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Thursday, September 9, 2010
An Indie Editor's Work Is Never Done
When I make the mistake of engaging in online discussions with comic book readers whose identities are unknown to me and whom I will probably never meet, there is a certain troubling comment that seems to recur: that other people could do my job so much better than I can, or -- more charitably -- that I could do my job so much better than I am doing.
It is troubling because when you're slightly neurotic and insecure about your own competence (and because I am working on my Master's thesis and preparing for comprehensive exams I am like this all the time these days) someone insinuating that you're a fuck up activates that voice in the back of your head that tells you, "It's quite possible that anonymous people who don't know you or anything about what you do are entirely right, you know."
All over the Internet, it seems, comic book readers are relishing the position of armchair editor. I have it easy compared to the guys who head the "Big Two." Just recently, an anonymous person calling him/her/itself "starks" on the Comic Bloc message board is calling for DC comics president Paul Levitz to step down because he won't allow crossover comics with Marvel. (Please note that I don't frequent the Comic Bloc message board; I found this threw a Blog@Newsarama post.) Others do disagree and defend Levitz. There are four pages of people repeating that they don't care to see any DC/Marvel crossovers. "Stormking" offers some business strategy to DC: "DC really needs to strengthen its licensing arm and get their stuff out of the Hot Topics, 6 Flags, or LCS's and into the Targets and Wal-Marts."
What's apparent is that these comics fans feel that they have something personally at stake in DC; they feel a connection to the company that publishes the comics they read. They want or don't want this or that from them; they have ideas about what the company needs to do. And they'll talk about it amongst themselves. They'll pick apart what they think the company is doing wrong, then others will pick apart what they say.
I'm guilty of it, too. I criticized Joe Quesada's performance on The Colbert Report along with everyone else who wasn't on The Colbert Report and who will never be on The Colbert Report and who isn't editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and who will never be editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. Hell, I don't even read Marvel comics and there I was, at the lunch table, telling my co-workers how much I thought Quesada blew it by revealing that Civil War is a convoluted mess even when the company's editor-in-chief tries to articulate what it's about. Of course, I've never read Civil War either.
So when I found myself on a message board with someone I don't know criticizing how Dan and I do our jobs because he/she/it had been interested in Tron and then had forgotten to buy it when it came out, I saw the parallel between his/her/its behavior and my own and got to thinking: What the hell is wrong with us? Well, what's wrong with me is a different subject entirely, but I'll take a guess about folks like the DC readers at Comics Bloc.
Comics readers sometimes aren't so much appreciators of an art form, but more like sports fans. You know, the guys who will never be baseball managers and sit in the stands or on their living room couches and chew out baseball managers from afar for their failure to use the hit-and-run. Sports fans do this, I think, because they have a personal investment in "their" team. They speak about their favorite team in the first person plural; their emotions often depend on the success or failure of their team. Fans often carry a sense of entitlement, too. An "I'm the fan; therefore you must do all you can to please me" attitude. Comics fans feel this way about the companies who publish their superhero books. Just look at that Comics Bloc thread I linked to. Or the person who seemed to believe that if someone didn't show up on his/her/its doorstep with a copy of Tron #1 Dan and I weren't doing our jobs.
The times when I see attitudes like those on display in that post are the times when I am grateful that I work for an independent comic publisher and not DC or Marvel. Unless I put myself out there for the scrutiny, comment, critique and lambasting of the public (like, say, by writing a monthly column for a comics news and review site), I mostly get to do what I do without fans on comic sites everywhere chattering about it.
And what do I do? Well, most people aren't sure what comic book editors do, and I'm not even sure what other comic book editors do. But in any given day, if you were to spy on my extremely glamorous life, you'd find me answering queries from our artists about page layouts and story directions, getting books off to the printer, reading scripts, eating cookies, updating the website and blog, sending out review copies, training the new intern, checking proofs, drinking tea, designing books, answering phones, singing Smiths songs under my breath, writing press releases, reading submissions, filing, and staring at my schedule spreadsheet and sighing.
That's what I do, and I've done it for more than four years as editor-in-chief at SLG. I like to think that I'm pretty good at it. I like to think that I always can be better at what I do, too. But I don't think I'm going to do better at it by taking a "give the people what they want" mentality. That strategy works for DC and Marvel -- they are, after all, caretakers of brands. Their iconic superheroes have been in the consciousness of their fans for so long that those fans feel a collective ownership of those characters. I'm in a much different position. For the most part, none of my responsibilities are to fans who have specific expectations to be met.
My primary responsibility is to SLG, of course. When I recommend a project for publication to Dan, I do think about whether the project is one that will sell, but I frame this consideration with different questions: Is this a comic that people will enjoy reading? (Not "Is this the type that people are demanding?") Is this a comic that means something to the creator besides just selling a project? (Not "Is this a comic with a lot of hype potential?") And once I am working with an artist on their project, I am aware at all times that the story, the characters, everything about the comic, belong to the artist. If I advise changes it is because of my responsibility to try to encourage the best work from artists -- in service of their work and the company I work for.
Some of the projects I've recommended to Dan have not been the best of sellers for us unfortunately, and experiences like that have altered my naïve former belief that good stories and good art will find readers. My new belief: they will find readers, but not nearly enough of them. We always have to think of ways to find more of them. And that is why I have to believe that I can be better at what I do. I have to believe that I can do better, that I can fulfill my responsibility as an editor -- to the company I work for, to the works that artists entrust us with, and to the medium as a whole -- and get more good comics into more readers' hands. Now if only that voice would stop telling me that I'll never figure how.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
