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BREAKING: Marvel Wins Summary Judgments In Jack Kirby Estate Rights Lawsuits
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Re: BREAKING: Marvel Wins Summary Judgments In Jack Kirby Estate Rights Lawsuits
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Snappleshacks
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Aug 9 11 11:19 PM
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videofarmer wrote:
"I think your assessment of Vaughan is a tad harsh. Have you read Pride of Baghdad?"
Yes. I don't think it's a coincidence it's more or less vanished from comics discussion.
"
I don't think most of Moore's books are revolutionary."
I don't think any of us have claimed most of them are.
"No form of art constantly pushes out masterpieces, but it doesn't mean current artists aren't trying."
From Hell came out in 1996. What has come close to that level of craft in the last 15 years that wasn't written by Moore?
"I have to concede that Moore has the right to control his creations, but as skillful as he is, I dislike him running down creators simply for not having his talent."
I don't think that's what he's doing. He seems to be pointing out that contemporary writers are content to retread established concepts rather than make something new, and by and large he's right about that. Mainstream comics are written by people who broke into comics because they wanted to tell Spider-Man stories. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but it's not the same thing as writing Watchmen. They're not playing the same game. Even the guys who broke in doing their own thing are now treading water telling the further adventures of Captain America and the Avengers, without appearing to aspire to do anything new with those toys the way Moore and Morrison and Miller and Gaiman did a generation ago. Or worse, we get people like Matt Fraction, who made his name excoriating pointlessly average mainstream superhero comics ... only to wind up cranking out pointlessly average mainstream superhero comics. Half the reason Moore has become marginalized is because the major publishers don't want to publish new things; writers don't want to write them; mainstream readers don't want to read them. A shocking number of people appear to read Watchmen or LoEG as straightforward superhero stories. I think that defines the industry.
"He's made it to the top of the tower and is firing down at the people who are trying to climb it"
I really don't think he is. Moore doesn't even consider contemporary writers his competition, because he sees himself as outside of mainstream comics altogether. He's deliberately marginalized his output; even LoEG is now published by a niche press. The writers at Marvel/DC are not competitors because Moore no longer publishes at Marvel/DC and he no longer plays in the superhero game.
"It is still boiling down to believing Moore has a right to use other people's characters because his stories are good (worthy of literary consideration, transformative, in need of the specific characters to make his points, however you want to say the stories are good) and other people should not use existing characters because their stories are not as good."
And here is why I think you're missing the point; I don't think "good" or "bad" enters into what Moore is talking about. He's talking about
new
, about the way the modern industry is content to wallow in nostalgia rather than push into new places. He's talking about capturing a wider audience, writing something the
real
mainstream will find interesting instead of yet another relaunch for The Flash. That's why I keep asking where those books are, the successors to Watchmen and From Hell etc. The closest we have are ... also by Moore. Look at the part of the quote I bolded in my previous post.
That's
what he's talking about.
"I know you're not saying that those writers who aren't consistently exceptional shouldn't be writing at all, so I assume you are saying they shouldn't be writing other creators characters (Moore's in particular)?"
Moore's ongoing corporate work consisted of Marvelman, Captain Britain and Swamp Thing. Can you name one contemporary writer aside from Grant Morrison who has even attempted that level of transformative sophistication with a mainstream work - let alone achieved it? And if we have an industry full of writers who just want to put a modern spin on Green Lantern or run through Daredevil's greatest hits or retell Chris Claremont stories, why should we expect anyone taking on the Watchmen characters would achieve anything akin to the original book? I'll ignore the fact that Watchmen only works as a closed story with a finite end anyway.
Anyway, none of this is to suggest that the books you like aren't good comics. I love Bendis/Brubaker Daredevil and vintage Claremont X-Men. I wouldn't put them up with Miller, and I don't think less of them for not being Watchmen.
Last Edited By:
Snappleshacks
Aug 9 11 11:25 PM. Edited 1 times.
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