Whether comics reflect the readers' or the artists' opinions is a very tough call. Superhero comics are small enough that most artists are in constant contact with their fans. Bendis, JMS, PAD, Waid, Ellis, they're all in direct contact with fans all the time, and they do listen. They take it with a grain of salt, especially Waid who had a really tough time of it (he made the mistake of going to UseNet. Ouch!), but they're there. They listen. They take part in the discussion.
How much power those individual artists might have in comparison to the corporate interests of DC (a subsidiary of the unholy trinity of Time/Warner/AOL), Marvel (a bluechip company run by stockholders), or Image (founded and owned by Todd "Asshole With No Talent" McFarlane) is a seperate but related question.
I tend to see the situation as one of neglect more than anything else. Time/Warner/AOL keeps DC around as a lost leader for merchandising, as far as I can tell, and Marvel just hopes to make enough money off of movies to have perpetual, short-term booms in sales. As for Image, their artists (theoretically) have total creative freedom, but the company itself is mostly supported by McFarlane 'Toys' (vaguely posable plastic statuettes), so the comics themselves are sort of meaningless.
Comics don't really make the money, as I understand it (haven't checked the numbers recently). As a result, they've been mostly left to their own devices by the parent companies. As long as there still is a Superman and a Spider-man, they're happy because it means that the merchandising has a focal point or an origin point or whatever. They don't really care. The result is that artists can kinda do what they like, including a lot of really subversive things.
JMS' Supreme Power contains some scathing attacks on the American military and on the use of propaganda in the US to promote blind patriotism. The very fact that the American President Lex Luthor during Bush's reign is extremely telling. The tradition at DC comics was always to depict the president accurately. Bush Sr. and Clinton both appeared in Superman's comics in the 90s. Bush Jr., however, is replaced with the original supervillain. That cannot be a coincidence, though I'll grant that it could be unconscious.
There's a lot of utter crap in supehero comics. Mysoginy, corporate propaganda, sabre-rattling, racism, messages of conformity, the list goes on, of course. But there are moments when, in the midst of one of the most (traditionally) mainstream American narrative genres, an artistic team manages to say something really subversive. I'm still amazed that Joe Kelly got away with puting the words 'I won't support the War in Iraq until you show me some damn evidence' in the mouth of Superman. Think about that.
Posted by orion at August 14, 2005 1:11 PM | TrackBack