In September 2011, Ed Campbell commented on an issue of Catwoman that had a panel with an explicitly sexual scene between the heroine and Batman (“Let’s Talk about Sex,” www.comicbookdaily.com, September 30, 2011). Campbell felt this was inappropriate for a teen-rated comic. Over the next few months, many others weighed in and some felt that explicit sexual content was one of the reasons for the marginalization of comic books in the U.S. (“Sex & Violence,” www.comicbookdaily.com, December 9, 2011).

We disagree. That’s why we don’t make our stories detour around scenes with sexual content. We believe these scenes help drive the dramatic aspects of the stories. However, we also don’t believe our comic is aimed at young teens—not because of this sexual dimension, but rather because of narrative complexity.

And we are also set on not turning our heroines into idealized sexual objects (“Art and Superheroines: When Over-Sexualization Kills the Story,” www.comicsalliance.com, February 16, 2012).

It’s one thing for characters to have a sexuality, but the treatment of certain related subjects can go wrong. Corey Schroeder spoke out against such a situation: “when Mockingbird was allegedly sexually assaulted by Phantom Rider, Hawkeye, her husband-to-be’s, reaction was to blame HER. You know, THE VICTIM” (“Are Superhero Comics Too Serious,” www.comicvine.com, September 14, 2011). Some topics deserve to be treated with tact. However, this can also become a dramatic turning point if all the implications are developed.

In one of his posts, Chris Sims (“Arcade and Why Success Doesn’t Make a Villain Credible,” www.comicsalliance.com, June 22, 2012) says the villain exists to be an obstacle for the hero. And because the hero must eventually overcome, the best villains are those that provide more interesting obstacles. Sara Lima on the other hand offers a more nuanced point of view. She feels it’s the interactions between the hero and the villain that’s important (“What Makes a Good Comic Book Rivalry?” www.comicvine.com, April 5, 2012). We agree with her use of the word “rivalry,” which is more appropriate because it doesn’t predetermine which character must eventually triumph. Within such rivalries, some characters may be amoral. As James Ellroy said, “Evil is those beings that are without conscience, those who are incapable of feeling sympathy or empathy for other human beings [translation]” (James Ellroy, « Le temps des moutons », from Petite mécanique).

Sara Lima asked an excellent question: “How to Wrtite A Strong Female Character? (“Greg Rucka on How to Wrtite A Strong Female Character,” www.comicvine.com, December 8, 2011). During the early stages of our project, it was clear that this was a very male universe. And more recently, we saw that some stories only had men in them. For a long time, we were hesitant to develop female characters because we felt we didn’t have the necessary baggage to develop a multifaceted female psychology. But we were looking at it the wrong way: It wasn’t developing female characters that we needed to focus on but rather creating strong characters. We mean strong here in the sense of complex, with areas of light and shadow, and with overt and hidden motivations. Once we realized this, there was no longer any barrier to the creative process. 

In a harsh critique published a few months ago, Graeme McMillan accused some of the US’s great contemporary comic-book writers of causing the stagnation of the industry: “For an industry that feeds on its own past to go 20 years without fresh characters or concepts is death. The most telling sections in ‘Leaping Tall Buildings’ are thus those written about industry powers like Brian Michael Bendis, Joe Quesada, Grant Morrison and Dan DiDio. These are the men most responsible for the failure of the big publishers to take advantage of the public’s obvious fascination with men in capes (“The Four Men Who Have Destroyed the Superhero Comic Industry,” www.newsarama.com, May 30, 2012).

Is this a problem with the authors or with publishers that want to create events? Chris Sims points out two major problems in his analysis of comic-book evolution since the 1990s. First, there is the increased power of collections, which puts pressure on the first issue of any series, regardless of its future development or artistic qualities.  Then, publicity events have turned out to be counterproductive. Sims cites the example of the “death” of Superman: “DC’s bright idea of ‘killing’ Superman, which produced one of the best-selling comics of the modern era. In retrospect, it’s pretty clear to me that this was probably a terrible idea—and not just because it was a story where Superman and a giant bone monster in green bike shorts punched each other to death. It’s great that they sold a million comics and bought Dan Jurgens a solid gold statue of Booster Gold or whatever, but they also had a truly massive amount of media coverage that told people that Superman was dead, and lured them into a shop where they bought a comic that — if they bothered to actually pop open the polybag and read it—ended with Lois Lane cradling Superman’s lifeless body. In real life—in most fiction—that tends to be the end of things. They told the biggest potential audience they had ever had that Superman was dead. Dead. Which, to rational people who are not familiar with how comic books work, means “there will be no more Superman stories so it is completely unnecessary for you to ever return to this shop and buy another one of these” (“What’s Up With the 90s,” www.comicsalliance.com, July 27, 2012).

As we have said in the past, changing authors is often used as a way to boost sales for a series. But a new author isn’t always enough and so an event must be created. Chichester admitted as much in an interview where he explained that the change in Daredevil’s costume in the early 1990s was a way to attract readers’ attention to the series and to position other changes in tone that they wanted to introduce (“Interview With D.G. Chichester (February 1998),” www.manwithoutfear.com).

However, these media events are now often clichéd. Readers know very well that the death of a major character is only a momentary eclipse to prepare their return. Like Graeme McMillan said: “It doesn’t help that it’s War in these teasers, a word that has similar weight at Marvel as “Crisis” does for DC. Between Secret War, Ultimate War, Civil War, Silent War, Chaos War and countless other wars that I’ve probably forgotten about (Oh! War of Kings, of course), the word has become almost meaningless in its attempt to suggest epic bombast, just like… Well, like the sight of Cap’s shield either cracked or splattered with blood, really. There’s an amazing sense of déjà vu from these trailers that’s unfortunate, especially considering that Avengers Vs. X-Men was already treading in ‘Haven’t I seen superheroes punching each other a lot recently in Civil War and X-Men: Schism?’ waters” (“I Don’t Wanna Live a War That’s Got Not End in Our Time,” www.newsarama.com, June 26, 2012).

Ensuring narrative consistency is a great challenge, particularly when there is a change of writers. In our opinion, it should be the publisher’s role to ensure a harmonious transition. But that is generally not what happens, and most often, getting a new author is seen as an opportunity to re-launch a title. This may lead publishers to agree to a change in direction that isn’t always elegant. Andrew Aardizzi was very critical about the work of Mark Waid on Daredevil. He claimed that the author was breaking away from recent events and going so far as to deny them (“Episode 12: I Object! (to Mark Waid’s ‘Daredevil’),” www.comicbookdaily.com, January 19, 2012).

TV offers a simple solution for this problem. It’s rare for a TV series to be written entirely by the same team of writers. A script editor has the job of making sure that the developments one writer creates will fit into the series’ overall storyline.

We are currently in the same situation. Due to lack of time, we have turned over the dialogue for some storylines to another writer. But we always check the work and do any tweaking necessary to ensure the consistency of our story.

Also, writing in a team is very stimulating. It creates opportunities for discussion that allow us to think more deeply about the characters.

In a previous comment on continuity, we cited a commenter who said that major characters have sometimes changed to the point of being unrecognizable. On this subject, Scott VanderPloeg said, “Batman can be a dark and gritty character, but can also be fun and light” (“What Happened? www.comicbookdaily.com, January 11, 2012). This phenomenon may be due to progressive intrusion of social trends into the storylines. However, what’s more destabilizing is a sudden personality reversal, which is most often due to a new writing team.

Many have said that continuity doesn’t stem from the story itself but from the writing team.  Graeme McMillan highlighted that “Better continuity developing through the line” (“Is Continuity Really a Draw for Superhero Universes?” www.newsarama.com, July 26, 2012). And in an interview, Ed Brubaker confided that he was nostalgic for the time when a writer and illustrator could collaborate on dozens of issues and be free to develop more textured worlds (“CR Sunday Interview: Ed Brubaker,” www.comicsreporter.com, June 24, 2012).

In our Axioms, we’ve already talked about the desire to create temporal continuity in order to have a narrative structure that supports the credibility of our stories. The “New 52” reboot of DC comic series gave rise to some interesting thoughts in the blogosphere.

Graeme McMillan had this to say: “I really like the idea of continuity—that ongoing, collective narrative that can inform storytelling […] that ongoing, collective historical narrative that can inform storytelling”  (“How Important is Continuity to You?  www.newsarama.com, June 21, 2012).

On the same topic, Anthony Falcone clarified that “He [Kurt Busiek] also pointed out that even though Marvel has not had an official relaunch they basically are on their fourth era of comic books. Indeed for anyone only familiar with 1960s Marvel Universe many of the characters would be unrecognizable compared to their decade-of-love counterparts.” He tends to believe that a consistent story cycle would last about 20 years. Beyond that, the stories lose a great deal of plausibility.

Anthony Falcone bemoaned the fact that the rise of the writers seemed to be occurring at the expense of the illustrators (“Artists and Writers,” www.comicbookdaily.com, June 5, 2012). We agree. Comic-book writers don’t get far without good illustrators to translate the moods they want to create into the stories.  Daniel Champion shines a light on a very simple truth about comic-book writing:  “Use words AND picture to make a different statement, don’t use both to cover the same ground” (“Writing for Comics,” www.comicbookdaily.com, July 18, 2102). Matt Fraction also says that “Comics are about that interplay, comics need that interplay to truly become more than the sum of its part” (Jeffery Klaehn, “Matt Fraction Interview,” jefferyklaehn.blogspot.ca, October 19, 2011).

In analyzing Volumes 4 and 5 of the Essential Avengers, one critic wrote, “in the big category, you get to watch the creators—particularly [Steve] Englehart—work out how modern comics were to be written, both the way that events took place in subplots that built to the next major crisis with one or two stories in between them…” (“CR Review: Essential Avengers, Vols. 4-5,” www.comicsreporter.com, June 4, 2012).  We’ve mentioned our admiration for Englehart’s work in the past. We feel his stories are always progressing and not mired in profound psychological reflection or existential doubt.