Comics: The Lure of the Artwork!

The week’s comics reflected a very, very old pattern of mine: buying for artists rather than writers. It would be wrong to say that for most of my comics-buying life I cared much more about a title’s artwork than about its writing; far closer to the truth to say I didn’t care about the writing at all – to the point where I’d routinely buy issues or even entire runs of books whose writing, the actual characters and plots, didn’t interest me in the slightest. If John Romita Jr. drew Iron Man, then I’d buy the latest Iron Man, even though the character bored me spitless. If Dave Gibbons drew Green Lantern, I’d buy the latest Green Lantern, even though the character was tedium incarnate. This even applied when my favorite artists were, shall we say, miscast in their latest art chores. When the mighty Gene Colan briefly drew Wonder Woman, I dutifully bought the issues, even though he made Wonder Woman look like Bella Abzug’s older sister. When the sublime artistry of Michael Golden was lavished on Micronauts, or the equally-sublime artistry of José Luis García-López lavished on Atari Force, I not only loyally bought the issues but also loyally write letters praising the artwork.

Friends over the decades pointed out that this could be construed as a standing insult to the very medium I professed to love. “What you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter how well or poorly the issues are written,” one such friend (who’s since gone on to write some mighty fine comics himself) would argue on fragrant evenings in Madison. “Which means you’re saying they CAN’T be well-written enough to get your money even if you don’t like the artist.”

I confess, at the time and for the longest time afterwards, the very idea of buying a comic for the writing alone – a comic whose artwork did nothing for me – was simply bewildering to me. After all, weren’t comic books an entirely visual medium?

I didn’t quite track the exact period when that predisposition changed, but here in the 21^st century, it’s certainly different. The writing in superhero comics has been steadily improving since the 1990s, to the point where the baseline level of complexity and humor in 2017 is easily enough to keep me reading an ongoing title even if it’s drawn by Barry Kitson.

So I was given a little jolt of nostalgia this week when I realized that as random chance would have it, the latest issues I was buying were chosen entirely because of their artwork. For instance, there was the third issue of Marvel’s Occupy Avengers, written by David Walker and drawn by the great Carlos Pacheco. The series seems to be following the Avenger Hawkeye as he travels across America slowly and gradually accumulating a team of weak-ass third-string superheroes to fight local crimes. The writing is slangy and energetic, but Walker inexplicably makes Hawkeye not only a weakling (in this issue he takes a beating from Nighthawk that, as Pacheco draws it, should have left him blind and severely crippled) but a bad shot – but I’ve been buying the issues anyway, because I wouldn’t miss any work done by Pacheco.

Likewise the great Lee Weeks, who does the art for issue #7 of DC’s new Titans title, featuring grown-up “Rebirth”-continuity versions of the Teen Titans. There’s Nightwing, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy … but the usual messy post “New 52” continuity makes a hash of who knows who, who’s always known who, etc. Luckily, the issue’s writer, Dan Abnett, makes up a lot of this lost ground by crafting instantly likable versions of all these characters – although even that little toe-hold is pried loose in this issue by the appearance of the “Rebirth”-continuity Superman, who hails from the same pre-reboot universe as Kid Flash. The two of them have a muddled and halting talk about it in this issue, just matter-of-factly discussing the fact that they now live in an alternate reality in which none of their old friends and loved ones remember their old relationships. Superman’s best theory? “Something weird is definitely going on.” These characters, the ones readers have followed for decades, would ordinarily be banding together and stopping at nothing to return to their own home reality … but since DC wants the “Rebirth” continuity to further the “New 52” reboot rather than re-write it, our two survivors here simply accept the loss of their earlier lives. Which is pretty maddening.

I expected to be maddened by the third issue under consideration this time around, and it, too, I bought for its art: issue #14 of the “Rebirth” Wonder Woman, written by Greg Rucka and drawn magnificently by Nicola Scott. I hadn’t been reading this title prior to noticing this issue, so I was coming aboard deep inside an ongoing story chronicling the “Rebirth”-version of Wonder Woman’s first year in Man’s World. In this issue, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor are fighting the evil war-god Ares, and maybe it’s Rucka’s vision of the early years of the character, but I absolutely loved the issue; the glowering, sword-wielding savage “New 52” version the Amazon princess is nowhere in evidence – this version has the glowing lariat but no sword at all, and her costume is brightly-colored, and her nature is full if caring optimism; it was like getting the best version of the character back again for a single issue … and drawn with delightful grace by Scott.

There were other issues on the stands this week, plenty of them, and given the merry-go-round of creators on most comics these days, the great artists featured in these issues will probably be gone next month. But for now, it was great to snap up some comics for my oldest reason.