Great Artists Have Trouble Selling Out

Mark Millar has a new comic coming out that has almost certainly already been optioned as a movie. I can't remember the name of it.

I used to love Mark Millar. I first came to his work when he replaced Warren Ellis on The Authority and I actually thought he had surpassed Ellis. I followed him onto Ultimate X-Men where he had an awkward, but creative run. However, his best work was probably The Ultimates. Even so, I followed his smaller creative owned work like Chosen, which was an... ironic but genuine telling of the second coming of Christ. (I'm being intentionally vague. Its one of those stories like The Sixth Sense that is ruined if you know what it is really about.)

He also did another comic at the same time called Wanted. It was an incredibly graphic and brutal depiction of a man joining a league of supervillains who have been running the world secretly for years. I never saw the movie because when I found out they were a guild of assassins rather than supervillains... well, to me the "cool factor" just plummeted.

Nowadays, Mark Millar is releasing creator-owned comics as fast as possible and marketing them even faster. The movie Kick-Ass was in production before the first comic was released. In order to keep his profile high and continue his working relationship with Marvel (who have extensive ties to Hollywood), Millar has continued to write stories within the Marvel universe, but they are increasingly shallow.

If you haven't read my review of Marvel's Civil War, check it out, but in a nutshell, Millar wrote a major Marvel crossover based on real life political issues then totally chickened out by stacking the deck and having an ending that didn't resolve anything. His recent Ultimate Avengers started with an introduction of the Red Skull as Steve Roger's illegitimate terrorist son... which to me signals that he no longer wants to expose themes that have worked for decades and instead wants to indulge his own ego. That's a perfectly fine choice for a writer, but he lost me as a fan in the process.

It made me think of some of my favorite comic artists and how difficult it is for them to sell out... like Grant Morrison or Sam Keith or Alan Moore or Terry Moore. Of those, only Alan Moore has had his comics adapted to film and this was done without his approval or consent.

But my very favorite artists write specifically for the medium they are in. By that, I don't just mean that they write dialog, characters, and a story that use the strengths of sequential storytelling (and they do), but more than that, the material is geared to a particular audience that is both child-like and mature. Comic fans indulge in fantasy escapism, but we also become accustomed to incredibly complex and meaningful symbolism. The more comics engage us on this level, the more complex future comics are libel to become. It is the inflation of expectations.

Now, I don't particularly want these artists to sell out. I just want them to be well compensated for work that I think is more deserving than whatever masturbatory adolescent fantasy Mark Millar has managed to crank out this month. I mean, I can't imagine any Sam Keith comic that would adapt well into a live action film, although I would love to see some short animated films based on his work.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the mainstream hasn't caught up to the maturity of comics. They think animation is for children despite brilliant adult works works such as AKIRA, Fantasia, or The Triplets of Belleville. They also think big expensive blockbusters work best when they are geared toward a teenage audience that they treat with contempt.

I'd love to see a live action Invisibles movie (preferably set in the '90s because I think the fashion was period specific), but I honestly think the biggest impediment to that is Lord Fanny, the transsexual shaman. Hollywood can't include that character without the risk of alienating teenage males who are insecure about their sexuality... and they can't exclude her without alienating fans of the comic. It's a form of discrimination normalized by corporate greed.

Like I suggested in my previous post, I think TV is a better place for comics because they aren't trying to put everything in a two-hour "sink or swim" film. They are trying to keep people watching and encourage more people to watch, so the material is richer and more organic.

How about a Strangers in Paradise HBO series? I would pirate that in a heart-beat.

Its hard for a real artist to sell out. There are reasons why many of the best artists died poor. They had true talent. The kind of talent that cannot be easily marketed or reproduced in other media.