![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Discussion about Dan Slott's Avengers: the Initiative got me thinking about various writers who just Get What Makes Comics Fun, and why. So here's a partial list of those I can think of, and the characters/titles I think their takes work best for. This is NOT about slagging writers who don't get it, it's about praising the ones who do...and I'll delete comments that look to be going in the slagfest direction.
Priest: AKA Christopher Priest, AKA Jim Owsley. He gets it on a technical level. He knows how it all should fit together, and therefore can do experimental storytelling and still have it feel natural. He has trouble with what he calls "landing a flying saucer on the lawn" sorts of overt fantastic elements, but he's very good at extrapolative stuff, things that may not be pushing the envelope of the setting, but show off what the setting can do. Best at stuff like Power Man/Iron Fist, small group interactions with the cosmic weirdness kept to a minimum, but occasionally popping up. Weakest when the cosmic stuff has to be taken straight-facedly, also has trouble with large casts (over 6 main characters).
Dan Slott: Slott has a good intuitive grasp of the hoo-ha fun energy of Jack & Stan or Stan & Steve. Rather than just aping the conventions of the retro stuff, he really knows what makes them tick at the core. As a retro type, he may not be so good at the high tech thriller or the sci-fi posthuman stuff, but he pretty consistently turns out good stories. Best on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or really any book where he's allowed to bring back the feel of the early 60s Marvel superhero stuff. Weakest on things that have to be dark, or that depend too much on futurism.
Adam Warren: THE go-to guy for futurism, posthumanism and all those whacked out isms. He approaches them with a sense of fun even in the midst of apocalyptic meltdown. His characters do tend to end up sounding a lot alike, and he's not a good choice for stories when the status quo needs to be maintained, but he's really good at just grabbing the ideas and showing just how far they can be taken if you push the throttle all the way. Also a very good visual storyteller, who can compensate for a weak artist in collaborations by doing detailed thumbnailing. Best at high tech stuff like Iron Man, but probably needs to stick to altiverses where he doesn't have to worry about resetting to initial conditions at the end.
Rod Espinosa: Like Warren, he's a good visual storyteller and artist in addition to his writing. But his best writing is all about the fantastic and wide-eyed wonder on the part of a relatively unsophisticated main character. The object of the awe isn't as important...it can be high tech, or magic, or simply the natural world. The details can sometimes be weak, but his big picture is always fun. I've only seen him on books at Antarctic, mainly his own properties, but to continue the pattern of picking Marvel books, I'd put him on Fantastic Four. Exploration and adventure are his strengths, and he's pretty good at family stories as well. He does seem to have an anti-technological bent at times that comes with his manga/anime inspirations, though, which could be a problem in superhero stuff.
I could go on, although it'd mainly be delving into more and more obscure writers and titles. This is not to say I don't enjoy other mainstream writers (I generally like Busiek, Nicieza, David, Winick and others), but they often seem to be trying to step outside the medium rather than grasping the core and running with it. Or they simply drift off-point too often, churning out uninspired tales to make deadline where the writers who Get It manage to keep at least a small spark of inspiration in everything.
Priest: AKA Christopher Priest, AKA Jim Owsley. He gets it on a technical level. He knows how it all should fit together, and therefore can do experimental storytelling and still have it feel natural. He has trouble with what he calls "landing a flying saucer on the lawn" sorts of overt fantastic elements, but he's very good at extrapolative stuff, things that may not be pushing the envelope of the setting, but show off what the setting can do. Best at stuff like Power Man/Iron Fist, small group interactions with the cosmic weirdness kept to a minimum, but occasionally popping up. Weakest when the cosmic stuff has to be taken straight-facedly, also has trouble with large casts (over 6 main characters).
Dan Slott: Slott has a good intuitive grasp of the hoo-ha fun energy of Jack & Stan or Stan & Steve. Rather than just aping the conventions of the retro stuff, he really knows what makes them tick at the core. As a retro type, he may not be so good at the high tech thriller or the sci-fi posthuman stuff, but he pretty consistently turns out good stories. Best on Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or really any book where he's allowed to bring back the feel of the early 60s Marvel superhero stuff. Weakest on things that have to be dark, or that depend too much on futurism.
Adam Warren: THE go-to guy for futurism, posthumanism and all those whacked out isms. He approaches them with a sense of fun even in the midst of apocalyptic meltdown. His characters do tend to end up sounding a lot alike, and he's not a good choice for stories when the status quo needs to be maintained, but he's really good at just grabbing the ideas and showing just how far they can be taken if you push the throttle all the way. Also a very good visual storyteller, who can compensate for a weak artist in collaborations by doing detailed thumbnailing. Best at high tech stuff like Iron Man, but probably needs to stick to altiverses where he doesn't have to worry about resetting to initial conditions at the end.
Rod Espinosa: Like Warren, he's a good visual storyteller and artist in addition to his writing. But his best writing is all about the fantastic and wide-eyed wonder on the part of a relatively unsophisticated main character. The object of the awe isn't as important...it can be high tech, or magic, or simply the natural world. The details can sometimes be weak, but his big picture is always fun. I've only seen him on books at Antarctic, mainly his own properties, but to continue the pattern of picking Marvel books, I'd put him on Fantastic Four. Exploration and adventure are his strengths, and he's pretty good at family stories as well. He does seem to have an anti-technological bent at times that comes with his manga/anime inspirations, though, which could be a problem in superhero stuff.
I could go on, although it'd mainly be delving into more and more obscure writers and titles. This is not to say I don't enjoy other mainstream writers (I generally like Busiek, Nicieza, David, Winick and others), but they often seem to be trying to step outside the medium rather than grasping the core and running with it. Or they simply drift off-point too often, churning out uninspired tales to make deadline where the writers who Get It manage to keep at least a small spark of inspiration in everything.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Or were you talking about some other segment?
Gets it, gets it... Aaron Williams, of course, gets it, in, not a retro, but an innately humanist way. The opposite of Adam Warren. Marvel... Well, I'd put him on the X-Men, but he'd have a happy ending there. Give him something like Runaways or... you know, he'd do just fine picking up Livewires. It'd be a different book, but he could do it.
Troy Hickman: Gets the weirdness. His most recent CoH arc was a darn near perfect 1970s Batman, and few people got it. The, what's his name. Joker Fish guy. That run.
Mark Waid: KNOWS COMICS. Was the editor for Who's Who in the DC Universe. I think this twisted him for life. A good thing. Waid is one of the very few people that I will go, 'He's taking my favorite character over and... turning him into a hermaphrodite camel? Well... I guess he'll make it work.'
His epic run on the Flash made Kid Flash able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Barry. Considering Kyle on the other side? Bigger job than it sounds like.
Joss Whedon. Perfect for the X-Men. Seriously. It's all about small group interaction during really, really bad times. Then having something worse happen. With brief moments of idyllic pleasure that make you go, 'well, that's all right, then.' (That he seems to have taken one of my Mux characters and put her into his comic has _nothing_ to do with my opinion. Down to the personal flaw of being really bad at making up superhero names. (Actual belief this happened: Not really. But the resemblance is, well, uncanny. Race, attitude, age, power, power description, bad habits...))
From:
no subject
Well, whatever. Veering back to the topic, more or less: I'm increasingly willing, at this point, to take the vast divergence between my expectations and what the Big Two are kicking out as evidence that I don't Get It wrt superhero comics today. As such, I suppose I'm the wrong guy to be considering the problem of what writers do or don't.
It just makes me twitch whenever I see anyone saying they think Adam Warren "gets" anything. Bleh.
From:
no subject
Adam Warren's Dirty Pair is futurism. I consider there to be a strong difference between the two.
Apparently, he watched them the first time without subbing, dubbing, or knowledge of japanese.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
DP generally is more fun when you don't have titles (one of the things Warren does better than the originals, write sharper dialog).
2 additional talking points.
1. "Good junk", series or stories that are not outstanding, but do what they try to very well. Someone once said that American Comics needed more "filler" especially in multiple genres.
2. Creators who are limited, but do one or two things better than anyone. Example, Foglio is a decent pro, but he can do snappy patter dialog and silly digressions better than anyone (even Donna Barr).