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Printheads: [Closed] Robert Kirkman's Mission Statement: Creator-owned is the way to go

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    • CommentAuthorANIMLBOOGY
    • CommentTimeAug 26th 2008
     (3309.81)
    Excepting the name creators on this board, Kirkman's rant wasn't for us. There's a small message in there for readers: "READ COMICS THAT AREN'T SUPERHEROES ONCE IN AWHILE ASSHOLES" Other than that, he's speaking directly to the Bendis-types, and anybody at risk of becoming focused on work-for-hire at the expense of a possible career doing original work.

    Bendis really has cast aside a chance at using some of that notoriety to push more creative work. There's no denying that. Still, he seems acutely aware that his time at Marvel is limited, so he's jumping at the chance to basically be the architect of a fictional universe for awhile. Kirkman just wants him to jump ship before it sinks for him, as it has for so many creators in the past. He's completely right about that.

    I know he wants the fan response to help trigger a massive change in opinion in the community as a whole. But this wasn't for us. He could have written some personal letters to every creator guilty of his charges and written an essay or two on the subject later. Instead, he's getting press for saying something in a long, taped rant that people like Brian K. Vaughan have been saying for a very long time, and saying it without the required eloquence to convince anybody of anything.

    He has power at Image. He should groom the next writer/artist teams that can move singles and trades like The Walking Dead and Y: The Last Man do, and worry less about attracting dogmatic superhero freaks to books they'll never read anyway. Find a new audience. The old one is probably too broken to bother with.
  2.  (3309.82)
    Bendis really has cast aside a chance at using some of that notoriety to push more creative work


    I'll second that, and it goes for a lot of creators, comics is one of the only mediums were work for hire is the top of the pile, while in everything else, it's the stepping stone to the kind of respect/notoriety that will allow you to do whatever the hell you want (which is great as long as you have the talent and skill to pull it off).

    I still think one of the main problems with comics as an industry is that, because the medium has become such a niche (partially due to distribution, partly due to a corporate enforced reservation from doing anything interesting), the people who work in comics are people who pretty much just read (past tense) comics. It's too inbred an industry for its own good, and the cracks show a lot of the time, be it the limitations passed on from the creators' predecessors, or a nostalgic streak that just lends itself to repetition and, ultimately, stagnation/boredom.

    Even the outsourced talent is still from the same stock (like the writers of Heroes are going to revolutionise comics!?). The "big names" moving to Image/other independent publishers? How is that going to make the slightest bit of difference when its still just the comic book community who know about these big names? Everyone's still going to be paddling in the same gene pool...
  3.  (3309.83)
    Bendis really has cast aside a chance at using some of that notoriety to push more creative work. There's no denying that. Still, he seems acutely aware that his time at Marvel is limited, so he's jumping at the chance to basically be the architect of a fictional universe for awhile. Kirkman just wants him to jump ship before it sinks for him, as it has for so many creators in the past. He's completely right about that.


    What's the hurry for a guy like bendis to return to creator owned title? He is not seventy years old and with a terminal disease that I know of. What are two or five years of only-marvel work in the larger scope of an entire career? He has a name, and I believe he still has the talent, and it's not like marvel is corrupting his talent anyway. When he will be fed up with marvel he'll probably go back to creator owned. I don't see why he should do it now. Other authors do it, he doesn't, others never will, who are we, or Kirkman, to know what's best for his career.
    BTW if kirkman titles didn't really suck maybe he wouldn't be here making such a speech.
    Bendis has also done some good things at marvel, parts of his daredevil run come to mind, and at least his approach to the avengers and even to crossover events is unusual and sort of refreshing. I'm not at all in love with Secret Invasion, far from it actually, but for sure it's not just a blockbuster thing, there's a very peculiar tone and rhythm in the main miniseries. And he could not experiment with that kind of thing on a creator owned title. He will have a name to do some creative work in five years too. There's nothing wrong in trying to write good superheroes, ellis does it, vaughan does it, aaron does it, brubaker does it, gaiman does it occasionaly and azzarello too. Is the notoriety Brubaker got with Captain america selling more copies of Criminal, or the fact that Ellis did a very good thunderbolts run is selling more copies of doktor sleepless, possibly, but surely not nearly enough to change the market, any market and especially such a niche market as the US comics one. It was once upon a time a popular art, now the sales number are depressing. In Italy we have a monthly comics that sell 300.000 copies, way more than a crossover big event in a much larger country like the USA according to the Diamond direct market reports. I still don't fully understand how that happened, especially considering that comics characters are more popular than ever in movies and cartoon franchises.
    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeAug 26th 2008 edited
     (3309.84)
    "BTW if kirkman titles didn't really suck maybe he wouldn't be here making such a speech."

    Given the sales on his Marvel Zombies books, I doubt Kirkman would have had any difficulty getting further work at the Big Two.
  5.  (3309.85)
    You are right about marvel zombies, but it was sort of out of continuity. Ultimate X-Men was really really bad. Ant-man I didn't read, I heard it was nice but got cancelled. Anyway I find strange that kirkman is so much sponsoring Image comics. I just do not understand it. There are a lot of other options: Vertigo, Avatar, Icon just to name the first that come to my mind.
  6.  (3309.86)
    Since we appear to have reached the point where sentence structure is optional, I'm closing this off.

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