Comics / Spotlight / Black Astronaut

Stories, Counter-Stories, and Comic Books

By Dan Horn
February 3, 2012 - 13:26

I was planning on delivering a different sort of editorial this week, one that examined the various merits of Eric Stephenson's Image Comics regime. It's truly a wonderful time to be a reader of independent comic books, and Image has, in recent years, become the champion of creative autonomy and that autonomy's profound impact on comic book content. It's difficult not to be enamored with many of the often lamentably obscured titles that Image Comics has been steadily churning out en masse. However, a number of things have been weighing on me recently, and I've channeled all of it into a comprehensive argument against the prejudicial editorial and marketing practices of DC and Marvel, something that will immediately seem quite divergent from the adulation of Image Comics. Perhaps after reading this, though, you, the reader, will better understand the true importance of a new counter-culture, a counter-narrative if you will, in the comic book medium, whether it is delivered by Image Comics, ONI Press, Archaia, or any number of other independent publishers. These days there are much better substitutes to the Big Two, but if you find yourself waffling on whether or not to jump the mainstream ship and paddle your intellectual lifeboat to the distant shores of independent artistry, then maybe this argument will be that merciful shove over the railing that you need. I do want to issue a brief warning before we begin: this is going to be a long one, folks, and a bit academic as well. I'm also sure to step on a lot of toes here, so I hope that you'll leave your scruples at the door and approach this essay with a reasonable measure of objectivity, or at least a somewhat sympathetic point of view.

My dissociation from mainstream comic book readership has been a slow and grueling process, to be sure, but the confluence of recent events that have brought me to this eventual endpoint have continuously existed as observable, perpetuated symptoms of a larger, blanketing diagnosis that had, until now, gone largely ignored or unnoticed by myself and many others. That isn't to say that any of the observations I'm about to make are particularly original, but I wanted to create a synoptic assessment of the mainstream comic book industry's integral involvement in oppression and marginalization of outgroups and suppression of counter-narratives.

I first felt the need to write about this during the impending approval of the SOPA/PIPA legislations, both of which have been indefinitely shelved now in the United States, but clones of which are surfacing in other countries, now namely in Canada, and the global resolution ACTA, which seems innocuously vague at first glance, could prove to be the censorship mother load over which we've all been chewing our fingertips to the bone. The fact that many comic book creators and publishers gave little or no regard to the obvious implications SOPA and PIPA presented in relation to freedom of speech and not merely piracy, which I in no way advocate, sent a shiver up my spine. Worse yet was explicit support for those laws voiced by Marvel Comics and implicit support from DC Comics. It wasn't necessarily the outcry against piracy, but the "stop it by any means" approach, that I thought warranted some serious attention. The Editor-in-Chief, Herve St Louis, of the Comic Book Bin felt similarly obligated to spend some time picking apart SOPA, and he became perhaps one of the first and one of the very few pop culture editorialists to address that bill in a cogent manner. Political advisor and pop culture blogger Brett Schenker also took up the cross that was opposition to SOPA/PIPA.

On a recent Comic Book Bin podcast, Brett Schenker of Graphic Policy was kind enough to illuminate some of the surprisingly advantageous aspects of piracy in relation to the comic book industry. Several professional studies, and even one independently conducted by author Neil Gaiman, concluded that comic book piracy was an unlikely boon of viral marketing, in the end increasing sales substantially (Gaiman likened the effect of pirated comic books and books to the effect of comic books and books offered at a public library). All of this, however, was obstinately overlooked by corporate copyright mongers. As I closely observed the reaction (or lack thereof) of the comic book community to SOPA, I became witness to several other unsettling trends developing in that industry:

I've watched comic book publishers and creators allow their readership to shoulder all the blame of their shortcomings in publication content and marketing, using guilt as its own marketing tool, and the comic book industry holding you, the consumer, responsible for its financial woes, if in fact they could even be classified as woeful. The comic book market had followed an extremely predictable downward financial trend after the comic book bubble of the 1990s. That decline tapered off early in the 21st century, and, as much as Marvel or DC would hate to admit it, as it would blunt the edge of that guilt marketing mechanism, comic books are now are particularly stable niche market, not counting the multi-billion dollar market it has spawned in film adaptations and franchises.

I've also seen Marvel grovel at the feet of the Tea Party and apologize for Ed Brubaker's criticism of the group, speaking to Marvel's creative outlook: most comic books, especially those published by the Big Two, are merely commercial products, not works of art, and so the creators assembling these products have been reduced to corporate drones, not artists. I can sympathize with those creators to a degree; they've been desensitized to their own artistic aspirations, their work turned into just that: work. However, there is a recent trend of comic book creators publicly complaining about things like pay and the possibility of lower digital price points. It seems crass, considering forty-some million Americans are currently living below the poverty line; thousands of Mexican migrant laborers in America work for less than ten thousand dollars a year and support families on those insubstantial wages while being subjected to inhumane work and living conditions. The sickening hubris of this country's entertainment industry has inevitably and undeniably bled into comic books. There's no denying that some of the schlock even the most lauded creators have turned out monthly is utterly uninspired, ostensibly completed only for a paycheck, and maybe that's the nature of the beast when it comes to monthly deadlines and juggling several simultaneous monthly titles.

I'd like to point out that what I've just written is only a generalization and doesn't account for conscientious creators like Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Joshua Dysart, Ron Marz, etc--at least, not entirely. I'm sure they've found themselves working merely for a check at times as well, but they don't live their public lives as human advertisements, as we see some creators shamelessly and incessantly shilling their products on social media networks and blogs without ever engaging the imperative social dialectic. I am trying myself to find my break in the literary/storytelling community, but I truly believe that I would tell my stories for little or no pay, as I believe the cathartic release of my ideas as well as their resultant psychic preservation by readers would be compensation enough, perhaps because I have some experience in receiving meager military wages in service of my nation; but I realize that to many writers and artists this is idealistic at best, especially to those who haven't much other viable options for secondary incomes. The question then is this: should we creative types really be able to make a living off of our creative lifestyles in the first place? Should teams of athletes and the leagues and moguls that own them really make billions of dollars more than the custodian that cleans up the peanut shells from under stadium seats after the game? Should Britney Spears make more money than the faceless musician who writes her chart-topping hits? When did lifestyle become a profession? When did artists stop starving, and what sort of impact has that had on the nature of art itself?

I'd be remiss not to admit that the patronage and commissioning of art dates back to ancient times, and Northern European guilds as early as the fifteenth century took measures to end common artistic anonymity; but whereas those artists' impetus to create lay in religious reverence and/or the desire for notoriety, that psychic preservation, spurred on by uniqueness in perspective and experience, today's pop artists are seemingly propelled monetarily in a world super-saturated with existing and vying pop art.

Still, there is more to this industry malady than support of corporatist authoritarianism and the singular market-mindedness. I sat back and watched while Mark Millar perverted and exploited comic books into some conceited media empire, a launching pad for a lucrative career in film. I've read of mainstream comic book news outlets like Newsarama censoring brilliant creators like Brandon Graham. I stood by, helplessly, as Marvel raped the Jack Kirby estate, even as Marvel's parent company Disney lobbied for copyright laws to be rewritten in order for Disney to prevent its own properties from slipping into the public domain. Yet, it is something else that's perhaps a bit more abstracted of which I'd like to write at length: calculated marginalization of outgroups. This was something which occurred to me over a two day period, bookended by readings of Richard Delgado's Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative and John Rozum's explanation of the circumstances surrounding his decision to quit the Static Shock comic book series. I'll address the latter text first.

Static Shock was one of the 52 new comic book series that heralded DC Comics' 2011 reboot. A reintroduction to a character which originated in DC's Milestone Comics line in the 90s and went on to star in his own popular animated television series, the new incarnation of Static Shock told the story of a young African-American hero who commanded a staggering intellect in conjunction with superhuman powers of electrical conduction and energy projection. The Milestone lineup was truly one of the first to successfully implement the genuine diversity that seems to elude the medium today, and the return of Virgil (Static Shock) purported great things for the future of diversity in comic books. The title was billed with John Rozum, one of the original Milestone creators, at the helm, aided by collaborator Scott McDaniel. Last month, the book was slated for cancellation in April, 2012.

Anyone who has read John Rozum's work from his impressive twenty-year career as a comic book scribe would have immediately sensed the uncharacteristic nature of "his" scripting of the New 52's Static Shock. Even as Rozum took quite a bit of heat from readership for the half-baked reboot of Milestone's Static Shock, I couldn't help but wonder how he could truly be involved in the project in any capacity given its tepid content. My misgivings seemed founded when Rozum quietly took his leave of the book, maintaining ambiguity toward the reasons for his early departure. Artist Scott McDaniel had been receiving a co-writing credit on Static Shock from the very beginning, and in his creative jump, I identified something incongruous: Rozum, as I've already stated, is a lauded industry professional, and not a rusty one at that, coming fresh off the heels of an inspired and acclaimed reinvigoration of the Xombi series, another former Milestone property. McDaniel has a substantial record of experience in the industry as well, but none of that experience included writing. I had the thought, before reading the actual books, that perhaps DC was using this venue to have one of its veteran artists apprentice with one of its veteran writers in order to get a feel for the minutiae of the scripting process. I initially assumed that perhaps through this apprenticeship some typical "creative differences" had been unearthed between Rozum and McDaniel, prompting Rozum's resignation from Static Shock.

Recently, Rozum came forward, after being unfairly harangued by the Static Shock fan base, to explain the exact details of his departure from the series, and those details are quite shocking, if you'll excuse the pun. The way Rozum tells it, the series was sabotaged by DC editor Harvey Richards from the get-go. Rozum, a friend of the late Dwayne MacDuffie, creator of many of the Milestone characters including Static Shock, seemed a logical choice for rejuvenating the adventures of the black teen superhero. However, the editor on the book stated his vague dissatisfaction toward Rozum's pitch, although he still wished to hire the writer on, perhaps to keep up the appearance of an integral Milestone creator on a former Milestone property or simply to give Rozum credit for the bits of his pitch that the editor wanted to implement without outright stealing them. In any case, Rozum was informed that he wouldn't actually be scripting any issues of Static Shock; instead, McDaniel would be almost single-handedly tackling those duties while also providing artwork for the book.

It seems to me that Rozum wasn't content to simply sit idly by and collect a royalty check as the series tanked, because, he writes, he actively began attempting to intervene in the writing of the wavering series, submitting new scripts for McDaniel and his editor to consider. However, Rozum found his efforts met with extreme resistance. As he puts it:

"From the first issue on, I was essentially benched by Harvey Richards and artist/writer Scott McDaniel. All of my ideas and suggestions were met with disdain, and Scott McDaniel lectured me on how my method for writing was wrong because it wasn't what the Robert McKee screenwriting book he read told him was the way to do things. The man who'd never written anything was suddenly more expert than me and the editor was agreeing with him. Scott had also never read a Static comic book, nor seen the cartoon series, yet was telling me that my dialogue didn't sound true to the character and would 'fix it.'" (2)

Rozum continues, explaining that he believes that where Static Shock subsequently failed was in its determination to be "sold" by using irresolvable plot devices to bait readers into returning month after month, but I identified something else in Rozum's article: a narrative which has become more and more pervasive with each passing week. It is a narrative Richard Delgado, leading American civil rights commentator and Seattle University School of Law professor, classifies as "the stock story." (1)

In Storytelling..., Delgado characterizes the stock narrative by its implementation by an "ingroup" in order to perpetuate that ingroup's values. Delgado classifies the ingroup by prevalent cultural phenotypes and earmarks or what could also be labeled as dominant culture. Dominant culture can be defined as a set of beliefs and traits that are seen as important in a given culture. There is a certain reverence these beliefs and traits are regarded in, or at least this reverence is asserted by those being revered and is reciprocated by similarly powerful cultural constituents. Dominant culture should not be mistaken as a popular majority, for in most cases the ingroup's features are propagated and represented only by a minority of a populous. (1)

For example, if you spent any amount of time watching telenovelas and knew nothing about Mexico or the people of Mexico beyond what you saw in those soap operas, you might assume all Mexicans must be of strictly European descent. Of course, this would be an inaccurate assessment of Mexican culture, where approximately eighty percent of the population is comprised of indigena and mestizos, with perhaps less than a fifth of the population being comprised of the Spanish criollos and others. However, the narrative asserted by Mexican dominant culture is that Mexicans are largely indiscernible from their Euro-American counterparts, a narrative that marginalizes the four-fifths of Mexicans, the "outgroup," that do not share those "dominant" traits.

In his text, Delgado gives a "standard event," fundamental enough as to be easily applied in many other situations, as an example of the stock narrative. He uses a prestigious law school as the foundation for this metaphor. The event itself revolves around the candidacy of a black lawyer for professoriate. When the predominantly white male faculty of the law school votes against employing the black lawyer, a student approaches one of her tenured professors to inquire about the outcome of that vote. The professor, Blas Vernier, parries the line of questioning at every turn, utilizing the stock story, "the one the institution collectively forms and tells about itself.. It emphasizes certain 'facts' without examining their truth[.] "(1)

Vernier employs a certain narrative tactic to coerce his student into sympathizing with him. When the student notes the faculty's lack of diversity, he counters by pointing out that there are in fact ethnic teachers at the school. When the student observes that those teachers are either untenured or simply on loan, Vernier returns with the argument that the faculty has yet to find a person that suitably matches its criteria, and it just so happens that the black lawyer didn't meet their expectations either. When the student comments that many of the tenured faculty does not fulfill that criteria, Vernier contravenes by claiming they are still tirelessly searching for a suitable minority candidate for the school.

From this "mythic" hiring criteria, Delgado offers an interesting insight. He claims that whereas a minority candidate has only one chance to fill a position by meeting those mythic standards, a straight, white, male candidate has two opportunities: one is to embody the mythic candidate, and the second is to not meet that criteria, but have no minority candidates that meet the criteria either.

Delgado explains further, using an "anonymous leaflet" metaphor to voice this concern to the student body:

"They hire a white person because, although he or she is not a mythic figure, functionally equivalent guarantees--namely first- or second-hand experience--assure them that this person will be a good teacher and scholar. And so it generally turns out--the new professor does just fine.

"Persons hired in this fashion are almost always white, male, and straight. The reason: We rarely know blacks, Hispanics, women, and gays. Moreover, when we hire the white male, the known but less-than-mythic quantity, [...] it does not seem to us like we are making an exception. Yet we are. We are employing a form of affirmative action--bending the stated rules so as to hire the person we want." (1)

In my experience with the New 52, many books that should have been cancelled have been afforded a second chance, and very few of those books feature minority characters, and none of them prominently feature black characters, whereas two cancelled series do.

Of course, this is abstract conjecture, with no way to accurately gauge the effect of storytelling on a culture. However, if you look, you are sure to find an example of the stock story in every facet of American culture. Let's look at migrant labor as an example. During the Mexican Revolution, American labor recruiters actually sojourned into Mexico to amass a migrant labor work force to bring back to the States. When the Depression hit, leaving twenty-five percent of American citizens unemployed, the US government created a vitriolic anti-immigration narrative. The deportation operation at that time indiscriminately "repatriated" even American citizens who had misplaced their birth certificates or naturalization papers. In the 1940s the bracero program brought those migrant laborers back to the States by the thousands, but, after WWII, heralding the return of an American work force, the government once again turned to stock narratives, instituting Operation Wetback.

When the Recession struck several years ago, we witnessed something very similar. Arizona's SB1070 and Alabama's immigration policy, both laws that supersede Fourth Amendment rights, created a hostile and invasive cultural climate for people who so much as resembled Mexicans. Whites took to the streets, demanding the jobs that they believed were being stolen from them by the UFW and other migrant labor unions. Conservative politicians invoked a rhetoric that even undermined the Spanish language as a practical form of communication.

The stock narrative is not relegated in its effect to blacks and Chicanos, however. As Abreham Alemu, of the Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature Education, writes in "Oral narrative as ideological weapon for subordinating women," a country's oral "folklore" is also instrumental in marginalizing women (3). What is America's current oral narrative pertaining to women: the Kardashian sisters? The Lohans? Katherine Heigl movies? Barbie dolls? Judd Winick's Catwoman? Pornography? What female stereotypes are projected from this narrative? What behavior does this narrative reinforce in men?

Words and phrases like "piracy," applied to give illegal downloads a much more sinister sonority, and "climate change," applied to dull the edge of global warming, are also examples of the dominant narrative at work. As we see in Mike Carey and Peter Gross's The Unwritten, no narrative is so small that it does not affect cultural perceptions and presuppositions. As Carey and Gross observed in their Vertigo comic book series, even an obscure comic book narrative, like the fictional Tinker, can warp or elucidate the world around us. So, at first it may seem like quite a leap from SB1070 to comic books, but I believe the mainstream comic book narrative is similarly powerful in its seemingly unassuming nature and presentation.

In the instance of Static Shock, Black Panther, X-23, Steel, Mister Terrific, Xombi, Blade, and many others I saw untenured heroes in the prestigious schools of Marvel and DC, perhaps used as bargaining chips in the game of affirmative action. As DC's New 52 took Barbara Gordon out of her wheelchair, promoting a dangerous message of ephemeral and physically surmountable disability, readers' outrage was met with Vernier-like evasive maneuvers: "But Paul Cornell's Demon Knights includes a crippled woman on a horse!" and "A non-disabled Barbara meets the mythic criteria we needed for a Batgirl." As Delgado puts it, this is the "look how hard we tried" sympathy grab, a narrative of a benevolent publisher who has been unjustly prodded by its readership and critics.

But this narrative tells much more than that. Herve St Louis and I spoke about this at length on this week's Comic Book Bin podcast, in which Herve argued that, because of the manner in which DC and Marvel marketed minority comics to the "ghetto" or the way in which they have used minority comics as the trial books for unproven creative teams, it has become more difficult to sustain minority comic books. I riposte, how much of that difficulty is part of the narrative that DC and Marvel have purposely constructed, though? Why do these books need to be marketed in a way that is known not to succeed? Why do these books need to be written and rendered by incompetent writers and artists? The power of this narrative is undeniably shaping its readers' perspectives and presuppositions in regards to race, gender, and disabilities, and what it says about the culture it is propagating is chilling: black people aren't viable in the industry, the only way to overcome a physical handicap is through physical strength, gays and lesbians are only sustainable characters in comics when they are good for press at the time of GLAAD Media Award-nominations announcements, and overt sexism is something to be handled flippantly.

Sure, the new Ultimate Spider-Man is visibly ethnic, but notice that he exists in an "alternate reality." Peter Parker is still alive and well in Marvel's main line of books and is continually repurposed for film and television. Sure, Spawn was a popular black leading man in comic books, starring in his own series for years, but he had had his skin roasted off, leaving his ethnicity indistinguishable for most of his tenure, and eventually he even had his face torn from his skull and then was replaced altogether by a white character. DC and Marvel create these alternate universe narratives and soft ethnographies to gratify the mere necessity for minorities to appear in comic books. Are we truly to believe that a company that has been publishing comic books for over seventy-five years is so inept that it cannot find a way to market mainstream  minority comic books? No, I believe that would be naive. There is a reason that DC and Marvel are consistently giving its readership superficial comic books with vague reference to ethnicity, politics, and religion. Of this Delgado writes, "[The ingroup's] complacency--born of comforting stories--is a major stumbling block to racial progress." (1) The phrase "comforting stories" should ring a few bells for the average comic book reader: the formulaic drivel of Fear Itself, Flashpoint, Avengers vs X-Men, etc.

As I posited in this week's podcast, DC maintains a hierarchic model for its characters. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are the Trinity, with Green Lantern and Flash coming in at a close second. In this hierarchy, there is an inherent danger in producing a comic book that might eclipse another character on this popularity ladder. The fact that Static Shock's cartoon series was very popular proves that there is a relatively large market for this character. Should Static be given the opportunity to reach that audience with an intelligible story and wonderful artwork, would Static be more popular than Aquaman, or even the Flash? That is wishful thinking. Static Shock debuted in Diamond's top 100 sellers for September 2011, claiming the eightieth position, indicative of a burgeoning interest, but there was a swift downward trend in numbers from September to October and from October to November and so on as those thirty five thousand readers quickly abandoned the poorly-written series. What if Geoff Johns, Scott Snyder, or Grant Morrison had been attached to a black comic book like Static Shock? It seems that is a risk DC is not willing to take, and that it would upset the hierarchy seems like a likely reason the publisher believes that move to be so risky.

It's easy to contextualize the failures of Static Shock from the outside looking in. I suppose I have to give the benefit of the doubt, that Marvel and DC might be run by complete idiots instead of overt racists and sexists, to these publishers and editors, but in my experience, there are no coincidentally functioning narratives. Every word you read, every image you see, has a message, a component of a greater narrative, and if that narrative's aim is to subvert your ideals, then I must implore the independent comic book community to up the ante on distribution of a counter-narrative which subverts that stock narrative. As the Big Two impose their guilt-inducing tactics, their marginalizing efforts, their coercive methods of placation, I simply ask you to remain discerning. Keep your eyes open for that narrative skein. Purchase books that offer counter-narratives to keep your opinion well-rounded and informed.

Fight back.







References:

1. Delgado, Richard. Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative, Mich. L. Rev. 1989.

2. Rozum, John. "Why I Quit Static Shock." http://johnrozum.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-i-quit-static-shock.html 

3. Alemu, Abreham. "Oral Narrative as ideological weapon for subordinating women: the case of Jimma Oromo." Journal of African Culture Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1. 2007.

 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12