You'll find this hard to believe, I know. But there are writers and artists, as well as presumably editors, who don't seem to care about whether their work makes sense to anyone beyond the die-hard fanboy. Pity the guileless consumer who decides to shell out for a copy of, to take but one prominent example, The New Avengers #21, in the naive expectation that they'll be able to both understand and enjoy what's going on within the comic's covers. Sadly, neither sense nor entertainment awaits them. Writer Brian Michael Bendis has artist Mike Deodato open the issue with an shot of the Avengers Mansion surrounded by thousand of New Yorkers protesting against the presence of trouble-magnet superheroes in their city. We're then shown Jessica Jones, her baby and Squirrel Girl leaving the Mansion and walking into the crowd, an act of apparent bravery matched with a supposedly touching vulnerability which eventually inspires some of the protest's more volatile elements to riot. It's a scene designed to pluck, pluck and pluck again at the reader's heartstrings. There's the brave super-heroines, the beastly swarming mob, the obligatory fight-scene, the humorous and yet strangely impressive attack of a swarm of squirrels clearing a path for our plucky female leads, and there's even a genuinely amusing punchline to close the sequence.
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| Jessica Jones, helpfully lining up herself and her baby for any super-villain's assassination attempt. After all, with Norman Osborn free again, why wouldn't Jessica be wandering around in the open in such circumstances? |
But the problem is that the scene doesn't make sense. It's all sensation and no substance. As unbelievable as it sounds, we're never told why Jessica Jones is behaving as she is in the first place. Why has she chosen to inflame an already obviously combustible situation? Where is she going and why is she headed there? She's presumably going away for quite a while, given the size of the suitcase she's carrying, and yet there's no sense of what she's doing or how it makes her feel. Is she pleased to be leaving, is she concerned about those folks she's left behind? Is she determined not to allow the crowd to intimidate her, or even striding out to try to talk sense to them before she moves on? Who can possibly say? The situation is never explained to us, which means that we have no idea at all of what the point-of-view character's motivation for the scene is. Worse yet, the little information we have been given by the preceding text page has informed us that:
"Norman Osbourn has escaped from prison and has previously threatened Jessica Jones' baby. This has rattled her to the core."
Lets leave aside the possibility - suggested by that last sentence's phrasing - that Jessica's baby is somehow smart enough to be exceptionally nervous about her own safety. (Many of Marvel's text introductions are apparently written by folks who'd struggle to attain clarity with a four-item shopping list.) Instead, let's consider the probability, based on the little information that the causal reader's been given, that only an idiot in such circumstances, "rattled" or not, would (a) make a such a clear target of herself and her child in the open while (b) plunging into a massive crowd of discontented ne'er-do-wells so obviously opposed to The Avengers. Had Jones discounted the probability that it's no coincidence such a demonstration of hostility has boiled up just as Osborn's regained his freedom? Is she so impossibly thick that she doesn't consider that such a crowd would be perfect cover for any number of villainous individuals intent on causing the Avengers hurt? Hasn't she the wit to glimmer that such a congregation of folks raging against The Avengers might not take well to one of the super-team's own striding into their midst?
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| Apparently the only way out of Avengers Mansion is through the big gates where the thousands of angry people are. This is, it seems, true even so for a super-heroine who can fly. (What? No back door, no other gate?) |
To show somebody behaving so irresponsibly surely requires an explanation? After all, Jones doesn't need to be behaving in this way. She can actually fly, for one thing, which means that she could pop across the field behind her home, slip up and over whatever boundary marker exists there, and be gone without attracting very much attention at all. But then, the Avengers possess Quinjets which would allow her to exit the Mansion without putting herself in a fraction of the danger which she chose to face, and there's a host of members and associates who could, one way or another, ensure her, and her baby, safe passage. Even if for some reason Jessica herself can't take to the air, it still seems unlikely that the huge expanse of parkland which is shown surrounding the Mansion lacks any other exit except for the one obvious set of gates surrounded by the folks with bullhorns and placards. Why would Jones ever choose to head right into the only significant source of jeopardy that's in any way threatening her, and why would she do so carrying her child with her as she goes?
There's no good answer available in the pages of The New Avengers #21 to any of those questions, apart from that suggested by the fact that Mr Bendis' script needs Jones to behave stupidly in order for events to pan out as he wants. Common sense, it seems, would only get in the way of all that citizen-bluster and squirrel-pandemonium.
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| It's funny. They're squirrels. But what if you've never heard of Squirrel Girl? What if you'd never recognise her costume, what if you knew nothing of her powers? (How many of these squirrels ended up maimed if not squished flat? Since the script plays on our sentimental fondness for cuddly lil'squirrels, it's worth remembering that many of them would've ended up as uncuddly, flat lil'squirrels. Or are they super squirrels?) |
These aren't the only problems with this four-page opening sequence, though you'd think that would be enough for any writer concerned with the plight of irregular or even unfamiliar readers picking up The New Avengers. There's also the fact that a huge, antagonised public demonstration has gathered outside an institution central to one of the most important components of America's Nation Security State, and yet there's not a single police officer in sight. How is this possible? You'd expect the NYPD to be out in numbers if that many people appeared anywhere in town, and yet somehow there's nobody at all supervising this mass of discontent. That actually seems even more unbelievable that the appearance of what seems to be dozens of massive, crowd-suppressing super-squirrels at the scene's conclusion. Who knows where that scury of cutesy terrors has leapt from. Amusing as it might be for anyone so meta-conscious of comics history that they can playfully swallow the idea of Squirrel Girl's rodent army clearing a path for nanny, mother and child, it's also an entirely opaque matter to everyone else who's so unforgivably ignorant of the minutiae of Marvel lore.
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| Luckily for BMB's plot, the thousands of demonstrators around the Mansion don't actually know anything about much the Avengers and their extended family. (Public protests in the super-universes do tend to be the province of the unruly, the ignorant, and the bigoted.Those rotten citizens moaning about their elite betters.) This ignorance of even the current membership of the Avengers extends, in celebrity and race-obsessed America, to Jessica Jones, whose marriage to Luke Cage would surely have been a longstanding water-cooler topic in the USA of the Marvel Universe. |
What we have in this scene is an unnecessary complex and contradictory set of challenges being thrown at the less-than-regular reader of The Avengers. Perhaps those folks who've been following the series know why Jessica Jones is behaving so stupidly, or even where she might be going and why, but for the rest of us, the sequence is baffling. (The neophyte reader really is left entirely without safety wheels. To take but one example; Squirrel Girl isn't even named in the text, and nor are her super-powers mentioned, let alone explained.) On the one hand, the reader's being expected to know who these characters are in terms of their identities and their powers, and yet on the other, the reader's required to forget that they've ever seen Jessica behave in anything other than an entirely imbecilic fashion. A touch of the relevant details explaining clearly what's to come on the textpage might have helped, just as a degree of plot-seeding and foreshadowing in the story proper would have. Yet The New Avengers #21 is the product, it seems, of creators who just don't care whether their work means anything other than noise to those of us who (a) don't belong to the fannish, buy-every-issue Rump, and yet,(b) have tried to pay attention to what we've previously read.
To be completed on Sunday;
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It's funny; the comics of the old days were much more absurd than this one, with nonsensical psychology, motivations that don't bear a second's scrutiny, and blatant disregard for reality. But it rankled less. I don't think it's a matter of nostalgia blinding us, either. I think the key difference is presentation.
ReplyDeleteThat "Avengers" sequence could be made easily acceptable to a reader with a little setup. A handful of narrating captions, a stronger context, and you're all set. Just answer the basic questions of "what's going on" and "why is it going down like this," and you're all set.
The problem is that the comic presents itself as "lesser television," which means a lack of contextual narration. Dude, we need more explanation! Another big problem is that these pages ask us to take them seriously. For example, the assault of squirrels, an intrinsically silly idea, is not depicted in a silly manner; it's drawn as though the fluffy-tailed bastards' attack is a moment of high drama. Given the lack of other information offered to the reader, evidently we're expected to find SQUIRREL ATTACK! as dramatic. But we can't, because SQUIRREL ATTACK! is an inherently silly and undramatic notion.
Too many mixed messages, not enough tools being used. This could have been a cool scene, with drama (the crowd turns against The Avengers!), pathos (the baby is in danger!), and humor (SQUIRREL ATTACK!), but the script is missing key pieces and the art plays it too straight. Argh.
Hello Harvey:- I agree entirely about your point. It is the way that the silliness is presented. I'd add to your point that pace is also an aspect of today's problems; in the very first Avengers tales, for example, we're no sooner presented with the likes of the Hulk pretending to be a robot in a circus than we're thrown into a huge brawl between the Avengers and Loki. One daft - one wonderfully daft moment - follows another because the point is to hold the reader's attention for THAT VERY SECOND before passing it onto another moment OF INCREDIBLE SPECTACLE, and so on.
DeleteBut this scene is as slow moving as it's stupid-minded. Combine that with the lack of the set-up you detail and it's hard not to yawn at the hollowness of it all, and squirm at the seriousness by which Squirrel Girl, for example, is treated. (I do get the joke. She's a sweet character. But every character has to end up being a destroyer, don't they, just as they'll also have to be shown being entirely pathetic too. SG isn't either, of course. She's just a children's comics character, and all the better for it.)
The mixing of tone that you mention would have been fantastic, and that process was another one which often marked the early Marvel Revolution books. Of course, I'm not suggesting a return to those stories, but the principles which underlined them could and should be transformed to today's comics.
Squirrel Girl isn't a silly character; she's just not a superhero crowd-breaker-upper. It's the creators who hold to this style, this substanceless style, who're the daft ones here ...
Lesser television? Love the phrase, agree with the meaning. We do need more explanation. This prejudice against context is infuriating.
I have not read this. I gave up on the Avengers quite some time ago...basically with Civil War, and I haven't regretted it in the least.
ReplyDeleteBut you make a valid point. WHY on earth, would anyone, go out and confront an angry mob, while CARRYING A BABY!!!! If you wish to endanger yourself, that is one thing... but a baby? It is ludicrous.
Hello Sally:- I think you were right to give up on the Avengers books. I keep coming back because I was always a fan of the title/s, and because I want to be won over by BMB's work. I keep thinking I'll get it if I just try a little harder.
DeleteWouldn't it have been interesting if Jessica's carrying of her baby into that situation had been meant to show that she was actually an irresponsible mother? (After all, it does, unless the kid has inherited the parent's invulnerability. I don't know, and the comic certainly doesn't say.) Instead, the kid's there as sentimental flavouring. Pah. Ludicrous indeed ...
"WHY on earth, would anyone, go out and confront an angry mob, while CARRYING A BABY!!!!"
DeleteIt's important to remember that contemporary superhero psychology is conditioned by the element of badassery. Altough it's reasonable and noble not to inflame a delicate situation with an outright provocation, that's not badass. And everything superheroes do must be badass, like walking defiantly through a crowd of people who don't like you.
Hello Miguel:- It's a good point! What a disappointment that the badassery wasn't in any way defined here. It would've been interesting to know that Jessica was facing down the crowd, or determined not to be cowed by it. THAT would've been a story. But just having her walk in that direction without any explanation .... Pah.
DeleteI keep saying it... why bother? Even buying this comic means you're part of the problem, not the solution. Don't buy it, ignore it, don't discuss it, don't give it the oxygen of publicity. Giving up on Big Comics will probably also have the added side effect of lowering your blood pressure.
ReplyDeleteHello Mark;- a fair set of points, well expressed. I don't agree with them, mind you, except for the blood pressure issue; there you're right. On the oxygen of publicity; one of the reasons I've been reading up on the Avengers is because I've got a "the month in comics" column coming up elsewhere & with the film being quite rightly big news in the media, I was obliged to discuss the Avengers. So, I guess I really have to give The Avengers that oxygen, although I am pleased to discuss the franchise too. I've always been a fan of the book, and it interests me to see how it's developing, though "my" era is pre #200, with some notable later exceptions. I spend a great deal of time discussing both "classic" comics and unMainstream books now, here and elsewhere, but I am still fascinated by the Big Comics. I may not think they're in good shape, but that's an interesting biz in itself.
DeleteSo, I guess I'm interested in the books, and I've also been paid to review them. AND, perhaps most of all, I'm fascinated by work which presents characters in a positive light even when they're actually being shown doing really stupid, irrational and even despicable things.
So, and I say this without a trace of the huffs, but because it was a good question passionately expressed; that's why I bother.
But on Tuesday I'll be writing about Wally Wood's artwork in the early Sixties, and then about some really interesting modern-era indy books, and I'll be REALLY pleased to do that too.
Well...I'm certainly glad I ditched this series when I did.
ReplyDeleteIt's always worth remembering that "fan" is a shortening of "fanatic" and fanatics are extremely unlikely to possess the critical distance required to see through 'convenient writing' like NA#21. Maybe there's just a wilful desire to ignore plot holes so that their money doesn't feel wasted.
Nobody expects New Avengers to be realistic - it's a super hero team comic after all - but is it really too much to ask that it at least remains remotely logical within the context of the setting? Apparently so.
It rankles because, as Harvey said above, this is presented as a serious scene in a serious book. This is the supposed to be a moment of high dramatic tension yet it doesn't stand up to the book's own internal logic.
Brian Michael Bendis can write good comics - I know this because I've read some of them - but I think he doesn't even feel the need to try with his Avengers work any more. Pretty much any old garbage will sell if you slap the Avengers brand and his name on it, so why bother?
At the point of submission there should be an editor reading his script and asking the questions you posed above but clearly they aren't. It's almost as though the folks at Marvel have no interest whatsoever in ensuring that their flagship book (carrying the brand of this summer's blockbuster movie I might add) is of the highest possible quality.
Your anger is entirely justified, the only surprise is that more readers don't feel the same.
Hello Ed:- I'm like an addict with the Avengers. I give the book up, I dry out, and then some lizard part of me thinks that it'll be alright to just try a little hit again.
DeleteI suspect the super-book has - with notable exceptions - gradually elbowed out of the way the mass of customers who are bothered by these stupid plot-holes, these ridiculously lazy examples of storytelling. If you don't treat your customers with respect, if you don't invest the time and care to make a story more than a collection of presumably fan-friendly moments, then why would readers stay? As you say, it's not a matter of realism, it's a question of being true to the reality which the book claims to portray. And it's so rarely done ..
I agree with you that BMB has written good books before. Powers is a series I've often enjoyed very much, and I've the Alias Omnibus sitting on my bookshelf. And I find it hard to grasp why, for example, this New Avengers issue, and those either side of it, are so lazy.
I too wonder about the role of editors when it comes to so-called superstar writers. But then I worry about the role of editors in the mainstream in general. The news of editorial interference in the New DC, for example, is often deeply worrying. Not for every book, of course, but there seems to be an editorial problem. If comics were a big enough industry to justify a news organisation funding research into it, I'd suggest some digging into the issue of editorship would kick in some fascinating material, for good as well as ill.
Hello, I've been catching up on your blog the last couple of weeks (great job, by the way; one of the few blogs that contains actual critical discussion rather than rehashes of who is fighting who) and you constantly hit on a problem that I have every week. I work part-time in a comic book store and am hard pressed to help people who genuinely WANT to start buying a monthly superhero book, but don't want all the back story. The most common question, of course, is "Where do I start?" The DC "reboot" has helped, but most of those titles actually refer in one way or another to the pre-reboot universe. Very rarely is someone willing to start investing in paperback collections of back issues to understand the foundations of the DC/Marvel culture. (Personally, I felt cheated by the supposed "starting over" when what we have actually been issued are replications of the same 1940's era tropes. Cranky, middle-aged Caucasian guys in tights, again.)
ReplyDeleteI love my job, but I find it much easier to sell full-length contained books like "Dotter of Her Father's Eyes" than the wonderful monthly "Wolverine and the X-Men." There are proper ways to put out restart issues. The recent issued of Garth Ennis' "Crossed," I think, did a wonderful job of re-introducing characters AND a world. Again, though, that's not a superhero title.
Hello randomwords:- Thank you for the generous words. They're much appreciated.
DeleteIt's fascinating to hear of your problems in trying to sell the super-book, and I entirely agree with your analysis of the problem,. EVERY issue has to count, EVERY issue has to deliver ALL the information necessary to make it an entirely satisfying read. That doesn't mean endless footnotes and exposition; the script for New Avengers #21 probably needed another couple of passes to (a) make it make sense in its own terms, and (b) make it an inclusive, transparent experience for the casual as much as the committed reader. But it could be done. I wonder whether the returns for writers are, in absolute and comparitive terms, enough to encourage such a measure of care and ambition. I wonder whether the culture amongst many professionals even recognises that such an approach might be neccesary.
It seems to me that the graphic novel market from the Big Two is still based on the premise that folks will want to explore the superhero universes in depth. It's a stupid, short-sighted premise. They need value for money and clear, ambitious, smart storytelling. They need intense experiences which aren't just soap-operatic encouragements to keep reading, to jump to this crossover, to this team-up, and so on.
I too share your disappointment about the New 52. And with the coming explosion of crossovers, it seems that things aren't going to get any better.
As you say, there's no reason why graphic novels, or even individual issues, can't be satisfying and (apparently) self-contained in themselves. But the Big Two don't seem to care, with a few exceptions. Instead of asking how can we reach beyond the Rump, they seem to focus on how to maximise the return from a tiny number of hardcore fans. In doing so, endless opportunities are squandered.
Good luck spreading the word!
re random: there's a new Ennis Crossed?! AAAAAARG I HAVE TO GET THIS
Delete- Charles RB
Hello Charles:- And if you're that enthused for Crossed, I suppose I really ought to find out why. As I've always meant to. (But I have to say, the Cap torture biz in the Secret Avengers hasn't helped me feel positive about investigating more WE.)
DeleteDear Colin
ReplyDeleteExciting news that you are about to reach a much larger audience, you surely deserve it. Congratulations. Perhaps you'll clue us in when the piece sees print.
Looking forward to part two of this review, if only to discover if Bendis actually did anything well in this comic. His talents are considerable and sometimes stupefying, I was one of his biggest groupies back when he was rolling with Alias and Powers. Can't help feeling he's been diminished and depleted by his unremitting workload. These days when I get a hankering for some Bendis I just whack on the Coffee's For Closers scene from Glengarry Glen Ross. Sometimes you're better going direct to the source.
Thank you for buying and reviewing this book so that I didn't have to.
Hello Marco:- thank you for those congratulations. It's two weeks until I have a small piece printed in a rather big magazine which I've been a devoted reader of for quite literally years, and, I fear, for all that it IS a small piece, I'll surely be unable not to mention it :)
DeleteThe second half of the piece is finished now. I fear that there may not good news a-coming about the rest of the comic. I too have been a big fan of BMB in my day. The whole situation re: the current quality of his work quite escapes me. I'll never know whether he regards his work on the Avengers as reflecting his talent or not, but I'd love to know. It's hard to think that a man who's so often shown himself to be smart and principled would knowingly produce such scripts.
I'm chuffed to have taken on the job of buying and reviewing the comic!
Love this analysis. One of the main things wrong with super-hero comics (post 2001 it seems) is the need for them to be "adult" and relevant, with no attempt to connect with the traditional target audience of child to mid teens. It is impossible for me to find anything from Marvel that is suitable for my little boy. Yet when I was between 7 and 11 I got hooked on the things, and was able to purchase whatever I saw in the newsagents with no worries for my parents. Too many fans turned writers wanting the characters to be relevant to them and so ignoring the younger audience, which means an ever decreasing population who will buy the things. Plus the fact that these are concepts that were never meant to hold up to reality, personifying good and bad in fairly simple terms. As soon as you try to apply real world thinking to the core super-hero universes it doesn't hold up. Alan Moore did it with Watchmen and Marvelman but these where not part of the mainstream universes of the big two, and did not come with the baggage of Spider-Man or Green Lantern (to take just two examples).
ReplyDeleteI suspect the reason for such sloppy storytelling is this thought that making every issue a jumping on point somehow detracts from the story being told. However if you where to examine the writing in a popular soap opera (e.g Coronation Street) you would find that every episode is a jumping on point. A viewer can start watching from any episode and get enough entertainment to return. Some of the current crop of super-hero writers could do worse than study such programmes.
Don't get me started on the inability of these people to come up with any original villains that stick (Norman Osborne still..).
Hello Marcus:- thank you for the kind words. I would agree with you that there's a major problem with the super-book and its lack of appropriateness to younger readers. I fear that it's a complex problem,but I'm certainly concerned that all-ages books are thought to be impossible when the likes of Dr Who can achieve exactly that mass mixed-ages audience on the TV. Appealing to adults and children alike needn't be the only product that the industry churns out. You yourself quote rightly mention Watchman and Marvelman. But a far greater range of product is surely something which we'd all like to see. The current division of books into THOSE FOR THE REALLY LITTLE KIDS and EVERYONE ELSE, BUT REALLY PERPETUAL ADOLESCENTS, is the most ridiculous business.
DeleteOn jumping on points: I agree with you entirely! And the soap opera example is an excellent one, if you'll forgive my enthusiasm. Why comics should - perhaps unwittingly - sneer at techniques which have allowed the likes of East Enders and Coronation Street to secure such huge audiences is beyond me.
I'd not thought of the dearth of original villains for awhile. I certainly struggle to think of any. (Osbourne has never convinced me. His past was simply too obviously that of a criminal psychopath for me to ever believe that he could get anywhere in the system. The idea of a rug-chewing psychopath in the system is a potentially interesting one, but the Green Goblin at the top of the National Security State? A psycho could undoubtedly get there, but one that's an industrial rather than a criminal psychopath, to use Hare's terms, and no doubt badly.
THE SPLENDID MARTIN GRAY SAID, BEFORE THIS DAFT NEW BLOGGER SYSTEM LED ME TO DELETE HIS COMMENT;
ReplyDeleteHi Colin, thoroughly sensible points as ever. I understand your perspective, I couldn't tell you how many times I've sworn off Bendis Avengers, gone back because I really wish to enjoy the team, written a negative review, sworn off ... I've not bothered with any of the latest Osborn business, because Bendis+Osborn has become a guarantee of a certain quality.
Sounds like the same old, same old, so far as story sense is concerned. I just don't understand why editors in the Avengers office seem so bad at their jobs; other Marvel books do tend to make more internal sense. Are they afraid to take Bendis in hand? Have they been told not to interfere? Or are they actually incapable of spotting holes in the story? It's a good job for creator royalties that Marvel automatically collects everything these days, because if Avengers issues were traded on merit, there'd be very little available since Kurt Busiek left the series.
Great comments, everyone above me. And well done on the upcoming article, Colin - I've always loved Woman's Realm too!
Hello Martin:- Sorry about deleting your comment. I thought I was getting rid of one of my own. Many apologies.
Delete"And well done on the upcoming article, Colin - I've always loved Woman's Realm too!"
Aw, you can be snotty about Women's Realm. Just 'cause you're a real journalist and I'm hanging on for dear life. I've never felt more respect for journalists than I have today as I desperately tried to loose 80 words from a piece that actually needs about another 120. Does that happen to everyone, or is it just wasters like me? And how come I can't make every line zing, as it were?
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that can't suppress the urge to keep going back to the Avengers. The first superteam book I loved was the X-Men, but that was dead and gone and apparently unlikely to ever return as I reached two figures, so it was the Avengers I turned to. From Thomas to Englehart to Micheline, it was SUCH a cracking title. I've enjoyed runs since, from the Stern/Buscema issues to the Busiek/Perez stories, and even the Crossing couldn't stop me dropping in to see what was up. But I just can't warm to BMB's work here and it's not for want of trying.
I have no idea why Marvel's editorial staff can't work closer with BMB on The Avengers. Perhaps the thinking is that he sells, so why interfere? Yet how many MORE copies might Marvel sell if he just attempted that extra draft, just engaged in a great dialogue with folks who might dare to disagree with him to the point that he responded. It's not as if I want not to BE buying the Avengers. Exactly the opposite is true.
I tell you, Martin, Women's Realm, it's a hard taskmaster, and worth every minute ...
Eek, I wisnae being snotty, just playful. Woman's Realm, like all entries in the UK women's consumer sector, is a tough gig to get. You'd get lots of respect from me were you working for them. As it is, the mystery remains!
DeleteNow, if cutting back your piece is proving too painful, I'm always happy to offer some suggestions. Subbing is fun! But I know you can do it.
Back on Mr Bendis, I've heard him interviewed and he always seems a bright, decent fella. And we know he has writing talent. So I suspect that indeed, he isn't being challenged by his editors - it could well be that he'd welcome someone going through his script with a needle and thread.
Hello Martin:- I didn't mean to imply that you were in reality being anything other than generous in a joshing fashion, Mr G. And I have no doubt myself that Women's Realm is, as you say, a tough gig to get and keep. In fact, the more I stumble round the margins of journalism, the more impressed I am, and the more amazed that the job is such a demanding one. Seriously.
DeleteI know you've been subbing today. I recall your tweet this morning. I hope it went well, and that's for the offer. But is subbing fun? I love editing when I've been able to leave a piece in the drawer for a few weeks. But editing what I've just written? That's a real challenge. Again, proper journalists are used to it. Me, it's a new skill to try to nail. Glad to have the chance to learn, mind you.
I agree with you about how bright and principled BMB sounds. It's hard to work out why so much of his work comes in a form which seems so ill-formed. Perhaps he'll have his own Supergods out one day, and we can really get an insight into his p.o.v. I don't feel any entitlement where his work is concerned, I've no problems in not enjoying it. It's how it came to be written in the form it's in that confuses me so.
I think you just put into words exactly what my issue with Bendis's "Avengers" work is: "But the problem is that the scene doesn't make sense. It's all sensation and no substance."
ReplyDeleteBendis's "Avengers" work is so incredibly heavy on contrivance and unlikely staging of events, which is in direct conflict with the supposed "naturalism" of his approach. He's hardly the first or only writer to have a scene that built on a lack of logic for the sake of raising the emotional stakes; it's practically a trope of the genre. But it gets much harder to swallow when the execution is meant to bring the story to a more exacting standard of realism. When you try to ground the pretensions of the genre as much as Bendis tends to do, relying on such see-through tactics doesn't aid the cause, it just draws attention to the fact that your "naturalism" is a convention that's just as contrived and unrealistic as the over-the-top spectacle of the most wacky space-opera.
It's the same thing that killed what could have been a good idea in "Secret Invasion:" by the end of the story, the Skrull army abandons all their meticulous planning, decades of work, and any semblance of logic in order for them to all be in Central Park just in time for the punch-up finale, which was so full of contrivances that what was supposed to be the dramatic crescendo was the point where the engine sputtered and the wheels fell off.
If it sounds like I'm a Bendis-hater, I'm really not. I think that he's written some of the best stuff of the last 10 years. His "Daredevil" may, pound-for-pound, be better than Frank Miller's. He's also a clearly intelligent man who has spent a long time honing his craft and thinking about his chosen medium. But that just makes his creative failures that much more infuriating. And to me, his Avengers work has always had an "Emperor's New Clothes" vibe to it: it was meant to be this polishing up and renewing of the team book, but it's always failed to engage because it's so easy to see the mechanisms at work behind it. You can't believe the illusion, because the wires are ropes are so easy to see.
Hello Adam:- "Bendis's "Avengers" work is so incredibly heavy on contrivance and unlikely staging of events, which is in direct conflict with the supposed "naturalism" of his approach."
DeleteThat's well put, sir! And it nails how I feel about his Avengers work, it really does. I'm keen to focus on relatively small examples of New Avengers #21 which seem to make sense and yet don't, but you make me wish I was doing something slightly more expansive, because the way you express your point really does illuminate a serious problem with BMB's approach. Not that its a pov that isn't relevant to the examples I'm using, of course. I wish I'd added that specific way of describing the scene with Jessica and the crowd. But you also offer a way of criticising his work as a whole on the franchise. I gave a general point, you nailed it.
Your example of Secret Invasion is a fine one. The truth is that it made no sense at all that the super-people of Marvel Earth as described in that book punched the Skrulls off of the planet, and for the reasons you mention. But then, it's not just his habit of cloaking ill-thought plots in a comics-realistic style which makes these confections so unsatisfying; there's also his lack of discipline when it comes to basic matters such as tone and point of view. Having spent the whole Secret Invasion series, and its long build-up, driving the reader towards a final confrontation, the actually climax of the series is suddenly pushed out of the foreground for that issue with the odd narrative choices, the voice-over, the oddly inept death scene for the Wasp and so on. I don't have the series anywhere within reach, but I recall feeling that SI had promised a big, smart climax, and all we got were bits and pieces lacking any sense of commitment to what had been set up. Yes, the idea that the Earth will be free after a punch-up in NYC was just daft, but if he meant it as a nod to superhero tradition, the least he could've done was to avoid the meandering deconstruction of the very thing he'd set us up to expect. (Anyway, why are these Skrulls unable to deal with the less powerful superheroes, the acrobats in tights? Why is America the big deal resistance? Why can't an interstellar race just super-nuke a grand gathering of superheroes in the middle of NYC rather than brawling with them? It just makes less and less sense the more its thought through, whereas a more well-judged approach wouldn't give us space to ask such questions.)
I agree with you that he's produced work of considerable quality. I've the Omnibus editions of that DD run, and although I don't think quite as highly of it as you, I obviously respect it and I did enjoy it; I don't save up for hefty books I don't feel that way about! No-one should ever suggest that the top two or three runs on DD shouldn't contain those issues.
But the Avengers? Oh, dear ..
Okay, here's my best guess as to what's going on, as well as why it doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteTHE PLAN -- Bendis and Deodato are using an excellent tool to get the reader's interest: the "completion principle." Rather than spell out every last little thing, you leave gaps, and let the reader make the connections. Billy Wilder, the great film director, explained that you give the audience two and then another two, but never say they add up to four. The audience will love it.
Thus, the lack of explanations as to what's going on, and the starting in medias res. We're supposed to get just what we need to understand the situation, and then read the rest into it ourselves. This is not a bad choice. It's a proven technique for building exciting stories quickly.
A hell of a lot of the odd storytelling choices in modern comics derive from poor use of this technique.
WHY IT DOESN'T WORK HERE -- and in so many other comics -- is because they're leaving out the wrong things. If I may oversimplify and make sweeping statements, for a scene to work, we don't need much, but we do need two things: a goal for the character, and the character pursuing that goal in some fashion.
How that particular information is communicated is a matter of style, but its communication is vital. In the scene you show above, it doesn't work because it's unclear what Jones and Squirrel Girl are after. We don't know their goal. Therefore, their behavior -- which is bizarre for reasons you cite -- can't be excused. It's just bizarre to us.
The effect of drama is anticipation mixed with uncertainty. That's how you build suspense, how you tell jokes, how you make a story compelling. What's deflating this scene is that we can't anticipate anything, because Bendis and Deodato don't give us enough information. Thus, no drama. Just noise.
What happens often is that fanboy knowledge of character and continuity is presumed to be enough for readers to fill in goals and motivations. (“It's Hal Jordan! Every fanboy knows that in this situation, Jordan would be driven by his fabled love for macadamia nuts...”) I don't think that's the case here, though. I suspect they're either assuming the goal of the scene is so obvious as to not require explanation – which it isn't – or they're leaving the goal “mysterious,” and figuring that readers will be drawn in by the question of “what the hell is going on” – which leaves the scene itself confused and ineffective, because any narrative propulsion is lost by the “mystery.”
That's my theory.
Hello Harvey:- Lovely to see Wilder getting credit here. He really is one of those creators who endlessly inspire. (There is no more perfect film than The Apartment for me.) And you raise the point that Wilder was always incredibly driven to make sure that the viewer (1) felt they understood a scene, while (2) never feeling they were being either talked down to or misled. That can mean that some of his movies now read as over-obvious - ie The Fortune Cookie - but better that than obscure and ill-worked.
DeleteThe lack of motivation for Jessica and Nanny Squirrel lies at the heart of the problem with this scene, as you so effectively establish. We don't know what anybody wants, so we can't anticipate their future actions and engage with the snares in the text. BMB loves to talk about Mamet, but it's impossible to believe that a Mamet writing comics would ever commit such a narrative heresy. Now, perhaps the reader who was lucky enough to read New Avengers 20 knows what's going on. Is Jessica running away so she doesn't attract Osbourne's attention? (No, that would be stupid; why walk through NYC with a big suitcase if you want to hide from a master criminal? But then, why is that comment in the introduction there is Jessica's behaviour isn't linked to Osbourne's return?) The fact that we don't even know where she's going means that everything collapses into absurdity. Imagine Some Like It Hot if we didn't know Lemmon and Curtis were running away from the St Valentine's Day killers.
Yes, I agree about the fanboy-pleasing nature of the scene. It's all about "Jessica being brave" and "Squirrel Girl being a bad-ass". It's all about reinforcing what the hard core reader presumably might want from a story, by which I mean, no story at all, but a series of moments which work as crowd-pleasing meta. So the plot goes out the window and the sensation is emphasised. This is something which I focus on in the second part of the above. (I say that just to underline how much I agree with you.)
As you'll know, Wilder always said that when he was faced with a difficult choice, he'd asked himself "What would Lubitsch do?" By which he meant he was looking for an elegant, transparent and yet never obvious way of transmitting the sense of the story. (The textbooks always focus on the hat in Ninotchka, which wordlessly tells us everything about Garbo's desires and her change of heart.) But that means that Wilder actually had his plot absolutely straight in his head, its logic solidly in place, and all he was looking for was the best, the most succinct, way of delivering it to the reader. But, as I hope to show come posting-time tonight, BMB's plot is all over the place. He can't ask what Lubitsch would do, because Lubitsch would have the logic of his work nailed down before he worried about how to present it.
The plotting is everything. Yet the plot to New Avengers either doesn't make sense - as I intend to try to prove, m'lord, in court soon - or BMB has failed to make the logic obvious.
Who's really editing this stuff, or does it go straight to the artist? I'd love to know. We know there's a great deal of chat between BMB, TB and others before BMB starts typing, or at least, that's what we've told many times. But who reads through the script afterwards and sends back notes? More importantly, who sends back the notes after the second drafts?
My suspicion is that, continuity issues aside, no-one does. At least, that's what the work on the Avengers titles suggests.
Harvey hits the biggest (IMHO) issue right on the head.
ReplyDeleteThese stories are allegedly better than the Silver Age silliness -- they are TEH SERIOUS! (spelling error intended)
But they don't carry through at all. As you pointed out immediately (and I was thinking the same as I saw the page), why doesn't Jessica fly? There's no reason seemingly given in the text, and I'm not very positively inclined to make one up for them.
I frankly don't really like Bendis' take on the Avengers. He does seem to have a great feel for street-level and noir settings, but the cosmic setting of the Avengers seems to elude him.
I really wanted to like his book, as I was a huge fan of 70's Spider-Woman -- seeing what he has wrought in that vein, I think I'm glad I never got to write for comics -- it seems loving a character tends to translate into hurting them badly.
And I agree -- what happened to Squirrel Girl's army of furry rodents? How many died for that "cool" scene? Or are we not meant to think about it aside from the panels of thrilling squirrel action?
Someone else said the writer/artist is taking ideas from television and movie writing -- I wish they (Bendis et al) wouldn't. Comics are their own, and they communicate their ideas uniquely.
Makes me glad I dropped the book well before this -- and I HATE saying that. I loved the Avengers, from Perez and Byrne all the way to the Waid reboot. Bendis' Avengers, not so much. And I really WANT to like them, I just can't, and you point out the problems so well.
Thanks for posting!
Hello Earl:- The point which Harvey makes and which you extend is of course key to the problems with BMB's work. If he'd just present himself with the humility of a Bill Mantlo, without the hype and the talk of the lofty influences, then I doubt folks would be quite so disappointed. Mind you, if Bill Mantlo - some of whose work I greatly enjoyed - or anyone had written these Avengers issues, they'd have got it in the neck from a great many folks, I'm sure.
DeleteI suppose that BMB would argue that he DOES get the Avengers, but that WE don't get HIS work. That's what he seems to say in interviews. There's no possibility that he might be mortal, that he might not have this super-team business sorted.
I don't want to think about those squirrels. I suppose the idea of being squeamish about it all is laughable, and yet, if we're supposed to laugh at that scene and cheer too, then I can't also avoid asking what the consequences are. I'm not walking around in a despairing funk like Morrisey - bless 'im - about it, but, again, that comics-realism does mean that it's hard not to regard as something to be taken seriously.
I want to like the Avengers, just like Mulder wanted to believe in UFOs. And I want to believe in BMB's writing too. I hope that one day there'll be a key that makes sense of what he's doing.
Thank you for commenting, good sir :)
Great article as ever, Colin. Personally, I read the mob as a commentary on the Occupy movement, which has been analogously turning up in many of my shows like Castle, Hawaii 5-0 and CSI Miami (I watch it ironically, damn you!), and like all of these shows (in some of which I have sadly become disappointed), Bendis' take on the matter is hard to read as anything other than an entrenched, privileged and disingenuous view of The Mob as a thing without justification that is at odds both with the central premise of a funnybook about people who often take the law into their own hands (and regularly stand at odds with government edict), but also with the Occupy movement itself, which is not a bunch of entitled whiners as is the default (and Freudian) depiction, but a staggering cross-section of the social and political population that includes people who have drawn and spilled blood for their country and think maybe they could be fixed up a little by that country to better be able to live within it again.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps I am reading too much into what The Mob represents in this particular instance - perhaps it really is an accurate reflection of the New York population that they would attack en masse a mother and child? Or perhaps even that goes too far on my part, perhaps this simply what the populace of the Marvel universe would do, in which case Bendis has a point and they deserve to be brutalised, terrified and kept in their place by a posthuman elite for their own good, but that is also sadly a world I have no interest in reading about, as if I can be forgiven for being possessive and presumptuous, "my" Marvel is not a parody of the real world, it is a reflection of it, and that is why I can care about the people within it enough to actually finish a story and not give up halfway through because I can't escape the idea that what I'm really reading is a pamphlet exploring a well-off writer's enduring issues with internet critics.
Hello Mr Brigonos:- There IS a contempt for the idea of the people in a great deal of Bendis's work. I'm sure there's lots of counter-examples too, and perhaps I've just been unlucky in what I've seen. But he doesn't seem to have a lot of time for peoplewho are exercising their constitutional rights of assembly, and he does tend to suggest that the folks who assemble on the streets - & who aren't Avengers - are, as you say, a mob. I really did think that he might be referencing Occupy in that issue, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it; it would be such a narrow minded view .
DeleteI tend to be with Swift when it comes to loving individuals and loathing crowds. (Swift doesn't seem to give a flying fox, but there you go.)But that doesn't mean that all organised political action is moronic and disorderly. Most isn't. The Splendid Wife was off on a great march the other month through the local city centre on the matter of government cuts. As far as I know, there were thousands there and the only problem was the coffee shops couldn't keep up with demand. No superhero mums or babies were threatened or assaulted on the day.
I'm with you in wondering who BMB is discussing in his recent work when it comes to groups of "typical" people. The mass of people appear unable to make reasoned decisions. Osborn is defeated and they love the super-people. Osborn returns and they hate them. Osborn talks testies on the TV and the public swallows the whole matter. It defintely gives the impression that the only worthy element of the population is the super-class of over-people. From risking their lives to save the community to expressing a contempt for the very same is the arc of the super-book, it seems.
At its heart, this Osborn story - this tedious, endless story - seems to say that the people don't deserve their rights. They need a super-fascist elite to protect them, but they aren't even grateful for the sacrifices their betters make. It's not that I'm straining to make such an analysis; that's what the stories say. At the least, BMB might have chosen to inject his democratic principles into these scripts. Or perhaps he did, though I hope not.
I watch a great many things ironically. The worst was that wretched time travel sci-fi Spielberg series which managed to make dinosauts and futuristic conflict in the past so boring that I could raise a measure of contempt. I've been watching House ironically from series 1 and I'm almost at series 7. When I'm finished, it's Castle, Hawaii 5-0 and CSI Miami for me.
Or the Wire and the West Wing again. I'm not sure.
Thanks for the kind words. I fear your analysis of BMB's Avengers is far closer to the mark than I'd like it to be.