Space Pirates Ltd.

Marvel loves the X-Men in the same way that a father loves a son who will eventually be a high-paid professional athlete. Everybody loves Marvel Comics’ favored son and as a result, Marvel pimps that son out like my uncle, Slick Willy Rickards, pimps out his hoes back on 10th and South in Philly. Walking into a comic book store I often feel like the United States gradually losing the war on drugs. I see dozens of X-branded titles written by people who have no business writing the complex characters X-men’s mutant heroes have become. Somewhere in Colombia, the secret king of Marvel Comics sits back in a shadowy chair and quietly chuckles, puffing his giant cigar and signing off on several new mutant-driven series: Unbelievable X-Men, X-traordinary X-Men, X-ceptional X-Men, InX-plicable X-men and (most critically acclaimed of the lot) Adjective X-Men.

The point I am trying to make is that while I love the X-Men, most of the X-books out there are almost good enough to use to wipe yourself. And that’s only if you’ve got eczema on your hands. Even legendary X-Men guru Chris Claremont does not do a good job writing modern-day X-series. That is not to say that Claremont’s contributes to the X-Mythology. He earned his stripes with storylines like “The Dark Phoenix Saga.” Claremont co-created some of Marvel Comics’ most popular mutants, including people such as Sabretooth, Shadowcat, and Gambit. Claremont’s got chops. Or he had chops. After purchasing some collections of his recent run in Uncanny X-Men, I vomited blood and then tried to commit seppuku with a butter knife. It was not up to snuff.

Within the past few years I’ve gotten back into X-Men. The animated show I loved so much as a child became available to me again and it helped rekindle my love-affair with mutants and their super-powered antics. Grant Morrison’s run in New X-Men (recently collected in one colossal volume priced conservatively at a low, low $100.00) intentionally revamped the entire series. Human drama returned to replace the then standard Soap-Opera Digest-esque dating problems. It was pretty good.

Another run I would have to recommend would be Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. Whedon, who many people may recognize from his good work on Firefly and his mediocre work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, takes some cues form Morrison in his use of legitimate character development over high-school teen drama with super-powers.

One of the most important features of comics is that creative control must rest in the hands of the writers and the artist. The industry suffered a severe downturn in the 1980’s because editors decided they knew what people wanted in their comics. Editorial dominance can kill anything. I like to think of this sort of thing like the music industry. The bottom line is always the money. And when something begins to make money, people flock to it like flocks of money-loving flockers who love money and want more money so they can go flocking. Basically, when music producers or comic-book editors realize that something they can control is making money (be it for them or somebody else), the idea or concept behind the money becomes the new fad. So when people start digging rap, emo or mutants with social problems, you start to see a lot more of recycled, rehashed ideas that leave a stale taste in the hole where your imagination used to live. The result: fresh, new ideas end up becoming cliché and overused.

My basic point, which may become lost in rambling hyperbole, is that creative control is very important to good art/music/literature/movies/comics. Especially as it applies to sacred calves like the X-Men. I’m no fan boy, but when I want to make an argument for more creative control I look at Japan, where the monthly revenue from manga and manga-zine sales is typically more than the American comic industry makes in an entire year. As I understand it, the artist/storyteller (or Mangaka I believe the term is) has much more control over what happens in his story, his vision.

As the movie business runs out of stories to tell, they have been tapping into comics in order to keep making money. And when Spiderman and Batman and the X-Men give the movie industry more money, comics are going to become more mainstream. It is my sincere hope that when this happens, control remains with the artists and not with the people financing them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Pirate Brew Ha-Ha. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.