Blush: Mighty Writey

To understand Watchmen, you need to understand a few things about comics' past.

Backing into success is not unheard of. Stephen King almost threw his breakout novel, Carrie, in the trash because he felt that he, a male teacher in his thirties, had no capacity to write a novel based around the trials of teenage girls (his wife fished it out and encouraged him to finish anyway, the rest is history). George Lucas' original cut of Star Wars was a dull, boring disaster, and if it hadn't been for the skilled people with him, notably his now ex-wife, re-cutting the film, the Internet these days would not be arguing over whether or not this is stupid.

It's not. Don't be boring.

Likewise, there's Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, who almost didn't create Tarzan; Burroughs was 'a failure' for the first part of his adult life (in the sense he had half a dozen jobs and either didn't like them or do well at them), and when he started writing, he sent Tarzan into the magazine he had already sold John Carter to, thinking it 'wasn't very good' and 'probably wouldn't sell'. Mixed with the fact that Burroughs had begun to doubt he wanted to be a writer, and it's easy to see that one stray different thought might have made him throw out the idea and stop writing, and hence erased one of the defining characters of fiction. The interesting thing, however, was the mindset behind Burroughs' doubts on being a writer; rather than whether he had any talent or not, Burroughs felt that writing was perhaps something to be ashamed of, a job 'that a big, strong, healthy man' shouldn't be doing. Burroughs' mindset brings up something that seems incredibly strange in the modern day of comic books; that once upon a time, writing comic books was just that, a job.

And it was. While there's always been a thread of creative spirit running through comics, for the first decades of the medium's life, it was the same creative spirit that runs through the Garfield comic strip (whose creator has explicitly said he created Garfield as a 'good, marketable character'); anything in any way exceptional only happened occasionally, and possibly by accident.

I will note, I do have strips from Garfield I like.

And for those familiar with how absurd the Gold and especially the Silver Age of comics are, the fact that they were primarily being created by men who considered writing them 'a job' says a lot about why. Imagine it; a small industry unconcerned with continuity, what a character 'was supposed to be', or whether a product was any 'good' or not, written solely by men who considered it little different from working in an office (and maybe less respectable). It was a disposable medium, stories that were meant to be read once, or at best kept briefly, and sooner or later discarded. What did it matter if they were repetitive, or ridiculous, or contradicted each other? This was a business of brief entertainments, primarily for children. No one in a year is going to care about (or remember) this stuff, let alone a decade or seven.

(I will note, of course, there are always exceptions to the concept that all comics were created as disposable nonsense meant expected to be forgotten. Ironically, the seen-as-disposable aspect of comics would create the other half of the curse that befell it in the late 80's and 90's; the collector's market. But that's another story)

Stan Lee, unlike a number of his peers (how many? Who knows. I'm sure someone does and the point of these articles isn't to try and pick through and categorize every comic writer of Ages past), actually had legitimate creative desires and wanted to write the traditional Great American Novel. His likely-planned start for such things in comics (thanks to an uncle) would ultimately change that; Lee would work for the company for over twenty years, writing in a variety of genres, creating a few superheroes (albeit none you'd likely have heard of), and ultimately serving as editor-in-chief, though his main creative contribution to comicdom before 1960 would be creating Captain America's trademark 'ricocheting shield trick' (in the very first story he ever told for Marvel, and a prose story at that). With DC Comics having experienced some success in redone superheroes after the superhero genre had fallen on hard times during the 50's, and with Lee planning on changing careers, when his boss asked him to create a new superhero team to try and claim some of DC's successes, Lee, encouraged by his wife, decided that instead of more of the same, he would try and tell the kind of story he was interested in. With that, Lee created the Fantastic Four, and told a story based around a different concept: instead of a perfect paragon, what would a superhero (or heroes) who was also a human being be like?

It's not exactly exaggeration when it is said that Lee's choice likely saved the superhero genre (we'll never know if DC's efforts would have been enough by themselves), and while Lee's stories were more or less as silly as the Silver Age's lesser known efforts, Lee was perhaps the first to try and introduce realism into the comics; his superheroes were flawed, had ups and downs in their lives, sometimes got overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and generally had more dimension. Lee, however, never seemed to forget that the roots of superherodom are inherently silly, and while every now and then he attempted something serious (his issues of Spider Man that showed the negative effects of drugs being one), they would always be matched by things like 'The No Prize' and 'The Merry Marvel Marching Society'. That superhero comics will always be silly on SOME level as a very aspect of their existence is something, unfortunately, a lot of future writers (and fans) would forget.

In some corners of the internet, showing this picture is a capital offense.

Perhaps Stan understood something that others didn't; superhero comics tend to be poor mediums for real life issues. It's kind of hard to discuss sociological inequalities with men who solve virtually their problems with punching and made-up nonsense. At best, the results will be clunky...

Not shown: the part where Hal Jordan realizes that saving the whole world counts. Then again, Hal was never that bright.

At worst, the silliness comic book superheroes constantly dip into will crash into the message attempt and end up producing something equally offensive.

Evidently, someone showed Ollie that Doom/Hulk ad. I would have made a joke here about Washington football teams, but I didn't want to date the articl-DAMN IT

The preceding two pictures are from one of DC Comics' more famous storylines, the 'Hard Travellin' Heroes' story arc, where Green Arrow and Lantern went wandering around trying to deal with more 'real-life problems'. You see the result. When you've gone from 'true if somewhat badly implemented question based in real life' to 'white man dressed up as a stereotypical Native while shooting at a man tied to a totem pole' within the space of three issues, you've gotten a direct look at why superhero comic books are not really the medium to show these issues off, even under the 'youth need a sledgehammer to learn' reason. I will note that this arc also contains perhaps the most infamous moment in Green Arrow (if not superhero comics) history.

You think that's bad Ollie, wait until Judd Winick gets his hands on you.

So, does that make you think of the plight of addicts, or are you too busy smirking at Green Arrow's rather overwrought facial expression? The link about the storyline above will show off many more of the arc's absurd moments, and while one should give credit where credit is due, things like this, especially in retrospect, remind me of a anonymous quote.

"A professor, writing on a grad student’s paper: You have reinvented the sled. Asked to clarify, the prof said: It’s much like reinventing the wheel, but less useful."

Which brings me, at last, to Alan Moore, and Watchmen.

Whether Moore could be said to be more creative than Lee is an impossible question; the two are very different men. Moore was definitely more of a wild child, dealing LSD in school, writing under a pseudonym that was a take on Gilles De Rais (which even Moore admits was a 'sardonic joke', and will generally give you an idea of what kind of man Moore is), and having his first major works be heavily influenced by his (immensely negative) feelings for the British government of the 80's (a trait many British creative types would share). Moore did, however, still like comic books, having had them as part and parcel of his voracious reading as a boy, and like Lee, he wanted to actually write stories following his interests (which would grow more and more anomalous as his life went on, but that is neither here nor there). which, as his career caught on, included revamping characters. With DC having acquired a new crop of characters, Moore presented a proposal to use them in a story, and was politely encouraged that it might work best with original characters instead due to the exact events of idea he had. Left with a completely blank canvas, Moore would rework the idea, and in the process, do as Lee had done. Lee had asked 'what if a superhero had human traits, like the kind seen in the real world'. Moore, instead, would ask 'What kind of a person in the real world would WANT to be a superhero?'

Looking at that question for a bit kind of makes you worried, doesn't it? It's a question that becomes more and more loaded the more you look at it. In the way of things, Burroughs' Tarzan also came about asking a question that is now very unfortunate; Burroughs, interested in the now-discredited field of eugenics, wanted to know if 'good breeding' could overcome adversity.

Translation; could being a white male descended from nobility allow you to take control of your environment per surpassing (easily) the native peoples there. The answer, of course, was yes.

While not as regretful as Nation's place in the creative field (that being a horrific story that happened to be attached to presentation techniques that unfortunately had to be originated with it and whose complete assimilation into the basics of the industry would ensure the film would not be forgotten), Tarzan's popularizing of what some call the 'Mighty Whitey' archetype (Tarzan wasn't the first character in that vein, but he was the one who caught on the biggest, especially since unlike those who came before him, his creator managed to discover a head for business and trademark him before further figuring out the concept of merchandizing him) would unfortunately ensure a certain type of adventure (and its unfortunate messages) would continue into the future.

Lee, on the other hand, ensured the superhero medium would. He lucked out, because Moore would as well...

And unfortunately, his contribution would end up more like Nation and Burroughs than Lee's.

Next article: I ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT WATCHMEN INSTEAD OF RAMBLING ABOUT GARFIELD AND GREEN ARROW. 

Coda: Here's what's on the back of that Incredible Hulk shirt. Just in case you HAD to know.