I want to create characters people love."

Over at the Newsarama blog, Lisa Fortuner comes at the "Heroes for Hentai"/"Mary-Jane: Thong Launderer" from an angle I should've seen myself but, in my general apathy towards characters I don't own and am not immediately working on, managed to miss.

"It amazes me that it never occurs to certain people that the problem is not one of jealousy or lack of attraction, but of identification with the character."

I'll admit, my initial reaction to the whole thing was "If you don't like it, don't buy it." I also questioned the wisdom of publicly criticizing, much less angrily denouncing, the company or creators involved for making aesthetic decisions based on business considerations, on the grounds that that sort of online noise is free publicity for what the one complaining considers distasteful. That's almost an "At Best" possibility, too--there also exists the possibility of a kneejerk backlash from people who don't see what the problem is at all and think the ugly fat chicks should just shut up.

I don't think anyone should shut up about anything. I do think that the internet is, with rare exceptions, not the ideal place to advocate for one side of a divisive idea--there's just too many a-holes out there looking to rile people up. I know I've taken a few shots at people who think Harry Potter's promoting witchcraft to children, and I don't even particularly like Harry Potter. Certainly not as much as I like pissing off people I think are idiots.

So I came to the whole thing with the more "meta" outlook being someone who makes these things on a regular basis by necessity has to some degree, rather than someone who invests in comics solely as heroic fantasies. It's been years since I stood in front of a mirror and shot Greedo (first), and regardless of their rating, there's no way H4H is aimed at nine-year-olds, or at a female audience. Which, as it features a lot of butt-kicking women protagonists, non-direct market logic would lead one to think it ought to be.

In spite of that, Misty Knight likely has female fans who identify with the characters (maybe even some male ones), as do Colleen Wing and almost certainly the Black Cat. And those people are seeing their heroes brought low in a crass attempt to cater to a different audience--in fact, to the most disturbing elements of stereotypical direct market mainstream audience.

No wonder they're upset.

Foley[/url]

THE PROBLEM WITH FUN, PART ONE

'"...fun" is a death word in comics these days...(it) automatically kills off a lot of your sales...I just hope that the "fun" label doesn't hit us too hard. If so, it's just another sign that current readers don't want "fun" comics.' Mark Waid, talking about the potential damage done to sales of THE BRAVE & THE BOLD by reviewers characterizing the book as...well, guess.

My eternal quest to avoid doing actual work regularly takes me to numerous comic-related websites, some news-oriented, some commentary-based, a few review sites. And I've noticed on several of these sites the blame for the current dearth of "fun" comics being laid at the feet of DC Vice President and Executive Editor Dan Didio. The claim that Didio holds to the dictum "Fun comics don't sell" is a common one, though if he has actually said such a thing publicly, I've yet to find a direct quote.

Even if he hasn't said such a thing, the prevailing wisdom at the Big Two (even Three, though when it comes to superheroes, Image no longer has the overall market pull or presence it once did) seems to be decidedly anti-fun, and arguably has for quite some time. Marvel has turned some of its greatest heroes into what are essentially villains, and then allowed those same villains to prevail, on the grounds that this is more reflective of the realistic world which Marvel's characters supposedly live in. (Someday, I want to do a Marvel miniseries about a kid who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and dies of cancer.)

DC, in spite of books like DKR and The Watchmen still generally considered the more traditional of the Big Two, has also progressively darkened its superhero universe in an effort to keep readers involved in storylines. Characters, countries, worlds, and universes are being slaughtered in record numbers, or so it seems to my jaundiced eye.

The rise of darkness in superhero comics has been accompanied by something of a return to '90s style publishing stunts designed to generate interest in titles/properties/characters through something other than the merit of the stories in which those characters appear. (Please note that I say "stories", rather than the merits of the characters themselves, which are only as good or bad as the creator's craft or reader's eye allow them to be.) Variant covers artificially boost sales numbers, company-wide crossovers force writers to put their actual stories on hold to deal with stuff happening "over there", noted creators are brought in to write for established properties (Todd McFarlane made a big deal when he brought four Big-Name Comic Writers in for an issue each of SPAWN; these days, rather than aiming for superior writers who've established themselves in the comics medium, companies are looking to the wider entertainment world, bringing in screenwriters and TV creators to give books a boost.) (Which, now that I think of it, is a weird thing to do, as the companies' money is in the characters, not the creators, and I have a hard time believing sales on ASTONISHING X-MEN will be nearly as good without Joss Whedon and John Cassaday involved.) (Note also that Whedon's pulling away from writing comics for Marvel, precisely because he does see the interconnectedness between titles both Marvel and DC are trading heavily on these days as overly restrictive to him as a creator.)

The term "continuity porn" has been thrown at books like COUNTDOWN and, if it hasn't been already, could be attached to something like Marvel's ILLUMINATI (which, if co-writers Bendis and Reed's critics are to be believed, has less to do with examining hidden chapters of Marvel's history than with wholesale rewriting well-known chapters of same.) There's an element--if not the biggest element, certainly the most vocal--of fandom that does enjoy recognizing the purpose of the lightning rods in the latest JLA/JSA crossover prior to it being revealed to the unenlightened reader who isn't well-versed in 1960s Legion of Superheroes continuity.

To some extent, former members of that element of fandom are the ones who're currently steering things at the Big Two. They realized their dreams and now create stories with the characters they love, stories that are considered "real", or at least legitimate, by other long-time fans who actually have something emotionally invested in the Beyonder being a flawed cosmic cube rather than an Inhuman mutant.

I don't know if I'm part of the fanbase that really enjoys stories steeped in continuity. At this point I'm more inclined to let a continuity gaffe slide (assuming I notice it at all) than I am a writer (or, possibly more likely, an editor) twisting a character's actions out of (my admittedly subjective interpretation of) their established personalities.

But what sells in superhero comics isn't about me, or it shouldn't be, anyway. And it shouldn't be about those fans who are going to buy the next issue of X-Men no matter how much they think it's sucked for the last 20 years. The continuity-laden stories running rampant at the Big Two these days cater to those fans, and that's a clear and present danger to the well-being of superhero comics as a genre, if not North American comics as a medium. Because books laden in continuity are going to alienate new readers, and the old readers are getting older all the time and will die eventually.

Will a non-comics reader coming to a Marvel or DC book think it's an entertaining read? Will they even find it intelligible?

I have a hard time seeing it. And reading something you don't get, that you have no chance to get without reading the last five years of Amazing Spider-Man, is not going to be a positive experience for a theoretical non-comics reader who picks an issue up at random. It will be no fun. Because what's fun for the hardcore fans is not fun for someone who's not one of the Cool Kids.

The accessibility of Chimera's books should be an advantage the studio has over many other superhero comics publishers. Or it would be, in a sane world. Unfortunately, given the state of the direct market, the people most likely to pick up a new superhero book at this juncture are also the ones who enjoy continuity porn, company-wide crossovers, variant covers, etc., etc.

This could be a problem for the creators of the Chimaera Superhero Universe. In the absence of a viable distribution model outside of the direct market, we must find a way to create comics that are fun to both the new comic reader, and marketable to the old.

To Be Continued, as always, If I Feel Like It.

Foley

CHIMAERA'S CHALLENGE 3.5: Putting the "Fun" in "Funeral"/It's All About Me

"You know that criticism that often gets applied to things, that those involved in the creation clearly had a lot of fun making it, but forgot to be able to translate that to the audience?" Graeme McMillan, reviewing the Deadpool/GLI Summer Fun Spectacular for The Savage Critic(s)

If I recall correctly, Alan Moore actually created the America's Best Comics line in response to what he perceived as a darkening in tone in modern superhero comics, partly as the result of his own dark (but in its own way, fun) superhero epic THE WATCHMEN. If ABC wasn't a direct response to that, Moore certainly stated on many occasions his regret that the darker, more "realistic" sheen of the Watchmen and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS had been embraced by other creators who hadn't absorbed what really made those works special (that being, again if memory serves, their relatively complex narrative structure. I also think both books had a degree of ambition that the majority of mainstream comics at the time lacked--that the majority of mainstream comics at this time still lack, come to think of it--but that's me.)

So Moore created the ABC line as something of an antidote to the grim 'n' gritty atmosphere that was then sweeping through comicdom. His goal, as I understand it, was to make comics that were fun. His relative success can only really be judged on a reader-by-reader basis. For myself, TOP TEN was far and away the most successful and, not coincidentally, fun of the titles. PROMETHEA started off fun (and in its last storyline actually mostly finished that way), but as it became less about mythical heroics and more about educating the title character, and by extension the reader, in the ways of magick, it went off the rails a bit. On a technical level, it was excellent, and I'm sure it was fun for Moore to write. Personally, I didn't enjoy reading a good portion of it.

Which brings us to...

THE PROBLEM WITH FUN, PART TWO

When George described the future first press release for the CSU, he wanted the first line of the PR to be something along the lines of “Remember when superhero universes were fun, exciting places to be?” And that was my touchstone for all the stuff I've done in connection with Chimaera. When working on TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE, TALES OF STUPEFICTION (changed the name from Spooky Action), and Chimaera’s Canadian Champion Contingent, I’ve always come back to “fun” as the requirement for whatever I contribute to the Chimaeraverse. And I've pretty much ignored the idea that the label "fun" is a death sentence in the current comics (direct) marketplace.

Partly that's because I think it's a stupid premise and I want it not to be true, in spite of a substantial body of evidence that says it is. Hey, I want to write comics for a living--"must live in a fantasy world" is practically part of the job description for me. And partly it's because that's a general statement, and I've got a more specific reason to worry about making comics I think are fun. As Graeme McMillan's quote at the start of this post points out, as the PROMETHEA example was intended to illustrate, what's fun for a creator isn't necessarily going to be fun for a reader.

It becomes even more problematic when you consider the idiosyncracies of the creator in question. To get to what I think is my point in this next bit, I'm going to narrow my focus a little, and talk not about fun, but funny.

In Mel Brooks' movie SPACEBALLS, there's a bit where Rick Moranis' Darth Vader knock-off character tells his subordinates he wants them to "Comb the desert"...for something. I don't even recall what they were looking for.

Anyway, a little while later, Moranis is in the desert, and in the background are a couple guys with giant combs, running them through the sand. As a sight gag, it's not great, but it's passable. Brooks wasn't satisfied to leave it a sight gag, however. Moranis makes a big deal out of his guys using a giant comb to comb the desert. At the time, I assumed that was because he believed his audience was too stupid to put two and two together. They needed to have the giant comb pointed out to them, to ensure they got the joke. "Get it? Eh? Get it?"

There's a theory I've heard that if you have to explain the funny part of the joke, the joke isn't that good. As an extension of that theory, I've generally worked from the premise that if you have to point out a joke is actually there, you're cutting into the joke's comedic potential. Part of the reason Douglas Adams' HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY books are things I can go and read every couple of years and still enjoy is because each time I manage to come across a joke or two that I missed the last time around (having a memory like a sieve helps, I think). It took me ages before I realized the exchange:
"It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water."
wasn't the surreal but still funny non-sequitur I'd taken it for when I first read the book as a kid. I probably never would've figured out what a "Kuhniggut" was in MONTY PYTHON'S THE HOLY GRAIL if someone hadn't actually explained it to me (if I recall correctly, they hadn't figured it out independently themselves, which made me feel slightly less stupid.)

In my long-gestating TOKEN GOBLIN series, the city of Idolon's watchmen are named after the city's most famous mayor, Reegan Onyer. They're the Onyer Guard. It was immensely satisfying to me when, more than a year after a friend had read one of the Token Goblin prose stories I've written and said, "The Onyer Guard. I just got it."

That's a moderately to not-very clever play on words--not a great joke, by any means. But to my mind it would be a lousy one if I'd gone to great lengths to call attention to it--any lengths at all, really, other than to toss it out and act like it wasn't a joke at all. Because it landed months after the initial reading experience, it becomes that much better than actually is.

But is a joke that someone's not going to get on the first read through going to fly in the North American comic market?

Or, to put it another way, is what I think is funny going to read that way to someone else? I worry that it won't, because I've got a superhuman sense of humour. It's going to take most of humanity about five million years of evolution before it'll be able to grasp what I find so patently, self-evidently funny about a store called SofaLand.

It's a concern. Fortunately, my friends and family generally indulge or ignore my tendency to burst into unstoppable giggle fits at the drop of a hat. (My all-time favourite line from my all-time favourite commercial: "Whoops! Dropped my hat!" I'm still chuckling about that one more than twenty years later...)

And I've got other friends who have some sense of what's actually working as comedy and what isn't. I showed the scripts for TITUS: HEROIC FAILURE to my DONE TO DEATH collaborator Fiona Staples. Her first comment on it was, "Boy, you were really angry when you wrote that, weren't you?" Which I was, but that was beside the point.

"Yeah," said I. Then, towering imperiously over her, I demanded an answer to my burning question. "But never mind that: was it funny?"

Said Fiona, "Yes, it was funny."

Which at the time made me happy; someone else thought the book was funny. Looking back on it now, however, it seems to me she answered the question... a little hesitantly. And now I'm starting to worry again.

So there's another aspect of Chimaera's Challenge: produce something that's fun (or funny, if appropriate), not for me, necessarily, but for the comic's eventual readers (both of them.) When I'm having too good a time doing what is, after all, supposed to be work...well, that's when I know I've got to be careful.

Because SofaLand is really quite funny. Just trust me on this.

"This is life. So go and have a ball. Because the world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you may not be right for some. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...my opening statement. Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog." - Peter Griffin

Foley