The Four Color Media Monitor

I'm glad to see that Wieringo, co-creator of Impulse along with Mark Waid, is speaking out and lamenting the death of Bart Allen, and also talking about how comics were ruined by Image Comics for starters (Via Newsarama blog):

I’ve had many conversations with creator friends of mine about the pendulum swing that happened in the wake of the IMAGE explosion back in the early 1990’s. The sort of ‘we don’t need no stinking writers’ attitude of the IMAGE founders resulted in what were nicely drawn comics with little story, for the most part. They became commodities and not comic books with good stories to go with the flashy drawings. The other major companies, in response, tried to emulate the initial massive success IMAGE had by doing similar types of books with crazy cover gimmicks thrown in for good measure… and the quality of the entire industry, for the most part, suffered. It drove many long-time fans away. In the aftermath of that sales bloodbath, the creative pendulum swung in the writers direction and away from the emphasis only on artwork as the selling point. It’s been that way for some 15 years or so now…. and I think that pendulum swing may have reached its apex. My feeling is that in recent years, the quality of writing in comics has diminished. Maybe it’s not the writers’ fault… maybe it’s editorial edict that has replaced good story, plot and character development with the stunt… the event… to sell comics. Maybe I’m just a middle-aged fuddy-duddy who has lost touch with what makes for interesting comics.

I think that Rob Liefeld, who was one of the co-founders of the early Image Comics, can be remembered in history as what helped to bring down much of comicdom today, as he too has a role in leading to a lot of what destroyed today's comics. But let's not forget that editorial mandates are also what are ruining a lot of them: now, it seems as though they think that only "stunts" and "events" are what can get things to sell.

It's to be hoped that eventually, they'll discover that even that isn't getting them anywhere, and that both Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio will be removed from their posts and replaced with people who do have an interest in slowly building things back up again. If the sales numbers on Amazons Attack are any indication, things may just be starting to backfire on them.

Update: CBR spoke with Mark Guggenheim, who said that he knew that his run was to be for just five issues only, culminating in Bart's death. Well gee, in that case, why bother, if all he's going to be hired for was a hack job?

Labels: dc comics, good artists, marvel comics