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THE CREATORS' PARTY.. By Any Other Name
PART 1 
It stands for the Creators' Party in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Thus saith Professor Amritas in a riveting dissertation on the role of the comics and their creators in today's troubled world. It's followed by another article on the Arab/Western standoff, both of which I'll discuss here. Both highly recommended reading for comics creators, professionals and lovers alike - both bound by the legacy of Jack Kirby, king of the creators, and a childhood friendship which exemplified the heroes he gave us. What makes comics such a potentially important medium? Why would it be tragic for Amekomi [Japanese for 'comics'] to deteriorate into little more than a memetic well for other media? My answer is that comics are the closest we've come to seeing what I call an individual's 'total vision'. A great comic is like a direct dose of the output of a creator's mind. Movies, TV shows, video games, etc. are all large-scale collaborations, and maybe it's surprising that an individual vision can still sometimes shine through the mixture. Comics, OTOH, involve small-scale collaboration (e.g., between a single writer and a single artist with the aid of a colorist and a letterer), or even no collaboration at all (if a creator writes, draws, colors, and letters his own story). When I look at a 70s or 80s 傑克柯比 Jack Kirby comic, I see, no, I experience his 'total vision'. His characters speak Kirbyese, wear Kirby 'klothes', live in Kirbuildings ... Each and every aspect of their two-dimensional realm was 'kreated' by the King himself (with the exception of their coloring in most cases). Kirby's highly stylized worlds can never be mistaken for the real thing and yet they mirror our reality better than a lot of photorealistic art. His 'New God' Orion is all of us, hiding our true face from others as he struggles with the demon within - his father's ugly legacy. We are Kamandi and OMAC, fighting for survival in an alternately animalistic and technocentrist future jungle. We are Silver Star, Homo geneticus, 'superior' to our ancestors in so many ways, yet still stuck in the same savage rut. Powerful as the comics are, however, they're not so easy to find these days. Not the way they were in the newsstands and drugs stores several decades ago:
American comic books, once a mass medium, are now difficult to find except in 'comics shops' which are few and far between. Since there are no comic shops in my neighborhood, I have not seen a single comic book since I moved to 新澤西 Xin Zexi. (I am not counting comics digests like Disney Adventures Comic Zone which do not contain the superheroes considered to be part of the Amekomi 'mainstream'.) I have been buying comics by mail order for years because of the difficulty in obtaining what used to be on newsstands everywhere. Amekomi would not be so obscure if it still offered messages that 'civilians' - people not like the Comic Book Guy - could relate to. In 1977, when comics appeared to be on a deathbed (with much better sales than today, btw) a new publisher was brought to DC to attempt to revive the enterprise. Neal Adams, then activist leader of the creators' community, in an advisory status with DC, pointed to the problem of comics sales being that the newsstands and drugs stores weren't displaying the comics enough because of their low price. The stores preferred to give the shelf space to more lucrative magazines and journals. Neal went on to inspire the implementation of the Dollar Comics series at DC, which showed there's a popular buying market for higher priced comics with robust content. This was the intermediate stage in the evolution of the form which later gave birth to the graphic novel. It beckoned a new era for the visual storytelling medium. It was also the turning point for merchandising and marketing of comics properties with the advent of the first Superman film starring Christopher Reeve - the first of the blockbuster movies based on comics creations now flooding Hollywood. I've said this before but this is a good opportunity to expand on it. Looking at the present situation, comics sales are at an all time low but the big publishers appear to be content with this. No real effort is being made to bolster comics sales and turn them into a popular cultural item. The publishers don't need to, because they make their big profits from the marketing and merchandising of the comics properties. The publishers retain this great source of intellectual property which the comics creators give them and wage a psychological war on the creator community, claiming that sales are so low that their work has little value beyond today's equivalent of work for hire status. This is how the major publishers have put out the fires which began with Siegel and Shuster's claim for just recompense in the wake of the first Superman film of the 1970's. It was then, in the late 1970's, that the cynical manipulation of comics distribution began by DC and Marvel. Instead of bolstering the price and content of the comics and keeping them at the public's reach in the newsstands and drugs stores, the publishers made a pact with the major comics distributors working the conventions, to deflect the comics buying market into secluded comics stores. This was the move which guaranteed that Neal Adams' vision for a strong and healthy comics industry would never see the light of day. The move which guaranteed that the creators would remain psychologically subjugated with a perpetually dying comic book industry - and allow for the cynical strong-arming of their creations by the publishers. Sure, a few creators have overcome the psychological bombardment. A few have even taken advantage of the bells and whistles which seduced the comics shop owners in the 1980's, and went on to become self publishers. These few, however, are the exception. The vast majority of the creator community remains shackled today by the state of affairs in the comics industry at the hands of the major publishers. Amritas on Kirby:
In his final interview before his death in 1994, the King said, In creating villains, Jack Kirby drew on his respect for the evil of legend, but made a concentrated effort to draw, and later writer, all of his characters as human beings, as people. "They act just the way real people would in extraordinary situations. That's why my characters are believable ... "I was drawing people that I knew," the King recalls, "on the streets of New York and Brooklyn. All the places I lived. I knew how they would react and I drew them that way. I had a lot of fights and arguments myself. But I was always on the right side, the hero. Believe me, at that time, people were hero-oriented." Kirby points out that the heroic qualities in people are still there, but require a certain type of situation to appear.
That situation is here and now. It's the human condition. Conflict is our way of life, and resolution is our universal goal. Despite all the depressing news and the deterioration of comic book heroes, real flesh-and-blood heroes still walk among us - and among them are the comic book creators. Amritas points to the effectiveness of the shorter name The Creators' Party, with which I agree, once we have indications for growing support from the comics creators. Based on his perceptions, however, we may be seeing a simultaneous interest also generating outside of the comics community. Reason Magazine's online coverage of the subject was an early indication of the curiosity and hope the idea garners in the murky arena of American politics. Will The Creators live up to their name? Will they slowly let go of corporate caped icons and increasingly turn toward self-expression? Before they can free the country, they have to free themselves from sixty-year-old fetters. Perhaps The Creators are not meant to be politicians. Perhaps their true role is to create the ideas that will inspire both leaders and voters to make better decisions that will benefit all of us. It's truly rare to read such insight, concern and faith in the creative force within the human spirit. Since the first words I read from Amritas, I've been captivated by his piercing message and confident tone which transcend the bits and bytes upon which they ride. Captivated much in the same way Jack Kirby captivated me with his visions and stories of other worlds that told so much about ours. Amritas: Creator.
What if The Creators as a whole don't deliver? Then what? Are we just a passive audience waiting to be saved? Would they have doomed us? No, for if linguistics has taught me anything, it is that we are all creators. Each of us has built our own personal language - our idiolect - and our own worldview. The Creator has made us in His image. The Maker has begat more makers. We are not powerless. In our own small ways - e.g., this blog - we too try to express ourselves. I can't wait for others to speak for me. In the 1984 reprint edition of New Gods, the King of the Creators said to us readers - the little-c creators - We'll do it together! You and I shall stay with it! And watch a giant image grow - like the talents and terrors of our times!
Permalink Posted: 11:46 AM EST
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