Ultimate Marvel and redefining comics for adults

digresssmlOriginally published September 29, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1402

The release of the “Ultimate Marvel” line, the first of which launches this week (as of this writing) with Spider-Man, serves several purposes. The first, of course, is that it downgrades the previous forty years of Marvel tales by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, et al, into merely a Penultimate Marvel line, leading up to the overwhelming greatness represented in the new series. A sizable legacy to live up to, indeed. However, it also seeks to address a genuine problem facing many potential new readers: Where to start?

When I was a kid, it was simple. Seeking an entrance into the Marvel Universe, I merely had to pick up such ongoing reprint titles as Marvel Tales or Marvel Collector’s Items Classics. For all of twenty-five cents, we got early tales of our heroes introducing many of the villains who were old standbys in the ongoing series. Times, however, have changed. Young readers subscribe to the same old-equals-bad mindset of most of the rest of society (Rudy on Survivor notwithstanding). They will not support stories that they consider antiquated and simplistic, and reprints are now the province of high-priced collections aimed—not at the new readers—but at the people who read them when they were first published and can afford the more “permanent” binding.

Now it’s not simple. Not simple at all.

This was driven home to me after I took eight-year-old Ariel to see X-Men. Intrigued and excited by the characters and situations she had just seen, she asked if she could read the comic. I realized we had a slight problem. X-Men, as currently presented, would simply be beyond her ability to handle. The storylines are spread out and complicated, the characters innumerable. I wouldn’t even know where to begin explaining everything to her. I realized at that point that the only place I could reasonably start her would be to go all the way back to the beginning. To give her the original Lee/Kirby Uncanny X-Men #1. Granted, Wolverine wasn’t in it, nor was Rogue. But Scott and Jean were present, as was Professor X, and Bobby—who had little more than a cameo in the film, but for some reason was a big hit with Ariel. Plus Toad (sans tongue) and Magneto were there as well.

(Purely as an aside, was I the only one who derived amusement from reading the coverage of the major gathering of world leaders at the United Nations recently? I found myself adding to the articles, “The only disruption in the proceedings occurred when massive energy waves radiated from the Statue of Liberty, causing pandemonium among the world leaders. Sources claim the energy waves were part of a master plan by Magneto; however the mysterious mutant group known as the X-Men managed to thwart the malicious scheme, allowing the gathering to proceed with no further problems.”)

The early X-Men tales are “safe,” you see. Not only is the continuity manageable, just beginning to build, but the conflict is clear and unvarnished, and I don’t have to worry about the “maturity” level of the tales. I don’t know that I’d be comfortable with Ariel reading even the early adventures of the “new” X-Men, because some of them get—well—a little intense. The old X-Men, though, have a comfort level on par with what I want to have my youngest reading.

Now perhaps I’m being overcautious. After all, even though she was capable of reading it herself, I insisted on reading the latest Harry Potter novel to her because the increased darkening of tone—and the death of one of the characters—had been well advertised. Ultimately, I was glad I did. Without giving anything away to anyone who hasn’t read it, I got to the point in the book where one of the characters was killed. I paused, waiting to see if Ariel would react. Nothing. So I kept reading. Three pages later, mention was made of the character’s corpse lying on the ground. Abruptly Ariel turned to me and said, “Is (the character) going to come back? Is (the character) going to be brought back to life somehow?”

And I explained to her patiently that, like in real life, no, that wasn’t going to happen. The character had been killed, and that was that. At which point Ariel burst into tears and reading came to a halt until she was finally able to compose herself.

In any event, Ariel is a potential X-Men fan, just as other kids—when the Spider-Man movie is released—will be potential Spider-Man fans. It’s hard to tell them where to jump on, both in terms of continuity and in terms of story content. The thing is, time has always moved forward for Peter Parker, as it did for the X-Men. Peter Parker graduated high school, college, got married, got widowed. The X-Men graduated, grew older, broke up, got new members, went their separate ways. Time marched on.

Except it’s been more than just time. Because new creators have come in as well, and consistently the new creators have reimagined the characters in terms that they themselves can handle. The increasing sophistication, the “adulting” if you will, of various characters, has become more and more prevalent, moving the superhero form further and further away from its original audience. Once upon a time, it was accepted that people didn’t stick with comic books; generally they gave up comics around the time they discovered the opposite sex. Now, however, the questionable health of the industry depends upon an audience who sticks with comics through thick and thin. The problem is that, as that audience stops collecting due to reasons ranging from boredom to lack of funds to outright hostility, there’s a lack of fresh bodies to replace them.

A big problem remains the cover price. Parents remembering comics as twelve or twenty five cents simply ain’t going to give their kids $2.50 or $2.99 for a comic book. Comics were fine when they were an impulse buy. When you have to think about it, you realize that there’s lots of stuff that’ll give you more bang for your buck.

But the other problem remains story content. Have we, we must wonder, made comics so sophisticated that they’re an outright turnoff to younger readers? What is this compulsion we have to tell adult stories with what most people perceive as kiddie characters? And are we wrong to do so?

It’s not as if I’m pointing fingers at others while exempting myself. Any kids who catch the old Supergirl movie (now in rerelease on DVD) or see the cartoon version and run out to buy Supergirl #49, now on the stands, won’t have a clue as to what the hëll they’re reading. There are some readers who insist that the stories I’m telling have no place in a book entitled Supergirl. That if I want to spin elaborate mythos of angels and such, I should be doing it elsewhere instead of “ruining” the character as she stood before.

Nor is the redefining of kiddie icons into adult status limited to comic books. Observe, if you will, Wicked, Gregory Maguire’s novel that gives us the previously unknown true story of the Wicked Witch of the West. On the very first page we see the following exchange as Dorothy and her companions journey toward the Witch’s castle:

“Of course, to hear them tell it, it is the surviving sister who is the crazy one,” said the Lion. “What a Witch. Psychologically warped; possessed by demons. Insane. Not a pretty picture.”

“She was castrated at birth,” replied the Tin Woodman calmly. “She was born hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male.”

“Oh you, you see castration everywhere you look,” said the Lion.

“I’m only repeating what folks say,” said the Tin woodman.

Not only are we not in Kansas anymore, we’re not even in Oz anymore. At least not the Oz with which we’re all familiar.

What is it about childrens’ fables and other icons that prompt us to re-examine them and redefine them with adult sensibilities? Are we doing anyone any favors in doing so? Or are we just displaying a singular lack of imagination?

More thoughts on it next week, although I’d certainly be interested to hear yours.

(Peter David, Writer of Stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

9 comments on “Ultimate Marvel and redefining comics for adults

  1. Regarding your problems with people who are new to comics, I often run into that problem when trying to explain comic book movies to people unfamiliar with the medium. They simply lack my background knowledge.

  2. I prefer not to think of it writing up to adults BUT AS NOT writing down to kids.

    When I was a kid I absolutely loved TMNT and Transformers, but I cringe looking back on that stuff nao and just the totally atrocious writing. OTOH a cartoon like Ghostbusters or Batman TAS holds up well despite shoddy animation thanks in part to guys like JMS and Dini not writing down to anyone.

    Speaking of writing down to kids, Dini has a nice diatribe on fighting with Cartoon Networks execs on just this over on Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast. Well worth the listen.

  3. What is it about childrens’ fables and other icons that prompt us to re-examine them and redefine them with adult sensibilities?

    As we get older we view the stories we’ve read/heard before differently. Seeing them with different eyes is inevitable.

  4. I think the key in why we’re ‘redefining children’s tales for adults’ lies in what we consider children’s tales. Remember the original fairy tales, the ones with dark and horrifying endings? Those were tales for children, but not ones we’d tale children now.

    I think it comes down to the fact that we actually have stories that are simplified, tidied, and sweetened for children, and they resonate with us, but as we grow up, we won’t them to be more.

    You can see that in someone who tulk something as simple as a childlike behemoth causing massive destruction (but no deaths!) and turning it into a complex, psychological tale, one that I still consider one of the top runs of comics ever created.

    Heck, I have a storyline I created for Hank Pym which would have changed the entire Marvel Universe. It’s no longer even plausible, thanks to the Age of Ultron aftermath, but I still love to take it out and play with it – probably because I have such clear memories of reading Pym’s run in Marvel Feature when I was 7 years old, especially Gil Kane’s cover to number 7 (not that I knew who he was back then).

  5. This sort of simplification was just done for the online strip LETHARGIC LAD http://www.lethargiclad.com Even for a comedy strip, stories and plot lines that go back decades can be intimidating for new readers. As writer/artist Greg Hyland explains:

    For a long time I’ve been thinking that I needed a major site redesign, but sometime in March I was talking to a friend, who knows both about comics and marketing, and he suggested I consider restarting Lethargic Lad. He said that while he really liked Lethargic Lad and thought the comics were funny, he found my 20+ year history and backstory to be off-putting and sometimes confusing, and that this might be what’s making it hard to reach new readers and bring them to the strip. Exactly the problems that both Marvel and DC claim they have!

    At first I thought “No way! I’m proud of the history and the relationships my characters have!” But then the more I thought of it, the more I thought he had a good idea.

    “What’s the deal with Hay Man?”

    Well, I explained that in a 1993 issue.

    “Why does Chad wear a bucket on his head?”

    Uh, all part of a joke I did in 1996.

    Yeah, I guess it’s been a while. And even *I* forget some of my reasons for doing things.

    1. My real problem is not the relaunch, but the way they’re done. With DC’s New 52, at least you knew what was coming, though they screwed it up badly by saying 5 years had passed, but then trying to shoehorn in all of Green Lantern and Batman continuity. It’s the same reason there was so much trouble and confusion after Crisis.

      Marvel Now was even worse, since I was a couple of books into it before picking up Hulk and realizing Marvel Now apparently had nothing to do with the Marvel comics I’d been reading the previous month. Since I spent two months picking up a bunch of extra marvel comics to be sure I was up to speed… Well, you can say I was less than happy.

      I can understand wanting to relaunch things so you can have a clean slate. I don’t have a problem with a creator doing that. But if you do it, be fair and let the readers know what’s happening (in real life and the story).

  6. OT: But I needed to vent somewhere.

    I very recently posted on the CBR Spidey forums, and noticed 2 of my innocuous posts were being deleted. Funnily enough I noticed the moderator had just checked my profile, clearly looking at my posting history, (FYI its clean). As a tongue in cheek response, to the deletion I went the opposite direction and did nothing but heap lavish praise on the creator note saying things like “how much i love his work” “under appreciated genius” “we should worship at his altar.” This comment too was deleted and confirmed my theory that for whatever reason (boredom maybe?), the mod Mr. Mets was singling me out.

    An hour later I email him asking very reasonably what warranted that last deletion. Immediately I get banned from the forums for “insulting the creator”. HUH? WHAT? Loving someone’s work and heaping praise is insulting there work? And yes for the record while the praise was tongue in cheek, there was absolutely no way you would know that unless you were the mod who knew why I was lavishing praise on the creator.

    But the biggest admission, is when Mr. Mets decided to ban me retroactively only after emailing him asking why deletions. So clearly they werent worth the ban until after I dared to question him.

    And Im ranting here, but quite frankly what a disgusting petty loathesome creature Mr. Mets is. No wonder the CBR forums is the Complain Bìŧçh Rant site. This whole time I thought it was the posters, shouldve known it started at the top.

  7. PAD queried, What is it about childrens’ fables and other icons that prompt us to re-examine them and redefine them with adult sensibilities?

    A rather unusual question when read today. Given the following: DC’s longest-running Vertigo title at this point, Fables, does EXACTLY that and has been for roughly a dozen years (plus, it’s spun off a couple of series and limited series and OGNs). Then, there’s another company which has, for much of the past 8 or so years, been revisiting those fairy tales and legends, largely by infusing the series with a whole lot of cheesecake. Then, we’ve got a couple of TV series that wouldn’t exist without the concept of “re-examining” those “children’s icons”: Once Upon a Time (and its sort-of spin-offs) and Grimm.

    But, it’s not like it’s really something new. Perhaps a film called “The Company of Wolves” (from 1985) rings a bell? It was largely a “grown-up re-examining” of the Little Red Riding Hood story.

    Also, as Chuck99 notes, most of those “children’s fables” were originally MUCH darker than are currently told (and, we shouldn’t forget that the story of Bluebeard was one of those CLASSIC “children’s fables”–but it’s not exactly the kind of story you’d currently expect to find in a modern child’s book of fairy tales, especially in its original form).

  8. I actually did start reading the Ultimate line because it was an easier entry point…but after some 14 years of stories, the Ultimate line suffers the same problem as the main continuity. Well at least dead characters remain dead, so that’s a bit less confusing than characters who constantly come back to life. The only drawback to making death “permanent” is that once my favorite character died, I just stopped buying the comics.

    On a tangent: I mostly read manga. What I love about manga is that they have a beginning and an end. The “goal” of the manga is a lot more clear cut. For instance I know “Naruto” will end when the title character becomes the leader of his village. The stories are less convoluted because the creative team is the same through the whole run. Now admittedly, some japanese titles run for a VERY long time, but still they end.
    Compare that with american superhero comics: at what point would I consider Spiderman’s story to be over? What’s his character arc supposed to be? The ever changing creative teams have completely different takes on what Spiderman should be fighting against, what he should strive for, and they might undo the changes the last creative team did to the character thereby resetting everything. There is no character growth in american superhero comics, it’s all just a spiral where the character grows then gets sent back to square one and goes through the whole process again, maybe a little bit differently than the last time. This is what frightens me most about american comics: the fact that they could technically go on forever.
    I was thinking that maybe superhero comics should adopt the “greek mythology” format. Each Greek god has their “origin” story, but beyond that, there’s no chronology behind each tale. Like, I don’t know whether Appollo had his son Asclepius before or after he was chasing after Daphne. So for example, if a writer decides to marry off Spiderman, he can do it, as long as he ends the marriage before the next writer comes along. Each run of Spiderman would be a self-contained story and therefore new readers wouldn’t need to know all of Spiderman continuity to jump in.

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