SOMETHING FAMILIAR…

...SOMETHING PECULIAR.

Some years ago…

…And as I type this, I realize this was over thirty years ago, so to hell with years, we’re talking decades, for fuck’s sake…

…A fellow who’d experienced not one but two consecutive lucky breaks in timing in a film career, who’d found himself writing comic books; this, I would guess to just make ends meet until his next lucky break, referred to writing comic books as “…A goof.”

Notwithstanding the implicit—again, to hell with implicit—explicit dismissal and casual diminishment of the work I’d done for over twenty years at that point, and the work of anyone else who’d bothered to take seriously the effort called for to make comic books, this, of course, demonstrated an unserious approach to what work was being done.   

To be abundantly clear, this statement made clear his was a commitment to hackery, in a craft already well supplied with hacks of Pat Hobby’esque proportions, of all ages and genders, of motivations and mindsets ranging from guileless self-regard to justified self-loathing, all in service to the maintenance of the mediocre.

This unseriousness was even more firmly defined and confirmed, as, over the succeeding years passed, and that lucky break never rematerialized, (He did get luckier than I would have preferred, however, as petty as that might sound.), Mr. Lucky opportunistically attached himself to various popular talents, the usual aging adolescents who made the sort of fan servicing anodyne work product that perfectly confirmed that “goof” crack.  

He was known, I am told, frequently, if not always, to ask his collaborators what they “…felt like drawing.”

“What they felt like drawing.”

Roll that around in your head for a while.  I mean, really now.  And they call me condescending.  Which is not to say I’m not, of course, but we’ll get back to that later.

To elaborate and to clarify, I don’t do any of the work I do based on what I feel like drawing.  That’s just bullshit, reducing a vocation to an avocation.  And if this is even one of the motivations behind your career, you and I operate in parallel dimensions and you can peddle your papers elsewhere…likely to great success, considering the marketplace, to be queasily honest about such things.

In a moment of rare wit, another colleague, the onetime and possibly still biggest of commercial deals, a guy who knows his audience, but whose French suicide poet adjacent self-seriousness has never allowed him to be capable of anything even vaguely humorous beyond the occasional leaden whimsy, referred to this fellow as “…A tapeworm…” This, in regard to Mr. Lucky’s superpower of finding unexplored aspects of that biggest of deal’s work and building massive story arcs from barely a thread. 

I would guess this thread pulling would somehow jibe with whatever his collaborators apparently felt like drawing.  And I will admit when I heard that “tapeworm” crack, I laughed with amusement and admiration.  And I’m a tough audience, believe you me.

Of course, there’s a rich vein of pot and kettle irony in the big deal’s resentment in this particular regard, but that’s another resentment for another day.

And, as all too frequently, I digress.

Recently, the current darling and likely future gavonne of the alternative comics universe—when the current major domo finally and mercifully cashes out—remarked in an interview, and I paraphrase, that he was deeply grateful that he hadn’t been good enough to get work in mainstream comics when he was first out there, first looking for his post art college career.

For the irony challenged among you, he’s simply and not all that subtextually expressing his disdain, bordering on contempt, for mainstream comic book work, from, to be sure, an evolved plateau, perhaps, but quantitatively, he’s going the “…goof…” route, too.  

In sum, from two different perspectives, these two represent a singular point of view that states, explicitly to my eyes, that mainstream comics, by their very nature, are purposefully shitty, so why bother?

The tapeworm confirms his own contempt for mainstream comics by his presumptions about the work, insulating himself from responsibility, or genuine ambition for that matter, by calling it dreck from the outset.   

The darling dismisses mainstream comics as intrinsically dreadful, shit in and of itself, dead in the water in regard to any aspect of ambition that might exist in a realm owned and operated, as it is, by supermonsterspacemutantdragon nonsense.

And, to a certain degree, as dictated by the audience, from which, of course, the talent pool is drawn and drained, in order to maintain and perpetuate this unfortunate circumstance, they’re both on to something.

And, in regard to disdain, bordering on contempt, in full disclosure, and as noted, I’ve been guilty of some of that myself.  That said, I have said more than once that comic books—by which I mean mainstream comic books, for you cherry pickers out there—are a frivolous and frequently pointless medium, that are difficult to do well.

Of course, “well” is profoundly subjective.  I will congratulate myself for a moment for what has turned out to be a one half century career long error in judgment, specifically, overestimating the mainstream audience in regard to its curiosity, its potential, and its possible interest in material beyond the usual superspacedragonmutantmonster chazerei. 

My experience confirms beyond any doubt on my part that that interest just isn’t there to any degree worth measuring.  This is certainly true in regard to the work I’ve done, where my ambitions have led me up blind alleys of genres separate and distinct from the fan service so adored and devoured by the enthusiast so enthusiastically. 

Thankfully, in the course of this long career, I have made a number of choices and decisions with my professional life which have financially insulated me from the uninterest of both the mainstream and alternative audiences.  I am, of course, disappointed in this reality.  I’d be lying if I said otherwise.  There has to be some pleasure in being the idol of thousands. 

But, generally speaking, as someone who grew up on poverty, and knows just how awful being a drag on the system can be and feel, I am good.

I am often regarded as a cynic by the “I need someone to root for” crowd of mainstream comic book enthusiasts.  Many of this shallow bunch also often seem to be incapable of separating the narrative voice from the character voice, holding the author responsible for any and all opinions and perspectives as expressed by any and all characters.

Ancillary to this, this swarm of ninnies doesn’t in any way grasp the idea that the depiction of an action is not in any way necessarily an endorsement of that act. 

Of course, much of the above is no more than a convenient means of displaying hurt feelings, or, for that matter, personal attacks of the most opportunistic variety, not to mention a projection of barely concealed witch burning venality.

This crowd all too often mistakes skepticism for cynicism, and naturally misses the point entirely, subjected as it is to often genuinely cynical work, frankly rarely more than fan service at its most pandering, just bullshit that’s just half smart enough to bedazzle the fatuous. 

And they are very easily bedazzled, believe you me. Ducks in a barrel.  Candy from a baby.

While over there in the alternative comic book universe, guilelessly self-regarding navel gazing narcissism, frequently coupled with an earnest and often comically inept amateurism, is all too often identified as, you should pardon the expression, authenticity.  I stopped counting the number of times it became clear that the talent involved in such material simply decided to become, and again, pardon the expression, a graphic novelist. 

Just like that.  Poof, I’m a graphic novelist.

An alarming number of mainstream enthusiasts are convinced I’m some sort of a rightwing nutcase because I don’t buy into the current progressive bullet point identitarian victim culture ideological bullshit.  Needless to say, the chasm that exists between me and those who present themselves as social saviors in the trenches of microaggressions grows wider and deeper daily.

An equally discomfiting percentage of the graphic novel alternative comics crowd are convinced, by dint of aggressively uninterested willful ignorance, that I’m just one more happy go lucky superduper comics guy.  Their reactions when they actually meet and engage with me verge on the priceless. 

Confusion to our enemies, as I frequently encourage.

And, just to make my point as crystal clear as possible, I don’t think that mainstream comics have to be so utterly shitty, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and I will likely die, sooner rather than later, continuing to hammer at what I perceive as my calling, to whit, to offer an alternative to the anodyne, within the confines and contexts of genre narrative.

This, despite the fact that too often anything outside the punchboard/checklist of concepts, narrative ideas, themes and tropes that mainstream comics dictate is too often deemed terra incognita, and to be avoided at all costs by enthusiasts.  

So, ambitions, of any sort except that which can be filtered through the sieve of supermutantspacedragonmonster expectations and that sort of thing, are regarded with, at best, suspicion, and, at worst, outright dismissal by an audience committed to defending its love for often indefensible horseshit.

 “It’s the best!” “It’s the worst!” Really now.

And that same dismissal works its magic for the alternative crowd in its assumptions, all too frequently justified, that mainstream comics are junk for the backward in thinking—an opinion all too often supported by the social media delivered screeds and rants in regard to this week’s latest supermutantmonsterspacedragon corporate crash grab, whether print, digital, or screen. 

And while that disdain for the main might be justified, there remains that smug whiff of subjective self-regard coming off the alternative comics cadre that, for me at least, reads as suspiciously unregenerated pretentious art school nonsense, with a healthy frisson of twee preciousness that sets my teeth on edge and my interest adrift.

“Graphic novels.”  “Commix.”  Oh, come now.

And so on.  But enough pissing on the alternative lineup and their smug and condescending presumptions.   I work in the mainstream, for better or worse, so there’s where my troubles lie and live. 

Naturally, in retrospect, my natural instincts, to try to synergize underground and mainstream comics, with a frisson of what EC had to offer, into something else again, was a disaster in the making.  I got very few takers, in an audience as satisfied with what it got as it was with its own opinions, as noted above.

In regard to those opinions, all the enormous energy invested by the consumers in declaring middling nonsense to be mind altering genius, or conversely complaining about what is essentially corporate crap for not being as good as it was when you were a kid, has led me to think about criticism, and what does, or all too frequently doesn’t, support and underscore the thought processes that lead to our choices of what we embrace and what we disdain.

I’ve struggled, for several years now, to find the language to frame, to explain, to better understand what has become an all too common form of criticism, that, oddly enough, to me at least, seems to sidestep actual critical thinking entirely, and instead embraces an emotional response that completely personalizes the experience; often at the expense of the experience itself, with nuance lying in a pool of its own blood in the gutter.

To be honest, most of the work that comes out of the mainstream comic book business, not to mention the television and movie product derived from it, bores the living shit out of me in its unchallengingly anodyne banality. 

Most of this work too often seems dim, creatively bankrupt, and thus uncriticizable.  This, despite the throes of agony and ecstasy from much of its audience over what is too often the latter-day equivalent of “Zombies of the Stratosphere,” “Sky King,” or “Space Patrol,” admittedly delivered with breathtaking technical excellence costing millions of dollars, in the service of pandering dreck.

And yes, before you go all “Ok Boomer, fuck off, old man” on me, I will acknowledge there are exceptions, few and far between as they may be.  And to be clear, most of those exceptions are in the context of graphic excellence, as opposed to textual beauty. 

If you’re here for the writing, and regard the artwork as a delivery system for narrative, you can, as above, peddle your papers elsewhere. Despite the writer as Alpha position that has become the norm in comics nowadays, it’s a visual medium, in which the images carry the weight of the narrative, and endow the material with value.

Criticism has become democratized across all media, as expertise has been rejected.  In the place of expertise, we now have a critical mass of massive criticism, that all too frequently amounts to little more than an affronted and indignant reaction to hurt feelings, as if one’s level of offense, or for that matter, those hurt feelings, are valid expressions of critical thinking, as opposed to no more than a matter of personal taste, limited as that taste all too frequently is, both by choice and experience.

But, of course, as “Good” has replaced “Favorite,” this crowd of earnest victims of their own self-regard grant their feelings actual merit, endorsing those emotional responses with what was once granted to intellectual rigor, as opposed to the unthinking kneejerk reactions to their own personal tastes, and to be sure, personal problems, that they are.

All this has led me to finally understand that there has been a cultural inversion, a reversal of relevance, as reaction has upended action.

 Whereas for most of, if not all of its history, entertainment material has driven the reaction to itself, we now, it would seem, live in an era when the specific demands of the audience, which has displaced actual thoughtful judgment with Boo/Hurrah, are the tail that wags the dog, to wield a cliché that serves us perfectly in so banal a situation. 

In a media marketplace of test screenings, of sensitivity readers, of market research, none of this should have come as a surprise to me.  What can I say? I can be unduly optimistic.

What with all this “Problematic” and “Controversial” stuff, trigger warnings, and censorship on the left, outright book banning on the right—of course, it’s okay when we do it, right?—not to mention that all time and reductive classic “I need someone to root for” bullshit, producers of popular entertainment are facing disaster should they even consider setting foot—not, for fuck’s sake stepping foot, but setting foot—on a landing anywhere above the lowest common denominator.

The natural and perfectly reasonable result of this is the marketing of entertainment product that is functionally uncriticizable beyond the gladiatorial thumb…

…A judgment replaced by what Justin E. H. Smith brilliantly dismisses as “Philistine pseudo-criticism...” filtering any and all material, past or present, through a scrim of consideration which rejects the very idea of actual critical thinking in lieu of the demand to be comforted by any and all experiences.

And, of course, when that numbing agent of unthreatening comfort isn’t present, when themes, concepts and narrative arcs are deemed problematic—secular code for blasphemous, to be clear—for whatever of what seems to be a multitude of reasons, when a surrogate representing undiluted goodness is unavailable for the consumer to adopt as an avatar—in lieu, of course, of actually being good, in you know, real actual life—the gleefully anticipated transfer of pandering anodyne bilge is disrupted, as shocked, offended butt hurt hysteria ensues.

And yes, of course, yes.  This is neither new, nor news.  Rather, it has become increasingly pervasive, the rule rather than the exception.

So clearly, the Darling and Mr. Lucky might very well be right in their estimation of mainstream comic books, and the ancillary product derived from them.  Mainstream comic books have been allowed to become, to a profound degree, no more than children’s material endowed with a gloss of gravity, a smear of ersatz grit and grift, anointed to infantilized content to make it palatable for middle aged children…

…Which, unfortunately, more than justifies the idea that writing to satisfy such an audience is, to be sure, a goof.

Trust me on this.

As ever, I remain,

Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.