From: tpjg9663@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Johnston)
Subject: Re: Who should join Image
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 23:20:47 GMT

visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:

>In <Bx9KKK.H04@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tpjg9663@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Johnston) writes:

>+>visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:

>+>>In <1992Nov3.180635.5843@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> dvandom@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (David VanDomelen) writes:

>+>>+> PAD, has about as much chance of joining Image as Ross Perot 

>+>>	Company robots always hate anything where people outside the 
>+>>"plantation(s)" have the chance to make money.  

>+>What does this have to do with PAD?  In the past year he's written for
>+>Why label him (to paraphrase) a company drone?

>	Read some of what he has said about Image, the way he has gone
>after people at image and people who work for image.  It seems to me
>that the attitudes expressed are either a personal grudge against
>certain people at image or sucking up to marvel.

Well, based on his CBG column, I would guess that it's based on
his friction with Todd McFarlane (?sp).  

>+>> And if the company orders you to put out books with bad plots and
>+>>silly stories, thats just the way things are.  

>+>Bad plots and silly stories?  Well, not everything can be Maus.

>	I'm glad you picked up on this "rationalization" because its 
>the same one used by most people who put out substandard hack work.

Thanks for offering that interpretation of my remark.  It offers
me an opportunity to try to clarify it.  What I was really 
suggesting, of course, was that perhaps superhero comics aren't
to everyone's liking.  I have several friends who like Cerebus,
Grim Jack, and other independents who wouldn't buy a superhero
comic if it was the only book on the rack.  These friends don't
enjoy superhero books (IMHO) because they're not willing to go
along with the suspension of disbelief required to accept the
standard Marvel and DC superhero universes.  How many times can
a non-powered hero (Batman, Punisher, whoever) wade through
heavy gunfire and survive?  How many villains must target such
a hero and arrange traps, etc. before the hero, no matter how
capable, dies?  As a fan of the superhero genre, I'm willing to
suspend my disbelief, and say "OK. Batman amazingly is still
alive.  As are Blue Beetle, Nightwing, (list 100 other non-
powered characters.)  So what happens this month?"  My off-the-cuff
remark about Maus was my way of saying that perhaps superhero
books are not to your liking.  It is not a crime to dislike
superhero comics.  Maus strikes me as the antithesis of 'bad plot'
and 'silly stories', so I used it as my example.

>Now there are two ways that creative people can respond to being told
>to do hack work.  They can move on or away.....or they can participate
>willingly in creating trash.  Once such people develop enough fans, they
>can reach a point where no matter how BAD the work, their drone-like 
>fans will refuse to be critical of it.

I liked the early McFarlane stuff (Infinity, Inc.) and the small
amount of his Amazing Spiderman and Hulk stuff which I saw.  I
hated his adjectiveless Spiderman stuff.  I like his Spawn stuff.
I hope I'm not a Todd drone.  If Marvel tried to rein in his
work on the adjectiveless Spiderman, I can't blame them.  The art
did not effectively tell a story, IMHO

>+>>You take what the master's
>+>>say is a reasonable cut and keep quiet.

>+>PAD keep quiet?  He seems to be very opinionated in his CBG column.

>	In a very selective way.  Very opinionated toward image in 
>particular.

Opinionated in a selective way?  Image has been the biggest news in
comics for the past 5 months, at least.  Of course his opinions of it
are more likely to be fodder for a column than his opinions of, say,
Star Comics (R.I.P.) or Archie comics.

>+>>	I mean the whole idea of image....creators actually owning characters
>+>>and taking a large share of the money is absurd and evil.  Besides which
>+>>anyone who leaves marvel has no talent anyway.

>	I find it difficult to understand why particular people would go
>out and devote lots of energy to attacking Image and the people involved.
>The last paragraph was meant to give some of them a motive consistant
>with their behavior.
>	I can't really understand why anyone would "hate" or attack image
>unless they were trying to suck up to the company.

Rather than doing it to suck up to the company, perhaps it's done
because of genuine dislike for the Image creators, or at least for
the attitudes they exhibit.  In particular, the attitude that
writers aren't needed and aren't important for comic books.
I disagree with the idea that writers aren't needed,
since many of my favorite comics creators are writers, not artists.

Tom
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc