MattBrady
05-20-2003, 09:30 AM
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<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 18</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
“There’s A Fine Country Out There Someplace”
If you read comics in 1972, you couldn’t avoid the word: relevance. For a couple of years, comics were hell-bent not just on reflecting the real world, but on hammering home hard-hitting social issues every month -- sometimes with a pretty blunt hammer. At DC in particular, everybody seemed to be trying on those new mod clothes and marching for civil rights.
The flagship title in this crusade was Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow. The Green Lantern title had been floundering since the departures of John Broome and Gil Kane, and O’Neil and Adams took it in a radically different direction. They made Green Arrow a regular costar and challenged the title character’s faith in authority through a series of confrontations with social issues, as the two heroes road-tripped across America.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/glga79.jpg" width="250" height="381" align="right" alt=""My Redskin Brothers?" Yeeesh....">Sometimes the GL/GA stories were incisive and sensitive, and sometimes they missed their marks. But the series as a whole was radical, ever-changing, and boasted some of Adams’ finest-ever artwork, which is saying a hell of a lot. It was never a big seller, but it won awards and was a favorite among sophisticated fans and fellow creators. No wonder other DC books tried to imitate its trappings, usually with less success.
Marvel dealt with social issues too, largely in extended subplots like Steve Gerber’s Sons of the Serpent storyline in Defenders and, most famously, Steve Englehart’s Secret Empire story in Captain America, which climaxed with the suicide of (a never directly identified) Richard Nixon. This sight so disillusioned Captain America that he temporarily relinquished his costumed identity, wracked by doubts about his country. As a big, extended metaphor for America’s betrayal at the hands of its President, it carried a lot of weight.
But Marvel’s hearts were never in “relevance” the same way DC’s were. At first glance that seemed odd, considering that their books, in other ways, were much more closely tied to the real world. Maybe the less serial nature of the DC books made it easier for them to cover the “issue of the month,” as opposed to the Marvel books, which favored more extended storylines. Who would want to read about Spider-Man fighting pollution for eight friggin’ months in a row, anyway?
Or maybe DC was a little less embarrassed by the polemic nature of too many of these stories. Most of them had to stop dead at some point while the hero either (a) delivered a speech about a gravely serious social issue or (b) had such a speech delivered to him, usually by a poor but virtuous denizen of a ghetto neighborhood.
Both of these clichés came from Green Lantern/Green Arrow, where they were initially fresh. In the very first story [GL #76], an old black man famously asks Green Lantern what he’s done for “the black skins”; this scene is dramatically clunky, but it hit a real chord and is very well remembered. Elsewhere in the issue, Green Arrow first develops his trademark rants against injustice. There was something very believable about the Arrow’s character in particular -- he really seemed like the former rich capitalist who had “gotten religion,” moved in with the regular people, got himself a sexier costume and girlfriend, and took his crusades much more seriously than the other characters in the book.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capnixon.jpg" width="300" height="224" align="left">Unfortunately, Green Arrow’s speechifying didn’t work so well when transferred to, say, Leo Dorfman’s Action Comics. But a new group of creators poured into the field in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: Denny O’Neil, Steve Skeates, Neal Adams, Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Barry Windsor-Smith, Frank Brunner, Jim Starlin, and others. And a lot of those writers and artists were young, ambitious, and committed to social causes.
As usual, mundane business reasons drove the influx of new blood, starting with the 1968 DC purge of its older-line writers chronicled in <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=00003 4" target="_blank"> Installment 13</a>, “Give Me Liberty.” Just a few years later, Marvel finally broke free of its distribution deal through DC, allowing the company to greatly expand its line. This made room for experimental comics like Killraven, Man-Thing, Warlock, and Master Of Kung Fu, where many of the new writers and artists spread their wings.
Like many areas of popular culture, comics embraced “relevance” as a way of catching up with the turbulent changes of the ‘60s. Most popular media were very conservative in the ‘60s, but as the political and sexual permissiveness of the counterculture seeped into the mainstream, things changed fast.
While a new vanguard of creators revolutionized comics in the ‘70s, a parallel shift was transforming the film industry. Dennis Hopper, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Robert Altman, Don Simpson, and the pre-Star Wars George Lucas, among others, came into that field with a fire and passion to make great, new, and (yes) relevant films. And as with comics, the doors opened for them partly because of behind-the-scenes changes at the studios.
The ‘60s had not been kind to the film industry. The old formula of expensive blockbusters wasn’t working anymore, and studios, in desperation, turned to cheaper works, which made way for a wider variety of idiosyncratic filmmakers. And a few successes made it seem worthwhile to throw a little money each at a lot of small films. Film historian Robert Sklar described it this way:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/easyriderposter.jpg" width="250" height="362" align="right" alt="it all comes back to Fonda and Hopper"> “Easy Rider’s example, in the age-old Hollywood way, impelled others to copy its formula -- gather up a youthful cast and crew, give them a story about youthful alienation and struggles with a repressive know-nothing society, and you’ll bank a 2,500 percent profit, or thereabouts. A movie gold rush began anew in Hollywood for a few noncommercial filmmakers, television directors, free-lance screenwriters and off-Broadway performers. It lasted until the imitations of Easy Rider nearly all turned out to be box-office disasters.”
Relevance in comics was pretty much dead by 1975; it lingered on in movies a bit longer. That might be because comics have shorter lead times for production than films. In his fascinating book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind put it this way: “Because movies are expensive and time-consuming to make, Hollywood is always the last to know, the slowest to respond, and in those years it was at least half a decade behind the other popular arts.”
It’s also possible that comics had so overdone relevance by 1973 that it was kind of embarrassing. DC in particular took the whole thing a little too far; the “women’s lib” stories in Lois Lane were simplistic, and I think we can all agree that writing Superboy stories on prison reform was taking the trend a little too far (though it wasn’t a bad story, as they went).
As the ‘70s wore on, both DC and Marvel also saw an influx of a new group of fans-turned-pros, less influenced by the hippie world and more inclined -- for better or worse -- to return to comics' pure entertainment roots. The older-line editors were happy to encourage this.
The film world changed, too, in the late ‘70s -- more dramatically, and more permanently, than comics did. And what film was cited as the turning point, the rallying cry for the new Hollywood?
A little thing called Star Wars.
More on that next time!
**
Bibliography:
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Simon & Schuster, 1998)
Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (Vintage/Random House, 1975)
Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999. Sadly, there’s no going back to Woolworth’s…but that hasn’t been a problem yet, because of…
My current comics work: Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day giveaway, ROCKET COMICS: IGNITE, featured a special 10-page stand-alone preview story of LONE, my entry into the new Rocket Comics line, along with two other great stories. More information at <a href="http://www.rocketcomics.net" target="_blank">http://www.rocketcomics.net</a> and <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094</a> . Also: The beautiful trade paperback collection of ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, my epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press, is out now; ask for it by name! And coming soon: announcements about projects from three other companies -- keep an eye on my message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com." target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com.</a> See you in 14 days…
<center>A THOUSAND FLOWERS</center><center>Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside</center><center>Installment 18</center><center>by Stuart Moore</center>
“There’s A Fine Country Out There Someplace”
If you read comics in 1972, you couldn’t avoid the word: relevance. For a couple of years, comics were hell-bent not just on reflecting the real world, but on hammering home hard-hitting social issues every month -- sometimes with a pretty blunt hammer. At DC in particular, everybody seemed to be trying on those new mod clothes and marching for civil rights.
The flagship title in this crusade was Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow. The Green Lantern title had been floundering since the departures of John Broome and Gil Kane, and O’Neil and Adams took it in a radically different direction. They made Green Arrow a regular costar and challenged the title character’s faith in authority through a series of confrontations with social issues, as the two heroes road-tripped across America.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/glga79.jpg" width="250" height="381" align="right" alt=""My Redskin Brothers?" Yeeesh....">Sometimes the GL/GA stories were incisive and sensitive, and sometimes they missed their marks. But the series as a whole was radical, ever-changing, and boasted some of Adams’ finest-ever artwork, which is saying a hell of a lot. It was never a big seller, but it won awards and was a favorite among sophisticated fans and fellow creators. No wonder other DC books tried to imitate its trappings, usually with less success.
Marvel dealt with social issues too, largely in extended subplots like Steve Gerber’s Sons of the Serpent storyline in Defenders and, most famously, Steve Englehart’s Secret Empire story in Captain America, which climaxed with the suicide of (a never directly identified) Richard Nixon. This sight so disillusioned Captain America that he temporarily relinquished his costumed identity, wracked by doubts about his country. As a big, extended metaphor for America’s betrayal at the hands of its President, it carried a lot of weight.
But Marvel’s hearts were never in “relevance” the same way DC’s were. At first glance that seemed odd, considering that their books, in other ways, were much more closely tied to the real world. Maybe the less serial nature of the DC books made it easier for them to cover the “issue of the month,” as opposed to the Marvel books, which favored more extended storylines. Who would want to read about Spider-Man fighting pollution for eight friggin’ months in a row, anyway?
Or maybe DC was a little less embarrassed by the polemic nature of too many of these stories. Most of them had to stop dead at some point while the hero either (a) delivered a speech about a gravely serious social issue or (b) had such a speech delivered to him, usually by a poor but virtuous denizen of a ghetto neighborhood.
Both of these clichés came from Green Lantern/Green Arrow, where they were initially fresh. In the very first story [GL #76], an old black man famously asks Green Lantern what he’s done for “the black skins”; this scene is dramatically clunky, but it hit a real chord and is very well remembered. Elsewhere in the issue, Green Arrow first develops his trademark rants against injustice. There was something very believable about the Arrow’s character in particular -- he really seemed like the former rich capitalist who had “gotten religion,” moved in with the regular people, got himself a sexier costume and girlfriend, and took his crusades much more seriously than the other characters in the book.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/capnixon.jpg" width="300" height="224" align="left">Unfortunately, Green Arrow’s speechifying didn’t work so well when transferred to, say, Leo Dorfman’s Action Comics. But a new group of creators poured into the field in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: Denny O’Neil, Steve Skeates, Neal Adams, Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Barry Windsor-Smith, Frank Brunner, Jim Starlin, and others. And a lot of those writers and artists were young, ambitious, and committed to social causes.
As usual, mundane business reasons drove the influx of new blood, starting with the 1968 DC purge of its older-line writers chronicled in <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=00003 4" target="_blank"> Installment 13</a>, “Give Me Liberty.” Just a few years later, Marvel finally broke free of its distribution deal through DC, allowing the company to greatly expand its line. This made room for experimental comics like Killraven, Man-Thing, Warlock, and Master Of Kung Fu, where many of the new writers and artists spread their wings.
Like many areas of popular culture, comics embraced “relevance” as a way of catching up with the turbulent changes of the ‘60s. Most popular media were very conservative in the ‘60s, but as the political and sexual permissiveness of the counterculture seeped into the mainstream, things changed fast.
While a new vanguard of creators revolutionized comics in the ‘70s, a parallel shift was transforming the film industry. Dennis Hopper, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Robert Altman, Don Simpson, and the pre-Star Wars George Lucas, among others, came into that field with a fire and passion to make great, new, and (yes) relevant films. And as with comics, the doors opened for them partly because of behind-the-scenes changes at the studios.
The ‘60s had not been kind to the film industry. The old formula of expensive blockbusters wasn’t working anymore, and studios, in desperation, turned to cheaper works, which made way for a wider variety of idiosyncratic filmmakers. And a few successes made it seem worthwhile to throw a little money each at a lot of small films. Film historian Robert Sklar described it this way:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/easyriderposter.jpg" width="250" height="362" align="right" alt="it all comes back to Fonda and Hopper"> “Easy Rider’s example, in the age-old Hollywood way, impelled others to copy its formula -- gather up a youthful cast and crew, give them a story about youthful alienation and struggles with a repressive know-nothing society, and you’ll bank a 2,500 percent profit, or thereabouts. A movie gold rush began anew in Hollywood for a few noncommercial filmmakers, television directors, free-lance screenwriters and off-Broadway performers. It lasted until the imitations of Easy Rider nearly all turned out to be box-office disasters.”
Relevance in comics was pretty much dead by 1975; it lingered on in movies a bit longer. That might be because comics have shorter lead times for production than films. In his fascinating book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind put it this way: “Because movies are expensive and time-consuming to make, Hollywood is always the last to know, the slowest to respond, and in those years it was at least half a decade behind the other popular arts.”
It’s also possible that comics had so overdone relevance by 1973 that it was kind of embarrassing. DC in particular took the whole thing a little too far; the “women’s lib” stories in Lois Lane were simplistic, and I think we can all agree that writing Superboy stories on prison reform was taking the trend a little too far (though it wasn’t a bad story, as they went).
As the ‘70s wore on, both DC and Marvel also saw an influx of a new group of fans-turned-pros, less influenced by the hippie world and more inclined -- for better or worse -- to return to comics' pure entertainment roots. The older-line editors were happy to encourage this.
The film world changed, too, in the late ‘70s -- more dramatically, and more permanently, than comics did. And what film was cited as the turning point, the rallying cry for the new Hollywood?
A little thing called Star Wars.
More on that next time!
**
Bibliography:
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Simon & Schuster, 1998)
Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America (Vintage/Random House, 1975)
Stuart Moore has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and the nighttime manager of the Lawrenceville, NJ Woolworth's curtain department. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999. Sadly, there’s no going back to Woolworth’s…but that hasn’t been a problem yet, because of…
My current comics work: Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day giveaway, ROCKET COMICS: IGNITE, featured a special 10-page stand-alone preview story of LONE, my entry into the new Rocket Comics line, along with two other great stories. More information at <a href="http://www.rocketcomics.net" target="_blank">http://www.rocketcomics.net</a> and <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094" target="_blank">http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000094</a> . Also: The beautiful trade paperback collection of ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, my epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press, is out now; ask for it by name! And coming soon: announcements about projects from three other companies -- keep an eye on my message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com." target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com.</a> See you in 14 days…