Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008
Who are... Park and Barb?
Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.
Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.
Woman's Work
Denise Mina, a famous, respected, female crime novelist from Scotland, is writing Hellblazer. The announcement left me with decidedly mixed feelings.
Feeling 1: It's about time, Vertigo. When I started reading the imprint, no less than three female authors were writing series (Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, and Kid Eternity). While it felt a tad strange that two of the three authors (Nancy A. Collins and Rachel Pollack) came from the medium of horror and fantasy books (as opposed to comics), I ignored this fact. I just felt good that Vertigo was an imprint that seemed to be an equal opportunity employer, both in terms of authors and editors. Then, somewhere around the time The Dreaming sort of stumbled to its inevitable fate, it felt like Vertigo, which was one of the imprints most friendly to female readers and female creators in the industry, sort of forgot female writers existed.
Now maybe I'm wrong on this, as I stopped reading Vertigo awhile back, but the only things I saw from them right before I stopped reading were a mini-series by Devin Grayson (User) and a "manga" Death graphic novel (i.e. a cartoony book that was marketed as a manga because of a vaguely "big eyes, small mouth" style) by Jill Thompson. Oh, and the Little Endless stuff. While I didn't enjoy seeing one of the most adult and sophisticated comics in recent history (Sandman) being made into cute, cuddly stuff, I appreciated that Jill Thompson, who is a bit of a role model for women in comics, continued doing work for the imprint.
I was especially saddened by the lack of work by female authors, as Vertigo, at the time, was the rare imprint that had female editors.
So, as I said, it's about time a female author got to write a series again at Vertigo.
Good on you, Vertigo.
Let's hope that there'll be more female authors working for you in the foreseeable future.
Feeling 2: Why does it often seem as if the comic industry feels a need to recruit outside of comics for female authors (let's leave aside the tendency in general for now and focus on the female side of things), especially when it comes to action-adventure comics? Is the message that of, "women writers ARE welcome in comics...as long as they've made a name for themselves outside of comics?" Is there such a paucity of female creators in comics that we have to import them to write our horror, our action-adventure, and our gritty stuff? I know that a lot of female creators in comics have gathered in the more traditionally female comic book genres of humor, romance, fantasy, slice-of-life, etc. But, is that because these genres are the only ones female creators WANT to write? Or, do they feel that these are the only genres they're welcome in?
A lot of female readers I know READ the tough stuff. More than a few female authors in manga write horror, suspense, action-adventure, and some of the more gritty works. We have Gail Simone and Devin Grayson busy at their computers writing action-adventure comics.
So, why aren't more female comic book authors inspired to WRITE the tough stuff?
In media outside of comics, as this recent Vertigo hiring has shown, women are creating the tough stuff. Is the exception, for some bizarre reason, comics? Has comics attitude towards women creators changed for the better (personally, I've seen scant evidence of it) and we females just haven't seen that we can dare now dare to hope to get jobs writing in genres beyond the traditionally female comic book genres? Or is it that fame outside comics trumps any and all gender considerations? I hope it's the former. I suspect it's the latter.
Feeling 3: Porous Borders: a Good or Bad Thing?
It seems like there's been a real immigration/importation of film people, playwrights, and "legitimate" authors into comics in the last five years or so. Nowadays, I see so many examples, it would be futile to list them. Now, this immigration sometimes works a treat. We got Greg Rucka and Kevin Smith that way. Denise Mina may be another example of someone from other media coming in and creating a good comic.
But, a lot of other examples I've seen of comics by non-comics writers have been fairly lame. I've seen creators outside of comics who seem to have no affection or knowledge of comics or their characters be given more consideration than young creators with knowledge of comics, characters, and continuity. If importing creators historically lead to stronger comics, then I could easily forget where the creators came from. However, the comics I've seen, in the main, have been weak sisters, even more mediocre than those from the more mediocre comic book creators have been.
Whiteout, of course, being the best and most notable exception.
What bothers me about this importing of creators is that it ignores comics as its own craft and art form. Comics aren't plays. They aren't movies. They aren't novels. They are a unique entity unto themselves, with their own rules about pacing, characterization, panels per page, even words per caption. While these rules are made to be bent and even broken, a good comic book author at least has a working knowledge of them. Comics writing is a craft and comic plots seem to be best when written by people who know and care the most about comics as craft.
What's more, this importation of talent makes it seem like comic book writing is an easy craft to learn. It's not. It takes practice, just like any other kind of writing. In a way, it's like hiring an English major to write a computer manual. While he or she will probably get good at it after practicing a bit, it takes awhile to transfer one skill (in my example, liberal arts writing) to another (in my example, technical writing). Comics have as much jargon and idiosyncrasies as technical writing, IMHO and should be approached as its own genre if the work is have the type of confident writing craft comics need to be good comics.
In other words, comic book writing is a learnable skill, but it is a skill different than that of other writing.
That isn't to question the loyalties of creators outside of comics that do comics. Many honestly love the comics. But, love isn't craft. And writing a book or a screenplay or a TV show isn't the same craft as comic book writing.
Let me take an example outside of comics to show where I'm coming from. I consider Brian Wilson, the genius behind the Beach Boys, to be a pop music craftsman of first water. But, I'd never buy a rap album from him because rap is its own craft---a craft Mr. Wilson knows nothing of. In fact, those who have tried to cross into rap from pop often embarrass themselves, as it's just not their forte (Blondie's Rapture, anyone? Captain Sensible's Wot? Lou Reed's The Original [W]rapper?).
I'm not saying "shoemaker, stick to your last", as it's more complicated than that. One of the reasons, for instance, Batman: The Animated Series was so good was that comic book authors wrote a lot of the scripts. While cartoons aren't comics, the cartoons were good because the authors understood the characters and loved them. And, we got Paul Dini's Batman all-ages comics out of the deal, so I honestly can't say all emigration/immigration of talent is a bad idea, per se.
It's just...
Comics are their own craft. I can't be more specific than that.
Now, Denise Mina has a very good reputation in crime novel circles and has won a prestigious award for her writing. From her interviews it also sounds like she has a real love in her heart for Hellblazer. A lot of the preliminary indications looked good.
So, I'm not prejudging exactly and I'm certainly not picking on a person I don't even know. I admire the heck out of Ms. Mina for being the first woman allowed to take on the challenge of one of comics' most hard-boiled male characters. I wish good things to the series and all.
But, still...