Broken Frontier

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Guiding Lines. My name is William Gatevackes. Let's take a look at the books coming out January 25th, 2006.

Spider-Man/Black Cat: Evil That Men Do #6 is being released tomorrow, one month after issue #5. This shouldn’t be considered an accomplishment. Comics, after all, more or less come out on a monthly basis.  But it is noteworthy when you consider the fourth issue of this series hit the stores over three years after the third.

Kevin Smith has gotten a lot of flak from fans for the lateness of the books. And they have a point. Three years is an unrealistically long time to wait between issues of a miniseries. But is Smith really to blame?

Well, at least partially he is. The delay stemmed from him not completing the scripts in a timely fashion. But for Kevin Smith, writing comics is not his primary occupation. He makes his money writing and directing movies. Comics, to him, are a part-time job he does in his free time. When forced to choose, he’ll pick movies over comics any day of the week. Whether this was the main reason why Spider-Man/Black Cat was late or not isn’t known, but it most likely played a part.

Marvel is in the forefront of hiring people famous for writing outside the comics field to work on their books. Kevin Smith was one of the first, but he was soon joined by Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), J. Michael Straczynski (“Babylon 5”), Allan Heinberg (“The OC”) and many more. Even horror master Stephen King agreed to bring his “Dark Tower” concept to Marvel.

Marvel, one assumes, hires these authors for their name. The company hopes that fans of “Buffy” and “Babylon 5” will follow their creators to the comics they write, increasing sales and bringing fresh blood into the comic reading fan base.

But when you hire someone whose first priority isn’t writing comics, you run the risk of what happened with Spider-Man/Black Cat. If Joss Whedon is faced with a scheduled start date on the multi-million dollar “Wonder Woman” he’s writing and directing conflicting with a script deadline on Astonishing X-Men, which project do you think he will devote all of his attention to?

This isn’t to say comic companies shouldn’t allow people famous for writing things other than comics to work on their books. They should just be smarter about it. They should do what they did to ensure that three issues of Spider-Man/Black Cat: Evil That Men Do would come out in two months. They didn’t solicit the series until Kevin Smith completed writing the remaining issues. If you get several scripts in advance, you have a little slack if these authors become late. Don’t advertise these books until you can guarantee that three or four issues will come out on a monthly basis.

Also coming from Marvel tomorrow is Nextwave #1, the first issue of a new series by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. The listings make the series out to be a devil-may-care, anything goes, wacky, wild fun ride quite unlike anything else found in comics today. But the series is most notable for its cast. The book features a team made up of B-list heroes: Photon, Machine Man, and Elsa Bloodstone, to name a few.

Never heard of them? Don’t feel bad, you’re probably not alone. Most of these characters have been relegated to guest appearances for the last few years. Certainly, most writers would shy away from any book featuring these characters. Apparently, Warren Ellis is not one of them.

I have always believed that there are no bad characters in comic books. What I mean is that any hero or villain, when handled by a talented creative team, can be featured in some entertaining stories. I think Nextwave will be a test of this idea.

The book coming out tomorrow that I am most eagerly waiting for, however, is the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. I remember picking up the first issue of the first Handbook series at a local supermarket (yes, they sold comics there way back when). I remember reading it voraciously, and from then on I was hooked. I loved finding out about characters I never heard of before and reading up more on ones I did know.

The one problem I always had was that every Marvel character, and I am mostly talking about the minor ones, didn’t get its own entry. Many might not have deserved one, but I still wanted to know more about them. This problem was partially solved when Marvel started the Handbooks up again a few years ago. Each issue focused on a particular theme; one volume was devoted to the Hulk, another to Daredevil, and so on. This allowed for not only more in-depth entries, but also more space devoted to little known villains and to the supporting cast.

Now, in addition to these theme issues, Marvel has started up a 12-issue series that, like the original, will run entries on heroes, villains and objects from A-Z. This means more listings for more characters than ever before. There is no guarantee that every Marvel character will get its own write up, but more will than ever have before. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing.

The sixteenth issue of JLA Classified hits the stands tomorrow as well and starts a new arc by Gail Simone, José Luis Garcia-López, and Klaus Janson. The concept behind the Classified books is a good one. They allow creators who may not be able to work on the main title an opportunity to handle the characters. The rotating teams on the book mean that quality differs from arc to arc. However, the JLA Classified book has featured good stories so far. There has been no decrease in quality to date, in my opinion.

The team for the current arc shows great potential. Simone is an up-and-coming writer with a lot of talent and Garcia-López has been one of the best artists working in comics over the last 30 years, even if his work isn’t seen that often today. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

And finally, Pulse #13 features the birth of Luke Cage’s and Jessica Jones’ baby.

Births are strange occurrences in comic books, mainly due to the way time operates therein. Babies don’t stay babies for long in real life, but they do in comics.  Take Franklin Richards. He was “born” in 1968, but he appears to be around 10 in the latest issue of the Fantastic Four. If he aged in real time in the title, he’d be 38. The rub is, the Fantastic Four themselves would be collecting social security and residing in an assisted-living community.

Time passes slower in comics because the public likes their heroes young and vibrant. But fans want the illusion that time does move, that the characters are growing with them. Most of the time, births are avoided, because they point out to readers the fallacy of that illusion.

So don’t expect Luke and Jessica’s baby to grow up all that soon. Judging on past experience, he should be taking his first steps around 2011.

Well, that’s all for this week. Join me next time and see what the first week in February has to offer.  Until then, I’m William Gatevackes. Thanks for visiting.