September
20 Wisdom of the 'Fool'

Financial analysis website The Motley Fool made a bit of splash in the comics blogosphere with a column about the financial state of Marvel that sees some disturbing but familiar problems lurking beneath the company's rosy quarterly reports. The writer, Nathan Alderman, argues that Marvel needs to do more to revitalize its publishing efforts to develop new properties that can be exploited 10, 20 or 50 years down the line rather than relying on its current library of vital but still aging franchises.

This is an old problem, but one that's increasingly troublesome in the face of new competition for comics readers from manga and graphic novels. For those who are familiar with and have affection for the comics biz as it has existed the past two tumultuous decades, it's almost impossible to separate comics as a whole from those heroes. Everyone has a favorite hero or title they think defines comics and think should be the standard bearer creatively and commercially. Those arguments go something like "Superman should have the best writers and artists and be the top-selling comicbook every month because he was the first, most important superhero and the market should reflect that."

And while comics should be proud of its contributions to the popular culture, there is always that nagging question of where does the next big thing come from? For Marvel and DC, it's been a long dry spell and in many ways it's one of their own creation. Every fan and potential creator since the 1970s knows the story of how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold the rights to Superman to National Periodicals Publications for a mere $130, and while they benefited greatly as the character first took off they were blacklisted when they tried to re-assert their rights in court and spend decades living in near-poverty. They also know the story of Jack Kirby, who created most of Marvel's most popular heroes for a flat page rate and received no royalties and, still to this day, no consistent creator credit in the pages of Marvel comics. Those are the two most famous cases, and they ended with some kind of settlement where the publishers gave something back to the artists. But there's dozens, if not hundreds more who got far, far less.

The obvious lesson that creators learned was that if you have a great character, you don't put it in a standard Marvel or DC book; you wait for that creator-owned opportunity. The sales incentives both publishers instituted about 25 years ago worked extremely well for creators such as Chris Claremont, who owns none of the characters or stories he wrote on his 16-year run as writer of "X-Men" but was well-compensated for his efforts. Those payments did a lot to revitalize Marvel and DC comics in the 1980s but also created a bit of an illusion about creators' role in the process at those companies. Despite the big bonuses, writers and artists were still replaceable and still had no ownership. That led to seven of Marvel's top artists leaving the publisher en masse to form Image Comics. Image won the creator rights battle for those artists, but their poor writing and business skills only exacerbated the comics crash of the mid-1990s that still casts a long shadow on the biz.

The Fool points out that Marvel's last major superhero creations were Wolverine and The Punisher, both of which first appeared as almost throwaway characters in 1974. The major new comics creations since then have almost all come from creator-owned work: Los Bros. Hernandez's "Love & Rockets," Dave Sim's "Cerebus," Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" and Frank Miller's "Sin City." Even the rare exceptions, such as Neil Gaiman's "Sandman," has the character and creative characteristics of creator ownership.

This leaves Marvel and DC in a dilemma. They have complete ownership of some of the most recognizable and popular characters in popular culture. To not do everything possible to exploit those resources is foolish. But the era and unique circumstances that led to their creation are long gone, and no amount of research, development and funding is likely to even come close to producing similar results — a point proven by the list of defunct publishers that tried to do so, from Valiant to CrossGen.

So what we're left with is an audience that is intensely fixated on the iconic superheroes it got hooked on in its youth — most of which were all cleverly revived and revamped versions of characters their parents and in some cases their grandparents would have read about when they were kids. That's still what sells best and creators who know how to play well with these characters still can do very well writing and drawing books about Green Lantern or Spider-Man. Many seem to do their superhero work to finance the creator-owned gigs that get the best of their abilities, much the same way people in the film biz will do big studio pics in order to afford to do the indie film they're passionate about.

Sensitive to the way they've treated creators in the past, both Marvel and DC have for decades offered imprints or outlets for creator-owned material. Those imprints have, even when successful, rarely sold well enough to rival the sales on superhero books. It makes sense, though. Why should a company promote and invest heavily in untested properties it has to share profits on when it has classic, time-tested characters to which it's entitled to all the profits? The execs at these companies today are far removed from the disputes with the original creators and therefore have no reason even to feel guilty about making these choices.

Which comes back to the Motley Fool's basic question of 'Where is the next generation of innovative characters and stories that will keep Marvel Comics strong well into the future?" The same question could be asked of DC, which does have a wider, more diverse publishing slate but is still behind Marvel in sales and market share. Does the continual focus on established characters keep DC and Marvel from finding the next Superman or Fantastic Four (titles that were true innovations in the field and created audiences that were excited about reading comics)? Does the audience's continual fixation on these characters and lackluster interest even in new titles from major publishers reinforce this to the point of self-fulfilling prophecy? Something needs to change not just at Marvel or DC, but in the market as a whole. It needs to change while things are relatively stable and the cooperation and resources necessary to build on the progress of the past few years are in place.