“Don’t you make money off of your ideas thanks to copyright?” someone will inevitably ask.

Yes, I do.  And I think I should be able to.  I just don’t think copyright / trademark should be nearly as long as it is.  And I certainly think that after the original creator is long dead, it’s not unreasonable to allow intellectual property to hit the public domain.  In fact, I think it should be well before that point.  Twenty or thirty years after original publication, at most.  If an artist can’t create another successful idea / story / character in that space of time, I have a hard time being sympathetic.  Not because creativity is easy.  But because I don’t approve of the notion that someone can do something really well once (or get really lucky once) and then coast along for the rest of their life.

Anyway, it’s a false dilemma.  If J.K. Rowling lost the rights to Harry Potter right this moment, it’s not like she would go to the poor house.  She’s would still be obscenely wealthy.  Even if all her royalties stopped rolling in, she’d still be set for life.  As well as for the life of her children and grandchildren.

Granted, most creators are not as successful as Rowling.  But it’s my opinion that the artist should create, not just rest on their laurels.  If I were a file clerk, I couldn’t alphabetize all the information, reorganize it in a wonderful new system, and then just sit back and collect a paycheck for the rest of my life.  People might congratulate me on my great job and even give me a bonus if they were feeling especially generous.  But they wouldn’t sit around for the next thirty years telling me what a great job I did that one time and that I was a filing genius.

That said, I’m perfectly willing to accept lifetime copyright / trademark.  It might not be the best system, but no one can complain if someone profits from their creativity.  I’m even for copyright lasting a decade or two after the creator’s death, so that their family has a window to profit from it.  It seems a bit excessive to me, but not unreasonable.

But what I’m against is someone who is not the original creator, someone (or something) who owns a license, profiting from an idea that they had very little to do with.  Granted, this isn’t always clear cut.  Batman achieved part of his popularity in no small part to the efforts of DC Comics.  At the same time, the comic book company was mostly there as a distribution network, not as a creative element.  Comic book companies (and companies in general) are pretty lousy at creativity.  They tell stories that sell comics, not good stories.  They are beholden to their bottom line, and that’s nothing to be ashamed about, but it’s a lousy motivation for creativity.

But, and I really need to emphasis this again, copyright / trademark is important.  Done correctly, it rewards creativity and artistic expression and encourages more of it.  Done incorrectly, all it does is discourage those things.

If I can allow myself to be a pretentious artist for a bit (if I haven’t already been too much of one at this point), art should be about more than making money.  Most art anyway.  I have no problem with a bit of soulless art, a little attempt to cash in.  I don’t care if someone wants to earn a few bucks by “selling out”.  But when even your cultural touchstones have sold out, where is there left to go?

We see it already in our culture.  It seems like more than ever, we have sequels and series and licensed properties.  And some people bemoan this, but the fact of the matter is that these things make money.  There’s no reason for a corporation to take a chance as long as their is more profit to be had in sticking to the same old thing.  If J.K. Rowling kept writing Harry Potter books, people would still buy them.  At this stage, it wouldn’t even matter much about the quality because it’s a habit.  And I have little doubt that the publisher would be very happy with this.  It is Rowling herself who has decided there is a limit to the number of stories she can tell about Harry and his universe.

For me, the worst idea is the notion the “constant reader”, that fan who consumes without question, who willingly surrenders their own judgment.  Not that I expect my fans to turn their backs on me if they read a book they don’t like.  But three or four books they don’t like?  That’s different.  And I’d hate for someone to buy any books (mine included) out of a strange sense of obligation rather than because they think they’ll enjoy it.

When I was a steady comic book purchaser, I used to see folks who would buy any comic with Character X on its cover or written by Writer Y.  There was nothing wrong with that, but often, I’d see a dissatisfied customer come back.  They might love Character X, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to love everything with him / her in it.  And even though you might love a writer most of the time, sometimes, they aren’t just going to do it for you.

Yes, even me.  I admit it.  It’s fine with me if you like some of my books more than others.  Heck, if you end up hating one, I can’t hold it against you.  And while I’d like to think one bad story wouldn’t put a reader off of my work, I would also like to hope that if you’ve read every book I’ve written and hated all of them that you would be smart enough to stop torturing yourself out of some misguided hope that I’m going to win you over.  (Although if you want to keep buying them and hating them, I can live with it.)

It’s easy to blame the corporation or the customer or anyone and everyone.  But it’s a complicated problem.  Consumers often like the same ol’ thing.  It’s okay to admit that.  Corporations like money.  It’s okay to admit that too.  And if these are only your concerns, then there’s nothing wrong with copyright / trademark as it stands.

But I like creativity.  I like encouraging it.  A world where everything is a sequel, where we re-release films in repackaged form because it’s easier and safer than trying something different, that world bothers me.  It’s a world without discovery, a place where finding something new and unexpected is harder and harder.

And that world is a sadder place.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

In theory, copyright is there to protect artists and creators, to allow them to make money off their work, and to encourage creativity.  In practice, it just leads to stagnation and to corporations profiting off of characters they simply are fortunate enough to own.

As usual, I’ll go to a comic book example.  DC owns the characters of Batman and Superman.  Nobody working at DC created these characters.  They are simply inherited property, held by a giant corporate machine.  DC profits because decades ago, an employee created some cool characters and then DC claimed those characters as its own.  End of story.

The system is simply broken.

While the struggle against cultural stagnation is nothing new, the fact of the matter is that when you pass a character or an idea to an immortal corporation, real growth and change is difficult, if not impossible.  Because people create, but corporations own.  And that’s the real dilemma we face today.  Is ownership more important than work?

It could be argued that what keeps Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. fresh is the creative people behind them.  Even if these people didn’t create these characters, there are still talented and capable writers and artists who keep the characters alive and kicking.  But even then, these folks are still employees, still subject to the whim of executives.  If the order comes down to kill character X or resurrect character Z, then this will happen.  And this will be decided by someone who is less interested in telling a good story than in increasing sales.

There’s nothing wrong with commercial success, nor with striving for it.  But if it’s all about sales, then there’s no reason to develop any new characters, new ideas.  And the thing about characters, about franchises, is that they don’t ever really go bad.  Not often anyway.  And hardly ever do they have an expiration date.

Certainly, not every character is timeless and a character or a concept might have a great appeal for a limited time.  But some ideas and characters are so transcendent that they can stick around for a really, really long time.  Batman is a great example.  While he’s had his ups and downs, he has never really disappeared from the public consciousness.  That’s because he’s pretty damn flexible as a concept.  You can do goofy Batman stories, dark Batman stories, sci fi Batman stories, noir Batman stories, and so on.  While he hasn’t always been a cash cow, he is certainly unlikely to be replaced anytime soon.  He’s a product without an expiration date, one that can be repackaged and sold over and over again.  This isn’t so bad if his creator and owner is mortal.  But once that owner is an immortal corporation, you end up with a real desire not to innovate.  If you doubt me, I can only point out that DC has created a new version that starts with his origin all over again.  Because we haven’t seen that enough.

This is a big reason why I can’t get behind the re-release of Star Wars in 3D.  It’s not a new product.  It’s the same old product reprocessed to appear new so that a corporation can make more money.  George Lucas too, I suppose.  Basically, it’s a foolproof moneymaking scheme because it requires minimal investment and is guaranteed to cash in.  But it, frankly, amazes me that we continue to fall for it.

Nobody who created Mickey Mouse has anything to do with him today.  He’s a corporate shill, a face to put on a T-shirt.  And while that’s always been part of why he existed, it shouldn’t be the ONLY reason he exists.

I’ll admit that I’m skeptical that self-publishing is the amazing revolution it often claims to be.  At this stage, it’s still working out the kinks.  I’m hopeful that it will figure the stuff that corporations excel at: namely distribution and marketing, two areas where self-pub rarely can compete against established corporate structures.  If that can ever work itself out, then creator owned works have a better chance.  But that’s a ways off.

As a novelologist, I’m lucky.  Though I moved publishers, I still control my characters.  I could write another GIL’S ALL FRIGHT DINER if I chose.  Or a sequel to THE AUTOMATIC DETECTIVE.  Though Tor owns the rights to publication of the original stories, I own the characters and settings.  Tor can’t publish those stories without me getting royalties.  Not that Tor has ever exhibited any hostility toward giving me my fair share.  They’ve always been accommodating and genial.

On the other hand, if they owned my characters, you probably would’ve seen a sequel by now.  That might be a good thing if you want a sequel, but it certainly wouldn’t be for me.  Not financially.  And probably not creatively either.

It all comes down to financial incentives.  Corporations are, first and foremost, about making money.  And you can make money by taking chances, but why bother when you can also make money with minimal time and investment?  If corporations were genuinely people, they’d be motivated by a desire to be better, to challenge themselves.  But they are NOT people.  They are vast, soulless financial machines that want to make a profit.  And while a desire to profit is not bad, it certainly isn’t good when it’s your soul motivation.

So what does it all add up to?  I can’t honestly say.  It’s easy to demonize corporations.  Usually, it’s justified.  An unbridled lust for profit, unconstrained by any conscience, is just about the most dangerous thing around.  Add to that the near unlimited financial power available to many a corporation (or even some individuals) and you run into a serious problem.

We can’t change copyright law, but we can demand better.  I’m not against Star Wars.  I’m against Star Wars being repackaged and resold to us without any real effort.  I’m not against Batman stories.  I’m just against Batman stories that don’t need to be told anymore.  And I’m not against Spider-Man movies.  I’m just against another lazy and heartless effort created mostly so a corporation can meet a contractual obligation to keep a second corporation from getting those rights.

We can do better.  We can demand better.  Copyright might belong to the corporations, but creativity should belong to the people.

Keelah se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Still, the new Batman film looks like it’s even more unpleasant, more full of itself.  If this is what passes for “great” superhero films, I guess you can count me out.  I’d much rather watch Green Lantern fight giant yellow fear monsters or Captain America punch Nazis than have to sit through a movie that is this determined to be mature and intelligent.

In a recent episode of The Office, a character classified the music group The Black Eyed Peas as “Pop for people who don’t like pop, Rap for people who don’t like rap, Rock for people who don’t like rock.”  While I kind of see where he’s coming from, I’m not going to bash the Peas.  They clearly have appeal, even if I don’t really get it.  Not that I dislike them.  Just put me as resolutely neutral.

But it does have me wondering about the evolution of genre and media.  I’ve long felt that the comic book superhero genre has run into this problem.  It seems like most writers and fans would rather read stories about talking, brutality, and gray-and-gray morality than about good guys punching out evil.  I wrote an article for SF Signal a while back suggesting that comics have trouble maintaining their audience because they don’t have enough punching and alien invasions and would much rather devote themselves to obscure continuity nods and some strange integration of realism in universes populated by wizards and flying robots.

Honestly, I’m not so sure I’m right about that.

If The Dark Knight Rises scores as much popularity and commercial success as its predecessor, it’ll just be one more giant step toward superhero movies that take all the fun out of superheroics.  And I believe it’s very possible this will be the future.  Comic book superheroes are relentlessly boring and steadfastly unpleasant at this point.  So why shouldn’t movies eventually follow?

In a way, it could be the very same pattern established with comic book superhero history.  Stories like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns came along and redefined expectations for a generation now in charge of writing superheroes.  And what we’ve gotten is more of the same, an often slavish devotion to recreating and imitating these groundbreaking stories to the point that if a comic book superhero doesn’t have swearing, hints of sexual violence, and some gore, it’s considered a “kid’s comic” by most of the audience.

If The Dark Knight Rises has the same affect on up and coming filmmakers, we can look forward to more of this in the future.  And while I’m in the minority in thinking of The Dark Knight as one of the worst superhero films ever, I still can’t imagine a world where people will flock to see film after film that makes superheroics depressing.

But aren’t we kind of already there?  How many shows on television are about bad people?  How much of our entertainment is devoted to the most unpleasant aspects of who we are?  From Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to Mad Men, we seem more and more like a culture more-than-happy to wallow in the darkness of our natures.  And put me down as someone who doesn’t like it.

This is not to suggest that these shows are bad.  Taste is such a subjective thing.  Still, whenever I bemoan not having a show I can watch on television, someone will inevitably bring up something like these as examples of how intelligent and deep television can be.  I don’t mean to imply that these shows aren’t intelligent and deep.  I’m just wondering why this is more and more our ONLY version of intelligent entertainment.

It’s why my favorite superhero flick remains The Incredibles.  It’s a beautiful and thoughtful film about what it means to be a hero and a villain, about family, about our own desires versus the desires of the society, and of everything that makes being human both transcendent and difficult.  It’s also has two amazing giant robot fights.  It’s a movie that is about people AND about superheroes, not just about people with some superhero stuff tacked on as a concession.

Part of me assumes that this is merely a phase that we’re going through.  Culture follows trends, and trends rarely stick around forever.  I can weather boring Batman and unlikable protagonists for a few years.  But another part of me worries that there’s no going back.  Once you cross that bridge where a man in a batsuit who fights crime is no longer fun, you have passed the event horizon and there’s only one way to go.  Darker and grimmer and grimdarker until eventually, all our stories are about drug dealers who eat babies and feel miserable while doing it.

There’s a way to things, a certain natural order that seems to pop up.  For example, men’s names can become women’s names over time.  Eventually, those names stop being men’s names all together.  Men’s names can become women’s names, but it is NEVER the reverse.

I worry that the FUN to BORING path is similarly irreversible.  Once the Joker shot Barbara Gordon, he signaled the beginning of a brave new world, one we can never escape.  My only solace is that as long as Batman: The Brave and the Bold exists, there’s always hope for tomorrow.

What?  Canceled?

Oh, well, never mind then.  Game over.

Congratulations, boring Batman.  You win.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The new Batman video game, for example, has swearing and harsh language in it.  In particular, many people have raised concerns that when playing as Catwoman, you are subject to constant unpleasant language and mild threats of rape by the thugs she runs across.

The hardcore gamers dismiss these concerns as silly because having thugs and henchmen be obnoxious and threatening is “realistic”.  There might be something to that, too.  If this wasn’t a game built upon pretending to be a billionaire dressed as a bat who spends his nights fighting criminals dressed as clowns and Alice in Wonderland characters.  If the Batman’s universe was realistic, then he’d either be shot in the back one random night or be so beat up and burnt out from his double life that he’d be a broken wreck.

Superheroes have always struggled with the fantastic and the realistic.  Batman has struggled the most.  Probably because so many of his fans seem to think he’s more “realistic” than other heroes.  I’m not going to get into that fallacy here.  I’ve wasted too many precious hours on that debate.  Regardless of where you stand on that debate, few people would want to read the Batman story where he trips on his cape and plummets to his death while on patrol, realistic as that possibility might be.

Realistically, Bruce Wayne could choke to death on a piece of pie.

I’m not interested in reading the story (or playing the video game) where ensuring Bruce Wayne chews his food properly is the key plot point.  But if you’re going to pull out the “realism” argument, then you can’t just stop where it suits your needs.

Given his status as Gotham’s wealthiest citizen and the obvious fact that Batman needs to have major funding to do what he does, it seems strange that no one has ever connected Wayne and his alter ego.  Or that a man with a prominent face can hide it behind half a mask and not still be recognized.  Or that a single man could have the time and ability to master every esoteric field of study, ranging from acrobatics to chemistry to art history.

And let’s not even get into his bad guys.  A guy with white skin and a hideous grimace who dresses in purple tuxedos.  A man with half his face burnt off.  A pulp style immortal evil mastermind who wants to wipe out the human race.  A crocodile man.  A shapeshifter.  A plant woman.

Realism and Batman are not friends.

This is not to say that a writer needs to throw realism completely out the window.  But when an unnecessary element of realism is introduced for no good reason, realism is not a defense.  It’s the same sort of half-logic that causes some folks to complain that children NPCs can’t die in Skyrim and that this fact “ruins the immersion”.

Oh, I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize that in the game where you pretend to be a dragonslaying badass who can throw fireballs and slay giants that NOT having roasting children would break the illusion.

OR

Dopey me.  I kind of assumed that if you were going to play Catwoman in a video game, you might get tired of being called a bitch a thousand and one times.  But, no, that’s REALISM.  Thanks for clearing that up.

To be perfectly clear, I don’t care if a Batman video game has (justified or not) hostility towards women.  And I don’t care if Catwoman slinks around in a sexy costume and uses kisses to disarm her opponents.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I do care.  I’ll go on record as saying a Batman game shouldn’t have these things in it.  Certainly shouldn’t have them casually strewn about.  But that’s just one guy’s opinion, and if I don’t like the game, I don’t have to play it.

But on the other end, you can’t just say “It’s realistic” and not expect me to roll my eyes a bit.  If your best justification for something unpleasant in a Batman story or video game is that it serves realism then I feel like you’ve already lost the debate.

Did I mention he fights a guy who has a freeze ray?

Realism in this context always seems to mean something other than realism.  It means a pocket of realism in an otherwise unrealistic realm.  And more often than not, that realism is aimed at shock value and “mature” content for its own sake.  So let’s just call it what it so often is.

Pandering.

I’ll stick with Skylanders myself.  Not only is it apologetically unrealistic, it’s also a game where its female characters (though too few) are not subject to dopey fetishism or “justified” sexism.  Stealth Elf is Catwoman without the baggage (and with the ability to vanish, leaving razor scarecrows in her place).  And Hex doesn’t slink around in a catsuit with a whip and wrap her legs around her foes like some softcore pornstar.  She fires shadowbolts and rains screaming skulls from the sky.  And she does it with style.

And really, I’m just glad to have female characters who are treated with respect.  Though apparently they have to hang out with dragons and boomerang throwing dinosaurs to get it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Jim Lee is a fabulous artist who was in charge of the redesign.  And that’s the problem.  Because he’s failed on one of the most important elements of a shared universe.  Namely, it should be populated by characters that are easy to draw.

I’ve written before on the underrated nature of simplicity, of avoiding making things complex for complexity’s sake.  And comic book superheroes are perhaps one of the best examples of this.  Most established superheroes of any staying power have extremely simple designs, both in terms of character motivations, background, and physical appearance.  This isn’t just to make them distinctive in their original medium.  It’s also practical because most superheroes are passed from writer to writer, artist to artist, regularly.  In addition, ongoing comic book titles try to stick to a regular publishing schedule and simple character designs are easier and faster to write stories for and draw than complicated ones.

There’s a reason Superman wears two primary colors.  And his spandex costume looks painted on.  No stitching.  No extraneous lines.  Just a human body wrapped in blue and red with a big S on his chest and a long red cape.  It is a design that has worked for decades, and not by accident.

The new designs, both in terms of characters and physical appearance, are far too busy.

Batman is a guy who saw his parents murdered, then grew up to dedicate himself to fighting crime.  Anything more than that is subject to writer’s interpretation, and that’s what makes him work.  Frank Miller might decide Batman is a raging jerkwad while Denny O’Neal can portray him as a detective in a mask and so on and so on.  The basic framework of the character leaves him flexible enough for any competent writer (and artist) to work with.

It’s a weird thing for me (an artist) to say, but shared characters and universes should always be more important than the writers and artists who work on them.  And where I feel that both DC and Marvel have stumbled in recent years is by being more enamored of their creative staff than their product.  Yes, I’m proposing that comic books are not selling because they’re not commercial, because they are being written by ascended fans now who have forgotten that they are not supposed to just be writing the superhero stories they wanted to see growing up.

Even writing that seems wrong.  I used to believe that if an artist created works they were passionate about, everything else would come in due time.  I still believe that, mostly.  However, there is the possibility that you are creating a story that just doesn’t have enough mainstream appeal to reach a wider audience.  And I fear comic book superheroes are at that point.

When you have creators who live in backstory, who know every little detail of the history of the Green Lantern Corps and want to put it all in there, you run the risk of locking out everyone who doesn’t share your passion.  And when you create costume designs festooned with lines and dozens of needless accessories, you definitely make the job of every artist after you a hell of a lot harder.

The DC reboot, for example, didn’t touch anything in Green Lantern’s recent years.  Or Batman’s.  Even when it really no longer makes any sense.  Both characters have only been active in their universe for five years, story time, yet both have such a tremendous amount of backstory that it doesn’t fit well.  (Batman, for example, had a son with a supervillain five years before he was active as a superhero, which could possibly be justified, but still seems like a stretch.)  Meanwhile, Blue Beetle, a character with very little backstory, was completely rebooted, starting from scratch.  Both decisions have less to do with the characters and their universe and everything to do with the people writing behind the scenes.

Marvel proudly has profiles in its comics calling its writers and artists “Architects” of the Marvel Universe.  But really, they’re work for hire that can, and often are, replaced at a moment’s notice.

I’m not suggesting that writers and artists shouldn’t be considered important.  Nobody wants to read a lousy Batman story, drawn badly.  But at the same time, most of these characters are bigger and more important than the people behind the scenes.  Stan Lee might have created Spider-Man, but Spider-Man will be around long after Stan Lee.  And while the characters do need to adapt and change to stay relevant, messing with them too much at your peril.  Because you aren’t going to improve upon Batman’s origin.  And making an “extreme” version of Superman’s suit is the modern equivalent of giving him bellbottoms.

It ain’t going to stick, and you really should know better.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Recently, there’s been a kerfluffle over the rather dreadful Red Hood and the Outlaws title that featured Starfire, an alien superwarrior from the Teen Titans.  You have probably never heard of her.  Or if you have, it’s probably from the Teen Titans animated series that aired on Cartoon Network.  The cartoon was aimed at a younger audience and featured a version of Starfire that was cute and sweet, kind of naive, certainly an outsider from another culture.

The comic book version is apparently a sex robot who has repeated sexual encounters with no emotional attachment.

Now, I’ll admit that I really don’t know much about Starfire, so I can’t judge whether this characterization is consistent with past versions of the character.  That’s not what I’m interested in writing about anyway.  Instead, I’d like to wonder why this was included in the comic book at all?

I’m not asking this in a judgmental way.  I’m just curious.

As a writer myself, I often struggle with what to include in my stories.  There’s no way to avoid controversy, but I’ll take controversies I intended versus accidental ones anyway.  For example, if someone doesn’t like Gil’s All Fright Diner because of Earl’s copious amounts of swearing, I’m pretty okay with that.  I knew that would turn away many readers.  But if they are upset because Duke wears a No Fat Chicks T-shirt in the first chapter (and some people were) then I find myself frustrated because the shirt wasn’t meant to offend anyone.

This isn’t to say that people are wrong to be offended by it.  It’s to say that it annoys me that I offended people unintentionally.  It’s not even an issue of respect.  I have no problem with the many fat jokes made at Loretta’s expense in the book.  Those, I knew would be trouble.  But the T-shirt . . . that was a complete accident.

Because I write standalone novels, I often ask myself what to add or take away in each story.  Gil’s has adult language, sexual situations, and, yes, fat jokes in it.  Too Many Curses has none of that.  Chasing the Moon sits somewhere in-between.  Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain, due out next year, has no language and no sex.  Meanwhile, Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest, my current project, has some mild language and some mild sexuality (though not much really).  Each book requires its own set of standards, that’s true, but my ultimate goal is still to sell as many books as I can.

It’s not “selling out” to decide NOT to include something for the sake of a broader audience.  One of the things that genuinely annoys me about DC’s new reboot is that it seems as if no one, not the writers, not the artists, not the editors, seems to ever say “Maybe that shouldn’t be included.”

I don’t need to see a Starfire who is soulless sexual being.  I don’t need to see a full page spread of softcore Catwoman / Batman porn.  And I don’t need to read a Green Lantern comic where people are dismembered.  And I’m not sure anyone else needs to either.  Or, more to the point, I’m not sure what these elements add to these comics.

DC’s stated reason for the reboot was to draw in new readers, but what’s the point of drawing in new readers if you’re going to turn them away.  Like it or not, Starfire is probably best known to the general public as a quirky alien from a cartoon show.  Making her a sexbot seems counter-productive to me.  And while Catwoman has always been an anti-hero, there are more tasteful ways of exhibiting sexuality than drawing her straddling Batman.

To some degree, I think this is a dilemma common to all media.  Comic book superheroes, in particular, haven’t been for kids in a long, long time, and the fans and writers have been conditioned to throw in adult content, often more for reflex than any other reason.  It’s the same reason I can’t get into so many HBO series.  I don’t mind nudity and gore, but after a while, it just seems so indulgent, so risque for its own sake.

It makes me wonder if it isn’t intentional.  “Oh, the average person thinks of Starfire as a cute cartoon character.  Let’s sex her up a bit to correct them of that notion.”

But it’s not just the sexuality that confuses me.  Nor is it the violence.  Neither of these are new elements to comic books.  It’s the presentation, overt and shocking, that confuses me.  If you want to suggest that Starfire has sex, that’s cool.  But you can do it in subtler ways than they’ve chosen.  Same for the violence.

Okay, so I promised this wouldn’t be specifically about comics.  Whoops.  Sorry about that.

In my own stories, I find myself less interested in elements that can end up forming a barrier to the audience.  Especially easily avoided things.  I know that if I write about an alien space squid supervillain that many people are going to be uninterested from the get go, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.  But what would be the point in giving that same space squid a dirty mouth other than to possibly turn away readers?  Maybe that’s selling out, but it seems to me that it’s merely avoiding a pitfall.

At least, I’m writing my own characters and universes.  If I want to muck it up, who really cares?  But we’re talking about characters with some mainstream appeal, with some access to the public consciousness.  Even if the writer wants to add mature content, why do the editors allow them to?  Maybe a writer doesn’t care, but shouldn’t an editor?

In my first draft of Monster, our hero was a real jerk.  My editor and I bumped heads over just how much of a jerk he should be.  It was annoying at first, but she had valid concerns about the likability of the character.  There are still elements from the original draft I miss, scenes that didn’t make the cut, but at the end of the day, she was probably right.  Even if she wasn’t, the stuff that was cut doesn’t actually hurt the novel for its absence.  And if it allows even one reader to enjoy the book more by lessening Monster’s unpleasant qualities then I see it as a success.

Believe it or not, that’s part of an editor’s job.  Maybe the biggest part.  To save we writers from ourselves.  Or at least to get us to think about stuff like that.  It’s not that I always agree with my editors, but they always come at it from a good angle.  Sometimes, it’s a simple question like “If we lose this element, does the story really suffer?”  Surprisingly often, the answer is no.

This is why I avoided the latest Transformers film.  I just wasn’t interested in watching robots begging for their lives, getting popped execution style when all I wanted to see was a cool space robot adventure.  It’s why I stopped watching HBO’s Rome because, really, how many Roman wangs do I need to see in an hour?  And it’s why I haven’t picked up any of DC’s new comics because if I wanted to see dismemberment and casual sex, I’d rent Saw and  porno flick instead of buying superhero comic books.

It’s okay to NOT do something if it makes your story accessible.  It’s not always easy to know what to cut and what not to cut, when it’s worth it to use a naughty word, an innuendo.  But when in doubt, it’s usually wiser to play it safe.  That’s my current philosophy.  Maybe it’ll change later.  But for now, it’s where I stand.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

It even gave me some ideas for some good blog posts.

Today, I’d like to write about a conversation I had with a fan.  He approached me after a panel and remarked that he had seen me on a panel from last year on the subject of copyright.  He was struck immediately by my lax view of copyright, and how I didn’t think it should last nearly as long as it does.  It intrigued him enough that he went ahead and bought one of my books.

First, that’s always wonderful to hear.  While I do enjoy sci fi cons, I don’t do them for my own pleasure.  I do them for the exposure, to get people excited about my books.  If I can get one or two people to take a chance on something I’ve written, then I consider things a rousing success.  One step at a time, right?

Even better, he read the first book, liked it, and bought another.  Don’t remember which books he mentioned, but he said that he enjoyed the second book too and had recently bought a third.  All great news.

Then he mentioned that he could see why I didn’t fear shorter copyright laws because I was constantly creating new characters and settings, so while another writer might have a vested interest in preserving their primary creation / universe, I was clearly a guy who’d just go make another.

For the record, I don’t think of myself as more creative as other writers.  Well, some other writers, sure.  But there are plenty of creative writers who are primarily series writers.  And it’s worked out well for them.  It’s just not my thing.

While it’s not my intention to free myself from copyright concerns by writing varied characters and universes, perhaps that’s an accidental byproduct.  Whereas many writers are looking for that golden goose to pin their career on, I’m more interested in writing fun, cool, varied fantasy stories.  While it has probably stifled my career’s growth, bucking a common trend, it’s also helped me in other ways.  And maybe one of those ways is giving me the confidence to believe that I don’t need to hold onto a story forever.

I like coypright.  I certainly like getting paid to create stories, but I do think there’s a danger of creative stagnation that comes with current copyright law.  It’s most visible in comic book superheroes, where so many older characters refuse to step aside for the next generation.  (Although this is trademark law, which is slightly different, but close enough for our purposes.)  Would Marvel continue to publish Spider-Man comics if the character was in the public domain?  Maybe.  But they’d also have the impetus to create new characters that could be more reliable revenue producers.

It’s true.  If I only had one money-making character / universe at my disposal, I’d want to hold onto as long as possible.  But I don’t.  Or at least, I choose not to.  Maybe it’s because I’m dumb.  Given current copyright law, one really strong, popular idea is worth a dozen less popular ones.  As I’ve said before, if I was writing my ninth Gil’s All Fright Diner novel, I’d probably be in a stronger place as a novelologist.  I don’t begrudge any writer who takes that path.

I just decided not to.  Rather, I just ended up going another way, mostly by habit and accident.

There are bonuses.  My fans tend to enjoy that I don’t write sequels.  They almost always have a favorite character / setting they’d love to read more of, but they also appreciate the variety.  And at least one guy respects me for it, which is always nice.

And then there’s Hollywood.  I’ve been fortunate enough to dip my toe in that pool, and it’s been a lucrative, fun experience.  I’ve earned a small reputation as a creative guy who can come up with cool ideas.  I’ve had several books optioned for films.  I can’t say whether they’ll go anywhere, but there still out there, still working for me, earning me a check now and then.  And getting me work that I never imagined I’d do.  Yes, I’ve written quite a few treatments and worked as a consultant.  I don’t think that would’ve happened if I’d just written a long-standing series, though if I were lucky enough to have a popular long-standing series, I’d have no reason to complain.

But I don’t have one of those.

What I do have is eight (make that nine, next year) fantasy / sci fi novels that have done respectably well, and a reputation as a creative guy who isn’t afraid to experiment a little bit.  That’s just fine by me.

Though selling more books is always something to strive for.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

In the meantime, here’s a smattering of thoughts running through my head.

Nobody succeeds or fails on their own.  It was the wonderful Elizabeth Warren who recently observed, “Even if you built your factory on your own, your products were shipped via roads built by public works projects and your factory was protected by a police force paid for by tax dollars.”  That’s really the problem though.  Roads and police and other things provided by the public sector are invisible when they work.  We take them for granted.  Until they’re gone.

So it is too with our own successes and failures.  Psychologically, we have a much higher opinion of our own abilities and reason than of others.  If you ask most people why OTHER people are religious, they’ll usually say it’s for primal emotional reasons like fear of death or sense of powerlessness.  But ask someone why they’re religious, and you’ll usually get a more profound, more nuanced answer.  If we see someone else throwing a temper tantrum in public, we just shake our head and assume they’re classless jackasses.  But when we do the same, we excuse ourselves by saying we’re having a bad day or that the target of our wrath deserved it.

We are immensely forgiving of ourselves, cruelly judgmental of others.  WE are amazing.  THEY are lucky.  It’s in our nature.

In this way, I don’t find the wealthy and successful any different than any other group.  Of course, the wealthiest people will consider themselves hard-working and deserving of their success.  And they’ll assume that the poor, the unsuccessful, are lazy or just need to apply themselves.  That’s not an attitude that comes from having money.  That’s just an attitude that comes from being human.

Yet as a professional writer, I realize just how dependent I am on all the people around me.  Whether it’s the mother who supported me all those years, the DFW Writer’s Workshop that encouraged me endlessly when publication seemed impossible, or the first editor who finally was able to convince someone to take a chance on me.  (Thanks, Paul.)  Beyond that, there are all the people who help in the editing process of the book, the hard-working folks who actually manufacture and transport the things, and the fans and critics who get them noticed.  And the people who buy the books.  At the end of the day, without those people, I’m out of a job.

That’s why I’m not entirely convinced of the merits of self-publishing.  Not because I believe the writing is innately worse, but because the self-published writer is often working alone.  That, more than any other factor, is why I’m reluctant to recommend self-publishing.  Novelology is a tough biz, and I can’t imagine going at it alone.   (Though I’m certain that as technology continues to advance that self-publishing will become more and more viable.  Just not entirely convinced it’s where it needs to be at the moment.)

I haven’t achieved my meager level of success because I’m awesome.  It’s because of the work and support of a hell of a lot of folks.  And the world would be a better place if we’d all take a moment to remember that, to view the other guy not as an obstacle toward our success but as a necessary partner in our endeavors.  Or we can all just sit around, resenting each other.

Yeah, we’ll probably stick with that.

Meanwhile in the world of comics…

DC Comics relaunched all their comics with a new line up of 52 new titles.  I’ve read through a few of the new titles and have yet to be impressed.  They’re not bad comics, but they don’t really seem new and interesting.  Especially because the stated reason for the reboot is to make comic books friendly to new readers.  Yet the comics seem to be plagued with all the same problems that have been dragging down superhero comics for years.

There’s continuity, which despite claims to the contrary is still just as overwhelming and incomprehensible as before.  Except now it’s even a bit unfriendly to old time readers because some of the old continuity doesn’t count and some of it does.  Even if it really doesn’t make much sense.  Like Hal Jordan, who apparently in the space of five years became a Green Lantern, turned evil, died, then came back to life and returned to the Green Lantern Corps, fought an intergalactic war with Orange, Red, and Black Lanterns.  That’s a lot of livin’ in five years.

Granted, comic book time is always kind of wonky, and it should never be taken too seriously.  Which is why it should never be set in stone.  Dates and times are something to be avoided in ongoing universes with characters that literally run for decades.  I’d much rather DC reboot the universe and just start from the beginning.  Not that I’d be too crazy about that either.  But starting from square one would certainly be easier for new readers to jump on board and diehard fans might complain, but they’d still buy the titles anyway.  They always do.

But what really gets me is that the comics are still struggling to find an acceptable level of reality for superheroes.  I don’t need to read about Batman and Catwoman having sex.  In point of fact, I tend to prefer my superhero comics very light on the sex.  There’s something unsettling to me about superheroes having sex, something absurd.  Bruce Wayne, I have no problem with.  But Batman, it just seems like weird fetish porn.  It’s just a bad idea, is all I’m suggesting.  Especially since superheroes should generally be about punching people, not getting it on.

Even the violence though tends to be on the unpleasant side.  Once again, realism is not your friend in the superhero genre.  Now every supervillain seems to be a sexual deviant, more likely to rape and murder than build a death ray or rob banks in unnecessarily elaborate ways.  And where once it was a genre of escapist fantasy, it so often seems to revel in reminding us that superheroes would be awful and frightening in real life.

I get that I’m an old man.  The comics I grew up with are not the comics being written.  They certainly aren’t the comics that influenced the current generation of writers and fans who seem intent on rewriting Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns endlessly.  I’ve never really understood why the deconstruction of the superhero genre became the default goal of mainstream superhero comics.  Deconstructions only work in limited capacity.  What makes Watchmen readable is that it is a single story.  You can do whatever the hell you want to the characters and their universe with no fear of having to keep things going.

But if you write that story where the Joker murders schoolchildren, you’re stuck with it.  Forever.  And suddenly, every time the Joker shows his face, we’re reminded that here’s a remorseless killer that no one can stop.  And if you write that story where “nothing will ever be the same”, you’ll soon realize that everything HAS to be the same because you can’t really change anything important in an ongoing, shared universe.  Not very often anyway.

I wouldn’t say DC’s new titles are bad.  They certainly aren’t any worse than most mainstream superhero comics, and just because they don’t appeal to me, that doesn’t make them objectively bad.  Taste is a subjective thing.  But at the end of the day, the reboot doesn’t seem to have changed anything.  All the same problems are still bothering the industry and while they’re sure to get a nice boost from the publicity, I don’t see it solving the long term problem of an business model built on writing stories originally intended for children and selling them to a confused market that isn’t even really sure what it wants.

That’s the real dilemma, and I can certainly relate.  I’m a guy who often complains about not being taken seriously enough just because I write stories about robots and space squids.  Maybe if I threw in more sex and ritualistic disemboweling, I could prove I’m a gritty, hardcore writer.  Though I’m not sure I’d want to write a cephalopod sex scene.  And I’m definitely sure I wouldn’t want to meet the fans who were eager to read it.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Okay, probably not.  Because that’s not something I do.  It’s not something that interests me.  I’ve got a pretty light touch when it comes to killing characters.  I’ll admit that.  I’ll usually kill or destroy or otherwise get rid of the bad guy, but it’s not my thing to introduce a colorful supporting cast and then pick them off to establish the credibility of the threat they face.  It’s probably yet another thing that keeps me from being taken as seriously as I’d sometimes like.  Nothing like a little blood on the page to remind everyone that you’re not screwing around.

I think this is probably because of my love of comic books.  Comic book superheroes are some of my earliest influences.  But I have a bad habit of liking the strange and obscure characters.  The very same characters that tend to die whenever a writer needs extra drama.  It puts me in a strange position.  If you’re favorite hero is Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man, you can rest assured that they aren’t going anywhere.  They might die for a gimmick, but no one with any sense believes they’ll stay dead.  Same with all the popular villains.  But if you, like me, enjoy Quasar, Diamond Lil, or Arnold Wesker, you are stuck walking a very difficult line.

Quasar, for example, is a character who was never popular but nonetheless had his own comic book series that lasted 60 issues before fading into complete obscurity.  I had the whole series and really loved it.  It also had the unfortunate side effect of making me a fan of several other even more obscure characters in his supporting cast.  Seriously, does anyone else out there like Makkari the Eternal?  If so, love to hear from you.

But then Quasar disappeared into comic book obscurity.  He did eventually reappear.  Only to be killed by an evil alien.

Story of my life, a comic book fan of the little guy, the obscure, the forgotten.

I think Quasar is back because death is rarely permanent in comic books if someone likes you, so clearly someone out there has a soft spot for Quasar.  Good luck, buddy.  I’m rooting for you.

Danger is often an important aspect of adventure fiction, but it shouldn’t be the only aspect.  Or even the most important one.  The conflict from adventure fiction should rarely be about the protagonists’ continued survival, but on their ability to achieve their goals.  Danger is only one of the obstacles that can get in their way, and it is, more often than not, an artificial one.

I call it The Invulnerable Protagonist Rule.  The rule says that if making your hero explicitly invulnerable to physical harm removes all the tension from your story, then you’re doing something wrong.

Almost all adventure protagonists are invulnerable.  Not explicitly.  But they’re invulnerable just the same.  Batman is not going to get shot and die, no matter how many times he leaps from the shadows into a mob of thugs.  Indiana Jones is not going to be killed, execution style, by the Nazis.  And no matter how many times James Bond is facing incredible odds, he won’t die.  This is necessary for most adventure fiction.  Without it, most protagonists would probably perish in very short order.

We might thrill to the adventures of action heroes, but for the most part, we know they are in no real danger because who wants to watch an superhero movie where the heroes spend all their time in traction?  Or watch Conan the barbarian get eaten by a giant spider?

The tension in adventure is found in whether our heroes can triumph.  Can Superman save Earth from an alien invasion?  Will Indiana Jones keep the Nazis from finding that magic superweapon?  Can James Bond keep Goldfinger from nuking Fort Knox?  Being invulnerable helps an action hero, but they usually have to work at it still.  Just because no one is going to shoot Batman in the back, it doesn’t mean he automatically wins.

I’m often surprised that this source of tension is lost among both writers and readers.  It’s one of the arguments most often used for why someone prefers Batman to Superman, for instance.  As if a Batman story is going to end with Bats getting mortally wounded.  The only difference between Batman and Superman is that Batman conveniently jumps out of the way of bullets while Superman doesn’t usually have to.  At the end of the day, they are both functionally invulnerable as their stories demand.

Yet there seems to be no greater joys for most writers than to get to write the story where ANYONE CAN DIE!  And the audience tends to dig it too.  And that’s their choice.

But I always get a little angry with it.  I don’t like stories where a character I’ve invested in is killed.  I don’t like them even as imaginary stories, as alternate universe adventures.  I find it annoying, manipulative.  Sometimes, it even seems a little abusive of the artist / audience relationship to trick the audience into caring for a character only to kill them off to supply drama.

I’m not suggesting that it shouldn’t be done.  I’m all for a diversity of stories, and if some stories make life cheap and the fans like it, well, good for them.   But in my fiction, if I’m going to invest in a character (or ask my readers to invest), I’m not going to yank the rug out from under their feet just because I can.  Frankly, I’ve lost too many important people in my life and in my fiction already.

This one goes out to you, Thunderstrike.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

One of the reasons I don’t like being considered a silly writer is that it lowers the bar.  Silly is fine, but it’s just a trifling thing.  It will always be considered unimportant.  And to some degree that’s to my advantage.  If someone reads a story of mine with no other expectation than to be entertained by some strange humor or weird situations, then it’s a standard I can usually meet.  If I was purely out to make a buck, then I’d be perfectly happy with that standard.  It’s not especially challenging, and others have built a career out of this kind of escapist fiction.  Writers I even admire.

But I have to admit, it bugs me to be thought of as slight and hollow.  I’m not writing the most meaningful fiction in the universe, and I’m certainly not out to change the world with my stories.  But they aren’t just stupid stories.  Not to me, at least.

What’s often frustrating to me isn’t my own writing and its reception, but the reception and excuse-making of other writings.  It annoys me to no end when someone excuses bad writing because a story is dumb and I shouldn’t expect it to be good.  It bugs me even more when a writer makes the same excuse.  In my last post, I mentioned my disappointment that DC Comics took the previously established short and stout Amanda Waller and turned her into another supermodel.  I’ve heard more than one comment on other sites that people are making too big deal about this, that comic book superheroes are “escapism” and who really cares if every single character is traditionally thin and good-looking?

I care.  And so do other people.

The notion that comic books are a lesser form of media and as such, are given free reign to avoid diversity is a false one.  I’m not saying I want comic book superheroes to go out of their way to be relevant and important, but just because they’re stories about people in funny costumes fighting aliens and evil clowns, that doesn’t excuse an outright hostility toward non-traditional character types.

The thing about escapism, about silliness, is that it actually matters a whole hell of a lot.  Because as much as we want to believe there’s a separation between meaningful media and silly media, there isn’t.  Both have tremendous influence on us as a culture and how we perceive things.  In fact, I sometimes think silly, escapist media is even more influential.  Because meaningful media is stuff we’re supposed to like, but escapist media is stuff we seek out.

This is why I’ve never bought in the idea that something like Jersey Shore or The Real Housewives as being meaningless candy.  More people have probably watched these shows than the latest academy award winning movie.  And regardless of how much we might pretend to laugh at the people who star in those shows, there’s no denying their influence.  You can bet there are plenty of folks who model their personalities after the morons of Jersey Shore.  And why should that be surprising?  People lined up in droves to get “The Rachel” haircut while Friends was popular.  And Marlon Brando made leather jackets cool.  We are influenced by our media, whether we admit it or not, and escapist, entertaining media is what we most often seek out and imitate.

All artists have a responsibility, even if they deny it.  When I wrote Gil’s All Fright Diner it wasn’t my intention to insult anyone with the fat jokes at Loretta’s expense.  I still stand by the book and think she’s a great character.  But it doesn’t change the fact that some people were put off by it, and I can certainly see why.  More importantly, if my response to their anger was a dismissive “Well, it’s just a silly story so get over it” I’d be guilty of ducking the responsibility.  After all, Gil’s is probably still my most popular novel.  It won several prominent bits of recognition.  So it’s hypocritical to say that it’s “silly, inconsequential” when it suits me, and “smart, clever” at other times.

It’s a paradox of sorts.  Shows like Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, etc. are popular and make a lot of money.  And they make a lot of money because people watch them.  But if confronted with their influence, producers and stars will often say they’re just TV shows and they don’t matter.  So apparently they matter enough that they earn millions of dollars but not enough that they actually have any influence on our culture.

In Bruce Campbell’s great autobiography, If Chins Could Kill, he observed that he once got a letter from someone who said his television show, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., had saved their life.  Campbell was deeply flattered, but also reluctant to accept this.  He understood that if you take credit for saving someone’s life, you have to also be ready to take credit for the opposite,  Yet media is quick to do exactly that.

Even if I am just a silly writer, I refuse to embrace the label because it would mean that my work, my art, would be ultimately meaningless.  But I don’t write meaningless stories.  I write from a certain point of view, and I have influence, whether I want it or not.  Even the stupidest story means something to someone.  Even the most mindless piece of art can affect someone in profound ways.  And the artist can’t deny that responsibility when it suits him.

But this isn’t just about art and media.  This is about all of us.  We are all tremendously influential, whether we realize it or not.  Our kind words can make all the difference in the world.  Our bad moods can spread like wildfire.  Our fears, our loves, our compassion, our disgust, these things aren’t self-contained.  They reach out and touch everyone around us.

Sure, as a novelologist, I have a larger reach than most people.  And if my career continues to grow, that influence will grow with it.  The more money I make, the more fame I gather, the less comfortable I am with the idea that I’m merely a silly writer of insubstantial stories.  And as I ponder the nature of media in this day and age, too many people try to avoid their obvious affect on our society even as they cash the huge checks that come with that influence.

There are no silly stories, no meaningless cotton candy entertainment.  It all goes into the cultural mix, and while that doesn’t mean every story has to be conscientious, uplifting, or insightful, it does mean that we can’t dismiss any of it as unimportant just because it’s about superheroes, robots, or egotistical chumps from New Jersey.  Because it all matters.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a little light entertainment, a little frivolity and silly escapism.  But escapist does not equal meaningless.  And while not every story can (or even should) be culturally enlightening, every story that reaches the world shapes it somehow.

We are who we admire, who we pretend to be.  We model ourselves and our world after our art.  Art imitates life, but life imitates art.  And if you’re confident on which has more influence on which, congratulations on that.  I’m not so sure.

All I know is that if being taken seriously as a writer means taking lumps for intended and unintended influence, it’s a burden I bear gladly compared to the alternative.  Although really, I don’t have any other choice.

None of us do.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee