From the beginning of Frank Tieri's reign as writer of Marvel's Iron Man and Wolverine, readers have complained about his two-dimensional characters and threadbare plots. I became aware of just how bad a writer he was when he devoted three issues of Wolverine to a brutal villain who wanted Logan to -- wait for it -- sign a legal agreement that the villain, and not Logan, was "The best there is at what he does."
Click on the graphic images accompanying this column to see the full-size image, and be warned, they are not pretty.
I'm told by company insiders that Tieri is good friends with editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, which certainly would explain how such an inept writer could continue to drive two such vital titles into the ground month after month. But as the months wore on, some disturbing patterns began to emerge in Tieri's storytelling, indicative of both a dearth of ideas and, in my opinion, an apparent fascination with sadistic, psycho-sexual violence.
While it is a given in superhero comics that superheroes will frequently engage in battle with supervillains, the recurring elements in Tieri's stories, of the hero being bound and sadistically tortured, are featured in virtually all of his tales. This recurring theme reaches its apotheosis in the current Wolverine storyline, which to the discerning eye betrays itself quite obviously as a prison gang-rape fantasy starring Wolverine and targeted and marketed to underage children. Featuring graphic scenes of Wolverine stripped naked, hosed down, stalked by "Cruisers," and eventually having his nipple bitten off and eyeball eaten, this storyline is an egregious use of children's characters, and has likely only been allowed to occur because Tieri's work is so awful that few readers, and certainly no editors, have stopped to really examine the twisted manner in which these characters are being (mis)used.
The signs really were there very early on. I think most Iron Man readers were baffled by the quick removal of Rumiko, Tony's girlfriend and love interest through most of the Heroes Return run of the title. Coupled with the removal, also, of Happy and Pepper, a happy, normal, straight couple, one is left to wonder what, exactly, Tieri feels is an appropriate supporting cast for Iron Man.
One thing should be clear right up front: I am all in favour of any kind of pornography at all that is produced by adults, for adults, and does no harm to its creators or consumers. It is vital that you remember that, no matter what the level of violence or adult themes that have been examined in these titles, particularly Wolverine, these are comic books that are marketed to children, and always have been. Saturday morning cartoons featuring these characters fill the airwaves, and you could fill many, many landfills with the Wolverine action figures that have been sold to children under 12 in the past decade.
It's particularly galling that the current Wolverine storyline has gotten published, and utterly mind-boggling that there is anyone, anywhere, who thinks it is suitable literature for anyone, especially children. The images are graphic representations of sadistic psycho-sexual imagery that have caused at least one retailer that I am aware of to forbid the sale of the book to anyone under the age of 18.
Unfortunately, most retail outlets don't make an effort to know what they are selling. In a local supermarket, Wolverine is sold in the spinner rack, un-shrinkwrapped, and right next to Archie, Scooby Doo and Batman: Gotham Adventures. I saw them all together as recently as last Thursday night.
While some might insist that Wolverine has never been written and drawn as entertainment for children, it is important to note that until recently, it was a code-approved book, and it continues not to be shrinkwrapped. Its trade dress has not been altered to differentiate it from other comics suitable for children, and no changes have made upon it that would in any way lead one to think it was being marketed solely to adults.
Of course, until the past few issues, generally, that was more or less fine. It was being created by people who, while not always (or even usually) top talents in the field, at least knew what was going to keep the book under the radar. If Donald Wildmon and his hoardes get ahold of the "Bitten Nipple and Eaten Eyeball" issue, it'll be interesting to see what the results are.
Frank Tieri has responded to my opinions about his writing on Usenet, saying:
As for those "obvious" themes you mentioned, they are not only not obvious-- but were a fairly bizzare personal attack. You want to bash the work-- fine. But lose the personal attacks and we won't have any problems.
It's not a personal attack. I don't know Frank Tieri, and I have no reason to believe he is anything other than a law-abiding citizen. Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas obviously think the world of him, because they certainly aren't keeping him as a writer for the company because of the astonishing quality of his writing.
That writing, in fact, has consistently demonstrated a sadistic tendency to have the hero get captured and tortured by the big scary villain out to utterly dominate him through the use of torture and sadism. The truth is, I don't even care that the quality of the writing itself is below average. There are plenty of badly written comics out there that I never talk about, because they're JUST bad comics.
Tieri, on the other hand, consistently explores (and not very well, at that) a single theme of sadistic, psycho-sexual violence. Tieri points out that Wolverine was not raped, but that does little to diminish the power of the sexual imagery in these issues, betraying the fact that Wolverine has become essentially a prison-gang rape fantasy stroke book, being sold side-by-side next to Scooby Doo, Archie, and Batman: Gotham Adventures in my local supermarket. Tieri has quickly proved to be the Mike Diana of mainstream comics. The difference is, Diana doesn't sell his comics to children. And he STILL got convicted and is paying a criminal penalty. And to my mind, Tieri's work is much more disturbing than Diana's, given that it proceeds from icons created for and marketed to children. I'm not aware of any accusations gainst Diana that he was actively marketing his comics to underage readers, as Marvel certainly continues to do with Tieri's grotesque fantasies.
If this is the new Marvel, they're more than welcome to it. I'm sickened to see once-beloved characters now in service to the sick storylines they've been shoehorned into. I'll say it again. I'm all for pornography, for those that choose to create, sell and/or read it. But as long as these twisted fantasies ("That's aint water!" -- I bet!) are marketed to young children (and they are, and anyone who says they aren't is either lying, dissembling, or just plain ignorant of how comics are distributed in this country), Marvel and the stores that sell this garbage are leaving themselves open for one hell of a legal action.
I wish Tieri all the luck in the world in making a living. I wish him nothing but the best as a person. I hope whatever issues he's working out through his writing gets resolved so he can move on to something else, preferably in another industry. Because he's injuring this one with every passing issue he writes.
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