I’ve worked a few shifts opening and closing the store, now that I have keys. It’s a strange thing. It’s not that I can’t do the work of it, but it’s ended up being stressful. There’s both more and less to do, closing shifts especially are scheduled strangely, and I end up with less time to spend in my department. Like with other leadership positions I’ve had, I don’t feel like anyone really explained what’s expected of me, what I can and can’t do, or provided any guidelines. I’m sure my bosses expect me to have an idea already and assume that someone’s explained it to me before, or that something (like that silly video) explained it well enough. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually. I always do.
Anyway, this week I want to talk generally about superhero stuff. Recently, I’ve gotten onto a superhero kick again. I think there’s a lot of untapped potential in the genre that we aren’t getting in either the Big Two comics or the movies. Well, arguably we get more of it in the movies, but they’re not taking the swings they can or should. Basically, because the comics are a “continuous act two” being told by a rotating cast of creators, none of them have singular visions of a story with a clear beginning, middle, and ending. The characters can’t make real changes to the world at large because it always has to be the same easy backdrop. Their circumstances may change, and quite dramatically at times, but they always do the same basic things; while I’m not saying these choices of creators on superhero comics have no value, they certainly feel like less when nothing really changes despite everything “changing.” That’s what makes those rare moments of real, permanent (or at least long-standing) change so special, like Robin becoming Nightwing, Batgirl becoming Oracle, and Spider-Man’s One More Day (controversial though that is).
Like, this recent Krakoan era for the X-Men is a good example. This was a time when the mutants formed their own nation and set themselves apart from humanity, on the island nation of Krakoa. The whole thing is tied into time travel stuff that showed humanity continually turning to a machine society to fully dominate and exterminate mutants, and the potential for such a future to happen again was a recurring theme in these stories. It’s coming to an end, with a new slate of X-Comics set to bring the characters back to the US to do X-Men stuff, with no Krakoa or X-Mansion. The Krakoan era had a lot of potential and, to me, felt like an obvious and much needed evolution for mutants in Marvel Comics. It suffered from the early departure of its architect, Johnathan Hickman, and so there was no steady hand to guide the era for the few years it needed. At the same time, I’m not sure Hickman was the best choice for executing this move in the first place. He’s a great writer for weird hi-fi adventures, in books where everyone is an intellectual speaking to big themes and the grand state of the universe. That’s not the X-Men. Establishing lore about the evolution of machine societies across the universe and putting in a bunch of (admittedly rad) data tables isn’t what we needed to sell the core idea of the Krakoan era, at least as I, an outside observer, see it.
Humans hate and fear mutants for their power and attack them with Sentinels, and in the future humanity gives into their ego and insecurity to become a completely machine society where Sentinels hunt all mutants to extinction, literally trading in their humanity to do so. As mutants establish their society, they make a point to say they stand opposed to transhumanist values that seek to “improve” their bodies with technology, and set up their society to protect the sanctity of their bodies. Like always, it’s humans with machines attacking mutants with X-Genes. Technology versus nature, design versus evolution, authoritarian uniformity versus self-determined community. Robots versus powers, taken to an ultimate extreme. If I were in charge, I would have found a different path to mutants protecting or empowering their bodies than resurrection, because that feels like a cheap way of institutionalizing a trope that was never literal in-world, but the overall concept is simple and powerful. They should have kept things earthbound and built out big ideas that could always be brass taxed by punching or blasting a Sentinel. No need to be too serious or get bogged down in the weeds; actions, not words. Like, it’s pretty surprising there wasn’t a book specifically about exploring Krakoa as a place and society. What’s Krakoan culture? What does it mean to be “mutant,” and not simply a mutant? They did a similar sort of thing with Wakanda recently, where the idea of who was Wakandan was redefined around the Black diaspora and what the dream of the country means to Black people around the world; that could have been a blueprint for Krakoa and mutants.
I’m riffing with hindsight, so I want it to be clear I don’t think I’m a better writer than anyone. I certainly couldn’t have written the story I just described, or the really good one that we got. My larger point is that the Krakoan age was also pretty status quo for mutants. The world is against them, they have to deal with Sentinel-based threats, they’re a big soap opera, and they have several teams that kinda just do their own thing, the same thing they always did before Krakoa. They just had an island base, and later a planet, to return to instead of a mansion. And this era, which could have changed a lot more for mutants and the Marvel Universe than it did, ended much earlier than it arguably should have so they can go back to a typical format of X-Stories. Cyclops is looking for mutants in need. Kitty and Emma will be teaching mutants in some capacity. A team of X-Men are in New Orleans being outlaw superheroes. The fact that they’re not going back to the mansion doesn’t really change how they’re going back to what it was before Krakoa, especially since Krakoa was, at its core, basically like before Krakoa as well, but with data pages and talk of dominions and whatnot. Nothing really changes, because even the most ambitious attempts to redefine everything have to be wallpaper that multiple independent creative teams can make their own stories against. It’s not one vision, one story, one life; it’s several visions, never-ending and thus never-complete stories, and immortality as products. I mean, they terraformed Mars and made themselves the capitol of the solar system, and not only was that not a big deal across all of Marvel Comics, but we may not even stick with that as a concept moving forward? Superhero comics at the Big Two have no room for that level of change.
In thinking about this, I remembered that Ultimate Spider-Man may well have been the best version of how Marvel and DC, as currently structured, can pull off change and growth. Partly because that book had Brian Michael Bendis writing it consistently for over a decade, but in this case, the length of the run isn’t the point. It’s that Peter’s story had a start and end, and the next act was a new character, Miles Morales. That moment could easily have been a time when a new creative team took the reins and continued the title. Legacy characters, as they’re often called. When used properly, they’d allow creative teams to write their own proper story while still using character names or introducing new characters without them being overshadowed by giants. One hero dies or retires, and then another appears. It doesn’t solve the “world not changing” issue, but one issue at a time.
Personally, I like the idea of an exquisite corpse style experiment. Either Marvel or DC get four creative teams together to each make three issues of a big name character (Spider-Man or Batman are the most effective), and they get to tell a story happening in an alternate universe, and the ending point of one story is the starting point in another; for example, if Mary Jane is kidnapped at issue three, issue four is a new story that starts with Mary Jane being kidnapped. If that universe hopping title is successful, they could make a longer version of it with other characters, as a way for people to have fun not pulling punches or conforming to the canon. Fun, pop, original worlds every few issues, with a narrative jumping bit to frame the series and play on the idea that it’s always an act two. It would be a nightmare to put together, let alone sustain. Probably one of the reasons they haven’t done it yet.
I had more about that than I was expecting, and I’d like to get on with my night, so I’ll stop there. I just wanna share the observation that superheroes could only have developed in comics. They have to be seen in a visual medium to work, and comics is ideal for them because it provides one other major benefit: We can hear their thoughts. Without that, they’d just be vigilantes that we decide we like and are therefore good; getting to read their minds means we know their intentions, values, and integrity in a direct way, so we know they’re the real deal. It’s the thought bubble that makes the genre, one could argue.
Weekly Thoughts 3/16/24
Life in the Gutters 