The hubbub over Joss Whedon on X-Men highlights the industry practice of searching high and low for "hot" new talent at the expense of industry stalwarts. Though this has been going on for decades, it wasn't until Quesada and Jemas that that veteran talents were junked wholesale to make way for artists with little track record, screenwriters, and the occassional Hollywood big name.

I think many of us "traditionalists" on the Byrne Forum believe that artists and writers get better at their craft over time. We are eager to see what Byrne, Miller, Perez, Stern, Cockrum, and many, many others have to share with us now that they are better than they ever were.

On the other hand Quesada and his supporters believe that new talent is necessary to bring new attention to comics. The parade of Hollywood names will provide the kind of public exposure that will resuscitate comic books. And new fan-originated talent will make comics "culturally relevant" again.

Opinions?


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[cuz the typo in the title was making me CRAZY!!!]

Remember, too, that many of the people hiring the Hollywood Big Guns have Hollywood aspirations themselves. They're sucking up to people who they think might provide them a way Out of comics.

Hmm...Marvel puts out one book with "new" talent Joss Whedon (a guy who's told good stories before through the Buffy-verse), while also putting out books with "old" talents Claremont, Davis, LaRocca, etc.

Where's the problem? (Other than the continual hiring of Chuck Austen, who has yet to write a good X-Men comic) You couldn't get George Perez, anyway- he doesn't seem to want to draw superheroes anymore. We'd all love to have JB back on a Marvel title, but we know that's not going to happen. If that's the problem, say that- but the fact that Joe Q won't hire JB has nothing to do with Whedon.

When I bitched and moaned about Knights 4 #1, I wasn't upset that Marvel had hired new talent for the book. I was upset that they hired talent that couldn't tell a good FF story. There's a difference. I'm confident Whedon can tell a good X-Men story, and I'm looking forward to his run.

John nailed it. They want NAMES, not talent. There's very little talent in the spotlight today, but names, they've got in abundance. Maybe they should start calling Marvel's product "movie books". -Rick

I JUST KNOW IT!!!!!

(ok, so maybe I don't know it ... but I'm sure hopin it very strongly).

Howard Chaykin's doing Challengers of the Unknown, dude.

at least 3 FF books running simultaneously then why can't there be two Challenger books?

Please let my fantasy continue for just a few more weeks

i just want to know why the hell we can't see more "superstars" coming to the table with an amazing older artist who deserves some limelight?

say what you will about Rawhide Kid, it was really good to see Severin drawing such a hyped book. the art on that series was beautiful.

Geoff Johns, David Goyer, Patton Oswalt and JMS have all been doing pretty good work.



cactusmaac

I hadn't thought of Geoff Johns in regards to "Hollywood" talent before, but you're right. He was an assistant of Richard Donner's, I believe. However, he wasn't a "big name" creator like JMS or Whedon.

It is certainly a disturbing trend to see workhorses like Byrne, O'Neil, Aparo, etc. not getting the amount of work they want/deserve in favor of some flavor of the month...however, hasn't this ALWAYS been the case?

Weren't some of the Golden Age greats removed from books because their style fell out of favor? Weren't a whole lot of writers almost literally kicked out of DC Comics because they attempted to form a union so they might get, of all things, health benefits?

Now, I'm not saying I agree with such practices, but, certainly we all, in this day in age, know that the INDUSTRY does not take care of its own! Ask Steve Ditko!

Matthew Hansel
matthewphansel@mac.com

We're seeing something in comics now that has not quite happened before. After the "Golden Age" there was a fairly length interregnum, in which virtually no new talent came in. Neal Adams, in the mid 60s, was probably the first to break this invisible barrier, and in quick succession a lot of people followed, ending the surge with the likes of me or Frank Miller, depending on how far you want to stretch it.

The result of this, however, was that many of the artists who had been doing the books before this influx of new talent were actually Old Guys, retirement age, who. . . retired! (Yes, some got screwed, but not all). There were the "youngsters", like Kirby, Dirko, Kubert, Gil Kane, Infantino, who had come in just before the "break" and they continued to get work for many years (still in some cases), but a lot of us (us being the new kids from Neal thru Frank) simply slid into spots other artists were more or less naturally vacating. There was no sense, then, that, say, I was working on X-MEN because someone else had been booted off, or that Frank got DAREDEVIL via "rising by assassination". (The closest I recall to coming to this was when I heard some of the older guys at Charlton were a we bit ticked that I had, in a matter of months, risen to the company's top page rate, something that had taken them years to achieve. I was, however, doing so on titles that had not existed before, so no one was losing work because of me.)

Much more in evidence today is a clear tendency all round to shuffle off the "old guys" (one of Todd McFarlane's pet phrases for anyone who was in comics before he was) in favor of the New Hot Talent.

I wish they'd forget this "hot" business entirely. That term has absolutely no meaning. Joe Kubert is doing the most exciting work of his career--but he's been around for decades. Is he "hot?" Complete bullshit.

It's seems to have become a zero-sum game with streak of cannabilism. For example the online "reviewers" and bloggers who make it a point to tear down the work of one specific pro or another, and who make no secret their desire to become professionals themselves.