Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Waid Wednesdays #13: You'd Better Be In There Somewhere

When I was working at a company called Crossgen back in 2001, I was stuck writing a book called Sigil. I didn’t start it; it was inherited. It was about a two-fisted, ex-military, blue-collar guy named Sam who traveled the galaxy and fought aliens. I forget why. I do remember it wasn’t a very compelling or convincing reason. I specifically remember that the alien empire he was up against had conquered interstellar travel but still had not invented the wheel, which is probably the single stupidest science-fiction conceit I’ve ever heard.

There was nothing about this setup that was particularly easy for me to wrap my head around. Sam was the kind of guy I couldn’t in real life relate to on any level, and he was fighting an eons-old humanoid empire that had somehow never seen a rock roll downhill. So finding my “in” was extra-challenging--but that’s the job. If you’re going to write a character convincingly, you have to find something in him, however small, that resonates with you.

After much studying and much drinking, I hit upon the one commonality Sam and I had: we were both vagabonds with no family ties. I got that, and something clicked. That suggested that there was some backstory with his parents. That there might be a reason he felt estranged from friends and family. That there might be some nugget of masked insecurity inside him that made him feel uncomfortable with close relationships. THAT, I got. (The book, though brilliantly drawn by Scot Eaton, was still a mediocre adventure, but I got it.)

Marvel Comics’ characters have been exceedingly popular since the 1960s because they’re especially relatable. The X-Men are about facing prejudice. The Hulk is about the power of anger and how to deal with it. The Fantastic Four is about family. Thor is about...

...about...

...this one stumped me for years. The Mighty Thor chronicles the ongoing, modern-day adventures of the Norse god of thunder, who divides his time between punching supervillains in Manhattan and fighting Frost Giants with a giant hammer to protect his home of Asgard and his cranky dad, Odin. I never got Thor. I have absolutely no interest in mythology, Thor’s trademark “thee-thou-thine” faux-Medieval dialogue feels corny to me, and Thor is traditionally about as bright as a week-old glowstick. And yet...and yet...he’s been one of comics’ mainstay heroes for nearly a half-century, which means there had to be something in the concept that the audience can identify with. I just couldn’t find it. And, worse, a few years back when I was doing a handful of Marvel books, I had to write Thor from time to time.

So I finally broke it down, and once I did, it was embarrassingly obvious:

Thor is about a rebellious son who can’t please his father no matter what he does.

Odin’s a jerk. He claims to have a very clear vision of Thor’s destiny, one that doesn’t involve wasting time with Earthlings, but like many fathers, he’s much better at articulating what Thor isn’t supposed to do than what he is supposed to do. There’s poor Thor, just trying to follow his heart, while Odin--time and again with all the compassion of a hurricane--punishes Thor for breaking specious rules that were never very clear to begin with.

THAT, I got. THAT, hundreds of thousands of teenage readers have been getting since 1962.

Characters, if they’re to have any longevity, have to speak to universal concerns. The Golden Age of pop culture is lousy with the tens of thousands of forgotten characters who weren’t really about anything definable. A few have adapted by becoming corporate icons--the Wonder Woman of 1942 is only barely recognizable as the safely sexless Wonder Woman of today--but, by and large, time is much kinder to the Spider-Mans of pop culture than it is the Betty Boops and Great Gildersleeves. Whether it’s a character you inherited or one of your own invention, you have to find in him or her the truths that will mean something to today’s audience and, hopefully, tomorrow’s.

73 comments:

Thomas said...

That's so obvious and brilliant I'm annoyed I hadn't noticed it before.

Rook said...

You're right. Not inventing the wheel. Pretty damn silly, if you ask me.

Funny how H.G. Wells managed to sneak into his story "War Of The Worlds" that the Martians hadn't invented the wheel either.

Tegan O'Neil said...

Wow. I've always been a big Thor fan, but I can't say that ever occurred to me. Interestingly, this is the primary note that JMS seems to be striking in his run, and although I've been following that it never occurred to me how intrinsic the father / son generational stuff actually is to the character.

Anonymous said...

I was just having some hardcore nostalgia for those crossgen titles!

Hardcore may have been the wrong word... but anyway, that is incredibly true about poor Thor. Noted.

nick said...

I don't think that Neil Gaiman was (or is) especially given to writing mean-spirited "fuck you"s into his work, but I always thought his characterization of Thor as a muscle bound dimwit of (ahem) Herculean proportions was meant to be a finger in the eye of Stan and Jack for screwing with such a rich mythological tapestry in such a sophomoric way.

Anonymous said...

I remember CrossGen. I liked a lot of the stuff the place was putting out in the early days. I was really sorry to see it self-destruct. But I've got to agree, Sigil was never one of their better titles.

Dean H. said...

Wow. That is very true about Thor. It makes me want to buy a Marvel Essentials just to check it out.

Anonymous said...

I don't think that Neil Gaiman was (or is) especially given to writing mean-spirited "fuck you"s into his work, but I always thought his characterization of Thor as a muscle bound dimwit of (ahem) Herculean proportions was meant to be a finger in the eye of Stan and Jack for screwing with such a rich mythological tapestry in such a sophomoric way.

Not that I can read minds, but I think Neil Gaiman wrote Thor like a dolt because in the original Norse mythology, Thor is a dolt. A Fun loving, barrel chested, Meed drinking, thigh slapping, giant killing dolt. The sort of heroic boob who would rather stay up til dawn swapping tales of daring do and telling dirty jokes than plan the next day's attack on the frost giants. That's why he has a magic Hammer. He is Captain Hammer, but immortal.

The brawling makes him fun. The daddy issues make him interesting.

Dean H. said...

Two things occur to me after reading this.

The first is that the longest tenured characters are often "about" the most universal themes. Superman is about love, Batman is about grief and Spider-Man is about becoming an adult.

The second is that the most perennially troubled titles are the ones that have been the most disconnected from their simple concept. Wonder Woman is the classic example. It was a title the was gender and power. That included sex, which is why it was slowly scrubbed of its original theme. Now, it is about nothing, which is why it gets re-booted every fifteen minutes.

I am sure that is true of every other member of the "frequently canceled" fraternity. The basic human emotion was excised by editorial fiat at some point in the past.

That actually is a great blog post in itself.

Mike Cane said...

Damn fine. So THAT's Thor!

Mark Waid said...

Rook: I don't remember that about WotW, but I believe you. Can you cite chapter and verse so I don't have to go searching?

Anonymous said...

I have to admit that my initial reaction to "sexless Wonder Woman" was one of surprise and disbelief -- after all, she's a top-heavy supermodel in a strapless bustier. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you're right. The heavy sexual politics of the character have been seriously watered down over the years.

To be fair, one could say something similar about Superman -- his original stories had a strong social-justice angle, if I understand it correctly.

But back to Wonder Woman. It seemed like there's always a lot of talk about her embodying a threat to patriarchal values, and that straw-man villains and sexists find her "Scary" as a result, but I can't recall any stories within my lifetime that really pushed the envelope in any way with readers.

Great point on Thor, by the by!

Anonymous said...

Mark, I should mention the upcoming NBC series KINGS proiminently features an evil corporation named CrossGen.

I interviewed the creator, who also writes comics, and he was bewildered to find out there was once a comics company with that name. At any rate, the evil CEO character is prone to many smackdowns by Ian McShane. You might enjoy this.

I remember enjoying that story you did with George Perez for SIGIL, but that was a case where the concept slowed down the storytelling. Some food for thought in this piece!

Kirk said...

Mark, the discovery the martians don't have wheels is in the chapter "What we saw from the ruined house." I'm going to quote an extensive section:

And of their appliances, perhaps nothing is more wonderful to a man than the curious fact that what is the dominant feature of almost all human devices in mechanism is absent the wheel is absent ; amongst all the things they brought to earth there is no trace or suggestion of their use of wheels. One would have at least expected it in locomotion. And in this connection it is curious to remark that even on this earth Nature has never hit upon the wheel, or has preferred other expedients to its development. And not only did the Martians either not know of (which is incredible) or abstain from the wheel, but in their apparatus singularly little use is made of the fixed pivot, or relatively fixed pivot, with circular motions thereabout confined to one plane. Almost all the joints of the machinery present a complicated system of sliding parts moving over small but beautifully curved friction bearings[.]

Alan said...

Excellent piece. Fundamental and intrinsic, yet something I hadn't consciously picked up on. The more I reflect on it, the more overtones I see in the literature and graphic novels I've read. I will remember this.

Bates said...

Add me to the folks who never saw that about Thor. But, man, it IS pretty obvious once you point it out.

Anonymous said...

Well, the Incas didn't discover the wheel IIRC, so it's not that impossible. And living where they did, they must have seen lots of rocks roll down hills.
As for Thor, I don't buy it (but then, I'm generally suspicious of "all successful characters must be X" assertions). I've had my share of issues w/my dad but those clashes between Odin and Thor never meant anything to me at the time and rereading the Essentials, they're just annoying.
Of course, I do love mythology so that counted for a lot. And Lee/Kirby infused Thor with that same sense of epic melodrama they did their other books: They can make even a battle with a second-rater like the Wrecker feel as if the world hinges on it.
As to why he's lasted since then ... beats the heck out of me. Though my favorite post-Silver Age stories, by Walt Simonson, were again just well done with lots of mythology.

Anonymous said...

Having lived at Camp
Norse for a fourth of my Summers, I am attatched to Nordic mythology. You are very right about Odin (isn't Zeus also often in bad dad mode.)

As to the comic...Is Thor's time as a human just part of his rebelliousness or is it more of a cosmic duality of the superhero/geek, like Superman/Clark Kent? Mad Magazine's origional Superman parody highlights this with Lois declaring at the end, either way, he's still a schlep.

Anonymous said...

Not Rook, but Google Books makes stuff like that pretty easy to find.

http://books.google.com/books?id=1HoBYmku9uQC&pg=PA205&dq=war+of+the+worlds+wheel

Anonymous said...

Very good point on Thor, and looking back it seems like it would be obvious but as someone whose mainly seen him in supporting role the picture really didn't come together till now.

On a side note, I was buying comics last night and thinking about the ones I ended up NOT getting because of the $4 price point (including Farscape, which in a moment of weakness got the first issue of). I was going to ask for your opinion on it, but realized that this isn't the forum. All I ask is that when you take off the creative hat and put on your business hat, that you keep asking stores and readers about the impact it's having, and do your best to try to help solve the problem. Thanks.

Mike Leuszler: Host said...

The thing about Mark's characterization of Odin is that it obscures the bad writing of the original stories. Odin made up these rules because he was a bad dad? No, Odin made up these rules because Stan Lee wrote so much per month, that he didn't have time to come up with better motivations for Thor's cast. A lot of Thor stories could be said to be as gimmick driven as the Silver-Age Mort Weisenger-edited Superman stories.

gwangung said...

The thing about Mark's characterization of Odin is that it obscures the bad writing of the original stories. Odin made up these rules because he was a bad dad? No, Odin made up these rules because Stan Lee wrote so much per month, that he didn't have time to come up with better motivations for Thor's cast.

But that just means that he unconsciously developed a way for readers to connect, and it's up to later writing to discover and refine this. (Much the same way many writers just pour a first draft onto the page to get the guts of the story out there and use subsequent drafts to refine and bring out these points).

Anonymous said...

Blogger Mike Leuszler: Host,

So basically, you're say that the bad dad was Stan Lee instead of Odin?

:)

Dean H. said...

A lot of Thor stories could be said to be as gimmick driven as the Silver-Age Mort Weisenger-edited Superman stories.


Mike, for stories of that vintage, it is not especially interesting to me that they were gimmick driven. Most of them were to some degree. What is interesting is what type of gimmick were they using.

The Weisenger-edited Superman books used a lot Freudian metaphors as gimmicks. The universal theme was the ordinary schlep being in love with the pretty girl down the hall. The gimmick and the theme were closely related to each other.

Mark's observation about Thor is that it is the same. It strikes me as being pretty valid.

Matthew Johnson said...

You'll note that almost all of the character cores Mark identifies are key to the experience of adolescence. (Incidentally, I would add "guilt" to the core of the Hulk -- I think it's about the common cycle of I'm-mad-so-I-did-something-wrong-so-I-feel-guilty-but-I-hate-feeling-guilty-so-I'm-mad).

I'd demur, however, about the X-Men: while we all like to believe they're about prejudice, they're not -- how many white teenage fanboys know anything about prejudice? They're about adolescence, pure and simple, the time authority (your parents) goes from being friendly to being hostile, the time your hormones start making you crazy, and the time your body starts doing weird things like sprouting armpit hair, breasts and wings. Or whatever.

Re: the wheel -- no indigenous American culture ever developed the wheel (except as a toy) and some developed some quite advanced math, though so far as I know space travel was still off the table.

Mark Waid said...

"I'd demur, however, about the X-Men: while we all like to believe they're about prejudice, they're not -- how many white teenage fanboys know anything about prejudice?"

I think you're defining prejudice a lot more narrowly than I was. No, white teenage fanboys don't know much about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Selma, Alabama, but they know EVERYTHING about being hounded and persecuted for being different from the pack, c'mon.

Shar said...

Great entry. Along similar lines, check out The Jack Kirby Collector #44, which cobbles together several quotes from Stan and Jack about Thor. The family angle figured pretty heavily into their concept of the series. Stan likens Thor and Loki to Cain and Abel and says "The jealousy of one god for another! Sibling rivalry between two gods! Those are motives that anyone can accept and understand..." Stan is also quoted as saying that a key to Odin's characterization was "he has two sons, both of whom he loves, even though one is virtuous and the other an unmitigated villain."

Matthew Johnson said...

"I think you're defining prejudice a lot more narrowly than I was."

Persecution is definitely part of the teenage experience (for most of us, anyway) -- my point is that it's just part of it. I think the broader theme of the X-Men is about becoming an individual, with all of the rewards and risks that entails (of which one is certainly persecution and prejudice of the kind you describe.)

The reason I think the difference is significant is because if we define the X-Men as being about prejudice specifically it moves down the road from metaphor to allegory, which is always (in my opinion) a negative step.

Jeff said...

You've made me nostalgic for the old Walt Simonson Thor run. That was some fun stuff, in story and art.

The Mutt said...

Thor was brand new when I started reading comics, so I thought this was evident to everybody already.

Thor always wanted to hang with his hippie friends,, but his big, important Dad always had some chore for him to do. His suck-up brother was always getting him in hot water. Dad didn't like his wrong-side-of-the-tracks girlfriend, so Thor was always getting grounded or having his car keys taken away.

It was my life, plus gods and monsters.

Anonymous said...

I remember the creator of Sigil- well, the first writer, saying one of the premises behind the series' female protagonist getting immediately killed off was "what happens when the hero dies and the warrior has to take over?"

Huh? That doesn't make any sense! He's the hero, then! DUH!

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