Genrebility

By Regie Rigby

So, I’m back from the far reaches of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, sitting at my desk and avoiding doing real work by watching the current Shuttle mission to the International Space Station on NASA TV. I love these live broadcasts from space. It makes me realise that in spite of the lack of flying cars and jetpacks, the future really is here already.

(And I assume you’re all reading Warren Ellis’ Doktor Sleepless? If you’re not, you should be.)

But it’s got me to wondering. I think the only comic I can think of that has been about the Shuttle was Warren Ellis’ Orbiter. Shuttles have popped up in the odd story, but only incidentally. Comics dealing with people involved in regular space travel and exploration are basically non-existent. Why?

Science Fiction is a pretty active genre in comics after all – probably second only to the spandex brigade in terms of volume. In my experience people who love SciFi are also pretty interested in SciFact and SciRealism. So why no more “realistic” comics dealing with shuttles and space stations? Why no comics stories about fearless inventors building their own credible space craft? It’s been done after all., and I can’t help thinking that if Burt Rutan had built Spaceship One in the fifties or sixties there would have been a comic about it. It would certainly have featured in The Eagle.

And that of course got me thinking further.

There are hardly any comics about “real” people that I can think of – not in the Anglophone market at any rate. In the past there have been comics about soldiers, doctors and nurses, teachers, pilots, cops – you name it. These days?

We’ve had films about the current conflict in Iraq – why not comics? (And no - Sandman Mystery Theatre: The Sleep of Reason doesn’t count. It wasn’t about real soldiers.) Where is the modern answer to Doctor Kildare or Dan Dazzler? And yes, I know that Doctor Kildare was based on a TV show, but in many ways that’s my point. We still have TV shows about medics – from ER in the States to Holby City here. These are massively popular shows with huge audiences. Can it really be that there is no market for comics along similar lines.

Well, sadly all the evidence we have is that there really isn’t.

A few years ago, in the wake of the September 11th outrage, with cops and fire fighters being held in almost unprecedentedly high esteem Marvel launched a range of books dealing with such real life heroes. They didn’t last all that long – and from what I recall, the key reason was poor sales.

Now, I have to confess at this point that I didn’t buy them, so I guess they might have found it difficult to find an audience because they were bad comics. But the fact that I, and many like me didn’t even pick them up to find out whether they were good or no suggests that the readership of Anglophone comics doesn’t really have much on an interest in that kind of thing.

So why aren’t we?

Actually, since I don’t think I can really to claim to speak for the massed ranks of comics fandom, why aren’t i?

I mean logically, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do veg out it tends to be in front of a cop show. CSI (any of ‘em, but I like Miami best), Inspector Morse (now there’s a thought – an Inspector Morse comic!). Why don’t I pick up comics featuring similar characters?

(Actually, now I think about it, there was a CSI comic for a while. Is it still published? If so, is it any good?)

Well, I guess I read Fell, which is about a regular cop trying to do his job. OK, his world is rather on the extreme side but Snowtown isn’t really all that different from the Las Vegas of Gil Grissom, or the Miami of Horatio Caine. (Actually, is it “Caine” or “Kane”? I can never remember, and because I’m such a damn shoddy columnist I can’t quite be bothered to check…) About the only other comic I can think of that made a point of exploring police procedurals is the much missed Gotham Central, and the realistic aspects of that book were spoiled by the constant intrusion of Gotham’s more colourful villains.

And it got cancelled. Lack of sales.

On the other hand, Fell is a runaway hit, with print runs selling out, being reprinted and selling out again. I know I never miss an issue.

So what’s going on? It really isn’t that the content or the genre is an issue. If it was, people wouldn’t be reading Fell in such big numbers.

So what is it?

As always, my foolish friends, I think it’s us.

Why do most of the people who read Fell first pick it up? I know I first picked it up because it had Warren Ellis’ name on the cover, and because Templesmith’s art makes me drool. I keep picking it up because it’s so damn good, but that’s not what drew me in in the first place.

I think the “problem” – if problem it is – is that the “big names” tend to get hired to write the big books. As an industry, Anglophone comics have found themselves pretty much wedded to Supes and SciFi, which means that the big name creators tend to be writing and drawing that kind of book.

This in turn means that that is the kind of book we tend to pick up when we see it on the rack. Limited budget means there’s a finite number of books we can buy in a month, and so the books by less well known creators get picked up rather less – that goes for the spandex and SciFi book by less well known creators too of course, but you can see where I’m going here. Any non-spandex non-SciFi book has the sales figures odds stacked right against it.

There are always individual cases that make it though by word of mouth of course – Oni’s outstanding Queen and Country springs to mind immediately. But you know that they’re the exception, not the rule. For the cycle to be broken two things need to happen.

First, you need a big name creator who makes more of an effort to tell the stories they want to tell, and has the clout (and the guts) to do it. Step forward Mr Ellis. Warren Ellis produces some of the best spandex and SciFi stuff around (and some of the best piss-takes of the genre too) but he also writes some of the best non Spandex and SciFi stuff around too. Fell is a good example, but I’d point you at Ministry of Space and Orbiter too, amongst other work. I’m hoping other creators and publishers might start to follow his example here a little – and indeed I think that’s starting to happen.

OK, so we have the first thing we need. The second?

Well, I keep saying it, but it’s us. We need to be more adventurous. There’s a reason “indie” comics stay “indie”. It’s because not enough people take a chance on them. We should. Retailers do their best – at least the good ones do. I’ve been in my LCS (you know who they are by now…) and seen the owner enthusing about books to customers who just refuse to step outside their comfort zone. What do they think? That the guy who depends on their business for his living would piss them off by selling them stuff he doesn’t believe they’ll enjoy? If they do, they should probably shop somewhere else anyway…

So, what should we do?

Read more diverse comics. And support the creators who make them.

See you in seven.