Where was I?

Having previously tackled the subjects of racism, the trials and tribulations of fictional characters, and why dinobots are always awesome, I think it’s time to talk about the paradox of being a fantasy fan.  It’s a paradox embodied pretty solidly by my own career.

Fantasy is usually considered frivolous and childish by default.  And it’s hard to disagree on the surface that jetpack gorillas and dragons are silly ideas.  The nature of almost all fantasy is built on this absurdity.  At the same time, fantasy doesn’t have to be stupid, as in simple-minded, as in a bit of colorful distraction with no real meaning beyond that.

Yet the paradox is this.  The more fantastic something is, the more unapologetically fantastic it is, the less “serious” it’s considered.  If gorillas suddenly become smart and rise up to attack us, it’s silly, but still a serious piece.  If those same gorillas get laser guns and fight giant robots, it’s goofy.  Nobody would take such a movie seriously.  I’d go to see Laser Apes Vs. Robots in a heartbeat, but I know I’m the exception.

The alternative to having your fantasy dismissed is to take it very seriously.  Have your characters stand around looking serious.  Have a tragic moment.  Be sure to remind everyone how important everything is.  Remind everyone that this is not “kid’s stuff”, and that if anyone’s actually thinking of enjoying watching a dinosaur getting punched by an alien, then be sure to throw some blood on the screen or have a lot of really boring talky scenes around it.

Recently, I watched M. Night’s live-action adaptation of The Last Airbender.  I’ve only seen a few bits, here and there, of the original animated show.  But what struck me most about the movie, aside from it’s rather stilted and clumsy direction, was how Serious (with a capital S) it was.  A story about a fantasy world where people control elemental powers was absolutely joyless.  It’s true that the animated series is about some serious stuff, but it also has moments of joy, of humor, of unapologetic “cool”.  The movie forsakes all that.  I don’t even remember a single laugh or smile in the whole damn thing.

As fantasy slips further into the mainstream, this happens more and more.  One of the things I disliked most about The Dark Knight is just how joyless it is.  It’s true Batman has his share of noir-ish sensibilities, but he’s also a guy who fights criminals dressed in purple suits, who wear tuxedos, and who can even shapechange or be werebats.  I’m not looking for a comical Batman, but I am looking for moments when I feel like I’m seeing something fantastic.  Instead, Batman is just a vigilante with a few gimmicks.  The Joker is just a killer without any sense of style.  And we are persistently reminded that being a superhero and living in Gotham City sucks.

Even the Star Wars prequels have this problem.  When you watch the original, there are certainly plenty of serious moments.  Especially between Luke and Darth Vader.  But the prequels lack their Han Solo, a dashing character who is there to have fun and be awesome.  I’ve always felt that Han was more important to Star Wars than just about any other character.  He gives us permission to enjoy ourselves.  Even when he’s being lowered into the carbonite pit, he gives us a sly wink and a cocky grin, and we know that it’ll take more than being frozen alive to stop Han.

The prequels don’t have that character.  And they suffer for it.  Indeed, Han might just be the perfect example of fun fantasy that still has some teeth.  Jar Jar Binks is just stupid, a character with no redeeming qualities, who exists only to be goofy.  Obi-Wan and Anakin are both maudlin, mopey characters.  And there’s good justification for that.  But without a Han to be both fun and serious, the prequels ends up either coming across as slight or angsty, depending on the scene.

A character like Han Solo can make or break a fantasy story, and thinking about it, Harrison Ford has made a pretty good career playing that type.  Indiana Jones has swagger and heart.  Even Ford’s version of the President gets to fight terrorists.  It’s just another small strike against Cowboys and Aliens that Ford plays the unlikeable version of Han Solo in it.  He’s so grizzled and unpleasant and deliberately avoids any moment of his trademark smile that by the end, I realized just how much I missed it.

This is why I often struggle finding an easy sub-genre in my own work.  I’m usually writing about strange things without apology.  I don’t feel the need to say THIS IS IMPORTANT every chapter.  And I even dare to have large chunks of humor scattered liberally throughout.  It has the twin handicap of making me seem too goofy to some, too serious to others.

Am I a fantasy adventure writer who uses humor?  Or am I a humor writer who uses fantasy adventure as a backdrop?  I’d like to think I’m both.  But the danger is that by trying to walk in two worlds, I might not be accomplishing as much as I could if I settled on planting both feet in one realm.

Even removing the humor though, when I write about robots detectives and space squid supervillains, I’m already working against myself as a “serious” storyteller.  When the plots of my stories hinge on raccoon gods dropping by to crash on the couch or about a fuzzy green monster that wants to eat the universe, one morsel at a time, I’m going to fall hard on one side of the spectrum.

If Mack Megaton was just a robot detective, I might get away with it as a “serious” writer.  But Mack lives in a retro-future city.  His best friend is a talking ape.  He fights aliens and giant slime monsters.  Regardless of the context, it implies goofy.  And it is.  But it doesn’t mean it’s slight or frivolous.

The paradox of my work is that, no matter how serious I might make it, the stories are always going to sound silly upon basic description.  The only way to offset that would be to write more seriously, to remove the smiles, the moments of joy.  And it wouldn’t hurt to kill more characters in the stories and possibly blow up a city or two.  Heck, even the original Star Wars blows up a planet to make sure we realize how nasty the Empire is.  And it doesn’t hurt the film to do so.

There’s a similar moment in Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain (due out next year) that isn’t played for laughs either.  But considering it’s the climax of a war between a space squid supervillain and rock men from Saturn, it’ll probably either come across as goofy to some or too serious to others.

And even as I write my current project, I find it’s a story full of humor.  And I live with it because it’s vital that it remain in there.  I’m not interested in backing away from the fantastic, from treating it as anathema to serious storytelling.  Fantasy can be fantastic.  It can be fun.  It can be every  bit as meaningful and worthwhile as any other story while still retaining humor and poise.  And it can do all these things while having jetpack gorillas and giant fightin’ robots.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

There was a lot of great stuff at Fencon this year, and I’ll get to it in some later entry.  Right now, I’m pretty damn tired, and I’m about to keel over.  But there was something at the very end that I thought is worth talking about.

The last panel of the con was called 70 Years of Marvel Comics.  I was on it.  As were several other cool people.  And Paul Cornell, a writer at Marvel.  I mention Paul Cornell specifically because I’m hoping that, by some chance, he might stumble upon this entry and possibly read it.

First of all, I wanted to apologize.  Near the beginning of the panel I got pretty heated, and while I’d like to think I didn’t cross any lines, I also want to be sure and say that Paul Cornell handled himself with grace and wit.  He was patient with my angry fannish ways, called me on some bullshit when I deserved it, and listened to my valid points when they came up.  The guy was just a class act (probably doesn’t hurt that he has that cool British accent), and I’m sure he’s sick of taking crap from fans.  No doubt, he was more patient than I would be if I had to put up with the constant fanboyish ways of we comic book readers.

Some great points were brought up though, and some I think are definitely worth thinking about.  Now, Mr. Cornell isn’t here to express himself, so I’ll do my best to offer his point of view because he had some great points.  But I’d also like to explore my own afterthoughts on the panel.  And we’ll do that first because A) it’s my blog and B) if Mr. Cornell can’t be here to speak for himself, he should at least get the last word.

The most heated point of the discussion came when I mentioned Tigra’s brutal treatment at the hands of Marvel.  Personally, this bugged the crap out of me and it still does.  And it still cheeses me off that she’s little more than someone to be kicked around for dramatic effect.

Mr. Cornell said (with some justification) that Tigra is a C-List character, and the fact that she wasn’t killed for extra drama is more than I had any right to expect.  On that point, he’s absolutely right.

He followed this up by suggesting that Joe Quesada, Marvel’s current Editor-in-Chief is tired of feeling like the fans seem to care more about the characters on the paper than the real people behind the scenes.  And he’s absolutely right about this as well.

And here’s where I get a little contentious again.  Just a little bit.  Because if the writers at Marvel (or anywhere for that matter) have a hard time accepting that the lives of their imaginary creations mean more to the fans than the creators, then I just don’t understand what they think their job is.  I have no reason to doubt that Joe Quesada is a fine human being and a good person.  But that’s all I really do know about him, and most probably, all I ever will.

Tigra, on the other hand, is a real person to me.  I know her.  I care about her.  She’s more real to me than a stranger on the street.  Heck, there are people I see every day that I know less about.  And she’s just a C-lister.  She’s not important.  But, as a character, as a person, she’s more realized, more concrete, than anyone in the Marvel Comics offices (at least to me).

And like it or not, these fictional characters, their lives, their welfare, their hopes, their dreams, mean more to most fans than any real person involved in their creation.  Now, I’ll admit that if The Mighty Robot King appeared before me and said that I had to choose between no more Tigra stories or Joe Quesada getting struck by lightning, Tigra would lose that competetion.  But barring some sort of Twilight Zone-ish twist, I am far more invested in Tigra’s happiness than Joe’s.  (Sorry, Joe, but it’s the harsh truth.)

Which brings me to my point.  Comic books are shared universes.  Not just shared by the writers, but by the fans themselves.  And while I don’t think the stories should be held hostage by the whims of the fans, I also have to say that to abuse a character and then act surprised that some fans get upset is confusing to me.  Because just because a creator has no affection for a character, that doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t.  And odds are, no matter how obscure the character, no matter how C-List they might be, someone really, really likes that character and will be annoyed, even possibly enraged, to see a character they enjoy sacrificed for (sometimes necessary) dramatic effect.

(I’ve actually gotten used to this myself since almost all my favorite characters are B and C-Listers.  I may be the only person in the world he hated that Quasar had to die so that Annihilus could earn his villain cred.)

I’m reminded of a funny story when the Jason Todd (then an unpopular Robin) was killed.  The editor at DC walked into a bar, and when he said what he did, someone turned to someone else and said, “Hey, this is the guy who killed Robin!”  It was then that he realized he wasn’t just an editor, but a keeper of something larger than himself.

I do think that it wouldn’t hurt for the writers at Marvel / DC / etc. to keep this in mind.  You aren’t just writing stories, gang.  You’re playing with our friends and family, and if you screw it up (or if we think you screw it up) you’re going to end up catching a lot of hell for it.

Of course, let’s also be fair.  You can’t handle every character with reverence and delicacy.  You’d never be able to tell any stories that way.  But you also can’t just say, “She’s C-List” as justification because that can end up being even more irritating.  Imagine someone comes up to you and says you’re favorite aunt / best friend / personal hero is irrelevant.   You’d be pretty irked, I imagine.  And Mr. Cornell was definitely irked when he assumed I was attacking his friends at Marvel.  (I wasn’t, and if that’s the way it came across, I apologize again because there’s no reason for personal attacks in this situation.  And these attacks do indeed happen, so he can hardly be surprised for expecting one.)

And now for Mr. Cornell’s excellent points:

He observed that the accusations of chauvanism, racism, & other assorted sensitive topics can easily become entangled in these conversations and thus derailing them.  He’s absolutely right on this.  While there are indeed complex issues often at the heart of these discussions, these are larger than any single comic book company and the icons they represent.  Too often, it’s easy to pull out the big guns of Prejudice & Sexism to make a point and then end up confusing every element of the talk.  (It’s like pulling out the Nazi card.  Just because it shuts people up, it doesn’t mean you’re right.)

Mr. Cornell also said that Marvel perhaps has a tendency to follow the market and sales too closely, but that this was difficult to avoid.  Because a great comic that sells three copies a month, no matter how great it might be, isn’t really doing the company any good.  He’s absolutely right on this too.  It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback, to say “If I was running Marvel Comics, here’s what I’d do!” and then sit back, smugly, thinking how easy it would be to save comic books if only we were given the chance.

And that’s bull.  Because Joe Quesada and his staff don’t want to destroy comics.  They want to make good comics AND make money.  And, like all of us, they judge their success on what draws an audience.  Or at least what justifies their jobs by what sells.  And this isn’t “selling out” or innately “bad writing”.  It’s necessity.

(As a writer myself, I struggle with the question of whether I want to be commercial or true-to-myself or if these two things are even in conflict.  And I have the advantage that I’ve finished my book by the time it’s come out so even if it bombs, I don’t have to second guess that particular work, whereas a writer of a serialized story might discover at any point that, hey, you’ve put your heart and soul into this story and nobody gives a damn.)

Once we got through the rough patch at the beginning, it appeared that Paul Cornell and I had a lot in common in actual comic book tastes.  (Both 70′s comic book fans, both thought it would be great if comics could keep their mature sensibilities and be appropriate for all ages at the same time, and both of us wished new characters could be allowed to develop and flourish.)

So anyway, I hope that I represented Mr. Cornell’s opinions properly.  He really did seem like a terrific, sensible sort, and I have no reason to suspect that he is nothing other than a dedicated, thoughtful, hard-working writer out to create the best stories he can.  (Seriously, check out the man’s resume.  He’s working his butt off.)

More importantly, I respected his thoughts, and while I rarely change my opinion (like everyone) he gave me some things to think about.  I certainly know that I won’t be so cavalier in my criticism (intentional or not) of the people behind the scenes at Marvel, who, despite any gripes I might have with their decisions, are just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee