Originally published July 10, 1992
I’ve been thinking…
Which is always a dangerous announcement.
I think I’m starting to realize–or perhaps dread–that the current new crop of comic book “wartists” may not be a simple aberration.
Comic books are presently being produced in which the concept of writing is not only secondary, it borders on irrelevance. Nothing is important aside from what meets the eye. And what meets the eyes is a series of images (so to speak), not always connected or flowing from one panel to the other, with little or not subtext or even a grasp of what subtext is.
Youngblood makes as much sense if you read it straight through without bothering to turn the comic over at the midway point; Spawn, which looks like some of the nicest Frank Miller work ever, is at least decipherable–but still there’s not so much story as big, flashy pictures that are loosely strung together.
Oddly enough, these may sound like criticisms–but in fact, to judge from various interviews with the creators involved, this is precisely what they set out to produce.
This makes a critique tougher. If someone tries to accomplish certain goals, and the critic says “You haven’t achieved it,” then that’s one thing. But the goals of the new crop of wartists are not to produce the types of comics that I’m accustomed to reading…or, for that matter, the type that all the people they cite as influences are in the habit of producing.
That’s why R.C. Harvey’s concise and incisive dissection of Youngblood–as accurate as it was, and I wish to make it clear that I agreed with every word–was also, by and large, irrelevant. It’s difficult to hold the new wartists to a critical standard when, as far as they’re concerned, those criteria don’t apply to them.
In People magazine, for example, Rob Liefeld blithely states that such notions as drawing with an eye towards proper perspective (you know–all lines angling to a single horizon line, that sort of thing) doesn’t factor into his work. He’s something of an anarchist in that regard, we are told. Whether this is because Rob knows correct rules of perspective, anatomy, etc. and simply chooses to ignore them or exaggerate them (which is one thing) or is, in fact, incapable of drawing a proper page of artwork even if you held a gun to his head (which is quite another thing) I don’t really know, and leave for you to judge.
Todd McFarlane, in various places, has stated that he never reads anything, which your average first grade teacher would tell you is absolutely crucial if you want to learn to write. But again it’s irrelevant, because Todd has stated that all that matters is that the page looks good. That is, above everything, what is important. Words, plot structure–all secondary to the pictures.
Why?
Why, I asked myself. Why is it so important to me, but not to them?
It took a long time for me to come to the realization that it was generational. But when I did, what quickly followed was the horrified realization that this might indeed be the wave of the future…which is not a pleasant realization at all.
I hadn’t really been looking at the wartists in terms of generational divisions, because I’m not much than a decade older than the youngest of them. A separation of ten years didn’t seem to me, at first glance, to be such an insurmountable gulf.
I mean, it simply wasn’t, to me, the same thing as when my father would be shaking his head in disbelief to the music of the Beatles or the Stones and saying, “That’s not music; that’s just noise.” The same way that I now look at the wartists’ work and say basically the same thing, except substitute “a story” for “music” and “pictures” for “noise.”
My God…am I my father so quickly?
Part of what got me thinking along these lines was Don Simpson’s “Oh So” letter. By and large it was silly (Don didn’t mention, for instance, that one of the creators engaged in the heinous game of betting against Image’s long-term existence was Jim Lee, who bet $5 Image wouldn’t make it a year; this all happened on Compuserv, and Jim’s wager should give an indication of just how seriously people were taking it. Just for the record, I stayed out of it) but what intrigued me was Don’s equating being concerned with traditional story-telling rules to something as quaint and old-fashioned as a bingo game.
Don may very well have put his finger on precisely what was eluding my understanding. The wartists, despite the relative closeness in years to many of their elders (certainly less than the traditional two decades) really, truly, are representing a new generation of creators.
But why, I wondered. What is it that caused such a drastic difference in priorities in a relatively short amount of time.
One of the most often cited influences has been MTV. I think that’s part of it, certainly. No longer was music appreciated for its lyrics and melodies; with the advent of MTV, songs were defined by the visuals. If heard subsequently on radio, the images that come to a listener’s mind are no longer pulled from their own experience. Instead the listener envisions the “definitive” version they saw on television.
But I don’t think MTV did it singlehandedly. You know what I think did it?
“Sesame Street.”
“Sesame Street” has been around for over two decades. It hit the airwaves at a time when most of the wartists (present day, and up-and-coming) were young enough to be influenced by it (whereas I was already a teenager, far more interest in females than large yellow birds).
“Sesame Street,” with its hypnotic high-speed technique, presented youngsters when they were at their most impressionable with a barrage of images. Its message was anti-intellectualism, anti-thought, anti-patience. Numbers and letters flew at young viewers, assaulting their senses.
The short-term gains were tremendous. Parents were thrilled that their children, at age 3, could recite the alphabet or count to ten. It gave them bragging rights. The fact that a parrot could be taught to perform in a similar manner was not taken into consideration.
This put teachers into a tough position. In the traditional school setting, teachers would spend anywhere from a quarter of an hour to a half hour on a given subject, teaching the kids to think and understand things before they utilized them. “Sesame Street” taught kids to put up fingers in sequence and say “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10” before the fully grasped the notion of greater and lesser quantities.
Oh, eventually they would understand–either from school, or by continuing to watch “Sesame Street” and eventually garnering comprehension from some of the longer sketches. Nevertheless the cart had already been put before the horse, and kids were clutching on for dear life.
The creators of “Sesame Street” understood that, before you teach a child something, you have to get his or her attention. The rapid-fire imaging did that. Fine. No problem. Once the attention is caught, it can have very positive value if the avenues are broadened: If parents watched “Street” with their kids, or read to them, then that’s beneficial–using “Street” as a building block. But parents who simply used the show as a hypnotic babysitter (“Here, watch Cookie Monster. Mommy’s busy.”) leave the kids to dwell on the superficiality only. And kids who want all learning processes to be like that machine-gun introduction are going to be frustrated.
And once they were out of the “Sesame Street” years, the “Street” generation could then graduate, yes, to MTV and videos, where it was no longer necessary to do the most fundamental job of appreciating music–namely listen to it. Music was no longer for listening to, which requires thought. Music was for looking at, and looking requires no thought at all. Appreciation requires thought, but with the “Sesame Street”/MTV generation, there wasn’t time or interest in that–information and visuals came so quickly that there simply wasn’t the opportunity to assimilate and understand. Opportunity? Hëll, it wasn’t even possible–the mental equipment wasn’t there.
Fast forward now to the era of the wartists. We have creators drawing without truly knowing anatomy; “writers” producing stories without any comprehension, or even interest in the foundations of story structure. Creators with no patience for the basics, and even outright disdain.
There’s nothing linear about “Sesame Street”–it’s a hodgepodge with no structure. There’s nothing linear about MTV–it’s one thing after another, with one thing no more important than the next. And with the emphasis of a series of cool images over the notion of a clear, cohesive story, there is nothing linear about the work of the wartists.
My (dear lord) generation would sit in front of the TV for an hour and watch a one-hour dramatic program. Heaven knows it might not have been good drama, but at least it made an attempt at having a beginning, middle and end. The thought of watching an hour of fast-moving pictures that required the attention span of a gnat would have been alien to me. But for the next flight of viewers, it’s the norm.
It’s not limited simply to comic books. Not only did “Miami Vice” make a big deal of incorporating MTV-style editing into the show, but now we have a new series called “Grapevine” which takes it one step further. Not a scene in “Grapevine” exceeds 90 seconds; most of them average around ten seconds as the characters talk to the viewer in rapid succession with the flimsy story ping-ponging all over the place.
There there are the readers of hypertext webs on computers can read stories that are nothing remotely like standard narrative. In web works such as Michael Joyce’s “afternoon”, the reader can jump all over the place, keying off whatever catches their interest in the narrative, and going off on tangents based on single words or phrases that–when highlighted–cue up entire related texts. It’s the ideal work for people who are unable to focus and pay attention to anything. You don’t even know for sure when, or if, you’ve finished with it.
It used to be that the work being read was the entertainment. No longer. Now the act of reading alone becomes the entertainment. We’re taken yet another step away from being able to think about something as a whole. Ideally, readers of hypertext should be able to assimilate all the strands and weave it together into something coherent. That’s the ideal, of course.
Granted, non-linear books and movies are nothing new. Woody Allen did it with “Annie Hall”; James Joyce did it with “Finnegan’s Wake.” But one must believe that they thoroughly understood the rules before the trashed them–and besides, their body of work was designed to make you think.
Are the wartists concerned about the notion of embracing the “What-you-see-is-what-you-get” philosophy and making it paramount? Not at all. Because not only is it what they set out to do, but they also point to the unprecedented sales figures and say, in essence, “Ha ha, see? We’re right. We’re the wave of the future, because our sales are so strong.” As if commercial success ultimately proves anything. If we keep with that logic, then “Basic Instinct” is a much better film than “The Maltese Falcon” because it’s made so much more money.
Never mind the thought of producing something that will last. The “now” is everything. As long as it makes money now, as long as it appeals to the commercial consciousness now, as long as it’s a success now, then that’s all that matters. Cream rises to the top, and wartists perceives themselves as the cream. This ignores the fact, however, that it’s milk that builds bones.
The world is hurtling forward at breakneck pace, and the new wave of wartists and their work is only the latest manifestation of a society that values immediate dissemination of information over everything else. Don’t dwell on anything. Don’t think about anything. Simply look and move on, because something’s going to be coming along in the very next second, and if you blink, you’ll miss it.
I’m certain, by the way, that there will be people who read this piece and view it as simply an attack on everyone involved with Image (which it’s not) instead of an overview of the elements of society that helped form a new breed of audience and creators with wildly different priorities than their predecessors. If the former conclusion is what you draw, then I’ll bet that either you’re under 30…or that you wish you were. Youngblood versus a bingo game? Well, I’ve read Youngblood. And I’ve played bingo. And if you ask me which provides more intellectual stimulation, my response is: N 32.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, says hi to everyone he met at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, and will also meet and greet folks at the Chicago Comic Con over the July 4th weekend. Autograph lines will not be linear, but instead cross-hatched.)
• 
I think this is alot like the comment you made months ago that there are hardly any stories told in a single issue of a comic anymore.
I remember some of the batman comics of the 90’s were great for having a great story in one issue.
Many comics now are nearly 30 pages of one page frames with hardly any story to them.
And the idea is to at least stretch the story into 6 issues to get a graphic novel.
My point though is that people will buy anything, but they will return to the comics with great writing in them.
Even if its from 20 years ago, Watchmen, Dark Knight returns, Kingdom Come, and anything by PAD.
On your comment on tv series, I don’t even watch tv anymore, I just watch the boxed sets.
Watch one, then start another. Since 24 most series stretch a good story rather then have many good stories in a series.
This hurts the show since many people will not watch it on tv, but instead hope that others are watching it and get it on dvd.
Basically people enjoy visuals, but remember stories.
Conor.
Age 49 here, but I must admit I disagree with your thesis. At the time Sesame Street has the most influence, most kids aren’t really capable of sustaining long narratives. In fact, Sesame Street‘s structure leans heavily toward creating little stories, so it actually reinforces the notion of narrative.
There are also far too many people willing to go to a movie for 2-1/2, 3 hours these days. Or sit down with a few anime DVDs. Or the newest George R. R. Martin novel.
Or the collected Civil War/OMD/whatever.
My own suspicion is that the biggest problem is one of the oldest carny bits there is: trying to boost short-term popularity by going for Gosh Wow. So many things I see in modern comics seem to be based on the perception that “everything’s been done”, so all there is left is to blow it up and maybe do it over — but THIS time it’ll be REALLY cool! Or somethin’.
There are almost no comics created in the past ten years that I go back to. The ones I do were written by Mark Waid or Joe Straczynski or you, and they have stories with characters I care about. Really great art is nice… but storytelling is all.
One thing you haven’t mentioned is the overall reception for those books. I haven’t been keeping up with sales figures, nor the many online forums for critical reaction. What I have noticed — and this stems from the days of Jim Shooter and Assistant Editors’ Month — is that the Big Two, at least, seem inexplicably uninterested in how their fans react to the big uber-mega-maxi-mondo storylines.
Some people get those comics, even the ones they don’t like, because they must buy some comics, and all they have to choose from are the ones out there. But I truly think those numbers are dwindling, especially in the face of the very thing you decry: the internet. There are so many possible choices for entertainment now that we no longer need to rely on what our Designated Companies will Marvel us with.
Of course, I could be utterly full of it. Wouldn’t be the first time. 😉
Geez, talk about an artifact of its time. No way would this article be written today, since the whole “wartist” thing has passed out into the night. Or just passed out.
But the comics writer has become prominent in the field again. I can’t even think of a wartist beyond John Byrne currently working with any prominence. Most of the well-known comics writers nowadays can’t draw a lick: Mark Waid, Brian Michael Bendis, Dan Slott, Kurt Busiek, Greg Rucka, and our own topic host, among others.
Just to point out, although he isn’t doing so these days, Brian Michael Bendis actually started as a “wartist.”
I respectfully disagree, for the most part. It’s true that the junk comics based primarily on art are largely gone, but so is the audience that purchased them.
.
Instead, we have comics that are quicker to read. Writers are stretching their stories out, giving them less dialogue in fewer panels which have grown in size. In some cases the pacing is an intentional manipulation (Grant Morrison) and adds to the story. In most, it is simply done to make things easier on the reader. While some will argue that a proper comic should be easy on the eye, there is also merit to slowing down the reader’s pace (Watchmen would not have the epic, reflective atmosphere it did were it told at today’s neck-breaking pace). And at $4 a pop! I have been spending a lot of my money in the dollar bin these days.
.
Short attention spanned America is probably more of a societal issue than it was back when this article was written. Kids have even poorer language skills, shorter attention spans, and absolutely no ability to delay gratification. Sure they can sit through four hours of Lord of the Rings, but can they same four hours reading a book (Harry Potter excluded, for reasons I won’t go into here)?
And while John Byrne may be working I would say the idea he’s currently got any prominance is highly debatable.
Interesting. I’m not sure I entirely agree, though. I grew up with Sesame Street (it premiered when I was a year old, so literally grew up with it, and Electric Company, and so on). I do have trouble sitting through an hour long drama, or a movie without explosions, but I have even less patience with half-hour comedies.
However, I can cheerfully sit down with a novel for several hours and not even notice the time passing. In fact I demand more from my printed material than the junk on television. And that includes comic books (I love The Umbrella Academy, Fables, the current Madame Xanadu and other non-traditional comic books). Rob Liefield and Tod MacFarlane are high on the list of comic book ‘creators’ that I avoid.
Mind you, my mother would say that the disconnect between what I can stand in a film/tv show and what I demand in a book comes from the fact that about the time I was starting chapter books, we moved to a small town in the Netherlands, where there were few television channels, and they didn’t show anything before about 4/5 pm, including on weekends, and only some British shows with dutch subtitles (Dr Who and The Muppet Show are the ones I remember best). And no kids in the neighbourhood my age who spoke English.
When we moved there, I was reading Little Golden books. When we moved back to Canada, three years later, I had two Barbara Cartlands and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island for on the plane.
So maybe Sesame Street affected my ability to sit through television, but my years in Europe made me an avid reader.
Sesame Street is anti-intellectual?
.
Sorry, that sounds completely backwards. I don’t buy the argument about kids only repeating numbers like parrots without actually understanding them. Repetition isn’t that different from what teachers do, unless the alphabet song we all learned had hidden subtleties I didn’t notice. Was “Now I know my ABCs, won’t you come and play with me,” some big plot twist?
.
Obviously I agree that parents should watch the show with their kids, but that’s true of any show. The parents who might dump their kids in front of Cookie Monsters would dump their kids in front of Power Rangers if Sesame Street had never existed. It doesn’t make sense to blame a particular show for something that happens with or without the show.
.
The argument definitely hasn’t held up over time. The big comics from 1992 may have been made by people who grew up on Sesame Street and don’t care about stories, but the big comics of today are made by people who grew up on Sesame Street and love stories.
.
Why were the wartists so big at the time and why did they all happen at once? It was a trend. They were always around, just not in vogue before then. Once one hit big, companies and readers decided they should give those artists priority. Then it faded. Trying to say it’s a generation of comic makers raised with a particular TV show is like saying that the current fad of belly shirts comes from a generation of shirt designers watching Law and Order for the last 20 years.
Speaking as a member of the Sesame Street generation (I was reading before I was three–Kathy can tell you all about it) I have to say that you are barking up the wrongest tree you could possibly be barking up.
It has nothing to do with Sesame Street. I don’t think it even has anything to do with a generational shift.
Anybody with a passing knowledge of how the brain works knows that the right side generally handles the visual and the left side the verbal. And while we all make use of both sides, over time the neural pathways we utilize the most get reinforced and the ones we use less get pruned away. I think these artists who have little interest in writing have developed the visual parts of their brains–particularly the parts that allow one to draw–and let the verbal portions atrophy in comparison. (Not to the point that they can’t communicate at all, obviously, but apparently to the point that they can’t put together a coherent narrative.)
I’m primarily a writer. I still can’t draw much beyond stick figures. I would like to learn at some point, but because I’ve spent so much time Not Drawing, it’s downright uncomfortable sometimes when I do try to draw. I wouldn’t be surprised if these artists had a similar discomfort when trying to write beyond the verbal equivalent of ‘stick figures’ and we all know it’s much easier to declare the grapes sour than to find a way to reach the vine.
It’s actually a little bizarre commenting on these old stories. It feels unfair to point out things that have happened in the last 17 years, since I’m arguing with hindsight against a version of PAD who doesn’t have that advantage.
.
PAD, any chance you could give us a quick update about how you feel about this article now?
Um, Keith, not to be argumentative or anything, but Bendis was a wartist prior to his landing at Marvel. In his indie days, on books like TORSO, JINX, FIRE and probably others I’m forgetting, he drew the stories he wrote. You might argue that he wasn’t much of an artist (beauty in the eye of the beholder, and all that) but the fact is, he did draw. It’s only since coming to Marvel that he appears to have abandoned that in favor of “just” writing.
Wartist sounds like an artist who goes to war. In my opinion writist sounds like a better term, but what do I know.
1992 was the year I started reading comics. Almost exclusively DC comics until somebody introduce me to Image in early 1993. I remember a friend who was an artist who loves image comics and though McFarlene, Lee and Silvestry were gods. He did not care for the storys. Others though they were going to get rich selling Image comics in the future.
I lost interest very fast and went back to reading Knightfall, Reign of the Supermen, Emerald Twilight, Zero Hour and all the other DC stuff was putting out at the time because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I cared about those characters and silly me I though those changes were going to be permanent and I was reading a part of comic history. At the same time I wanted to know what happend before so I bougth a lot of back issues. I discovered Batman Year One, The Man of Steel and a lot others.
The first time I heard of PAD was Spiderman 2099 #1 around that time(which I still have).
I can’t decide who’s worse: Liefeld, who has no grasp of anatomy and doesn’t believe in feet or spines…or Greg Land, whose art consists of flat-out tracing and people have PROVED it’s tracing and he traces his OWN traces and SERIOUSLY COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THIS GUY HAS A JOB AFTER SO MANY EXAMPLES OF HIS TRACING HAVE BEEN DISSEMINATED THROUGHOUT THE NET ARRRGH
…well, you know where I stand, anyway.
People like the results. There’s a large group of people out there who just like the results and don’t care what his sources are.
.
It’s like hot dogs. Try to tell someone what’s actually in a hot dog and they’re likely to stop you and say that they don’t want to know because they want to keep eating them.
Queen, the best example imo of why Liefeld should never be employed as an artist again is from one of his drawings of Captain America. It was a profile of Cap with his head turned toward the reader. And yet, his chest was not equal, but the left side actually stood out further than the right side. Maybe I’d have to find the pic, but it was one of the most mind-boggling pieces of art involving terribly drawn anatomy that I can recall.
.
And, yeah, Land is a hack.
He is very good at tracing. If you buy one comic he drew it seens good at first. Nice drawings. The fact that its of semi naked women is not exactly a disadvantage either. But if you read more than one comic you start to realize that it’s just the same beautiful semi-naked women over and over. And they don’t seem to do much except pose for the camera. The story, such as it is takes a back seat to the constant sexualy explicit posing. Then you realize that, with all due respect to sexualy explicit images of semi-naked women, you actually read comics for the story.
Jason–you do have a point there about debating with hindsight. But, in some ways, I suppose that’s the fun of it, seeing how things came out between then and now.
Though I think I would have been just as unconvinced by the Sesame Street argument, for pretty much the same reasons.
I’m sure I would have been unconvinced, but at least I wouldn’t have been cheating. 🙂
Actually, I do have a reason to be more defensive about Sesame Street than I would have been then. I’ve been watching a lot of Plaza Sesamo the last few months. That’s the Mexican franchise of Sesame Street.
.
I’ve been watching it for the same reason kids do, to learn words and such, just in Spanish this time. It’s a strange thing to repeat the process of being a little kid as an adult. I’ve found that the show isn’t always as educational as I’d like, but it’s definitely not detrimental and “anti-intellectual.”
I just had to laugh when you said in reference to Rob Liefeld
.
“incapable of drawing a proper page of artwork”
.
because it is still true today, 17 years later.
Ye gods, I was 19 when that was originally published. My movie was still a novel only on it’s second iteration.
Rob Liefeld is not my favorite either but I hate it when people constantly beat up on him. If you don’t like his work, don’t buy it. And blaming this on Sesame Street? This is a joke, right?
With a little help from my mom and dad, Sesame Street taught me how to read and count. More importantly, it gave me positive black role models on TV, not to mention an appreciation and even an EXPECTATION for diversity. I’m glad that it’s still on the air so that other children can learn from it.
Byron, I don’t buy it.
.
In fact, I discovered that I had a comic book with his art in it, so I destroyed it to purge the anger from my system.
.
And Liefeld is still not an artist–he’s merely a huckster with delusions of being significant.
Yeah, the Liefeld bashing does get old. There are worse artists out there, but I think he gets singled out because of the level of fame and success he’s achieved. It’s the Dan Brown syndrome.
I see the appeal, but I think he’s gotten worse over the years. I see the same facial expressions over and over and over again when I look at his work. That’s not a style issue, that’s variety an and “acting” issue.
I don’t have an issue with the perspective problems, or his legendary inability to draw wrists. I’ve heard the same people who rag on Liefeld for anatomy talk about how wonderful Ramos is, and I hate Romos’ style. Liefeld doesn’t do wrists because he doesn’t want to, so even if I don’t like how it looks, that’s his style. So people like it, so okay.
Byron,
ITEM: Sesame Street did a lot of good things, and I have no problem with it – but I never did think of it in the perspective that PAD puts on it. I mean, look at it this way – if you take an episode of Sesame Street, you could start watching it at ANY TIME during the show, and lose nothing about it (save that which you didn’t see.) You can’t apply the same to a lot of other shows. Take an episode of Mash, or Scrubs, or Star Trek, or Lost (well, maybe not Lost… 🙂 and if you don’t see it from the start, you can’t get it – because there’s a story, continuing points that contribute to a plot, and an evolution of some type.
The corollary to that is that parents who use the TV as an electronic replacement for attention to their children should not be parents (figuratively, not literally, pals and gals.) Sesame Street taught the basics; a parent who built on that was the one who got the message.
ITEM: Why pick on Rob Liefeld? Because, as noted, he’s popular and he’s thus a good example of everything that a LOT of other artists do that’s as bad, or even worse – but not subject to public scrutiny. I could say that I HATE the acting of the guy who played Capone in “Night at the Museum 2” as a sample of how bad theater and movies are these days (for example only – I don’t hate his acting, just an example, hold your water gang) – but if I instead say that I hate Brad Pitt’s acting, it’s a little better reference because more people are familiar with it.
Or to quote a phrase I once heard – the crowd doesn’t boo nobodies.
I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
The Silver Age Fogey
x<]:o){
P.S. I have no real contentions with Brad Pitt or Jon Bernthal’s acting – but boy, that Liefeld has no idea of how to draw. Now, if he sticks to pin-ups and posters, I can avoid those a lot eaiser.
Ah the Image columns. These were the reasons I bought the But I Digress… collection, and why I became a regular weekly reader of CBG. Personally, I think it’d be cool to run these with the historical notes that ran in the collection.
There may be some truth to the column’s thesis, but keep in mind that the person one grows into is not nature or nurture alone, but the interactivity between the two. Sesame Street and MTV’s influence are limited. It can have some effect, yes, but how much, and across what swath of the demographic is unclear. I grew up on Sesame Street, as did a number of artists of the Image founders’ generation, and they didn’t develop the sam creative sensibilities. These pop cultural influences are interacted with character traits that were likely inherent.
Byron Dunn: Rob Liefeld is not my favorite either but I hate it when people constantly beat up on him.
Luigi Novi: Who’s beaten up on him?
“Wartist” sounds like a type of dermatologist.
I think that’s very interesting, Peter. I would agree that today’s image-driven society has lost a large part of its narrative sense. I am significantly under 30 years old, but I grew up on a ranch, with no television, reading only books, and I certainly grew to love “story.” But more than that I love the poetic combination of brilliant visual style to compliment utterly engaging narrative driven by the endless power of words!
I don’t follow comics much, but such pop culture milestones as “Lost,” “Harry Potter,” “The Dark Tower” give me hope! I would love to be one of THIS generation’s voices to steer us back to the power of STORY.
This is my first time posting here, but I must say that my two biggest influences growing up were you (Peter David) and Stephen King. My early attempts at writing always seemed to try to find the balance between you two. But the interesting thing is – is that when I read your books (“Strike Zone” my first Trek read), I was always given the most amazing visual sense! I think that is one of the byproducts of such wonderful writing – the visual sense that, in a way, makes you believe you’re watching a movie. I never got that from other Trek writers, so much – maybe Greg Cox.
I’d love to be the man to combine the two in today’s cinema.
http://www.shanezeranski.com
I started reading this, but it’s soooooo long. I liked the first few paragraphs, though.
Maybe if you serialized it over a week or so.
Or added pictures.
Or music.
Or animated it.
That looks like a fascinating article, but I couldn’t be bothered to read all of it.
Yeh. MayB if U added big pecs, big tits & big guns 2 it.
http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html
That list will cover all that for you and more, Luigi. 😉
“…C is for Comics… that’s good enough for me…” 🙂
PAD,
The result — a growing number not interested and/or able to follow a complex story (or argument) — is very true. The cause, of course, is open for debate. But I must say you make a very compelling case.
I have dabbled a little in reading other theories surrounding our post modern culture, and suspect Sesame Street is as much a result of these changes as it is a cause. But I also suspect it has an (obviously unintended) influence that we may only now begin to grasp.
I grew up on books, not TV, so perhaps that is why I am different than my fellow genX generation. But some of the ideas of there being no meta-narrative came from somewhere and it does have an impact on our society.
Iowa Jim
Yeah, anatomy and perspective are overrated. I find it highly hilarious that Liefeld’s career went down the toilet once people finally wised up to him being a hack. Even with those giant splash pages, once he and McFarlane left the regimented discipline of having an editor, both of them quickly quit producing work after falling behind so far with their schedules. As far as growth and development that goes with producing your work, neither of these men has shown any, McFarlane still draws uneralistically large capes and Liefeld still refuses to draw with any semblance of anatomical correctness. His last work I saw (Heroes Reborn-Liefeld’s Return, or whatever it was called) didn’t have a single background in it (go look if you don’t believe me) and couldn’t even ship on time still! My basic point is a hack is as a hack does. Thankfully we have seen a return to story as the driving force behind the comic (at least in most books). This is not to take away from some of the beutiful art that creators still produce, but the books are more balanced.
It’s funny you mention MTV. I did a college paper back in the mid-late 80’s entitled “MTV: The end of America’s imagination” citing the exact same things you mention here. No longer did people come up with their own images when hearing a song, but rather they would see only what the video had put forth, which, from the artists standpoint is fine (as I would presume they wanted anyone listening to see what they felt the song was about), but for a active engagement of one’s imagination, is absolutely smothering.
Is MTV linear now?
And I’d agree that just about any bit of children’s television, with some glaring exceptions could be used as a beneficial or educational factor if watched with a parent or a mentor figure, an older sibling, for example, and supremely damaging as a baby-sitter.
On the other hand, hypnotistic injection of sequences may work. This is not my typical line of study.
This is probably complete heresy for me to say, considering my line of work and what’s sitting on my demo page, but I really don’t like music videos. With the possible exception of some of the hotter female singers, I don’t need to see the performers.
Quite by accident, although I’ll take all the credit for it in the world, my son and I usually talk at length about stories he’s seen on TV. Avatar, MBC, Martin Mystery, Danny Phantom–he’ll come up with all kinds of story questions and “Why didn’t this character do THIS?” questions. However, when it’s after 11 pm and he’s STILL coming up with questions, THEN it’s not such a good thing.
I was thumbing through the expanded edition of The Stand the other day. Would that or Tolkien or their ilk sell today? I think so.
I thought it was strange that Peter David would criticise artists who can’t handle perspective. Why would you keep working with Larry Stroman? I don’t know if he’s even heard of perspective. (Look at those earliest issues of X-Factor– the first time around– It’s some of the worst art I’ve seen.) Fortunately, I pay much more attention to the story than the art. And even when the plot is a weak one, as it sometimes is, a Peter David story always has the greatest dialogue.