Originally published March 9, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1425

And no dialogue. We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.

–Norma Desmond

“Sunset Boulevard”

One has to credit new editor-in-chief Joe Quesada: He’s trying. In an industry that’s gone from cyclical to cynical, the new chief is beating the drums as loudly as he can, trying to get Marvel Comics and suspicious comic book fans together. In some ways it reminds me of the school dance in the movie of “West Side Story,” where the desperate master of ceremonies, “Gladhand” (John Astin) is trying every trick he can think of to get the Jets and Sharks to mingle. In similar fashion, Marvel and the fans (not to mention the retailers) are circling each other warily, suspicious of the motives at every turn, reluctant to commit lest they suddenly discover a knife in the back.

And lord knows Quesada approaches everything with enthusiasm. It’s evocative of Stan Lee at his most “Excelsior-ish,” back in the days where Stan was so fluid that he could announce a price hike and by the time he was done, you’d be saying, “An extra nickel a book! Fantastic! A bargain at twice the price, Stan, we’re with you!” When Joey Da Q is channeling Stan Da Man, it’s almost impossible to distinguish good news from bad news. Almost.

For instance, a recent letter to “All Marvel Suppliers” starts out, “Hey, Folks, to assist Marvel suppliers (that’s you!) in submitting invoices or vouchers on a timely basis, and to ensure the fastest payment by Marvel, please take special note of all of the following info,” and it finishes off with, “Thanks for your assistance. See ya in the funnybooks,” with a cheery “JQ” at the bottom. I assume it’s from Joe Quesada rather than (as some might conclude) Jonny Quest. In the meantime, between the friendly salutation and sign-off is buried the news that Marvel—after issuing freelancer checks on a weekly basis for close to half a century—is cutting back to bi-weekly. For a freelancer, that’s remarkably sucky news. It means that if you miss the vouchering deadline by a day, you can wait up to three weeks for your check. One almost wonders if there’s a committee at Marvel specifically designed to find new and interesting ways to piss off freelancers, because if there is, then the folks on it are more than earning their money—which presumably comes faster than every other week.

In the meantime, any announcement from Quesada is scrutinized for negative content more assiduously than a Clinton speech at a Rush Limbaugh convention.The latest to receive this treatment is Marvel’s Silent Month, a company wide crossover with such a clunky name that Joe has made an open appeal for someone to rename it. Here’s a helpful hint for the future: Never have a “Name this” contest wherein the word “Dumb” (adjective, “lacking the power of speech”) can actually be applied in proper context. I have no doubt that Joe is at this moment being flooded with endless variations on “Marvel’s Dumb Idea,” “Marvel’s Dumb Month,” “Dumb December,” “Dumb de Dumb Dumb,” “Marvel Dumbs Down,” etc.

From the point of view of letterers, it stinks to high heaven. Many companies give Christmas bonuses; Marvel letterers get instead a nice fat Christmas Suckball, rolling into the holidays with no work for a month. From a PR point of view, it was not a sharp move, because it allowed cynics to proclaim “Make Mime Marvel” month to be merely a cost cutting measure. And the last thing you want to do is give cynics even more excuses than they’ve already got. Marvel should have found a way to pay the letterers, even if it meant insisting that every page have a single sound effect.

Much is being made of writers being “forced” to take part in it. That it’s presumptuous by Marvel to announce to the writers, like the Soup Nazi, “No word balloons for you! One month!” I can only speak for myself when it comes to that, but when Tom Brevoort told me some weeks ago of “Make Mime Marvel” month, my immediate response was, “Sure, sounds cool.” As crossovers go it’s far less onerous than many others I’ve had to deal with. My only gripe came from the fact that I’d just done a silent issue, next month’s Young Justice #31, solely because I wanted to see if I could. So the challenge to me was to find ways to make Captain Marvel different in tone and style from the YJ issue. In point of fact, I became so jazzed about the idea that—even though I had only written up to Captain Marvel #21–I jumped ahead to #26 (the silent issue) and wrote it months ahead of deadline (and yes, was paid my full page rate, in case you’re wondering.)

Marvel presumptuous? No. No, what I found presumptuous, even infuriating, was an e-mail sent to half a dozen writers and Quesada (making it, as far as I’m concerned, public rather than private correspondence, although I’m withholding the writer’s screen name) which said in part:

I was just hoping to confirm that the December silent issues coming out of the best Marvel titles (Avengers, Captain Marvel, Incredible Hulk, Black Panther & especially Thunderbolts) will not contain any plot point making them a necessary purchase. Not that I don’t respect the story-telling of both the writers and artists on each of the titles, but there’s no way I want to buy a comic that’ll be essentially missing 50% of its essence. I’m certain there’re no circumstances under which I’ll buy these issues, and indeed I’m quite sure I’m not in the minority. I suppose if they’re that important, I can always get the information off the internet.

Now I don’t know if he’s in the minority or not, but he’s certainly not the only one voicing these opinions.

First off, let’s make clear that there’s no such thing as a comic book that is a “necessary purchase.” Clothes, food… these are necessary purchases. Comics are no more and no less than a hobby. Buy them, don’t buy them… it’s up to you guys.

That said, I think this doesn’t show any respect for storytelling at all, because fans are putting a quantitative measure on whether it’s worth their while, based on words. Its “essence?” What in the world does that mean, precisely? A comic’s essence requires dialogue balloons? All right: How much dialogue is required to fit a reader’s needs? If a comic averages one word a page, will that suffice? Two? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? At what point is the essence requirement satisfied?

A recent issue of Orion by Walt Simonson was told almost entirely in splash pages, with a grand total of half a dozen words. Was that comic worth less because of insufficient words? How about quantity of panels: Does that fit into the essence factor? Or could it be that Walt produced a story that perfectly summed up the “essence” of the New Gods with few words and splash pages, because full page artwork was what was required, and words weren’t?

Fans are falling into the same myopic trap that had “Village Voice” dismiss Stan Lee as a “typist of word balloons.” They think that the word balloons are the essence of the story. They are wrong. In Young Justice #31 there is exactly one word spoken at the beginning, one word at the end. Otherwise, nothing. I did it not to disenfranchise the readers or save myself work. It was, in fact, more work: The script was extremely dense because I had to convey every single aspect of the story through visuals, so it was a bigger challenge. The thought that such an issue will be dismissed out of hand because of the lack of a mythical “essence” is quite disheartening… almost as disheartening as the thought of fans seeking a free pass to skip a month because they think the only measure of a book’s worth is how many dialogue balloons are in it.

And then there are the fans who feel the comic won’t be worth the money because the lack of word balloons will cause them to fly through the comic unimpeded, and so it’s not enough dollar-to-time-occupied. I dunno: The most recent silent story I read was a John Byrne Enemy Ace Christmas story reprint. I spent far more time on it than any other story in the issue, studying the storytelling, the expressions, deriving all that I could of the story from the art.

Marvel has issued a challenge to the writers. Rather than be intrigued by the challenge, fans dismiss it. I find that very sad. Dialogue balloons are tools to tell a story; nothing more… same as flashbacks, parallel plot construction, foreshadowing, etc. Not all tools are required to tell all stories. I and my fellow writers intend to tell stories that are just as engaging and interesting as any month’s worth of titles, using all the other tools in our arsenal. We won’t be producing stories that would have required dialogue balloons, but are being told without them and therefore are inferior. We will be telling stories that don’t require word balloons to be told. In fact, I personally think the issue of Captain Marvel I wrote would be a less effective story if word balloons were present.

Will the stories be missing anything? Yes. They’ll be missing faithless fans. Only you guys can decide whether you’re one of those, or one of the fans who genuinely does have respect for storytelling.

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

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