Topics That Will Not Die: #3 - Series That Will Not Die
Reflecting more on
David
Fiore's post, I realized that I neglected his points about the
interactive nature of monthly comics. Before getting into his
thoughts on the "open-endedness" of perpetually serialized comics,
David wrote that "serially published super-hero comic books (those
which feature letters pages as integral parts of the text, anyway),
beginning with Marvel in the early 60's, offered a wonderful paradox to
the world: synchronic, interactive narrative!" David elaborated
more on why this aspect of comic books interests him over in the
comments
section of
Rick
Geerling's 11/19 rant:
[S]peaking
as a person who wants to write a dissertation about the aspect of the
medium that you deplore--namely that it's the only artform in which the
creator/public boundary is somewhat effaced by the texts themselves
(thanks to the letters pages--which I hear are disappearing...)--I
think you're underestimating how wonderful and unique these
"neverending stories" are!
It's easy for me to
say, since I write prose fiction, not comics, and I don't have to deal
with people interfering with my most cherished ideas, but as
a critic I find the creator/readership of monthly comic books
absolutely fascinating...
One thing I will
say is that I don't believe in endings anyway, never saw one in
any medium that didn't feel like a con, so "seriality" has
never been a problem for me.
I don't quite
understand how David sees all these elements as intersecting. For
one thing, as David himself notes, most monthly mainstream comics are
closing down their letters pages. But even back in their heyday,
did fan letters really have much of an impact? I doubt they
influenced many creators to change their stories (except perhaps when
the letters called for
more
gorillas). Perhaps the sphere of influence was somewhat
different: Fans may not have had much impact on pros, but fans
could influence each other ("Oh, I see--I didn't understand why Lois
rebuffed Clark like that, but reader K.B.'s detailed analysis brings it
all into sharp focus now!").
Obligatory Manga Boosterism: If David feels that fan
interaction is a vital part of the appeal of sequential art, then he
should really like manga. Not only are manga anthologies such as
Shonen
Jump,
Raijin Comics, and
Super Manga Blast some of
the last comics around to publish letters from readers, but
Shonen
Jump even publishes fan
art each month! And
Raijin
Comics, adopting the practice of Japanese manga publishers,
solicits fan feedback
to see which serials will continue to see print! Just think if
Marvel and DC operated this way: Publish thick anthologies with
new material, and fans get to vote on which series would survive month
to month. Why isn't anyone doing this here? It would
combine America's love for crappy reality TV with big, cheap
comics! It's a natural!! It can't miss!!! (
Disclaimer:
I am
not
an industry
insider, either, so my enthusiastic armchair opinions should not be
mistaken for sound business advice: It could very well miss.)
As for David's point about not believing in endings, I'm somewhat
sympathetic to this view. Often a story's resolution feels forced
and tacked-on, and some authors try to make an ending "mean" too much,
when in reality things wouldn't be so tidy. But at the same time,
I've never really had an across-the-board problem with endings, mainly
because I think of them more as "stopping points." Although there
are times when I'm so engrossed in a story that I don't want it to
stop, for the most part I realize that, practically, stories can't
simply go on forever. For one thing, even if a story were truly
endless,
I would still reach an endpoint, so the result would
be much the same. And even if a work were only ridiculously long
(rather than truly endless), this would still cause problems as it ate
into the time I had available to devote to other stories. I also
worry that long-lived works would wear out their welcome:
Eventually a story reaches a point of diminishing returns as an author
(or series of authors) dilutes a concept in order to keep it
running. I'd rather see a story end in its prime instead of
becoming a weak, watered-down shell of its former self.
Further, I think in many cases a story's finiteness actually
contributes to its open-endedness. I certainly felt that
The
Matrix was more open when it stopped with Neo flying up, up, and
away out of that phone booth. At that point, the story was still
interesting in my mind: Sure, Neo looked like a badass Man of
Steel, but there was still so much work for the resistance to do--so
many minds to free from the matrix. Just think of all the
possible stories... So it was a little disappointing when
Reloaded
came along and closed off certain storytelling possibilities.
Instead of conjuring up our own visions of Zion, for example, we were
now locked into a lame rave-happy version. I hear fanboys
experienced similar disappointment when a bit of Wolverine's mystery
was chipped away with
Origin.
I know it's a natural impulse when a story reaches its stopping point
to wonder:
What happened next? But do we really need
someone else to show us? Isn't it better in some cases to leave
it up to our own imaginations? (And just to close off certain
avenues of response right away: This isn't a call for bad
fan-fiction.) I do think that the stretched-out seriality of
corporate comics can lead to some interesting effects (retcons,
revamps, reinterpretations, etc.), but I don't know if extended
seriality strikes me as an intrinsically good thing, especially when it
comes at the cost of creative ownership and control.
