The Bendis Age: Hickman's Fantastic Four

Somewhat amazingly, I was not the only person to think of using the extremely clever and witty title Marvel Then for a series of posts on the Marvel era that started coming to a very slow conclusion last month. Because I'm that guy you go out to dinner with, you know the one, who refuses to order the same things as someone else, I've decided to retitle the series, this time emphasizing that its Brian Bendis's exit from The Avengers family of titles, more than anything else, that marks this as the beginning of a new era. Welcome to The Bendis Age. 

Why not start where all this began, right? Before I move forward, though, a quick word about what's going on here: these BENDIS AGE posts aren't going to be comprehensive, except in one very particular case. Instead, they're going to be quick and improvised, and they're going to reflect a very simple truth about me as a comic book reader: I'm not doctrinaire about my purchases. I don't have enough money to be. Every month, I have to choose what to buy and what not to buy, and every month I don't buy something that I did buy the month before, often because I want to try something new.

As a purchasing strategy, I think its the only viable one. As a strategy for keeping track of serial storytelling, though, it kind of blows. As I flipped through my shortboxes, picking out books I think would be interesting to reread at this particular moment in time, I'm struck by books I bought but didn't read-- much of Journey Into Mystery, until I realized I wasn't reading it and stopped buying it*-- as well as the books that I bought, but just not consistently. Hickman's neat little duo of Fantastic Four comics are among these.

Of course, the fact that Hickman got me to buy Fantastic Four at all is something of a feat, since I don't think there's a character in all of comics that pisses me off quite as much as Reed Richards. Although the insufferable smartest man alive is one of comics' greatest stock characters, Marvel has five such characters that I can think of off the top of my head. Reed doesn't have the charm of Tony Stark, the menace of Bruce Banner, the humor of Amadeus Cho or, even, the pluck of the recent iterations of Hank Pym. He's just kind of a know-it-all, and, worse, one who chronically doesn't seem to remember who he's got around him because he's got so many other things to do, because, more than he's interested in them, he's interested in solving puzzles and saving the world. Reed Richards simply isn't a very good dad.

Although I don't harbor quite the same distrust of the concepts of the other members of the extended Richards family, the only truly great character in the bunch is Benjamin Grimm, the ever lovin', blue eyed Thing. It used to be that Yancey Street's favorite son was the only good reason to tune into the book-- you could certainly be excused for getting your fix from New Avengers, at any rate. I don't think I'm the only person to think this way- the scuttlebutt on the book is that it never sells as well as Marvel thinks it should and I expect that this reason is this: the Fantastic Four, as characters, have a tendency to be grating at best and, at worst, simple and boring.

But it wasn't always this way. You only have to go so far as Matt Fraction's ongoing reading of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaborations on the earliest issues of the book to see that, to see the extent of the universe that the Fantastic Four were born into, to see the sense of wonder that that classic team up evoked not only in the reader but, also, in the characters themselves. If you can, find some examples of Kirby's collage pages from this period, itself a suggestion that the drawn comic book was not the final frontier, that comics could be much more than illustrations and word balloons printed using a four color process.

Jonathan Hickman, as talented as he is, wasn't quite so ambitious, or at least he wasn't here. But, from the beginning, he was interested in reinvigorating a stagnant idea. In a postscript to his run, published instead of a letters page in the last issues of both Fantastic Four and FF, he writes about his first goal for his work with Marvel's first family:

I still remember how disappointed I was when I found out my boss, Tom Brevoort, wasn't going to put "THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMIC MAGAZINE" tagline of my first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR. The dispassionate, analytical side of my brain understood it, but I swear to God and I do mean Jack Kirby, the hopeless romantic in me was crushed.

The fact that Hickman was able, since that first issue of Fantastic Four, to cast aside that dispassionate, analytical side in favor of that crushed hopeless romantic is directly responsible for the success, artistic, critical and, in a relative sense, commercial, of his run with these characters. Because he was able to transform the Fantastic Four from insufferable super cardboard cutouts into heroes with significant and interesting pathos, he made them readable again. Hickman's take on the group, which pits love of the family against a responsibility for the world, the addiction to the puzzle against the embrace of imagination, chooses the latter in both cases and casts Reed in his own father's absent role, before revealing to him his own failings, evident to readers for years. For the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time since Lee and Kirby, Hickman was able to discard the cold stare of Reed Richards in favor of the ebullience, the straight wonder, of Reed's creators.

This last issue of FF, even moreso than his last issue of Fantastic Four, demonstrates that this is exactly what Hickman was trying to do, that focusing the book up rather than down was the plan from the start.
Reading the two first family books over the last little bit, and particularly before Hickman wrapped up his three year arc on the book twelve or so months ago, was to be convinced that anything was possible and that most things were plausible. Everything was fair game-- the death of Galactus, the death of the Human Torch, the Mad Celestials, an alliance with Dr. Doom. Anything could happen. Anything could be.

Process: Jamie McKelvie

Jamie McKelvie shares an uncolored page from Young Avengers #1

Today Is Election Day

Go vote. If you don't vote, shame on you-- whatever happens, you've lost the privilege to complain about whatever happens next.

To get you in the mood, go read Caleb Mozzocco's Super Endorsements series:

Remember that this is Bizarro. 

Update, from the desk of Paolo Rivera:

Marvel, Then: Intro

I'm hunkered down in my apartment*, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to pass me by. Happily, this means that I am catching up on months worth of reading I have piled up next to my mattress, but I also figured that it was a good time to quickly intro something I'm going to be doing over the next few months, in conjunction with the House of Ideas' Marvel NOW! yearly culling of established ongoing series in order for the company to replace them with new number ones in an attempt to temporarily raise sales relaunch, namely, the consideration, first, of the books whose era has just ended (Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca on Iron Man, Ed Brubaker on Captain America, Jonathan Hickman on the Fantastic Four, and so on) and then of the books that are replacing them.

In some ways, this series started last week, with my review of the initiative's not very good flagship title, Uncanny Avengers #1. That was sort of a false start, though, since the first few posts, which I've not very cleverly titled "Marvel, Then," are going to focus on what's ending, rather than what's new. Because of the staggered roll out of new titles, though, some of those posts will run concurrent with the posts, titled, again very cleverly, "Marvel When?" that deal with what's new NOW! that an era that's a decade old has come to a close.

That time frame, of course, is the same one in which Brian Bendis has been writing The Avengers. His work on that franchise over that span, while hardly the greatest superhero comics produced in the period, made possible the existence of some much better work. If he hadn't brought Luke Cage to the forefront of the Marvel universe through sheer force of will, for example, it seems unlikely that Immortal Iron Fist would have happened. I have a feeling, too, that his use of the Thing in New Avengers is partially responsible for the success of Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four. Bendis's move to other projects, which would have presaged a monumental change even if Marvel hadn't cloaked it in a line wide changing of the guard, presents by far the most important questions of this new era, at least when we think about Marvel as a business: can he replicate his Avengers success with All-New X-Men? Will his high word count writing style, the superhero board room approach, translate well to a much different kind of series? How about Guardians of the Galaxy? Is it going to be any good? Given that it mostly exists to gin up excitement for the movie adaptation, could it possibly be any good?

While Bendis's contributions are important, and while his arrival at Marvel marks the beginning of a renaissance for the publisher, I don't want to minimize how important, maybe even how much more important, I think Hickman, Fraction and Brubaker are to the company's artistic success over the last decade. Before them, too, were people like J. Michael Straczynski and beyond those three there are people like Kieron Gillen, each of whom helped to make Marvel's recent production stronger than anything from the Big Two comics companies in quite a long time. So, for the next few months, besides posts on the new Iron Man, Thor and Captain America series, you can expect commentary on the old ones, as well as whatever else piques my interest during this most fascinating moment in the history of the House of Ideas.

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*Although this is posting Tuesday, I wrote it on Monday after I was sent home from work.

Process: Paolo Rivera

I know I posted some process from Paolo not very long ago, but I want to highlight his last post, which deals with his work on Mythos: Captain America, because, in it, Paolo goes beyond the art itself, beyond comics, really, and deals with its afterlife.

Of Mythos as a whole, that is, of the comics themselves, Paolo writes:

The series did less than amazing in terms of sales, but Marvel still followed through with the project until we had enough issues to collect into a beautiful hardcover. If nothing else, it proved to be a fantastic platform for jumpstarting my career — aside from being paired with a top-tier writer, I got to illustrate the cream of the crop in terms of Marvel characters. And all that while I was still a rookie: when they gave me the job, I had painted just 34 pages for them.

In the pantheon of creator origins, Rivera's story is kind of extraordinary. Although he was one of the few comics artists in the last few decades to immediately jump to the big leagues, I'm not sure he has ever been introduced with that overused "superstar artist" epithet, despite the fact that the quality of his work is often much higher than those artists that are. Instead, he began his career by working for the House of Ideas, and, perhaps more interestingly, he has only produced a couple of dozen books for the company over the ten years he was signed to an exclusive contract with them. While I'm cynical about the ability of mainstream comics companies to see and recruit truly talented artists, its not hard to see why Marvel kept Rivera around for so long-- look at these pages, both from Captain America's Mythos issue: 

Although the one on the left is unequivocally beautiful, the one the right is fascinating, formally: check out the way the Rivera suggests differences of time in the top three panels, although all three frame the same space. Obviously, this is exceptional work, but anyone who suggests that nothing interesting happens in mainstream superhero comics isn't paying close enough attention. 

But Rivera doesn't just pull these images out of thin air. His process, which he very generously describes in more or less detail on a regular basis, is one of the most intensive I've ever read about. Rather than bluffing his way through the parts of a page he thinks people are unlikely to notice, Rivera takes every detail into account. He sketches everything from multiple angles. He takes reference photographs and, when he can't, he sculpts a reference out of clay. Take a look:

Of this technique, he writes:

One of the things I love most about Marvel heroes is that they don't always look the part. In fact, Captain America was the first in the entire Mythos series who had the classic heroic look (despite the fact that he doesn't start out that way). Creating that square jaw from scratch ensured that I got exactly the look I was going for, panel after panel. This was the largest of the maquettes I've made — the head's about 2 inches tall — and I still use it as a general reference for all types of heroes. 

I think he probably builds whole pages, both in reality and in his head, that we'll never see, things that are just as good as what he has published. It's hard to escape the sense that Rivera would have found success as a fine artist, had he not decided that what he really wanted to pursue was a career in comics.

Of course, the fact that his production is extraordinary neither makes him immune to market forces nor excuses him from paying the rent. In fact, I imagine it was something of a detriment: he's admitted that he's a slow painter, but, given how much work he does before he even touches the gauche, it would probably be more accurate to describe him as a pure and simple perfectionist. Still, perfection has its price, and I imagine the way it was limited production could be hard. Working on Mythos, however, helped him alleviate some of that stress:

The fact that I was commissioned to work on Marvel's flagship characters so early on was a privilege I recognized from the start, however, the benefits extended to my original art sales, which quickly became a third of my income (a much-welcomed addition since I was such a slow painter). If you're not familiar with the comic book art market, the price paid always comes down to which characters are on the page. Art is a commodity like everything else, and fame always trumps any intrinsic value. Captain America was (and always will be) more famous than me, but he has been kind enough to let me share in the spotlight.

I will tell you that, because I'm a recent college graduate, I never think about the original art market and, accordingly, know nothing about it. I had no idea that value in that world was figured in that way. Although I could imagine a market where value was determined by the relative fame of the artist, since everybody has their own favorite B-List character, this makes much more sense: Captain America will always be more famous than Paolo Rivera, and Batman will always be more famous than Jim Lee. Rivera's honesty about all of this is a thing to behold and, while I imagine that someone who wasn't some kind of fan of Marvel couldn't produce art that celebrates it like Rivera does, it's refreshing to see him admit that one of the perks of getting to draw the company's flagship characters is being able to up his income by a full third. A full third. 

Of course, an admission like that could be dangerous for artists, since its conceivable that they could end up stiffed on pay, with the big companies using that reasoning as an excuse: "Well, yeah, your royalties are tiny, but have you ever thought about original art sales?"

A few weeks ago, I heard Sean Howe describe his recently published history of Marvel as a story about pop culture because its a story of how art met commerce, and Rivera's post is a good reminder that its that confluence that conscientious readers of comics, that any conscientious consumer of culture, really, always need to be thinking about, but particularly when they're making decisions about what to buy and how. While it's tempting, maybe even partially true, to point to Paolo Rivera as story of a big comics corporation getting it right, Rivera's experience is, ultimately, atypical: he was as lucky as he is talented. And its important to remember that.