Newsgroup: it.arti.fumetti
Titolo: [lungo] Master of the Obvious #9 del 29/09/99 by S.Grant

 Riporto di seguito il nuovo articolo che S.Grant scrive regolarmente per la
rubrica MotO su: 
www.comicbookresources.com
 .
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Master of the Obvious, #9 Wednesday September 29th, 1999
For some reason, people keep asking me about the Wisconsin Mafia these days.
I have no idea what they're talking about. I grew up in Madison Wisconsin,
and I did have a couple benign brushes with the real Wisconsin Mafia when I
was a music critic there, but these people are referring to an alleged "mob"
of comics talent that came out of Wisconsin, like Richard Bruning and Mike
Baron and Steve Rude. And me. The myth goes that somehow we all greased each
other's wheels and allowed Wisconsites to take over the comics industry.
Nice story. If there ever was a Wisconsin Mafia, it never did anything for
me.
It's not unusual for waves of comics talent to suddenly sprout from specific
areas. Up until the early 70s, New York cornered the market, but then
California got into the act. Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Rich Buckler and
others rose together out of Detroit's comics fandom around 1972. Bob Layton,
Roger Stern and John Byrne launched their careers off a little Indiana
fanzine called CPL around 1976. (John was Canadian, of course, but CPL
brought his art to professional attention.) In all these places, there was
an organized comics fandom where those who broke through gave entrée for
others. But Wisconsin? Not a chance.
The closest I ever got to a Wisconsin Mafia was Mark Gruenwald, who arrived
in Manhattan from Appleton WI a few months before I moved from Madison. I
didn't even know he existed until then. I'd gotten in on the coattails of
the CPL Gang, as they were called, but Mark and I, having a home state and a
Manhattan neighborhood in common, became close friends and writing partners
for a couple of years. An assistant editor at Marvel, Mark had no power to
speak of, and, though he did throw me what assignments he could, our
association probably hurt him more than it helped me. (The power structure
at Marvel held me in low regard, but that's another story.)
Mark and I both held strong opinions on what comic books should be. As our
opinions parted, so did we. We never became enemies, but it wasn't until
just before Mark's recent death that we really started talking again, and
then only at conventions. He was a great guy, but his driving obsession was
one I couldn't share.
Mark loved universes.
Universes were pretty much implied in comics the first time the Justice
Society ever banded together, but nobody concerned themselves with whether
the Mars Wonder Woman "Universes are bad for comics."
went to was the same Mars Green Lantern went to. Nothing was really
suggested until 20 years later, when Gardner Fox set the Golden Age heroes
on their own parallel earth, a concept long established in science fiction
but never really applied to comics. But DC was then subdivided into
editorial fiefdoms, and editor Julius Schwartz was under no obligation to
correlate THE FLASH with events or settings in Mort Weisinger's Superman
books, even though they appeared together in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. Even
internal consistency in titles was rudimentary.
When the Marvel Universe congealed around Stan Lee - a triumph of
convenience over design, as Stan was writing something like ten books a
month and leaving the plotting mostly to his artists, and less variation
meant less he had to keep straight - fans reacted strongly. It was an
exciting idea at the time, the notion that all these separate stories could
coalesce into a single all-inclusive myth, and when fans became pros, they
started writing about what excited them. Since most broke in at DC, which
had recently purged its old talent for political reasons, they began
"universing" DC. Jack Kirby's NEW GODS bumped the overt myth content of
comics to a new level, and Jim Starlin wedded that to acid mysticism and the
convolutions of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion to take superhero comics
"cosmic." And where once people had talked of Earths or worlds, universe was
the official buzzword.
Mark came to professional attention with his fanzine OMNIVERSE, co-edited
with Dean Mullaney, who went on to found Eclipse Comics. OMNIVERSE attempted
the ultimate jump to a unified field theory of comics where not only did The
Flash and Superman share the same universe but all comics universes were
sectors of one great superuniverse: his Omniversal Theory. He never stopped
quietly pushing it. On some levels it's a really great idea, with only one
flaw.
Universes are bad for comics.
 I recently tried to explain to one reader why many creations are of their
time and don't necessarily translate for a new audience. DC's Adam Strange -
America's First Spaceman - made sense when astronauts were new and the space
race excited us, but I doubt it's a coincidence his popularity faded the
closer we got to the moon. (And as our national attention shifted from "the
last frontier" to social issues.) While Marvel has managed to keep him
active (if not consistently popular) for 30 years, the sensibilities
underlying Captain America are so tied to the 1940s it's no wonder they keep
reviving Nazis or pseudo-Nazis like Hydra to justify his existence.
Universes are the detritus of the 1970s, when comics, facing plunging sales
as they are now, scrambled between the twin idols of myth and relevance to
make comics more meaningful for readers. We like to think of comics as the
last repository of myth in our culture, but that's a pretty egotistical
view. All fiction is myth, regardless of medium. While ancient myth is
supposed to have great resonance, we shouldn't forget that they're what's
left of dead religions, and those religions are dead for a reason.
GILLIGAN'S ISLAND is no less a myth of our culture than Superman. Superman
is no more a myth than NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION. The idea of
universes as the grand tableau of new myths has led more than one talent to
quasi-religious excess, attempting to illuminate the meaning of existence
between fight scenes. Enough is enough. By the 50,000 resurrection or the
five millionth destruction and rebirth of the universe, even philosophy -
once fascinating in comics simply because there previously wasn't any -
can't keep it interesting. Jung said that the closer you get to your dreams,
the further they recede from you. Myth, like dream, is an unconscious
process, something scores of fantasy writers and Hollywood producers haven't
learned. If you start by consciously trying to create myth, you end by
creating Jar Jar Binks.
  The compression of entire lines into a single coherent universe, most
notably in DC's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, was also thought to make those
worlds more real for the readers by wiping out redundancies and streamlining
continuity. All universing did was to separate comics even further from the
real world, and from the experience of potential readers: only borderline
schizophrenics need apply. Like most people who wander off into their own
little worlds, comics companies have become, at least editorially, more
solipsistic as they've depended more and more on universes as content to the
exclusion of all else.
Whatever was originally behind universing, in the 90s it has become, like
virtually every other aspect of comics, a marketing gimmick. (Not that it
was ever anything but. As soon as Stan Lee realized he had a proto-universe
on his hands, Marvel started marketing that over individual characters. It
wasn't enough to buy Spider-Man, you bought Marvel.) As Image rocketed to
popularity, whole comics companies rose peddling their books on little more
than shared universes, and existing companies like Malibu and Dark Horse
were suddenly desperate to generate their own universes. Even DC and Marvel
created "new universes." None of them lasted. Pinned down on the tiniest
details, they were all suffocated by minutiae, everyone forgetting that all
the great myths were syncretic - even Greek and Egyptian mythologies, often
presented as coherent story cycles, resulted from waves of migrations and
conquests replacing indigenous gods and heroes with new ones - and even
Marvel Comics came together piecemeal and unplanned. Everyone tried to
replicate 30 years of Marvel history overnight, and it can't work. It
landlocks everything. There's no room to move.
"Universes make for bad writing, and we get enough bad writing in comics
without them."
Universes make for bad writing, and we get enough bad writing in comics
without them. Logic tells us that "universes" offer an expansive view for
writers to work with, but the opposite is more true. The weakness of the
Tarzan concept is that today we know enough about Africa to not expect lost
civilizations there. We've mapped enough of the moon and Mars and Antarctica
that lost lands and secret bases grow less likely by the day. Fu Manchu, the
manifestation of the Yellow Peril, is unconscionable today. The more
territory mapped out, the less there is to discover. Fact is always an
obstacle for fiction. Ignoring fact opens the door for some reader saying
"But that can't be so!" and once they say that, you've lost them. Universes
carry their own sets of artificial facts, eradicating contradictory stories
in the name of verisimilitude. Continuity, not story, is the raison d'etre
of the comics universe, and any story that doesn't fit becomes, de facto, a
bad story. Universes are crutches for editors, cheats for readers, and
shackles for writers.
  I'm not saying Alan Moore shouldn't put PROMETHEA and TOM STRONG in the
same universe if he wants to. Let every writer create his own universe of
books for all I care. But should he have to put them in the same continuity
as FROM HELL and BIG NUMBERS? Why should Batman exist alongside the Justice
League? A weakness of my CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN was the expectation of
many readers that they'd take for granted things like ghosts and magic and
telepathy that are common in the DC universe but strange and suspect in
ours; the DC universe had rendered "the unknown" moot. While there will
always be readers who say "I like it," many readers have shown their growing
antipathy toward universes, putting their money behind things like DC's
Elseworlds books instead. Or simply no longer buying anything.
"There's no reason comics must mimic the real world."
There's no reason comics must mimic the real world. But by ritualistically
disconnecting comics from any connection to reality, by wrapping comics in
hermetic esoterica in lieu of actual stories, we marginalize what
possibilities comics have. The universe concept is played out - almost 30
years on and it's still just sound and fury, signifying nothing. Can anyone
honestly say universes have made for better fiction? They've captured a few
imaginations in their time, but whatever power they had for that has
obviously waned badly. It's time for comics universes to wane as well, and
for comics writers to find their own ways, their own voices and viewpoints,
again.
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Credo che alcune parti dell'articolo contribuiscano alla discussione che si
sta svolgendo nel thread sulla "sospensione dell'incredulità".
Byez.
P.S.
A chi ha chiesto una traduzione in italiano: ho provato a tradurlo, ma
sebbene comprenda l'inglese leggendolo, in molti casi mi sono trovato in
difficoltà nel rendere in italiano molte espressioni di cui avevo compreso
solo il senso generale. Quindi se qualcuno si sentisse in grado di tradurlo
e soprattutto avesse la voglia di farlo...beh...penso sarebbe cosa gradita.
--
Hellboy
Dove c'è molta luce, l'ombra è più nera.
   W. Goethe

e soprattutto avesse la voglia di farlo...beh...penso sarebbe cosa gradita.
io ho gia' dato, ora toccherebbe ad altri volenterosi ;-)
oppure vi imparate tutti l'inglese, che sarebbe anche ora :PPPP
--
Marco Pesce - la vera e-mail e' 
mpe...@libero.it

same universe if he wants to.
Sono stato molto felice di leggere, nelle pagine della posta degli
albi ABC, che ciascun personaggio si muove nel suo mondo separato, e
non sono previsti cross-over di nessun tipo...  ;-)
Mettere Promethea e Tom Strong nello stesso mondo li avrebbe uccisi,
IMHO...
P.S.: 
Purtroppo, proprio mentre negli USA si sta facendo strada finalmente
l'idea che gli "shared universes" fanno piu' danni che altro, in
Italia da buoni ultimi cominciamo a piazzarli anche dove non ci
vogliono..
Per esempio, chi diavolo e' stato alla Bonelli ad avere l'idea
peregrina di "unificare" gli universi di Zagor, Martin Mystere e
Nathan Never? (e implicitamente di Mister No)
Non era assolutamente necessario. Si poteva benissimo avere un MM
"futuro" negli speciali di NN dicendo semplicemente che era un
"possibile" futuro e lasciarla li'.  Ora invece bisogna stare attenti
a quello che si mette nelle storie di MM per non contraddire quello
che hanno scritto in NN...
Come se fossero necessarie maggiori limitazioni alla fantasia in MM...
Puah!
Ciao,
/\/\oreno 
(please remove "togli" from email address to write me.)
Ho modificato il mio indirizzo e-mail per evitare di avere la
 casella e-mail intasata da pubblicita'. 
Per ottenere il mio vero indirizzo e-mail, togliete "togli"

mettere nella sign :-)
Mi sono permesso di apportare una modifica che credo calzi a pennello.
-- 
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     C E Z 
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gval...@usa.net

 -----------------------------
Beh, il risultato e' scarso, spero che si capisca il senso se non sono
riuscito a travisarlo: chi volesse sgrossare la traduzione, e'
benvenuto. Chi volesse continuare con i prossimi, auguri!
Ragazzi, studiate l'inglese! E fatelo meglio di me! ;-P
citte
(c) del testo dell'autore, (c) degli strafalcioni del traduttore
che faticaccia!!
--
Ero un eunuco che si faceva seghe immaginarie agitando il braccio nel
vuoto.

Beh, il risultato e' scarso, spero che si capisca il senso 
complimenti, sopratutto per la faticaccia ed il tempo speso al
servizio di iaf..ora e sempre...^_^
--
Josh Constantine - Hellfucker
Fans n. 1 di Daniele Moro