Author: Ray Cornwall

Everyone who reads comics wants to write comics. Yes, you too.

Comics are the second easiest storytelling media to create, behind prose. All you need to make a comic is the ability to make words and pictures come together on a page to make a story. If you can draw, take photos, or use an image program like Illustrator or Photoshop, you’re halfway there. All you need now is a story, right?

Wrong. You need time and dedication, and that’s why most people don’t make comics.

Steven Seagle and Stefano Gaudiano didn’t have a lot of time in the 80s; both were full-time students at the University of Colorado at Boulder. But Steven sold Kafka to Deni Loubert’s Renegade Press on one condition- the book had to be published immediately or not at all. Loubert, best known as Dave Sim’s ex-wife, had an unexpected opening in her publishing schedule and needed to fill it. Within 40 days, they completed the first issue- two color covers, 25 pages of story (lettered by Seagle and his girlfriend), ads, and three design pages. The result was so good (and the deadline was so tight) that Seagle and Gaudiano sent the following five issues of the series directly to the printer without having Loubert look at it first.

The result? A tense thriller about a man in a witness relocation program who finds out that his new identity has been leaked to those he’s hiding from. Not only is his life at risk, but the life of the wife he had to leave behind is threatened. Chased through airports and two countries, he eventually discovers the truth behind the US agency protecting him and the crime cartel pursuing him.

Because of the time pressure, Gaudiano chose a rough, expressive art style for the story. At times, it’s confusing, but it’s otherwise clear and serves the story well. Seagle’s plot is taught, and the dialogue is quickly paced. The story has all of the paranoia of a Franz Kafka story, even though the title doesn’t refer to the famed author of The Metamorphisis. "Kafka" was a term used in World War II prison camps referring to those who vanished at the hands of the Nazis.

Did I mention the series was so good it was nominated for an Eisner? The fairy tale ends there, of course. After all, it was up that year against another series you might have heard about: Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Still, Seagle and Gaudiano used the book as a jumping point to other work, and both still work in comics today. Seagle is writing American Virgin at DC/Vertigo, while Gaudiano is inking Michael Lark on Marvel’s Daredevil series.

Seagle and Gaudiano took a rare opportunity and created a book that propelled them into comics as a career. These days, the opportunity isn’t so rare; anyone can publish a comic through the web and through self-publishing services. You too can create a comic. All you need is the same determination these artists had.

Steve and Stef made this
book in forty days still read
twenty years later.

Buy this book at Amazon.com.

Easterbrook, noted editor at The New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, and the Washington Monthly, and also writer of ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, discusses the X-Men.

True story: I got the idea of writing haikus in book reviews from him, as he uses haikus in his column to describe football teams. If you’re going to steal a gimmick, steal it from the best.

Brevoort’s an editor at Marvel, and responded to some comments on his blog with this gem:

"Here’s the thing: the characters are invulnerable.

"I’m not talking about super-powers here; I’m talking about the ability to survive bad stories and bad times and to live on and prosper again. The primary Marvel characters have been around for four decades at this point, and have been translated into animated cartoons, movies, television shows and more toys than you could ever hope to collect. They’ve become immortal, and a part of the pop culture landscape…

"The characters are indestructable. The worst you can do to them (assuming you’re behaving somewhat responsibly) is to tarnish them, and to make them unpopular for awhile. But literally anything can be fixed–and nothing repairs a character like good, compelling, exciting stories. As long as you can produce that, you can’t go wrong…

"The best of the Marvel characters are now functionally immortal–created before I was born in most cases, they’ll survive long after I’m dead and gone."

This is the silliest, most arrogant quote I’ve ever read from Marvel management. And it’s quite wrong.

Now I like Tom Brevoort a lot, and I like Civil War a lot. I think the mega-crossover is the most interesting superhero story in many years. It’s a period piece that’s perfect for post-9/11 America. Rather than replicating the events of that day with some sort of superterrortist, Mark Millar’s story captures the paranoia, fear, and bad decisions we make when we try to restructure society after a horrible event. I think many Internet critics have gotten it wrong when they criticize Millar’s handling of Tony Stark and Reed Richards; as Marvel’s wealthiest superheroes, it’s not surprising to me to see them strongly support the Registration Act. They have the most to lose if the public fully loses trust in superheroes. This is an argument I’ll get into more another day, but I have little qualms with how Millar’s written Civil War, and McNiven’s art is gorgeous.

What I have a problem with is the idea that Marvel’s characters are somehow iconic, eternal, or everlasting.

Somehow, we got it in our heads that superheroes have the ability to resonate forever, that Superman and Batman and Spider-Man will always look fresh and inviting to future generations. If that were so, they’d be a very rare subset of characters in human literature, because there’s very few eternal iconic characters out there.

Look at the great characters of the first comics boom in the thirties and forties. Little Orphan Annie, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Popeye- are any of these eternal icons? They’re all great characters, especially Annie (I have collections of the old strips, and they’re simply amazing). But iconic? Hardly. Sure, Hollywood can strip the Depression and WWII elements of the character, slap some CGI and breast implants in there, and present a fresh version of the character for today’s audience. I’m sure that, in 50 years with its smell-o-vision and virtual flesh and in-brain infobeams, similar techniques will be used to update the character for another audience.

But does that mean the characters are eternal? No, of course not. Is an updated Spider-Man really eternal? No. What happens is you take the character out back, shoot it, gut it, and put someone else in its skin. It’s got all the trappings of Spider-Man, and it may be fit for a new audience. But part of the old character is rotting in back of the shed.

There’s no guarantee of success when you’re creating something like the Marvel Universe. In fact, it’s the greatest storytelling experiment of the 20th century: a multitude of characters that germinated in the minds of three or four people (Lee, Ditko, Kirby, maybe Martin Goodman) that were then handed off to others, who then created their own characters. And then all of these went to someone else, and some characters were killed off, and some new ones were created, and the process grew bigger and smaller at the same time.

In any month, there are tens of Marvel comics published, each with its own subset of characters and viewpoints, but all in the same universe (or, if you want to include the Ultimate books, multiverse). All of it was created by the same company; it may have had different owners along the way, it may have been bankrupt at some times, it may have been flush with cash, but it’s always been Marvel. (Whereas a lot of DC Comics were created by companies that DC then bought, such as Shazam, the Blue Beetle and the Charlton heroes, and the Wildstorm universe with Jim Lee.) It’s an organic whole created by thousands of artists over 65 years (if you consider Namor was created in 1941; 45 years if you just look back to the start of the proper Marvel universe in 1961).

And every month, hundreds of thousands of readers poke holes into this storytelling concept 50 or more ways, each hole a different issue on the monthly schedule, and we change the Marvel universe through the act of observation (remember your quantum physics?). Some readers drop out each month, the concept/multiverse/mothership no longer resonating with them. Others drop in, sometimes accidentally. Occasionally, one of the readers becomes a creator and makes changes to the universe directly, and is himself or herself changed by the process.

There’s nothing else like it. And that’s why it’s so curious to see someone say it’s eternal, indestructable, immortal. Why? Many have tried to recreate the Marvel concept and have failed miserably, in some cases with much more money than Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Goodman had access to in 1961. If the concept can’t be duplicated, why is it guaranteed success forever?

The answer is, it isn’t. There’s no guarantee that this very week, a Marvel comic isn’t going to come out that will throw the whole concept into oblivion and extinction. The chance of such an occurence is small, true, but it’s not zero. Every week, Marvel walks a multidimensional tightrope, and so far they’ve stayed upright.

Heck, I think the concept’s thriving. But entropy watches the whole thing, waiting patiently. Now that’s functional immortality.

Colleen Doran posted this LA Times story about a retiring librarian from Mississippi and his struggles with a community where illiteracy runs rampant. There’s some comics content in there too, including a note about a custom comic the people at Archie created for the community.

I’m lucky. I’ve been able to read all of my conscious life. I was a bit of a child prodigy; I had a high school reading level while in second grade. I have bookshelves filled with books and graphic novels. I make enough money to support my love of reading. I cannot imagine what life would be like without words.

I dare you to make it through this article without shedding a tear.