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General / House Characters In Comics
« on: 30 September, 2017, 01:47:23 PM »Obviously I'm quoting this because it accords with my own views, but it's worth reading/hearing in its own right, not least because it's more incisive than anything we've produced in the prog review thread lately.
Julius Howe, from an unusually thoughtful* episode of the Everything Comes Back To 2000ad podcast:
'Dredd's always been a story that's about forward momentum, whereas War Buds reflects on the past. I'd love to know where Wagner's taking Dredd, because all that will happen at the end of this is the other writers will go back to satirical strips that don't take the story forward.
The book Simpsons Confidential does a really good job of showing how the success of that show wasn't down to one person. Sam Simon told the writers to mine their personal history as story material, which is why those early episodes felt so honest.
When John Wagner writes Dredd, you get John Wagner in the story, and I think that's something missing from a lot of 2000ad stories. Dan Abnett is a great writer, but I don't know who Dan Abnett is because you don't get a lot of Dan Abnett from his stories. Dredd feels so consistent because there's so much of John Wagner coming through.
When those original Simpsons writers moved on, the writers who replaced them were basing what they wrote entirely on The Simpsons. I think that's the same kind of thing you get with Dredd. You've got this Icon (or Titan) of British comics, with all this history, and the writers are basing their stories on the back story.
Rob Williams is writing stories he wants to tell but with Dredd in them; Al Ewing and Michael Carroll are replicating Wagner stories but bringing a bit of themselves. They're really good writers, but the stories don't quite work because the character's so closely associated with his creator.
Even though other writers have come and gone, it's always been John Wagner who took the strip forward. Now we've got this power struggle to see who's going to be the voice of Judge Dredd, but the voice of Judge Dredd is always going to be John Wagner.
I don't think anyone can replace him, because Judge Dredd is not a corporate character - he's too closely tied to his creator. It would be like someone else writing ABC Warriors, or replacing John Smith on Devlin Waugh.
Rebellion are trying to look at these characters as if they're Marvel properties, but they're not. The difference between US and UK characters is they're creator owned characters who aren't owned by their creators.
The characters Tharg tried to treat like corporate IPs - Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog(s), Robohunter - should have been a lesson learned. Treating these characters as anything other than the product of their creators doesn't work.
With a few exceptions, Alan Grant's recent Anderson stories haven't been great. I don't think he feels he has more to say with the character, but I don't think bringing in another writer helps. New writers need to develop new characters that embody their personalities and take them forward in their own way.
Judge Janus is universally hated, but she was a character who embodied the interests of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. The stories weren't very good, but they were of their time and of their creators.
I don't think putting Morrison and Millar on Judge Anderson would have made the Anderson strip better, because that strip is such a product of its creators.
Creators need to feel appreciated or they're not going to produce their best work.
If you treat creators separately from their creations, you don't foster a relationship with those creators. Especially with a creator like John Smith, who's quite out there, you've got to put a lot of effort into that relationship and getting them where they need to be to produce their best work.
John Smith was terrible at endings - people just basically turned into lizards or something - but the enjoyment of the stories as they went along was immense. I couldn't understand a lot of what was going on in Revere, but I still enjoyed reading it every week.
Rebellion want a situation like the Marvel production line, but with 2000ad that results in something quite ordinary. That kind of system produces a structure that's functional but lacking the vital spark of originality that makes the best work so memorable.'
The aspect of this commentary I find most persuasive is that it doesn't figure other writers as hacks who lack talent or idiots who simply do not understand what makes a character so great. As Garth Ennis and Douglas Wolk demonstrate, it's possible to write fairly ordinary Dredd strips but still be able to write eloquently and powerfully about Dredd.
The other aspect of Julius's disquisition that resonated with me is the focus on the connection between reader and writer, as opposed to between reader and character. I've never really understood why comic readers follow characters, as opposed to creators.
It's the personality of the writer ** that shines through and causes me to invest in Dredd, Strontium Dog, Indigo Prime and Devlin Waugh. I'm not sure there's anything inherently special about those characters (or any others) - the ordinary-to-awful results of Tharg's previous attempts at turning original creations into house characters suggests not.
* I say thoughtful, but you have to fast forward through an (admittedly entertaining) hour of middle aged men drinking gin and singing cartoon theme tunes to get to the incisive analysis: https://2000ad.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/ecbt2000ad-ep340/
** ... and, in the rare case of Strontium Dog, the artist
