Nothing springs to mind today about this page, so it’s time for another Twitter-derived rant, folks!
Circa my first years as an—ahem—“comics professional,” I have a vivid memory of reacting to some “dang that Generation X” outburst by a fuddyduddy older pro. (For the record, he was bitching about the demographic Gen X, not Marvel’s X-Men spinoff book.) In response to said sputtering comics graybeard, I recall saying, “Oh, why don’t you go take a nap, you bitter, ossified, burnt-out, repetitive old hack?”
Flash-forward to the present day as, decades later, I awaken from one of my multiple daily naps with more than a trace of gray in my own beard. Whoops! From the list of spiteful adjectives I spewed at that aging Baby Boomer pro long ago, I can’t deny that “bitter” and “old” may certainly apply to me nowadays. I do hope that “ossified” and “repetitive” aren’t apt descriptions for me, though Your Mileage May No Doubt Vary on whether they’re appropriate. Ah, but I can definitely assure you that “burnt out” really doesn’t apply, as I feel as intensely—and, important, productively—energetic about the work I do as I ever did when I was younger. No, really!
I may be somewhat embittered about and disillusioned with the (print) comics field nowadays, but let me hasten to assure you that I was even more embittered about and disillusioned with the comic field in my early days as a Kubert student and fledgling pro. In those dark days, after Swamp Thing and American Flagg! and Daredevil: Born Again had run their respective courses, pretty much no one in American comics was doing anything that even remotely appealed to me. Then again, so what? In a rather cold and calculating light, I saw the comics field merely as a workplace where I could get Dirty Pair published. Would’ve been nice, I suppose, to have debuted in a field rich with other work that inspired and motivated and pushed me forward, but that wasn’t the case. Didn’t really matter, though, because I had my own goals I wanted to accomplish, regardless of whatever mediocre dumbassery was raging unchecked throughout mainstream comics.
So, whenever the field is roiled by sociopolitical controversy or stupid publisher stunts or maddeningly wrongheaded thinking in general, I find myself defaulting to my customary stance regarding the American comics market: “Hey, I just work here, folks.”
Alternate version? “American comics: Welcome back, my friends, to the clownshow that never ends! Come inside, come inside!” *cue the Emerson, Lake and Palmer*
Plus, never discount the value of negative inspiration, kids! The crappy writing, wildly inept action storytelling and sheer, bludgeoning lameness of the mainstream comics I bothered to look at back in the early day of Dirty Pair only inspired me to try and do a better job in my own comics oeuvre. Hell, that still happens nowadays. A few years back, I read a wildly, even insanely overpraised superhero prose novel that was so godawful that I was briefly driven to work on a long-form Empowered story in novella form. As in, “Jeez, I actually hate writing prose, and I still can do better than that piece of garbage!” (Side note: I evaded my distaste for conventional prose by formatting the entire story in Twitter-post format, as I do enjoy writing in 140-character bursts for reasons I cannot begin to explain.) Alas, the Empowered Twitter-novella project ground to a halt as my conventional comics work overtook it, but I might still post the incomplete online project someday; in any event, I’ve already “stripped it for parts” repurposed for “regular Empowered,” so attentive readers might recognize where its story elements found use elsewhere. So, in summation: Yay for negative inspiration!
-Adam Warren
