The Four Color Media Monitor

According to the Daily Galaxy, Stan Lee gave an interview to CBC radio, and is optimistic about the future of superheroes.

In a CBC radio interview with Q's Jian Ghomeshi, Stan Lee, the one-man dynamo behind some of Marvel Comics' greatest creations discussed the state of affairs in the comics industry. Lee, who is no longer affiliated with Marvel, is quite optimistic about the superhero genre that he helped to popularize with creations such as Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Iron Man.

Part of that future lies in motion pictures. Lee feels that superhero stories are perfect for the big screen, thanks to advanced digital effects and computer animation. And he doesn't mind screenwriters changing the origins of his characters, recognizing that the transition of a work from one medium to another requires different approaches to storytelling. However, he expressed disappointment at the re-imagined origins of the Hulk in Ang Lee's 2003 film, and of Doctor Doom in 2005 Fantastic Four movie, directed by Tim Story.

On that last part I can certainly agree. I've often guessed that the filmmakers of Fantastic Four were anti-war, and that they redid Doc Doom's origin because they realized that Doom was a perfect allegory for Saddam Hussein, and they didn't want to make anything too patriotic like having the FF take down his whole fortress setup in Latveria. The second movie was even more disturbing, seeing how the jail where the Silver Surfer was being kept looked almost like Gitmo!

Regardless, I don't know if comics will be able rely on movies as part of their future, seeing how even sales prompted by movie attendence seem to have dwindled lately. For example, unless I missed the reports, while the first two Spider-Man movies may have encouraged moviegoers to buy Spidey comics, I didn't see any news that it worked this time. I'm sure some did, but probably a lot less than before.

Lee praised current comic books for their outstanding artwork, improved coloring (now done on computers), and sophisticated story lines. He noted that the industry is attracting serious writers from other fields, including television and film (ed. note: Clerks director Kevin Smith worked on eight issues of Daredevil, and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski worked on issues 471 to 544 of The Amazing Spider-Man). Lee also talked about the changing demographic for comic books, saying that fifteen years ago, comic book stores were mostly patronized by kids, whereas they now primarily attract adults.

Well I hate to say it, but I think that the part about more sophisticated storylines today is one thing where I disagree with him. Whatever talent Kevin Smith might have to offer in movies does not translate well into comic books, and Straczynski's run on Spidey was pretty stale.

And if there's no even balance in the crowd that comes to the stores, that's actually a problem, if it wasn't made clear enough there: more adults but not enough children, and not enough that's suitable for children either, is the problem.

When confronted with the question of diminishing sales (at the height of its popularity in the 1990s, The Uncanny X-Men had a print run of 600 thousand versus its present run of 100 thousand), Lee points to increased competition from video games, the Internet and text messaging, stating that there were not as many diversions available to children in the heyday of comic books. He's also dismissive of the idea that online piracy affects sales, stating that the practice is not as prevalent with comics as it is with music and movies.

It's not just increased competition that's the problem today, but also bad storytelling, to say nothing of superfluous violence, promiscuity, overly-politicized storylines, even allegorical ones, and lack of serious moral lessons that drives people away from comics. There's also the slowly increasing prices, that are slowly reaching four dollars, and the latest thing that could discourage wider audiences from coming aboard is the surge in company-wide crossovers that's become prevalent in the past three years. In fact, the lack of independent character development for a lot of these comic book characters due in no small part to the crossovers is another thing that may have people discouraged.

Looking at the sales given for X-Men, that also pretty much sums up how far sales for a lot of other books have gone down since the early 1990s, when some books were selling almost a million, and today, they just barely sell 350,000 copies max, if they're lucky.

Again, I wish I could share Stan's optimism, but when you look at the deeper details, it's just too hard to do so.

Labels: good writers