Comics and Ageism

Originally published September 11, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1295

Harlan Ellison told me an interesting anecdote, in relation to the Writers Guild of America’s committee on ageism. The head of the committee, a writer well into middle age, was complaining of rampant ageism in the industry: a very pronounced prejudice against older writers. Another writer, upon hearing this, said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve had to deal with that kind of thing, too.” The committee head was skeptical that the relatively young man could have experience with prejudice on the basis of age.

The young writer then related the tale of an appointment he had with the producers of Spin City. He was going to pitch story possibilities, perhaps even be in line for a staff position. He called the day before the meeting to confirm. He was told, yes, by all means, they were looking forward to meeting with him. Then he was asked, “By the way, how old are you?” He was, he told them, thirty-one.

“Oh,” the person on the other end informed him, “Then you don’t have to bother coming in. We’re only looking for people in their twenties.” Keep in mind that the series was created by Gary David Goldberg, who hasn’t seen twenty in several decades.

Talent didn’t matter, experience didn’t matter, knowledge didn’t matter. Old is bad, young is good, and anything which has the slightest taint of “not now” is tossed aside.

In the film Postcards from the Edge, Shirley MacLaine, portraying the mother of Meryl Streep’s character, says, “You kids today only care about instant gratification,” to which Streep’s character sighs, “Instant gratification takes too long.” That more or less nails it.

Now—how does this relate to comics and the discussions of ageism?

When I first started as a comics fan, what I found intriguing was not simply where comics were going, but also where they’d been. By buying into the DC Universes, I had a sense of being part of something that had been around before I was born (less so with Marvel, which was simply around before I was paying attention to it). It was a feeling reinforced by the ready supply of inexpensive reprints and the copious volumes over the succeeding years that broadened and deepened my understanding of, and appreciation for, history.

But history is of little-to-no relevance to many these days. There are any number of reasons that can be cited, I suppose. Perhaps it’s a crumbling educational system. Perhaps it’s the fact that with the advent of computer nets and such, there’s too much instantaneous dissemination of information available. There’s so much pressure to keep up with everything that’s happening right now, that no one cares about what has gone before.

Perhaps history seems to have no relevance since the world of the 1990s is so drastically different from the world of the 1940s (since back in the 1940s we had attempted genocide, crazed dictators, and a Democratic President who conducted a series of affairs, none of which could possibly have any relevance to modern day).

There is, or should be, a grand feeling of being part of something that is bigger than you are. Comic books are our modern mythologies, and it was an incredible notion when one considered that one was reading of characters who are not only alive and vital today, but who have careers that stretch back thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty years. (Why isn’t Time Warner making a big push to celebrate Superman’s 60th anniversary? What’s up with that? Are they so annoyed that the film hasn’t worked out that they’d rather just sweep it under a rug?)

There are steps being taken in the right direction. More involvement of the Justice Society of America, for instance, and the recent publication of an old-style Superman annual. It cost a hëll of a lot more than twenty-five cents, but at least it was more accessible to impulse buy than a glitzy hardcover collection would be.

Meantime, over at Marvel, a recent press release proclaims:

“We have identified ways to make Marvel storylines and characters more accessible to the casual readers and young children while maintaining appeal to the die-hard fans,” said Joseph Calamari, President and COO, Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc. “Reestablishing the values and original characterizations of Marvel’s most popular super-heroes bridges the gap between generations of readers.

“What this means for comic book readers is more accessible storylines that recapture the original personalities of Marvel’s super-heroes. This strategy will appeal to the long-time fans as well as to children yet to be introduced to the Marvel Universe.”

A laudable goal. The problem is that Marvel can’t separate its initial success years ago from the environment that spawned it. Thirty years ago, Marvel was—dare we say it—new. New and different. There was nothing else being published that was like it. Marvel had its own creators and sensibilities that made it unique.

But freelancers move freely between Marvel, DC and other companies, and the styles of the books have all tended to blend together. It’s like trying to determine nowadays which automobiles are built in the US and which in Japan. Although simplifying the storylines might placate the current readers, attracting new readers means providing them with something wildly different.

That was what Stan, Jack and Steve did that was so clever. They looked at what had gone before and tweaked it, twisted it, and hammered it into something new. Men with a sense of history were able to build upon it. Let’s see what went before, they said, and send it in a direction that is both unexpected and yet logical. That’s how long-term storytelling is done. That’s how myths are built upon. That’s how people with a sense of history operate. People with a sense of desperation, on the other hand, look at what’s gone before and say, “That worked before. Let’s do it again.”

Marvel presents a curious dichotomy. It seeks to embrace its past—but in the parlance and expectations of today. One the one hand it extols the virtues of its lengthy history, but on the other hand it restarts titles right and left, as if ashamed to admit just how long the titles have been around. Remember when DC cancelled Adventure Comics just short of issue #500, and all the brouhaha that engendered (which resulted in DC’s extending the series to #503)? Well, Marvel just announced that Incredible Hulk will be cancelled in a few months, killing the title just two years shy of its 500^th issue. In terms of the stories themselves, like a mother bird chewing her babies’ food in order to make it palatable, Marvel will reprint in easily accessible form the early tales of Spider-Man—except they’ll be pre-chewed by John Byrne.

I was also amused that Marvel intends to make their titles “more accessible to the reader” by means of “shorter story arcs, less panels per page, more intelligent and in-depth background information.” I remember a couple of decades back when Marvel instituted a no-continued-story policy. It proved to be, by my outside perception, a spectacular flop as fans cried out for, and got, the return of the multi-issue adventures that had helped to make Marvel popular. Also telling is the desire for Marvel to return to its glory days while calling for “less panels per page.” I’m looking at two pages from Incredible Hulk #6 hanging on my wall, drawn by Steve Ditko. Two random pages. One page has nine panels. The other has eleven. The action is clear and uncluttered, easily comprehensible even without the dialogue (of which there is an abundance, I should note). It reminds me of the clueless Joseph II, Emperor of Austria. “Too many notes, Mozart.”

“Too many panels, Ditko.”

There are some steps in the right direction. Marvel has an upcoming YA line called Marvel Kids Interactive Adventures, and is planning a “line of collectible reprints of books from 1939 to 1999,” although the word “collectible” would seem to imply that they’re not going to be priced at—oh—ten cents.

I’m very aware of the financial difficulties of marketing reprint books at anything approaching pocket change. The problem is that, with today’s readership, anything costing more than that might be of no interest to them at all. That, and the fact that no matter what Marvel does, it can’t make itself new.

In the 1960s, Marvel was new, DC was old. Now Marvel is old and DC is older. And if you ask any young person, they will tell you that there is nothing more embarrassing to watch than the spectacle of someone old trying to act as if they’re young. Modern young readers are simply not interested in making the emotional and historical investment in the characters. Rather than being something that intrigues them, that long history serves as a turn-off.

Ageism is an attitude that pervades not only the potential readership, but the creative base as well, at all levels. I was relating to someone who works as an editor (I won’t say whether in or out of comics) how the hilariously titled film Jane Austen’s Mafia had been shortened to the unhumorous Mafia when audience polls indicated they had no idea who Jane Austen was. To which the editor replied, after a moment, “Um, who is Jane Austen?”

Jane Austen. She wrote the book upon which Clueless was based. Clueless, the film which featured the line, “That look is so five-minutes-ago,” a line that would be a lot funnier if it weren’t reality in microcosm.

We live in a culture that not only disdains the old, but devours the new and spits it out, rendering it old in less time than it takes to read this column. We not only have contempt for that which is old, but we wonder why it ever interested us in the first place. For that matter, it is also part of the mindset of youth that parents—and that which their parents enjoyed or celebrated—must be rejected, set aside and forced to make way for that which is new. Movies are aimed at teenagers, television shows are aimed at ages 18 to 35. Never was it more blatant than in the commercial proclaiming, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Well, guess what. Superhero comic books are, to many potential young readers, their father’s Oldsmobile. The thing is, I once saw a caw drive past, made in the 1950s, that had a sign on the back proudly proclaiming, “This is your father’s Oldsmobile.” And you know what? It had a lot of style.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. In case you’re wondering, I couldn’t bring myself to read Hulk #468. Out of morbid curiosity, I did flip through #469, but couldn’t get past the fact that Dr. Bruce Banner had been mysteriously transformed into a dead ringer for Dr. Benton Quest, father of Jonny Quest. Which might have been cool if Race or Hadji had been in the issue as well.)