MichaelDoran
11-05-2002, 05:53 PM
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A THOUSAND FLOWERS
Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside
Installment 4
by Stuart Moore</div>
4. Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction (Part One)
<blockquote>“C’mere, kid. Yeah, I see you. Don’t try an’ sneak out of old Uncle Hugo’s house. I may be pushin’ eighty, but I still got a few tricks. I can still push out a bestseller, or create a work of literary beauty. Can you, punk? Huh?
“I know, I know, most of the time I just sit around an’ talk about the same old crap. But y’know…old Uncle Hugo’s memory might be playing tricks, but…I don’t think it’s ‘cause I’m gettin' old. I think I always did that. Y’think every issue of PLANET STORIES was packed full of original ideas? Or every Ace Double?
“Kid, you an’ me…we ain’t always had the best relationship. Tell the truth, I was pretty ashamed of you for a long time, even though a lotta my friends liked you. But you’re growin’ up now, and I’d just like to talk to you a little…tell you about some of the mistakes I made. How I followed some of my own worst impulses, how I let people I thought were my friends corrupt me an’ send me down the wrong path. Some of the same things I see you doin’, right now.
“Come an’ siddown, an’ pour us both a glass of scotch. It ain’t every day old Uncle Hugo gets to have a serious talk with his favorite nephew: Comics.”</blockquote>
**
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/tac9.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/tac9_t.jpg" width="150" height="195" border="0" alt="THE ALIEN CRITIC #9, May 1974" align="right"></a>If you read this column, you probably follow at least some of the comics press and Internet message boards. If so, you’ve seen the endless moaning and laments: comics need to be taken more seriously; the insular nature of comics is our biggest impediment to national superstardom; fans have ruined professional comics; etc., etc., etc. A lot of this is perpetrated by people with actual hidden axes to grind, and it has the effect of making the field look like it’s in much worse shape than it actually is.
But some of it is honest debate about where the comics industry should be going - and there’s another field that’s been through a lot of the same changes as comics over the decades. The seventy-six-year history of science fiction (by which I mean, throughout this article, prose science fiction, not TV or films) parallels that of comics in many ways. Some of this is due to the direct influence of a few key people who crossed between the fields, and some of it is just the nature of the beasts. But it’s interesting to look at some of the (immortal) storms that sf (science fiction) has weathered over the years, and see how they relate to comics past and present.
**
“Fandom has proved the sort of movement from which empires are born.”
--Brian W. Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree, 1986
It’s a debate that’s raged for at least twenty-five years: Have the fans ruined comics?
One side argues that the steady flow of fans into professional positions has led to a skewing of priorities, a generation of (mainstream) comics aimed purely at the hard core of fandom, inaccessible to the casual reader. This side further argues that these fans-turned-pros are poorly trained in the basics: clear storytelling, literary techniques, appreciation of real drawing ability. Instead, they over-identify with specific characters and concern themselves too much with what happens in a story, not whether the story itself is well-written, well-drawn, or even comprehensible.
The other side goes as follows: Without fandom, comics would have withered and died by now. The traditional young comics reader grows out of the habit within a few years; it’s the fans who stick with the field, who make it a steady business and support the best creators. And when fans become editors and writers, they bring with them a greater knowledge of the field - its techniques, its history - than outsiders possibly could.
Harry Warner, Jr’s book All Our Yesterdays, subtitled An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties, was published in 1969. It includes a capsule description of different kinds of fans, which applies as well to today’s comics fans as to the sf fans of the ‘30s and ‘40s: “Some of them just accumulate the stuff without reading it. Others not only accumulate the items without reading them, but take such pains to insure their safe preservation that they are afraid even to remove them from their wrappings, cellophane encasings, or lightproof boxes. But there are collectors who put the books and magazines to their literary purposes, and a few benevolent collectors put their hobby at the service of other fans by producing criticism, indexes, historical information, and related matter about their possessions.” On the web, these days.
Sam Merwin, Jr., edited the pulp sf magazines THRILLING WONDER and STARTLING STORIES in the ‘40s. He later described the fans - much more colorfully than Warner - as “the source of much joy and occasional anguish, an incredible tribe of masochists who kept returning endlessly for further fetishistic mistreatment despite the fact that I exploited them quite shamelessly for what I deemed the good of my publications.”
Warner’s book also features a chapter called “Fans into Pros,” which describes the transition many fans made in the early 1940s, when the number of sf magazines expanded dramatically. Among the fans profiled here is Mort Weisinger, best known as the longtime editor of the Superman comics line, but who here is noted as an early sf agent (along with Julie Schwartz) and editor, before Merwin, of THRILLING WONDER STORIES. More on Weisinger next time.
Warner notes that “Unfortunately, this partial conversion of hobby into vocational school has not been an unmixed blessing for either fandom or prodom…Many fans became editors when they were too young and inexperienced with people to handle them as well as they did words.” He also asserts that “some fans edited prozines that either died promptly or offered awful stories during long lives.”
The two main routes to fandom in those days, according to Warner, were through clubs and letter columns. He laments the decline of letter columns in the professional sf magazines - just as comics fans are doing today, now that Marvel rarely runs letter columns and DC has formally discontinued them.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/itsaysherecolor.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/itsaysherecolor_t.jpg" width="200" height="160" border="0" alt="letter column heading from SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, May 1954" align="left"></a>One problem publishers face in dealing with fan reaction is the disconnect between the most vocal readers’ feedback and actual sales figures. Today, this seems…louder…because of the instant-response nature of the internet, but it was just as true in decades past. In Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction (1975), James Gunn quotes fan-turned-writer/editor Robert A.W. Lowndes as saying that “even when the Sloane [-edited] AMAZING was at its lowest ebb, it still received mail by the sack.” An editorial note in that magazine’s February, 1932 issue, responding to a largely critical letter, diplomatically states the editor’s eternal dilemma: “We have two ways of judging the reception of AMAZING STORIES by the great public. One are the many letters we receive and of these comparatively few are unfavorable. The other method is the investigation of the circulation and this we find to be very gratifying.”
In other words: I don’t want to insult you directly, but sales are fine, so why should I listen to you? Even if there is a small, hardcore fandom that agrees with you?
Or, to put it in modern terms: If GREEN LANTERN sales are good, it doesn’t matter what kind of petition is online. Why in the world would we want to bring back Hal Jordan? Clearly a lot of people like Kyle Rayner.
There’s no one answer to the fan-into-pro puzzle - it depends on the individual, and the circumstances he or she walks into. (A fan learning his craft at the Marvel Comics of the ‘60s would have learned very different lessons than an intern at the ‘90s Marvel, for instance.) But Brian Aldiss, again in his sf history Trillion Year Spree, states the case for caution simply and elegantly, with particular focus on the fan-become-writer. He gratefully acknowledges the positive effects of fan attention on writers, then continues:
“But there is an obverse side of every coin, and the truth is that several promising writers have been spoiled by seeking popularity exclusively from the fans who - like any other group of enthusiasts - want more of what they have already been enjoying. To attain true stature as a writer, one must look beyond the fervid confines of fandom - however cosy it may seem by the campfire, yarning of old times and old mistresses.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/imagi-nation.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/imagi-nation_t.jpg" width="150" height="210" border="0" alt="A real oddity -- an interior ad from the mimeographed 1940 YEARBOOK OF SCIENCE, FANTASY AND WEIRD FICTION, by Franklyn H. Brady and A. Ross Kuntz" align="right"></a>You don’t have to change a word to apply this to comics. The only difference - a somewhat depressing one - is the reluctance of mainstream comics professionals to acknowledge the possibility of artistic achievement in their own work.
So - prescription for the 21st-century comics writer: Mix a little ambition (to transcend the genre limitations of mainstream comics) and a little caution (to avoid the pitfalls of fannish thinking). For the editor: Encourage talented writers to stretch themselves, and discourage them from dwelling on Aldiss’s “cosy” campfire - or on the favorite comics of their youth.
The sf professionals of the ‘40s faced the same challenge. Some of them failed, and are forgotten. Others rose to it, and are still read today. What more could a writer ask?
**
<blockquote>“So you see, kid, you an’ me are a lot alike. Yeah, you got your own music you listen to, an’ you got that whole art connection goin’ on. I respect that, I really do. A little of that coulda gotten Uncle Hugo a whole lot more tail back in the old days. Heh!
“Kid, Uncle Hugo’s tired now. That’s why his head’s lolling to the side like that an’ his breath smells funny. He’s goin’ to sleep now. You can let yourself out…but come on back in, say, two weeks. We’ll talk about how things got this way; about some guys I knew who took an interest in you early on, like Julie Schwartz and Mort Weisinger; an’ why it’s so hard to get the world to respect you. An’ Uncle Hugo’ll be awake by then. He promises.
“Just turn on the Sf Channel when you leave, okay? Uncle Hugo wants to see who’s stealing from him this week…”</blockquote>
**
NEXT [11/19]: Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction (Part Two)
Last Installment : <a href=http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000005>Bringing the Readers Back Home: Comics and WWII </a>
<blockquote>[Stuart Moore’s A THOUSAND FLOWERS is co-sponsored by <a href=http://www.crossgen.com target=”_blank”>CrossGen Comics</a> , <a href=http://www.ait-planetlar.com/ target=”_blank”>AiT/Planet Lar</a> & <a href=http://www.pfpress.com/ target=”_blank”>Penny Farthing Press</a> . Click on the links to visit their websites. To inquire about future sponsorship opportunities with this column, please email <a href=mailto:newsarama@aol.com>newsarama@aol.com</a> ]</blockquote>
**
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Creators/stuartwizphoto_f.jpg" width="110" height="113" align="right" alt="Stuart Moore">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.
Currently Stuart freelances as a writer of comic books and nonfiction; he’d like you all to go out and buy ZENDRA, his epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press. Issue #4 of the second series, ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, is on sale now, and the trade paperback ZENDRA 1.0: COLLOCATION collects the first series. Then you can go to Stuart’s message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and discuss ZENDRA, this column, or anything else on you like. Clear ether!
<font face="Arial, Verdana"><div align="center">
A THOUSAND FLOWERS
Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside
Installment 4
by Stuart Moore</div>
4. Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction (Part One)
<blockquote>“C’mere, kid. Yeah, I see you. Don’t try an’ sneak out of old Uncle Hugo’s house. I may be pushin’ eighty, but I still got a few tricks. I can still push out a bestseller, or create a work of literary beauty. Can you, punk? Huh?
“I know, I know, most of the time I just sit around an’ talk about the same old crap. But y’know…old Uncle Hugo’s memory might be playing tricks, but…I don’t think it’s ‘cause I’m gettin' old. I think I always did that. Y’think every issue of PLANET STORIES was packed full of original ideas? Or every Ace Double?
“Kid, you an’ me…we ain’t always had the best relationship. Tell the truth, I was pretty ashamed of you for a long time, even though a lotta my friends liked you. But you’re growin’ up now, and I’d just like to talk to you a little…tell you about some of the mistakes I made. How I followed some of my own worst impulses, how I let people I thought were my friends corrupt me an’ send me down the wrong path. Some of the same things I see you doin’, right now.
“Come an’ siddown, an’ pour us both a glass of scotch. It ain’t every day old Uncle Hugo gets to have a serious talk with his favorite nephew: Comics.”</blockquote>
**
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/tac9.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/tac9_t.jpg" width="150" height="195" border="0" alt="THE ALIEN CRITIC #9, May 1974" align="right"></a>If you read this column, you probably follow at least some of the comics press and Internet message boards. If so, you’ve seen the endless moaning and laments: comics need to be taken more seriously; the insular nature of comics is our biggest impediment to national superstardom; fans have ruined professional comics; etc., etc., etc. A lot of this is perpetrated by people with actual hidden axes to grind, and it has the effect of making the field look like it’s in much worse shape than it actually is.
But some of it is honest debate about where the comics industry should be going - and there’s another field that’s been through a lot of the same changes as comics over the decades. The seventy-six-year history of science fiction (by which I mean, throughout this article, prose science fiction, not TV or films) parallels that of comics in many ways. Some of this is due to the direct influence of a few key people who crossed between the fields, and some of it is just the nature of the beasts. But it’s interesting to look at some of the (immortal) storms that sf (science fiction) has weathered over the years, and see how they relate to comics past and present.
**
“Fandom has proved the sort of movement from which empires are born.”
--Brian W. Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree, 1986
It’s a debate that’s raged for at least twenty-five years: Have the fans ruined comics?
One side argues that the steady flow of fans into professional positions has led to a skewing of priorities, a generation of (mainstream) comics aimed purely at the hard core of fandom, inaccessible to the casual reader. This side further argues that these fans-turned-pros are poorly trained in the basics: clear storytelling, literary techniques, appreciation of real drawing ability. Instead, they over-identify with specific characters and concern themselves too much with what happens in a story, not whether the story itself is well-written, well-drawn, or even comprehensible.
The other side goes as follows: Without fandom, comics would have withered and died by now. The traditional young comics reader grows out of the habit within a few years; it’s the fans who stick with the field, who make it a steady business and support the best creators. And when fans become editors and writers, they bring with them a greater knowledge of the field - its techniques, its history - than outsiders possibly could.
Harry Warner, Jr’s book All Our Yesterdays, subtitled An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the Forties, was published in 1969. It includes a capsule description of different kinds of fans, which applies as well to today’s comics fans as to the sf fans of the ‘30s and ‘40s: “Some of them just accumulate the stuff without reading it. Others not only accumulate the items without reading them, but take such pains to insure their safe preservation that they are afraid even to remove them from their wrappings, cellophane encasings, or lightproof boxes. But there are collectors who put the books and magazines to their literary purposes, and a few benevolent collectors put their hobby at the service of other fans by producing criticism, indexes, historical information, and related matter about their possessions.” On the web, these days.
Sam Merwin, Jr., edited the pulp sf magazines THRILLING WONDER and STARTLING STORIES in the ‘40s. He later described the fans - much more colorfully than Warner - as “the source of much joy and occasional anguish, an incredible tribe of masochists who kept returning endlessly for further fetishistic mistreatment despite the fact that I exploited them quite shamelessly for what I deemed the good of my publications.”
Warner’s book also features a chapter called “Fans into Pros,” which describes the transition many fans made in the early 1940s, when the number of sf magazines expanded dramatically. Among the fans profiled here is Mort Weisinger, best known as the longtime editor of the Superman comics line, but who here is noted as an early sf agent (along with Julie Schwartz) and editor, before Merwin, of THRILLING WONDER STORIES. More on Weisinger next time.
Warner notes that “Unfortunately, this partial conversion of hobby into vocational school has not been an unmixed blessing for either fandom or prodom…Many fans became editors when they were too young and inexperienced with people to handle them as well as they did words.” He also asserts that “some fans edited prozines that either died promptly or offered awful stories during long lives.”
The two main routes to fandom in those days, according to Warner, were through clubs and letter columns. He laments the decline of letter columns in the professional sf magazines - just as comics fans are doing today, now that Marvel rarely runs letter columns and DC has formally discontinued them.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/itsaysherecolor.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/itsaysherecolor_t.jpg" width="200" height="160" border="0" alt="letter column heading from SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, May 1954" align="left"></a>One problem publishers face in dealing with fan reaction is the disconnect between the most vocal readers’ feedback and actual sales figures. Today, this seems…louder…because of the instant-response nature of the internet, but it was just as true in decades past. In Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction (1975), James Gunn quotes fan-turned-writer/editor Robert A.W. Lowndes as saying that “even when the Sloane [-edited] AMAZING was at its lowest ebb, it still received mail by the sack.” An editorial note in that magazine’s February, 1932 issue, responding to a largely critical letter, diplomatically states the editor’s eternal dilemma: “We have two ways of judging the reception of AMAZING STORIES by the great public. One are the many letters we receive and of these comparatively few are unfavorable. The other method is the investigation of the circulation and this we find to be very gratifying.”
In other words: I don’t want to insult you directly, but sales are fine, so why should I listen to you? Even if there is a small, hardcore fandom that agrees with you?
Or, to put it in modern terms: If GREEN LANTERN sales are good, it doesn’t matter what kind of petition is online. Why in the world would we want to bring back Hal Jordan? Clearly a lot of people like Kyle Rayner.
There’s no one answer to the fan-into-pro puzzle - it depends on the individual, and the circumstances he or she walks into. (A fan learning his craft at the Marvel Comics of the ‘60s would have learned very different lessons than an intern at the ‘90s Marvel, for instance.) But Brian Aldiss, again in his sf history Trillion Year Spree, states the case for caution simply and elegantly, with particular focus on the fan-become-writer. He gratefully acknowledges the positive effects of fan attention on writers, then continues:
“But there is an obverse side of every coin, and the truth is that several promising writers have been spoiled by seeking popularity exclusively from the fans who - like any other group of enthusiasts - want more of what they have already been enjoying. To attain true stature as a writer, one must look beyond the fervid confines of fandom - however cosy it may seem by the campfire, yarning of old times and old mistresses.”
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/imagi-nation.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/flowers/imagi-nation_t.jpg" width="150" height="210" border="0" alt="A real oddity -- an interior ad from the mimeographed 1940 YEARBOOK OF SCIENCE, FANTASY AND WEIRD FICTION, by Franklyn H. Brady and A. Ross Kuntz" align="right"></a>You don’t have to change a word to apply this to comics. The only difference - a somewhat depressing one - is the reluctance of mainstream comics professionals to acknowledge the possibility of artistic achievement in their own work.
So - prescription for the 21st-century comics writer: Mix a little ambition (to transcend the genre limitations of mainstream comics) and a little caution (to avoid the pitfalls of fannish thinking). For the editor: Encourage talented writers to stretch themselves, and discourage them from dwelling on Aldiss’s “cosy” campfire - or on the favorite comics of their youth.
The sf professionals of the ‘40s faced the same challenge. Some of them failed, and are forgotten. Others rose to it, and are still read today. What more could a writer ask?
**
<blockquote>“So you see, kid, you an’ me are a lot alike. Yeah, you got your own music you listen to, an’ you got that whole art connection goin’ on. I respect that, I really do. A little of that coulda gotten Uncle Hugo a whole lot more tail back in the old days. Heh!
“Kid, Uncle Hugo’s tired now. That’s why his head’s lolling to the side like that an’ his breath smells funny. He’s goin’ to sleep now. You can let yourself out…but come on back in, say, two weeks. We’ll talk about how things got this way; about some guys I knew who took an interest in you early on, like Julie Schwartz and Mort Weisinger; an’ why it’s so hard to get the world to respect you. An’ Uncle Hugo’ll be awake by then. He promises.
“Just turn on the Sf Channel when you leave, okay? Uncle Hugo wants to see who’s stealing from him this week…”</blockquote>
**
NEXT [11/19]: Comics’ Drunken Uncle: Science Fiction (Part Two)
Last Installment : <a href=http://www.newsarama.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=000005>Bringing the Readers Back Home: Comics and WWII </a>
<blockquote>[Stuart Moore’s A THOUSAND FLOWERS is co-sponsored by <a href=http://www.crossgen.com target=”_blank”>CrossGen Comics</a> , <a href=http://www.ait-planetlar.com/ target=”_blank”>AiT/Planet Lar</a> & <a href=http://www.pfpress.com/ target=”_blank”>Penny Farthing Press</a> . Click on the links to visit their websites. To inquire about future sponsorship opportunities with this column, please email <a href=mailto:newsarama@aol.com>newsarama@aol.com</a> ]</blockquote>
**
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Creators/stuartwizphoto_f.jpg" width="110" height="113" align="right" alt="Stuart Moore">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.
Currently Stuart freelances as a writer of comic books and nonfiction; he’d like you all to go out and buy ZENDRA, his epic science fiction series from Penny-Farthing Press. Issue #4 of the second series, ZENDRA: HEART OF FIRE, is on sale now, and the trade paperback ZENDRA 1.0: COLLOCATION collects the first series. Then you can go to Stuart’s message board at <a href="http://www.joequesada.com" target="_blank">http://www.joequesada.com</a> and discuss ZENDRA, this column, or anything else on you like. Clear ether!