I was about to refer you folks to comicbookresources.com where there’s a nice article about “Fallen Angel,” complete with more artwork from issue #1. And there, on the same page, is a diatribe from Erik Larsen that angrily scolds creators who merely work on company-owned characters rather than on characters they themselves own–which, technically when you get down to it, includes Lee, Kirby, Ditko, Buscema, etc., since everything they created was company owned…just as any characters created for those same titles now are company owned. Yet in the world of Erik Larsen, creators who labor only in the company owned field are “pûššìëš,” resting on their “fat áššëš” and failing to “show (Erik) what (they’ve) got.”
Now I haven’t bothered with Larsen’s previous columns, despite his swipes at me (and his oh-so-clever use of “But I digress” for transitions.) But the combination of blind irony and blatant hypocrisy on this one, I just have to address…
Over ten years ago, when Image broke away to follow their own muse, their own dream, to no longer “hold back,” I wrote a column which had something of the same tone to it. Except my attitude was that I was unimpressed by the notion that–freed of the shackles of the main companies–all Image was going to do was produce more superheroes. Putting aside questions of ownership, I pondered whether the superhero-choked marketplace really needed MORE superheroes. My feeling was that, if I was going to do creator-owned stuff and had the wherewithal to do whatever I wanted, introducing yet more superheroes would be the furthest thing from my mind.
(This is an attitude that I have backed up in my career. “Sachs & Violens,” “Soulsearchers and Company,” “Fallen Angel,” plus my novel creations such as “Sir Apropos of Nothing” are nothing like my other comic book work.)
Well sir! There was much excoriation and bleats from the Image boys, attributing all manner of vicious motivations to my comments. Superheroes were what made them happy. Superheroes were what they wanted to do?
Okay. Fine.
Yet now Erik is expressing disappointment with the allegedly narrow field of achievement of other creators in terms far more nasty, juvenle and insulting than anything I ever said. Except his complaints apparently stem not from the quality of the work so much as who owns it. If someone else owns the material, apparently, then you’re just not trying hard enough and you’re a wimp and pussy. Which I’m sure will come as a shock to the army of acclaimed Oscar-winning screenwriters who haven’t owned any scripts they’ve written, ever.
What POSSIBLE motivation could Larsen have for excoriating those who toil in the realm of company owned universes? Could it be…jealousy? Well, let’s check his recent track record: A widely decried and short-lived run on “Aquaman” that seemed to exist primarily to tear down my work on the book, all of which outsold his…and an attempt to get assigned to the Hulk with a take that Marvel didn’t want to touch with a ten meter cattle prod. Maybe he’s the fox dismissing those grapes as just too dámņëd sour.
Or maybe he’s just shilling for Image, with “Show me what you can do” as a naked attempt to get people to bring their potential new series to Image. That being the case, fine. Nothing wrong with trying to drum up business. But why does it have to be done on the level of a mindless jock? I’d say that being the head of a publishing concern and acting like a jáçkášš isn’t the smartest way to elicit support, but certainly the lesson of Bill Jemas has already been learned by everyone. Well…almost everyone.
Know what I think? I think if people are happy writing only Spider-Man or Superman or Batman or whatever…God bless ’em. There are so many people in this country who are laboring at jobs that they despise, where the hëll does ANYONE get off bìŧçh-šláppìņg people who are living out their dreams…the dreams of writing the characters they grew up with? And by the way, having the sheer nerve and determination to brave the staggering odds of breaking in to be able to achieve those goals deserves far more than a dismissive “peachy.” It deserves a “well done you” and “welcome to the club” and “stick with it.” It doesn’t deserve snottiness and arrogance and the towel-snapping bullying of the jock mentality Larsen displays with such facility.
And how about the notion that the people who achieved their goal of crafting new directions for the DCU or Marvel Universe achieved their current station in life without stepping over the bodies of friends in order to do so.
Producing creator-owned superhero tales is what makes Erik Larsen happy. Producing company owned superhero tales is what makes other creators happy. One is not intrinsically more cowardly than the other.
Just one fan’s opinion.
PAD
• 
Jacob: Hey Luigi, next time you pull quotes from me, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t just pull a tiny snippet of what I wrote. What you essentially did was smear me out of context and I don’t appreciate your follow up with an allusion to racism. Also adding the N-word was a tad-bit strong to prove your disagreeing point. If you don’t agree with me in any shape or fashion, fine, but what I wrote reflected how this recent commentary wasn’t as offensive to his past ones. I wasn’t implying it was equally harmless.
Luigi Novi: I did not “smear” you, nor take anything out of context, nor make any “allusion” to racism. I simply disagreed with your argument, because it implied (to me at the time) that only calling someone out by name is a bad thing, which I disagree with. Yeah, I know you were making a comparison to his past columns, but again, so what? That’s not the basis on which people here are reacting to this recent one. I myself have never even read his other columns, as his exchange with Peter in the letter pages of Savage Dragon shows him incapable of forming a coherent argument, and I would imagine that many others here don’t read his other columns either. The only basis, therefore, on which people such as myself reacted to this column was the wrongness of what he did say, not what he did not. Just because I didn’t address the specific comparison you brought up doesn’t mean that I decontextualized anything, much less “smeared” you. If you came away with that, however, I apologize.
Whune: It’s quite ignorant of you lot to focus on the hypocrisy, or irony: a bloody convenient way to ignore the truth of what he is saying, even if it scathingly applies to him just as much as many others.
Luigi Novi: The problem with columns like his is that if there is any “truth” to it, it is poorly conveyed, and in writing, how you convey your message is at least as important as the message itself. There’s nothing ignorant about “focusing” on the fact that Larsen insulted good, hard-working people simply because they didn’t take the same career path as he did (especially considering that not many creators have had the luxury—or luck—of having the opportunity to take that particular path). What’s ignorant about pointing out that his column was littered with profane, unprofessional insults and overly judgmental comments at a large group of people who’ve done nothing wrong?
Whune: The thing is, I’m pretty sure Larsen would agree that he isn’t blameless, or clean himself, but a ranting confessional would be pointless; and to be honest you are just as guilty of pointing out things you your self are guilty of, its called being human.
Luigi Novi: And who says the column has to be a “ranting confessional”? A simply qualifier inserted at times into his statements would take care of that, something like “Now I myself have done work-for-hire at the Big Two, even after my success as a creator-owned writer/artist, but….” Instead, the entirety of the column is simply him attacking creators repeatedly simply because they don’t do creator-owned stuff, as if that’s somehow a bad thing.
And as far as us “being guilty of pointing out things that we ourselves are guilty of,” what does that mean? Can you elaborate on this?
Whune: Personally I ignored the hypocrisy, and let it inspire me. I think most of you are mad because he’s talking about you, deep down you know you are taking the easy way.
Luigi Novi: You’re saying the people on this board are themselves comic creators doing work-for-hire for the Big Two? Obviously, that’s not true, so this accusation makes little sense.
Peter David … I think if the series had aired in the order it was supposed to and the train robbery story had never been done, it wouldn’t have left quite such a bad taste in people’s mouths.)
Luigi Novi: Glad I only saw the entire series recently on DVD. I got to see it in the right order, and it primed me for the movie, which I saw last night. 🙂
“If you’ve got interstellar travel that’s cheap enough for freelancers to afford, there’s no such thing as an out-of-the-way colony.”
What gives you the impression that interstellar travel in Serenity’s ‘verse is cheap? Maybe the fuel actually is, but I get the impression that the ships aren’t, given the fact that not everyone has one. And that for some worlds, the ship becomes the first settlement building of the colony. Who knows how Mal and others afford their ships? Mal’s a veteran of at least one conflict…he could have “acquired” some loot during one of his tours. He’s the son of a rancher…could have sold his family plot for the cash. And not like Serenity is exactly state of the art, either, so it wouldn’t have fetched top dollar when he bought it.
As to cheap travel being the answer to supplies, just look at the world today. Why is there starvation all over the world today, when it’s a simple matter of transporting excess food?
The original Star Wars had huge western elements, right down to the bar fight. “Unforgiven,” on the other hand, could easily be shifted to an outer space venue without a hitch. A lot of SF is westerns with blasters instead of guns. “Firefly” was just more honest about it (although the network-imposed train robbery story that launched it was a bit too on-the-nose for me. I think if the series had aired in the order it was supposed to and the train robbery story had never been done, it wouldn’t have left quite such a bad taste in people’s mouths.)
And if Lucas had given Han Solo a six shooter and had him speak in double negatives like Mal did, then Star Wars would have been too “on the nose” for.
Fox’s decision to skip the pilot episode in favor of the train robbery as the debut story always puzzled me. Of course, I remember them screwing with the order of episodes of Sliders, too. But this case seemed pretty strange given that the commercials building up to the show kept mentioning a “girl in a box” and yet we never saw River being smuggled in the box until they finally aired the pilot as the very last episode of the series.
The primary purpose of the train robbery was to set up future confrontations with the crime boss, but it was still a fairly weak episode to lead with and it did color many people’s perceptions of the series in general.
Still, I plan on giving Serenity a fair chance in the theater.
I was thinking just today how weird it would have been to check into the premiere of Firefly and see the Train Job. Skipping the whole issue of showing how Book, Simon, and River came to be aboard Serenity, Train Job just doesn’t carry enough of the themes and ideas Joss wanted to explore in the show that the pilot did.
Having seen the movie twice now, I highly recommend it. Unless you totally hated Firefly, or think that Whedon’s vision of the future will distract you too much from the movie, I’d say you’d have to be a big fan of crap to not enjoy Serenity. It provides you with all the background information you need in order to enjoy the story and characters. Having seen the Firefly DVDs will only add depth.
And for those that have a different opinion on whether viewers need the backstory or not, consider that when Star Wars was released, all you got by way of introduction was the Giant Scrolling “previously….” That didn’t seem to interfere too much with audiences following the plot, or getting into the characters.
And you have no idea how difficult it was getting “Apropos” sold. Why? Because publisher after publisher said the same thing: “Peter’s fans aren’t interested in reading anything that’s entirely his creation.” I was going out of my mind. I’d get these rejection notices saying there was no market for wholly original concepts of mine, and in the meantime I’d get constant e-mails from fans saying, “When are you going to write stuff that’s your own work?”
Here is my two cents worth: I always am interested in other books by an author I know. I am glad they published your other works (such as Sir Apropos). However, I have not liked all of them. And that is fine. I personally think it is far more diffiuclt to take an established character, especially one locked into a universe where very little can really change, and to write consistently interesting stories. As you said with Aquaman versus Fallen Angel, you are working with far more restrictions when dealing with DC, Marvel, Star Trek, etc. My respect for your ability to weave in random past contintuity into new stories is huge. You have an ability to take the best of those worlds and create new stories that delve into what makes the characters tick. Very, very few writers know how to do this.
The problem with writing your own new creations is overcoming fan expectations. It is like meeting an actor you loved in a role. It can be hard to separate the two. He or she is not the same in real life. It can be unsettling to learn that the actor is nothing like the role he or she plays (even though this would be a rather obvious fact).
In the same way, I sometimes find authors who write for an established universe too different when they write their own. I did not like Fallen Angel or Apropos, but that does not mean they were poorly written, etc. (My best attempt to explain why is that there is a cynicism underlying these works that I disagree with. There is not the type of redemptive theme I look for in a book.) I am glad others have enjoyed them. I enjoy some Orson Scott Card and Stephen R. Donaldson and Terry Brooks that others don’t. I do think I know PAD better through his own works than through Hulk or Spider-man or Star Trek. And I will try other new things PAD tries (especially books) since he has shown such a wide range of stories. So by all means keep doing new things (as long as you still do some more “New Frontier”).
I have never deliberately read any Erik Larsen and doubt I ever will. At the end of the day, the proof is in the numbers. There are only a few who can hold a candle to the diverse range and success PAD has shown. So I simply ignore the comments that seem to come from petty jealousy.
On a side note, I just saw Serenity and thought it was a great movie. I only saw two episodes of Firefly, but found it very accessible. Too bad Star Trek is unwilling to let PAD or Wheedon write a decent script for a movie. Star Trek should be able to rival Star Wars. It is almost criminal the way the potential has been squandered.
Iowa Jim
One little nitpick David Bjorlin, Stan Lee AND Steve Ditko created Spider-Man…. and anyone who doesn’t like Walter Simonson’s art is a putz.
Not to nitpick back or anything, but I know that, and I specifically used the words “wrote about” when referring to the writer of Amazing Fantasy #15.
And as for my being a putz, well, 1) bite me, and 2) it may have been the Wiacek influence that really stunk– I’ve seen (early) Simonson stuff that I liked without Wiacek, and I’ve seen Wiacek stuff without Simonson that I hated. I stand by my core position: the Simonson art in X-Factor, inked by Wiacek, was absolutely horrible, and has flavored my opinion of Simonson lo these 20 years later. I don’t remember who was the inker on Simonson’s Thor run; I think he may have done his own inking, in which case Wiacek is off the hook (to the extent he cares about my opinion of his “tracing”) because I didn’t like the look of that book either. Simply put, I liked Simonson’s writing much better than his art, but I realize other putzes’ mileage may vary.
[b]The ‘Name Withheld’ comment looks like a goof, not sad. And if you’ve heard “Wrapped Around Your Finger” you’d have heard of Charybdis (thanks Mr. Sting!)[/b]
Yes, it was a goof. I admit to posting it. It was just another stab at Erik that long time readers of the Comics Buyers Guide will understand. Years ago he wrote a letter that was published in CBG that boiled down to “Writers aren’t necessary since artists can write the books”. It caused many flames and a lot of turmoil at the time. He asked that his name be withheld so the letter was published as “Name Withheld”. It took a long time before he finally was outed as being the person who wrote it. It just shows what a stand up kind of guy he is, or isn’t.
I guess I’m a part-time putz. I started out hating Simonson’s work, especially X-Factor. His Fall of the Mutants stuff seemed rushed and underdone. Then I saw his Thor stuff, and I started liking him. Maybe he just does Norse better than Spandex? I dunno.
Simonson’s Thor was brilliant, and spoiled me from anyone else’s take on him. Period.
But if you want excellent Simonson? Manhunter with Archie Goodwin at the helm writing.
That was a turning point… what a great series.
Travis
Scott – I figured it had to be a goof since if Erik actually wrote it anonymously, he wouldn’t have said ‘when I wrote Aquaman’. I vaguely recall the letter you refer to – more silliness, I suppose, but not that far off the mark from the issues of Spider-Man that McFarlane’s wrote.
“I did not like Fallen Angel or Apropos, but that does not mean they were poorly written, etc. (My best attempt to explain why is that there is a cynicism underlying these works that I disagree with. There is not the type of redemptive theme I look for in a book.”
Spoken like someone who would be eating their words had they read “Fallen Angel #15-18.”
PAD
What gives you the impression that interstellar travel in Serenity’s ‘verse is cheap?
The official Serenity website says there are something like 40,000 Firefly 03’s (the exact model of the Serenity) still around, even though the model has been retired.
Even for a cargo ship, that’s not exactly a handful. 🙂
(pretend I know how to make italics for my quotes)
“The official Serenity website says there are something like 40,000 Firefly 03’s (the exact model of the Serenity) still around, even though the model has been retired. Even for a cargo ship, that’s not exactly a handful. :)”
Not sure which point you mean to make, that the Firefly class is rare, or isn’t rare. That raw number is pretty meaningless. It’s like your response was “the ship is red.” Even by today’s standards, 40,000 isn’t such a big number. Comics are a good example…40,000 is a decent run for some monthlies. But that’doesn’t mean that every house gets one. Far from it, it means that most houses DON’T get a copy.
And that’s based on a US population of 278 million, and a planet-wide population of over 7 billion. Now put that same number of carriers into a whole different ‘verse, with maybe hundreds of billions of people…and only 40,000 aging Firefly class cargo ships. Some no doubt in museums, others in junk yards like Serenity was.
Larsen spoke like an ášš, but I agree with him in principle (even if I DON’T think it matters one bit).
Work for hire IS creatively inferior to self-owned/created projects.
It’s artistically inferior the same way rap “sampling” is inferior when the song is built on riffs/melodies created by other bands. Work for hire (meaning working on previously created characters) provides a ready-made spring board, so the new talent doesn’t have to start from scratch.
The old notion that “everybody’s got a Batman story in them” tells us a whole lot more about Bob Kane than it does ourselves. It tells us his character was very well made. The same can’t be said about, say, Brother Power the Geek.
That said, self-owned/created projects are not economically feasible most of the time. And I don’t care how artistically pure a self-created/owned project might be, an artist’s gotta eat. A great story can be lost forever if it’s buried in an indie book that has poor art and no marketing money behind it. So the incentive to convert that story to fit a Marvel/DC property is considerable.
Larsen can crow about the virtues of self-created projects all he wants, but this industry was NEVER driven by “originality.” Everything’s derivative around here.
“Work for hire IS creatively inferior to self-owned/created projects.”
Phooey.
The same can’t be said about, say, Brother Power the Geek.
I don’t know. I can think of three or four Brother Power the Geek stories. 😉
“Work for hire (meaning working on previously created characters) provides a ready-made spring board, so the new talent doesn’t have to start from scratch.”
Is that a fact. Interesting.
So by that logic, Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel–entirely work-for-hire and using previously created characters–is intrinsically, artistically and morally inferior to “Savage Dragon #1.”
PAD
“Work for hire IS creatively inferior to self-owned/created projects.”
Really now????
So…..
Savage Dragon is creatively superior to Miller’s Batman?
Youngblood was creatively superior then Moore’s Swamp Thing?
Wildcats was creatively superior to Claremont & Byrne’s X-Men?
Shadow Hawk was creatively superior to Gaiman’s Sandman?
Super Patriot was creatively superior to PAD’s Hulk run?
I could go on for ages but I think you get the point. Creatively superior work is what it is no matter where it is published. Creatively inferior work is what it is no matter where it is published. It has nothing to do with ownership. That was a very stupid blanket comment to make.
Larsen is probably taking a page from Warren Ellis’s script, superheroes=bad, indies=good. There’s just so many Constantine knock-offs I can stand with Ellis, who is now back doing superheroes. I like both creators, but I don’t think either of them are really grasping the real problem in the industry which is distribution. There are many good indies I’ve read, but the work-for-hire corporate characters are the ones that keep the industry afloat. You have to pay your bills after all. I don’t think it’s being a pussy to get paid a decent amount to work for a corporation so you can afford to do creator owned work. Getting a profile boost by work-for-hire seems pretty smart to me.
Larsen is probably taking a page from Warren Ellis’s script, superheroes=bad, indies=good. There’s just so many Constantine knock-offs I can stand with Ellis, who is now back doing superheroes. I like both creators, but I don’t think either of them are really grasping the real problem in the industry which is distribution. There are many good indies I’ve read, but the work-for-hire corporate characters are the ones that keep the industry afloat. You have to pay your bills after all. I don’t think it’s being a pussy to get paid a decent amount to work for a corporation so you can afford to do creator owned work. Getting a profile boost by work-for-hire seems pretty smart to me.
Larsen is probably taking a page from Warren Ellis’s script, superheroes=bad, indies=good. There’s just so many Constantine knock-offs I can stand with Ellis, who is now back doing superheroes. I like both creators, but I don’t think either of them are really grasping the real problem in the industry which is distribution. There are many good indies I’ve read, but the work-for-hire corporate characters are the ones that keep the industry afloat. You have to pay your bills after all. I don’t think it’s being a pussy to get paid a decent amount to work for a corporation so you can afford to do creator owned work. Getting a profile boost by work-for-hire seems pretty smart to me.
Now put that same number of carriers into a whole different ‘verse, with maybe hundreds of billions of people…and only 40,000 aging Firefly class cargo ships
Err, no.
Firefly is but one example of many.
Compare it to, say, Firefly being the hybrid auto. There are far greater numbers of other types of cars and so forth.
And there are still plenty of backwater places in the US where the number of people still outnumber the number of cars. 🙂
hey big news…
for what it’s worth, the folks at Wizard have taken all of Peter’s comments from this thread, and all of Larsen’s comments from this thread, and declared this debate to be a draw.
(more whiplash for Elayne) 🙂
Ironically, for me, Erik Larsen is how I first became familiar with Peter David. I was a fan of the Dragon upon it’s launch (eventually faded away from it, and comics in general) but the letter pages were constantly full of “Peter David this” and “Peter David that”. It was clear there was some sort of grudge between the two, but being a teen and not too up on the comic gossip, I didn’t know the cause. I recall in one column Larsen attributed it to when he was doing Spider-man and had Doc Ock (with adamantium arms) pummel the Hulk unconscious, while in the (Peter David’s) Hulk Doc Ock gets whupped by the green goliath.
I thought it a bit odd that such a small thing would seem to fuel this sort of constant sniping, but now (years wiser and all that) I understand that it comes more from an argument of authorship and the credit division between the words and the art. Well, I looked into this Peter David fellow and it turn out that he wrote some darn fine comics that I was enjoying (I particularly like the Infinity Gauntlet Hulk issue with the Abomination).
I guess both gentlemen have tough nipples (as they say), they’ve been nursing this grudge a long time.
Peter, when Larsen said it was ‘gutless’ to do work for hire I think he meant it in the financial sense and not the creative sense.
It takes balls to say no the next advance, or page rate and instead work for free for roughly 3-6 months doing something self/Image published / creator owned and hope it pays out financially.
A freelancer can write/draw an X-men story and be reasonably sure that it will sell to some folks. The company will likely give it *some* promotion and at least the die-hards will pick it up. And of course, you get your money regardless.
But a whole new character? With the book’s success or failure completely up to your creativity, promo skills and work ethic?
That’s a different ball of wax. Perhaps some creators are taking the easy way and deciding to do work for hire for their entire career.
Truth be told, Erik’s advice may be good for those folks. Very few freelancers have long term successful work for hire careers. Fan favorites come and go, many writers & artists that were hot 10 years ago ain’t hot today. The same will be true for todays big names 10 years from now.
If they create something that they own and get some sort of fan base, they can still do that when editors stop returning their calls. I’d rather the ‘job security’ of owning Hellboy vs. hoping editors will hire me over the new and different up-in-comer.
“So by that logic, Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel–entirely work-for-hire and using previously created characters–is intrinsically, artistically and morally inferior to “Savage Dragon #1.””
Dude, have you seen the bøøbš on the chick in Savage Dragon #1? ’nuff said!
“Larsen is probably taking a page from Warren Ellis’s script, superheroes=bad, indies=good”
That’s taking Ellis’ points rather out of context.
For him, he’s bored with Superheroes. He feels the genre has been pretty much played out and is eating itself. If he’s right or wrong is pretty much up for debate, but he also doesn’t say that people who are working in Superheroes or doing work-for-hire are bad or inferrior. Just (generaly) not doing anything he’s interested in.
There’s a big difference between that and Larsen’s belief.
On the issue of there being 40,000 Firefly 03’s still in service, and that making them fairly common:
The galaxy is a big place, and on a cosmic scale, 40,000 ships ain’t that much. Also, 40,000 units is slightly less than half the total production of the 2004 Dodge Neon. We don’t necessarily know how long they built Firefly-class ships in the “Firefly” universe, but if interstellar travel is relatively common it seems to me that 40,000 units still in service suggests either very low production or very high attrition.
As for why the colonists use six-shooters instead of semi-autos or blasters: The simpler the tool, the simpler the repairs when it breaks. What do you do if you’re out in the middle of the prairie in an unsettled area of a newly-colonized planet and your laser rifle’s lens breaks? Hop on your horse and ride two days to the nearest town and then wait six months or a year for a supply ship or a trader to show up, in the hope that they might have the particular lens for your particular model of laser rifle? Whereas, if you’ve got a problem with your .45 revolver, you can probably fix it yourself, or, in an extreme case, get a blacksmith to repair it.
Paul
“I aim to misbehave.”
>
Because the Allance has the good high tech equitment and those on the frontier “rebal” planets had to fend for themselves and in many ways start over from scratch. The Alliance doens’t want to give them weapons with wich they might have an actual chance of fighting back. This was part of the show, Wedon never spelled it out as such but it’s there. Also I should point out that Lazers haven’t really come into being a usable weapon in 50 years in the real world, and I don’t see a lot of evidence for them to come into comon useage anytime soon, meanwhile guns are still being used. We’re used to seeing the future with high tech lazer guns and such, I found it refreshing that someone took an opppisite approach. AS to square dancing, every weekend, (if not every night), there’s square dancing going on somewhere in the US, sometimes in the town square. Why do we automatically assume this custom will dissapear in the future?
Peter David: “(although the network-imposed train robbery story that launched it was a bit too on-the-nose for me. I think if the series had aired in the order it was supposed to and the train robbery story had never been done, it wouldn’t have left quite such a bad taste in people’s mouths.)”
The train robbery show contains my favorite bit of the entire series – Mal kicking an underling into the ship’s turbine then dragging the next underling to the same spot and giving him the same spiel which that underling immediately accepts. I saw the series in dvd-order and *that* moment is when the show made me sit up and take notice.
It takes balls to say no the next advance, or page rate and instead work for free for roughly 3-6 months doing something self/Image published / creator owned and hope it pays out financially.
Yes, it also takes balls to say no to that paycheck that will actually pay your bills and keep a roof over your head.
And since most writers (in any medium) are not rich, not wanting to turn down an advance shouldn’t come as a shock.
Larsen has an ego that needs deflating.
Besides, who the hëll is he to say what others should or shouldn’t be writing? I’d never even heard of him before this thread started, so obviously his asanine comments don’t have much of an impact.
Robbnn says:
Bill, I’ve wondered about the lack of a graphic Doc Savage as well and decided that the pulp fiction heroes just aren’t visual enough to support a comic book existance. To make them do so would be to make them someone else (hey! Like Superman or Batman ;0) ). I would like a good movie about Doc, but I don’t think he’s very well known anymore…
I think you’re right and if that doesn’t tell you why superheroes dominate comics, nothing will. Doc Freaking Savage isn’t visual enough! The readers, they loves their spandex.
Maybe it’s just that in superheroes comics found a genre that could be uniquely their own–until the technology got better it was hardly worth movies and TV even TRYING to do superheroes.
The danger with that monopoly is that it has left comics more or less saddled with the expectation that superheroes are the alpha and omega and great stuff like Fallen Angel gets ignored. And now TV, video games and film have caught up.
“The train robbery show contains my favorite bit of the entire series – Mal kicking an underling into the ship’s turbine then dragging the next underling to the same spot and giving him the same spiel which that underling immediately accepts. I saw the series in dvd-order and *that* moment is when the show made me sit up and take notice.”
See,whereas I saw it in aired order and I had the EXACT same reaction. I’m watching the show, and I’m not especially interesting. The characters aren’t compelling, the world doesn’t seem especially original…and then Mal drop kicks the flunky. And it wasn’t just that; it was when he starts the exact same speech over and the next guy–not wanting to be shredded, stops him before he gets ten words out with, “No problem! I’m right there with ya, buddy!”
PAD
‘So by that logic, Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel–entirely work-for-hire and using previously created characters–is intrinsically, artistically and morally inferior to “Savage Dragon #1.”‘
Seems to be a common form of “artistic” snobbery, in all fields. Or perhaps it’s the old “try to make yourself look better by tearing everyone else down”, sort of the antithesis to creativity.
I observe the same elsewhere: I have a friend who is a nicely successful composer in Hollywood. He has always written eminently good music, making others in the composition field highly suspicious. Once he actually started getting commissions, well, clearly he had “sold out” and “lost his artistic integrity”. Like Mozart, Liszt, Haydn, and those other famously incompetent and uncreative composers.
>The galaxy is a big place, and on a cosmic scale, 40,000 ships ain’t that much.
Depends. In the Star Trek universe that’s more than the whole of Starfleet. But then, this latter only have a small portion of the galaxy to cover. Do we even know how big FIREFLY’s Known Space equivalent is? If it isn’t much more than 100 light-years across, 40,000 ships of ONE type – there are others – would be ample to cover the habitable worlds likely to be found in such a relatively small area.
“See,whereas I saw it in aired order and I had the EXACT same reaction. I’m watching the show, and I’m not especially interesting. The characters aren’t compelling, the world doesn’t seem especially original…and then Mal drop kicks the flunky.”
Does this mean that we should be worried about Glenn?
“It takes balls to say no the next advance, or page rate and instead work for free for roughly 3-6 months doing something self/Image published / creator owned and hope it pays out financially.”
And when you’ve got a car payment, a mortgage, a wife and kid counting on you to make all those payments, to say nothing of putting food on the table, keep the AC running, and put a little away for a rainy day, saying “no” to that steady paycheck is what we call irresponsible. And stupid.
Larson and the rest of the Image kids only broke away after working for years for Marvel. They made an awful lot of money holding back while working on someone else’s character. New books were launched just for them. The alone were practically responsible for the collector market that set off a wave that nearly ended modern comics as we know it. And then they took that market, went and got investors to back their Image venture, and launched a can’t miss publishing company. They didn’t take a risk. They never said no to a paycheck. By the time they formed Image, each of them had made enough money to be set for life. So Larson’s “you’re only really working hard if you’re working on your own stuff” really smells.
Do we even know how big FIREFLY’s Known Space equivalent is?
According to the opening minutes of Serenity (which, themselves, are an expansion of one of the opening monologues Fox ran before the series), it’s essentially a (large) solar system, with the outer planets’ hundreds of moons terraformed into the “frontier worlds” where the crew of Serenity can normally be found, and the (naturally?) habitable “core worlds” making up the heart of the Alliance.
Unless I misunderstood, that is.
The new BG isn’t science fiction at all. It’s a mediocre exercise in transplanting a couple of different genres of “mainstream drama” into a spaceship, and hoping that moving starfields or aircars outside the window will fool an audience into believing that it’s sf, and that it’s good, when it is in fact neither.
The only thing more distressing to me than that Ron Moore, who I’ve previously respected, would be a party to such a travesty, is the huge number of otherwise intelligent and respectable viewers who’ve fallen for it.
I so sorry that your such a moronic ášš! Have a nice life! whovian222@msn.com
Unless I misunderstood, that is.
I don’t think you misunderstood, I just don’t think the explanation given in the movie makes much sense.
A very large solar system with hundreds of moons that were all able to be terraformed? I’m not buying it.
David S: Does Mr. Larsen remember what happened when Neil Gaiman created some new characters for Spawn when he wrote for that title and had major problems getting renumerations for them? Does that make HIM a pussy?
Luigi Novi: I think Larsen was talking about self-publishing your own creations in your own books. Not creating characters in someone else’s book.
That’s interesting. I was under the impression that he was talking about BOTH! He may have been pushing for the FIRST career choice, but he was also name-calling people who pursued the SECOND!
Comic pundits had been periodically covering the aftermath of the “guest writers” issues of Spawn that included the creations of new characters for the book like Angela and Medieval Spawn/Cagliostro, who made an important appearance in The Spawn Movie! The fact that Neil wasn’t renumerated for his creations that became incorporated into a series that was created by someone else isn’t as different IMHO as creating new villains and guest stars(am I the only one around here who remembered that Steve Gerber’s “Howard The Duck” started out as a one-shot cameo in “Fear,” Man-Thing’s first series?) for an established “comic book icon” who stars in a book created by The Top Two Comicbook Villains, Marvel & DC Comics, at least according to the “prophet” Larsen!
Or do you feel that only Marvel/DC have a monopoly on dismissing creators as “writers-for-hire?” At least they get usually paid for their work before they’re dismissed as “hired help.” What was McFarland’s excuse?
Just a quick thought for all the Larsen defenders out there: when your fandom has to come to your defense to explain to people what you really meant by/might have meant by/got out of your “argument,” you’ve done a piss-poor job of presenting your case –such as it may be– and pìššëd øff your audience to boot. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using honey to attract flies, you know…
PAD: “…so by that logic, Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel–entirely work-for-hire and using previously created characters…” Man, you love to whip out with this argument, don’t you? And did you just compare God to a Big Two stable character? 🙂
Charlie G.: “…the folks at Wizard have taken all of Peter’s comments from this thread, and all of Larsen’s comments from this thread, and declared this debate to be a draw.” Shows what they know… and why I rarely read Wizard these days (and I can get it free!).
“Peter, when Larsen said it was ‘gutless’ to do work for hire I think he meant it in the financial sense and not the creative sense.
It takes balls to say no the next advance, or page rate and instead work for free for roughly 3-6 months doing something self/Image published / creator owned and hope it pays out financially.
A freelancer can write/draw an X-men story and be reasonably sure that it will sell to some folks. The company will likely give it *some* promotion and at least the die-hards will pick it up. And of course, you get your money regardless.
But a whole new character? With the book’s success or failure completely up to your creativity, promo skills and work ethic?
That’s a different ball of wax. Perhaps some creators are taking the easy way and deciding to do work for hire for their entire career.
Truth be told, Erik’s advice may be good for those folks. Very few freelancers have long term successful work for hire careers. Fan favorites come and go, many writers & artists that were hot 10 years ago ain’t hot today. The same will be true for todays big names 10 years from now.
If they create something that they own and get some sort of fan base, they can still do that when editors stop returning their calls. I’d rather the ‘job security’ of owning Hellboy vs. hoping editors will hire me over the new and different up-in-comer.”
I would like to chime in and point out that taking your project to IMage isn’t exactly a sign of bravery and resourcefulness. Image likes to talk about how they’re such a great independant publishing banner, but to that I would hold up the example of Dave Sim and Cerebus. THAT is self-publishing, people.
Posted by Bobb at October 3, 2005 09:58 AM
Reading Leviathan’s other comments re: BSG and Firefly, it’s apparant to me that he’s missing the trees for the forest. It sounds like he wants his sci-fi stories to be non-human. I’m sure someone could come up with a TV show that represents a truly alien story…but chances are, our human senses wouldn’t be able to percieve that story in any kind of way that makes sense.
That’s a bizarre leap to a straw-man argument. I want my sci-fi stories to Science Fiction. I want teh stories to require their science-fiction elements to be told at all. And I want them to make some kind of sense. Doctor Who, Star Trek, Babylon 5 — Hëll, even Lost In Space! — have all managed to do this and still tell stories that humans can comprehend.
Leviathan, what are some examples of Sci Fi shows that in your opinion tell new stories? Because, as Den suggested, there are no new stories. The anchient Greeks pretty much had the basics of all storytelling down, and they probably got them from some other culture. Hollywood of late has gotten really bad, because they’ve lost sight that it’s HOW you tell the story that matters. The story itself isn’t new, and it never will be.
I’m not talking about BG failing to create an eighth basic plot. I’m talking about entire plots and sub-plots lifted whole and breathing — well, not really breathing, because they’re shopworn, threadbare, and lifeless cliches — from other sources.
Leviathan, perhaps, in the interests of actually supporting your arguments, you could share with the class a few of the supposed “entire plots and sub-plots” plagiarized by the writers of the new Battlestar Galactica?
-Rex Hondo-
Posted by: Stew Fyfe at October 2, 2005 01:25 PM
Leviathan wrote:
“The sheer, lazy effrontery with which the producers completely failed to even make the slightest gesture toward giving even a semblance of a culture to the 12 Colonies is a sickening display of contempt for the audience.”
Effrontery and contempt are kind of strong words, don’t you think? What, do you think Moore & co., while planning the series, sat around and said, “Our viewers are a bunch of simps and idiots, so screw ’em”? C’mon, that’s silly.
When J. Michael Straczynski first came to Hollywood, he worked as a reporter for some entertainment magazine, and during that time, one of his gigs was interviewing the producers of a new SF series — possibly “V.”
The producer told him, “We don’t care about the Sci-Fi fans. We don’t have to. As long as we have spaceships and ray-guns, the Sci-Fi fans will watch. We just want to attract other viewers.”
Besides, there actually is more than a “slight gesture toward a semblance of culture,” or at least there was in the 3 episodes I’ve seen. At the heart of the battle with the Cylons, or example, is a religious conflict between monotheistic and polytheistic religions, with the good guys as polytheists. Can’t remember having seen that kind of thing, from that angle, in television science fiction before.
That’s the thin coat of paint on the surface.
Are there things which probably would be different in a distant, extraterrestrial culture which aren’t (the cigarettes, the liquor, the form of government, etc.)? Sure, but why is that any more of a big deal than the fact that we hear them speaking English?
Because there’s way too much of it, down to the bonehead stuff that would be easy to fix.
(Plus, part of the premise is that there is a connection with our world, hence the various Greek names in use, so who knows, maybe there’ll be an explanation for it. We have no idea when the series is set, relative to our time.)
We know it’s distant enough that (A) humankind has colonized a dozen worlds in different, distant solar systems, far out across the galaxy, and for those colonies to have forgotten us so completely that “Earth” is a half-forgotten legend more obscure to us than Atlantis. So we can safely assume a couple of thousand years, and, based on how obscure the “Earth” legend is, probably more like five or six thousand.
So, look around yourself at work today, and take note of how many people you see who would be able to blend in to a crowd scene in, say, Ancient Rome — without a change of clothes.
“In science-fiction, Job One is world-building. If your world doesn’t work, your story can’t. And the world the new BG has given us is LA circa 2005.”
While I’m sure many would agree with you, the first sentence is open to debate – sci fi can go down many different roads. The latter, what, you’ve never seen science fiction that functions, and is to a large extent constructed as a direct commentary on the present before?
Sure. Watch the Doctor Who episode “The Sun Makers.” It understandably mocks Britain’s tax structures without appearing to be set in London in the year of its filming.
(And why just LA circa 2005? US circa 2005 is more like it – paranoia, threats of terrorism, conflict between military and the democracy.)
There isn’t the cultural diversity of a whole country.
“Moreover, it re-uses iconic images without a thought to what those iconic images mean: re-staging the LBJ swearing-in on Air Force One without thinking about what it implies about the character of the new President, for example.”
Why would the character of the next president have to match that of LBJ? Are the only significant things in the actual iconic image of LBJ’s swearing in LBJ himself and his presidency? Aren’t there other meanings attached to those images, that moment?
You can’t pick and choose what parts of the iconic image are communicated and what parts aren’t. It carries its emotional weight in toto. That’s what makes it iconic. You see LBJ being sworn in, and you see a country in crisis, and a small, venal, unworthy man stepping opportunistically into the shoes of a giant. It’s all of a piece. Straczynski understood that, re-staging the LBJ swearing-in with President Clarke on Babylon 5, and we immediately knew that the Earth Alliance was screwed, that this man was going to sell us down the river. BG doesn’t seem to want us to think that of its President, but put her in the same iconic position. That’s just inept storytelling.
“The new BG isn’t science fiction at all. It’s a mediocre exercise in transplanting a couple of different genres of “mainstream drama” into a spaceship,”
What’s wrong with mainstream drama? What’s wrong with setting some elements of it aboard a spaceship? How does that preclude it from being sci fi?
Nothing is wrong with mainstream drama.But it’s not science fiction. A lot is wrong with derivative, unimaginive, mediocre mainstream drama, and none of it goes away when you set it aboard a spaceshiop, and being aboard a spaceship doesn’t make it SF.
This is one of the things that makes me crazy about the cultish love of the new BG. If you peeled the bogus SF veneer off of any part of the series, and set it in the here and now, we’d all think it was a pretty second-rate show. The president dealing with breast cancer while in conflict with a resentful military would be Lifetime TV’s knock-off of The West Wing, Baltar and whatsername would be “Body of Evidence Lite” and the combat storylines would be second-rate Black Sheep Squadron. Flying an aircar past the window doesn’t make it brilliant.
“and hoping that moving starfields or aircars outside the window will fool an audience into believing that it’s sf, and that it’s good, when it is in fact neither.”
Okay, I can see how you could try to argue that “moving starfields outside the window” might fool people into thinking something is sci fi when it’s not, (though I don’t think that’s accurate here), but how would it fool them into thinking it was good?
Because they seem somehiow to believe that these shopworn cliches become fresh, brilliant characterization if set in space. The mechanism baffles me.
So it’s not your cuppa tea. Why does that make it horrible, an act of contempt, etc.?
It’s not simply “not my cuppa tea.” It’s absolutely a case of people being paid huge amounts of money to do a job, not being willing to be bothered to do it.
You can go on all you want about how BG’s failure to do _anything_ to differentiate the cultures of the Twelve Colonies from ours is a bold and deliberate storytelling choiuce, but I notice that it’s bold and deliberate storytelling choice that saves them the trouble of thinking up something at all different, that lets them do their costuming at Chess King rather than hire a costume designer, lets them buy their props at Big Lots instead of designing abd building them. In short, it’s a bold and deliberate storytelling choice that lets them do everything the cheap and easy way.
It’s not lazy? Then why did we see Colonel Tigh,in a major, important, character-defining scene, say,”Christ!”?
Yes, yes, I know, it wasn’t in the script, the actor ad-libbed it. That doesn’t excuse the flub, that exacerbates it! The actor didn’t know enough about his character and his background to know that the word made no sense for him. Nobody explained it to him well enough for him to understand that he wasn’t plying a guy from earth, Nobody could be bothered. And nobody on the set said, “Waitaminute! What does a guy from teh Twelve Colonies know about Christ? Let’s do another take, and can you maybe say ‘Gods’ instead?” They couldn’t be bothered. And on through post-production, editing, sound recording, and so on until it went on the air, nobody noticed it, nobody caught it, nobody fixed it. Nobody paid enough attention to see that it was there, or cared enough to do anything to make it right.
Like Attack of the the Eye Creatures, they just didn’t care.
And that’s every bit as much an act of contempt as a carpenter who accepts your money to build a cabinet, and doesn’t nail together the boards.
PAD Notes:
“Unforgiven,” on the other hand, could easily be shifted to an outer space venue without a hitch.
Yes, but it still wouldn’t have been Science Fiction.
I think anyone who took the time to write a well thought out response to Erik’s article is an idiot (or at the very least acting like one for the moment). Obviously Erik didn’t put much thought into this article: it was emotionally fueled and fired off with little thought of the implications. Many of the statements Erik made contradict beliefs that he has held for years- hëll, they contradict material he wrote just a month earlier!
In order to guess at what Mr. Larsen was feeling (I hesitate to use the word “thinking” here, since he most likely wasn’t), we need to look at who this article’s target was. I believe he’s angry at himself. The entire On Fan’s Opinion column is self indulgent to begin with- it is no stretch to see how this rant applies only to his own practices. I am a fan of the Savage Dragon (as well as a fan of Mr. David), and like most other SD fans I am acutely aware that Erik created the Savage Dragon Universe as an opportunity to play with Marvel and D.C.’s toys in his own sandbox. (Over time the universe evolved into something more original- just as Spider-man began as a shadow of Superman.) As he has stated before, Erik is a fan first and a creator second- that is why his own title is so enjoyable. It is a comic fan’s fantasy come true. At the same time Mr. Larsen must realizes that his chracters are only interpretations of the originals as he has written on several occasions how the only history of a character that “counts” is the material that occurs in the regular continuity (and not alternate “elseworlds” reality). And thus we understand his time spent working on the “real” Marvel/D.C. heros that he loved as a child. And we also know of his fustration over having his contributions erased like they didn’t count (I won’t elaborate the whole Doc Octopus vs. Hulk controversy, but Peter is among the guilty for undoing parts of his history). Erik wanted a mark left at Marvel to show he was there. He didn’t get it. And so he’s pìššëd at himself. Let him cry in his own column and leave it alone- because in the end it doesn’t involve anyone here.
[P.S. Visually the Dragon looks like the Hulk but the similarities end there. To say they are the same character is unjustified. The original Savage Dragon was an intentional ]
PAD Notes:
“Unforgiven,” on the other hand, could easily be shifted to an outer space venue without a hitch.
Yes, but it still wouldn’t have been Science Fiction.
Actually, it would.
science fiction
n.
A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background.
-Rex Hondo-
Just a couple of memories from writing classes all those years ago triggered by the recent thread.
First, all stories ever can be broken down even further than 7 or 8 basic plots. The essense of all drama is conflict, and there are only three basic conflicts, man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs self. All stories are combinations of these three in varying degrees.
Also, one of the most quantifiable measures of how well crafted a story is, is how easily the plot could be shifted to an entirely different setting without losing anything. It’s done with Shakespeare and Bronte all the time. If it relies on SF, Fantasy, or other trappings too much for the story to function otherwise, it probably weakly written. Dune could just as easily take place in the Middle East with horses instead of worms. The Lord of the Rings books could be set during a fictional modern war with little effort.
And so on…
-Rex Hondo-