Weeds
Bad comics, and even more frequently just mediocre comics, continue to cram the stands week after week. While there are certainly alternative and independent comics that aren't very good (I join Tony Isabella in being mystified by the acclaim for Angry Youth Comics), I find that the vast percentage of essentially useless comics, weeds if you will, are coming from the mainstream Axis of Mediocrity of Marvel and DC.
Even titles that were once promising, or even better than that actually good, have been allowed to degenerate to levels of consistent mediocrity not seen in quite a few years. New X-Men comes to mind. I've been astonished at the way Marvel has let this title go to seed artistically, upon the realization (once again) that Frank Quitely Is Very Busy Doing...Something Other Than Comics, Apparently.
Ethan Van Sciver is a fine illustrator, whose artwork would be most welcome in regular doses on some other title. Igor Kordey seems to be an interesting artist, also sadly unsuited to Morrison's scripts, and even more sadly apparently having his artwork shot from the pencils in the most recent issue by him that I've seen. The effect was extraordinarily ugly, but if it saved Marvel 50 bucks, well, yay, one supposes.
You know, I was a participant in the initial press conference call when Morrison and Quitely were announced as the new creative team, and I remember being excited again about the X-Men in a way that I wasn't since Paul Smith left the book in the, what, mid-to-late 1980s? Recent issues of the title have been so artistically inconsistent or downright unattractive that I've been unable to make head or tail of the story, and it's frustrating, because Morrison's JLA and Invisibles were quite capable of holding my attention despite frequent guest artists or changes in artistic direction. So one is left to wonder, Is It Me or Is It Them?
I've gone, in a little over a year, from being pleasantly surprised at Marvel's newfound potential to once again cyncially blaming MYSELF for falling for the hype in the way Charlie Brown could only blame himself when Lucy would pull the football away at the last second again. The company has had such gifted creators as Barry Windsor-Smith and James Kochalka at their disposal, and they've done just that -- disposed of them -- while putting a gifted penciller like Tom Raney on a lower-tier book like Thor (although his issues have been good for what they are, with solid scripts from Dan Jurgens), and while apparently furthering some sort of enabling relationship with Quitely by continuing to foster the myth that the man draws comic books for a living, when clearly He Has Other Things to Do.
I'm personally off the hype-machine now. Marvel mostly disappoints these days, with a slew of pointless and useless #1s clogging up the stands every week, choking out like weeds good comics from more worthy competitors who can't quite seem to grab the attention of the major comics "news" outlets and "critics," but conversely providing a wealth of potential quarter-bin fodder for future generations. "Muties," anyone?
DC, on the other hand, mostly seems to strive for some sort of Institutional Mediocrity where the vast majority of their mainstream superhero books are quite reliably readable but not very good (but not very bad, either), leaving only dedicated fans of the characters to get excited about most of their titles (I fail to see what's so great about JSA for example -- but it doesn't suck, either...it's just there), leaving readers looking for passion and vision in their comics needing to look elsewhere.
I don't think there's any sort of Office of Mediocrity at Marvel and DC (although if there is, hey, great work, guys!); I think the vast numbers of lousy-to-barely-acceptable books they issue forth stems mostly from a need to pay the bills. The end effect on the industry remains the same, though. Most potential readers look for the brand name first, and would apparently rather buy a mediocre-but-readable DC title like Supergirl or JLA than take a chance on lower-selling but clearly higher-quality "off-brand" reads from such "scary" companies as Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, or even, surprisingly, Image. The facts are indisputable, though. Fused is light-years beyond Iron Man, Rob Liefeld's new Youngblood with Mark Millar will almost certainly be more interesting and noteworthy than recent issues of either JLA or Avengers no matter how bad it is or how many issues it runs before it disappears, and Top Shelf's two Pistolwhip releases in 2001 were vastly more interesting than most of the crap being shoehorned into the Vertigo line these days.
The past couple of weeks have seen me spend a lot (a lot) of money on books from such companies as Top Shelf and Drawn and Quarterly. It began, yes, as an effort to Do the Right Thing for the industry in the wake of the bankruptcy filing of a major trade paperback distributor, but the end result has been quite a wake-up call for me. I've discovered great books by creators I'd been ignoring, and more than ever, I'm aware that I've been letting the weeds block my view of more deserving titles from creators who actually care about what they're doing, and publishers interested in more than just filling up shelf space with any crap they can squeeze out in a given week. I've re-thought my comics budget and shifted about $100.00 a month that I was spending on Marvel and DC to a dedicated fund for unexpected or previously ignored titles from the alternative and independent sector. I've cut out the weeds, and I'm ready to help the good stuff grow.
I hope you'll take a look at what you've been buying lately and see if there's some mediocrity you've been putting up with, too. Like I said in an interview not that long ago, "Comics should be a personal, visionary statement of the creator's unique life experience, unable to be duplicated or copied or even easily paid homage to. Comics should rock your fucking world and leave you breathless with their astonishing insight into what it is to be human, alive, and aware. If the comics you're reading aren't all those things, find something better to do with your money. Support comics that give back to you as a human being, and forget everything else. Life is too goddamned short to waste on shit."