Found this rant over at comicboards.com. Why does it sound like a sales pitch more than anything. And Peter David's response is great. Erik Larsen, WTF?!?!?!
WTF? He's ranting about creating original stuff? I don't remember him creating anything original. Lets create a large green guy. Incredible Hulk? No...we'll put a fin on his head....We'll call him the "Savage Dragon!!". What a load of horse crap!!
Meh, how dull, if it was Stan Lee or someone, then yeah, by all means, do it. But Savage Dragon? Outside of TMNT crossovers has anyone really read it?
I read SD and sure in the hell don't read TMNT. I like it it's very different form most other comics.
Is that because he can take his arm off and beat himself with it and it grows back? Hmn? Besides, my main point was one successful(?) comic does not really put one in a position to call out the rest of the industry now, does it?
True but i get some of what he is saying. 99% of of modern creator owned comics will not be remembers 5 or 10 years from now. Unlike the classic characters that we have loved for the past 30 - 60 years. So most new creators have no legeacy.
Yes, but thats because 99% of creator owned comics are derivative. Which is the problem. You have truly great creators like Daniel Clowes who are largely ignored because he doesn't do Superheroes, but he's indy, he owns all his own stuff, he's is successful. But does anyone give him his dues? Nope, because its not superhero stuff it's ignored by the majority of comic buyers and critics and it's sidelined as "art comics" or whatever you want to dub it as and treated as practically a different medium. I have no idea where I am going with this, but its the audiences that are at fault here, not the creators.
I like how this is coming from the man who published 22-odd issues of a shock value hack pissing all over Ninja Turtles.
To be fair though, he is the only Image founder who consistantly stayed with (and continued to work on) his own book. Even while publishing said Ninja Turtles series.
But that's only the surface. Savage Dragon isn't a scientist who changes back and forth from human to super-strong behemoth. For most of the comic SD is a cop in Chicago, then became a government agent, etc and still remained green with a fin. He has no secret identity. Maybe you could make an argument that Dragon is comparable to the merged Hulk of Peter David's run--and David did make a joke about it in one issue--but Dragon would have still have different circumstances and experiences than the Hulk. In fact, I think Zeek from SAVAGE DRAGON is a lot closer to the Hulk than Savage Dragon is, and Zeek doesn't really look like the Hulk, save for muscles: http://www.imagecomics.com/images/messageboard/ZEEK01.JPG http://www.imagecomics.com/images/messageboard/ZEEK02.JPG http://www.imagecomics.com/images/messageboard/ZEEK03.JPG
I wan't knock him for that, the fact that he actually gets off his arse and works means that i've got more time for him then I have for the likes of Beafeld and Todd-Head.
word up and F*** the campfells, mclard, mad, and crapp lazy bums who make the fans wait for months to years for a single issue to come out..but oh wait, they started on another series and dropped their current one(s)
While I agree with some of Erik's points, I don't agree with alot of them. Like Twist said, there are a lot of comics that could become as big as a Superman, or a Spider-Man, but they aren't superhero comics, so they are overlooked. The main problem is the ones that do superhero comics, don't bring anything new or interesting to the table. Spawn? Crap. Hell his costume is just a mix of Spiderman and Ghost Rider with a cape. Do people actually remember Valentino's Shadowhawk? Silvestri's Cyberforce? Liefeld's horrid horrid horrid Youngblood, Bloodstrike, Supreme, or Brigade? Portacio's Wetworks? (Which if I recall correctly we're STILL waiting for issue #1 yes, I know it came out. it's a joke on the many delays it had) Lee's WildC.A.T.S. has a bit of a following still, but only because it's promoted and published by DC now.
I remember people going nuts over this stuff when I very first started collecting comics. About the time these image books started folding was the same time both comic book stores in my hometown in alaska folded.
What Twin Twist said. But there is also a certain part whith that the huge companies that have built its income around super hero comics can't abandone what brings food to the table. So they try to keep their main source of readers. Super hero fans. No matter how small that crowd seems to be in contrary to the even BIGGER crowd of non superhero fans whou they really should focus on getting to read comics. Which in return creates a really narrow market for anything esle. The majority of the fans to the big name publishers still being super hero fans would also continually sneer upon anything different. Its a bad circle. But it is changing; people are tiring. But the change is slow and would only speed up in the inclusion of something drastic. Like sudden death of a publisher through napalm attack.
I'd rather read Waid on FF and Spiderman than his Hunter Killer. It's a decent book but nothing noteworthy. Larsen just hit it during the right time of a comic slump. Savage Dragon and Spawn were new ideas in a time when edgier comics were not around.
