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Posts: 3031
Aug 9 11 5:47 PM
Posts: 1238
Aug 9 11 6:33 PM
BillyBatson4360 wrote: There is a crucial point that is missed here. How, in advance, are we to know the quality of ANY story by ANY writer?
Aug 9 11 6:40 PM
videofarmer wrote: I don't think it's right for someone to use other writers characters while saying newer writers should not have that same privilege, just because that someone is more skillful. Although the current crop of writers may not say something great using established characters there is a chance they may say something good.
Posts: 4692
Aug 9 11 6:44 PM
Snappleshacks wrote: BillyBatson4360 wrote: There is a crucial point that is missed here. How, in advance, are we to know the quality of ANY story by ANY writer? By looking at their track record...
Wasn't negating that conceit the whole point of the second paragraph? To wit:"There was nothing in a more than 20 year history of writing comics that suggested Stan Lee was going to transform comics when he collaborated with Jack Kirby on FF #1. There was nothing in Steve Ditko's work to make one think that he would co-create a hero such as Spider-Man."That seems to suggest that track record isn't always an accurate measure...
Posts: 13497
BillyBatson4360 wrote:There have been many brilliant books and movies that have used Sherlock Holmes since that character entered the public domain, but Sherlock Holmes is still the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle and much of what we love about his personality springs from Doyle. Ditto with many of the characters Moore uses in LoEG (including IIRC Doyle's Mycroft Holmes).
Aug 9 11 6:54 PM
videofarmer wrote:For the record, I'm not itching to see "Watchmen 2" and can't imagine myself buying it. But... I don't think it's right for someone to use other writers characters while saying newer writers should not have that same privilege, just because that someone is more skillful. Although the current crop of writers may not say something great using established characters there is a chance they may say something good. All comic book readers aren't 40 year old white guys either, there is nothing inherently wrong with "derivative" Daredevil stories if there are people that are entertained by them. My son is 15 and thoroughly enjoys Captain America and Daredevil stories as he hasn't seen 'em all before. I read in another thread that snapple thinks that every story should have a message, so I'm not expecting any agreement here. Just getting it off my chest.
Posts: 2776
Aug 9 11 7:23 PM
Golden Age
Snappleshacks wrote:By looking at their track record...
Matthew McCallum wrote:That seems to suggest that track record isn't always an accurate measure...
fubarthepanda wrote:But Moore isn't writing "Sherlock Holmes", just as he isn't writing sequels to "Dracula" or the "Invisible Man". LOEG -- like Lost Girls -- uses pre-existing characters in order to deconstruct popular preconceptions and mythologies.
fubarthepanda wrote:...has nothing to do with what Moore was talking about.
Aug 9 11 7:30 PM
Snappleshacks wrote:videofarmer wrote: I don't think it's right for someone to use other writers characters while saying newer writers should not have that same privilege, just because that someone is more skillful. Although the current crop of writers may not say something great using established characters there is a chance they may say something good.I see what you're saying but I think you're missing the forest for the trees re: Moore's objection. It's not about someone writing the further adventures of Rorshach; it's about the context of that in an industry that is content to wallow in nostalgia rather than create anything new or meaningful. Almost all of the industry heavy hitters came out nearly two decades ago. That's just embarrassing. Contrast that with what Moore is doing when he uses previously established characters...
Yeah, I know what you're saying too, but since you brought up context, let's consider when Moore and Miller were writing. In the mid-eighties, comics were just emerging from a period of extended naivety which began in the mid-fifties with the implementation of the comics code authority and the downfall of EC Comics. In fact, super hero comics had barley ventured beyond their initial childish stage since their beginnings in the late thirties. Some of the grittiest, most challenging super-hero books during the CCA period were three issues of Amazing Spider-Man which dared to show that using drugs could be bad. In the eighties writers knew they had an adult audience as well as an audience of kids and were starting to explore stories that were more complex, putting Moore and Miller at the perfect place in history to introduce their transformative tales. Now, the slap-in-the-face, the-wake-up-call has already happened. Readers understand the potential of the medium and the art-form in America was forever changed. It was changed by starting the elimination of the conditions that led to those stories.
Comics are no longer in that innocent, naive state that was enforced by a code that said the entire medium was only meant for children. Revolutionary comics like those produced in the mid-eighties can't be created again until there is another set of conditions that is ripe for a new revolution (maybe we're getting to that point now). That said, you're right in that no revolutionary comics have been produced since then, but some great comics certainly have. There has to be lulls between revolutions, periods of time where more of the changes are to style than to substance, and in the years since the eighties, there have been some creators that have been very influential on style, and even some that have made substantive changes.
Keeping that in mind (if anyone buys into what I'm selling there, that is), if previously established characters can only be used in truly great or revolutionary stories and not just in really good or entertaining stories, those characters will never be used and the chance to create a new revolutionary work with them may never be seized.
Aug 9 11 7:38 PM
fubarthepanda wrote: BillyBatson4360 wrote: There have been many brilliant books and movies that have used Sherlock Holmes since that character entered the public domain, but Sherlock Holmes is still the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle and much of what we love about his personality springs from Doyle. Ditto with many of the characters Moore uses in LoEG (including IIRC Doyle's Mycroft Holmes).But Moore isn't writing "Sherlock Holmes", just as he isn't writing sequels to "Dracula" or the "Invisible Man". LOEG -- like Lost Girls -- uses pre-existing characters in order to deconstruct popular preconceptions and mythologies. This type of work can only be effective if you're somehow familiar with the concepts that are being deconstructed. Just as Watchmen can only be effective if you're familiar with the standard super-hero archetypes. Confusing deconstruction with the ongoing adventures of some character is mixing apples and oranges, and has nothing to do with what Moore was talking about.
BillyBatson4360 wrote: There have been many brilliant books and movies that have used Sherlock Holmes since that character entered the public domain, but Sherlock Holmes is still the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle and much of what we love about his personality springs from Doyle. Ditto with many of the characters Moore uses in LoEG (including IIRC Doyle's Mycroft Holmes).
Aug 9 11 8:12 PM
fubarthepanda wrote:videofarmer wrote:For the record, I'm not itching to see "Watchmen 2" and can't imagine myself buying it. But... I don't think it's right for someone to use other writers characters while saying newer writers should not have that same privilege, just because that someone is more skillful. Although the current crop of writers may not say something great using established characters there is a chance they may say something good. All comic book readers aren't 40 year old white guys either, there is nothing inherently wrong with "derivative" Daredevil stories if there are people that are entertained by them. My son is 15 and thoroughly enjoys Captain America and Daredevil stories as he hasn't seen 'em all before. I read in another thread that snapple thinks that every story should have a message, so I'm not expecting any agreement here. Just getting it off my chest. I agree -- never make an apology for something that you personally like! Derivative works definitely have there place (I loved Miller's Daredevil, the recent Battlestar Galactica television series, and the new Star Trek film as much as anyone). I also don't think Moore was addressing "skill", per se -- I think for much of the 80's and early 90's, there was a period where we had extraordinary creators like Moore, Miller, Gaiman, Mignola, Jim Lee, McFarlane, etc., cut their teeth on traditional work-for-hire and then progress on to more original and creator-driven work -- be it in comics or prose. In today's industry, though, we're seeing a lot more seasoned creators settle for work-for-hire instead of pushing forward with more transformational work. In fact -- it's almost become inverted -- where new talent breaks in with creator-owned work in order to get into Marvel and/or DC. Having lived through both time periods, I can say that the industry that we have today has a fraction of the excitement that we had back then, so whether you agree with Moore's exact words or not, there is a general point in there that I think is worth observing.
Aug 9 11 8:17 PM
Matthew McCallum wrote:Wasn't negating that conceit the whole point of the second paragraph? Yes, but those instances are so rare that they're virtually limited to the examples in the paragraph. Have we ever seen a journeyman break out in modern times, or a great new writer not show evidence of that in previously published independent work?
Wasn't negating that conceit the whole point of the second paragraph?
Aug 9 11 8:36 PM
Aug 9 11 9:12 PM
Aug 9 11 9:15 PM
BillyBatson4360 wrote:fubarthepanda wrote:But Moore isn't writing "Sherlock Holmes", just as he isn't writing sequels to "Dracula" or the "Invisible Man". LOEG -- like Lost Girls -- uses pre-existing characters in order to deconstruct popular preconceptions and mythologies. And Moore also took other preexisting characters - like Superman - and just wrote stories about them. This may also sound like blasphemy but I don't find LoEG to be either "transformative" or a "deconstruction of popular mythology." It was a very clever idea to cobble together some classic literary figures into a (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) super-hero team. That's all. It's brilliantly done! It's wonderfully written! I will keep purchasing their adventures as long as Mr. Moore continues to write them, but it's not much different (on a foundational level) from any well-written super-hero team book of the modern era. Clever? Yes. Well-written? Superbly so! Transformative? Not so much. Deconstruction? Not as I understand the term.
Aug 9 11 9:34 PM
fubarthepanda wrote: In LOEG, Moore's taking well-known characters from Victorian literature and deconstructing the popular notion of them by layering real-world personality traits on them, no different then what he did in Lost Girls and Watchmen.
Aug 9 11 10:02 PM
Aug 9 11 10:30 PM
Aug 9 11 10:40 PM
Snappleshacks wrote:videofarmer wrote: "Addressing the contention that there haven't been any great comics or any creators good enough to handle Moore's characters in a worthy manner"I'm afraid you keep missing the point. The issue isn't whether the current crop of writers is good. The issue is whether they're pushing forward the way Moore did when he arrived on the scene (and still does today, to a somewhat lesser extent) and/or writing with the same level of sophistication. The answer to that has to be no. Here's your list:Strangers In Paradise100%Heavy LiquidBatman Year 100Truth: Red, White & BlackInhumansCap: Theater of WarCriminalIncognitoEssex CountySurrogatesThe Homeland DirectiveScarletGoldfishJinxTorsoOceanOrbiterMinistry of SpaceKabukiMidnight NationNightly NewsScalpedHow are any of these remotely in the same league as Promethea or V for Vendetta in terms of literature? To say nothing of Watchmen, a work so accomplished it was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best novels in the English language. Bendis/Brubaker are writing (very good) pastiche; Ellis writes (sometimes very good) pulp potboilers; Strangers in Paradise would be utterly unremarkable if shown on the CW instead of published in comic book form. Satrapi is reporting; Vaughn writes the equivalent of popcorn movies; Thompson is skilled with a brush but has nothing to say.Of the books you list, Black Hole is an interesting case, and arguably Morrison's We3. I would class these as lesser demigods in the pantheon but still worthy of serious cultural consideration. But it's still some distance between that and From Hell, a masterwork worthy of discussion alongside 20th century novels by people like Fitzgerald and Woolf. In many ways that's the fundamental divide for Moore; he's a writer of that calibre working in a medium better known for men with socks on their heads punching each other. And arguably he's the only person we have like that (I say arguably because the usual suspects - Spiegelman etc - haven't produced anything of note beyond the usual candidates). Certainly any book on the list above is going to be laughed out of a proper literature discussion, although Satrapi would probably get a look in for topicality.I don't disagree you're listing good books, but there's a difference between a good movie and something by Kubrick/Lynch etc. That's the Moore distinction, and I don't think he's wrong to criticize the current state of the industry in this respect. These guys aren't writing the next Watchmen - not even close. They're not putting out Lost Girls alongside The Killing Joke. There's nothing out there to suggest Watchmen 2 wouldn't be an exercise in nostalgia, let alone worthy of sitting alongside the first one in a literature class. He's essentially watching the inexorable advance of slash-and-burn agriculture and saying, "Hey, not in my forest you don't." But then again, we live in an age where half the people who bought Watchmen seem to think Rorshach and the Comedian would made cool action figures."Just because Alan Moore won't read any of their books doesn't mean you can't."Nobody is saying there aren't good books out there, or that the books you like aren't any good. I don't think anybody is saying anything like that. Instead, they're trying to contextualize Moore's comments for you. I don't like all of his books, but he's operating on another level entirely to pretty much everybody else in the industry. The only other person to come close is Grant Morrison, and aside from a few bits like We3 it feels like he's given up on trying to reach the same level since partway through New X Men.
Aug 9 11 10:51 PM
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Aug 9 11 11:07 PM
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