Buffy The Vampire Slayer

With Joss Whedon’s ASTONISHING X-MEN on its way, Bulent Yusuf looks at the phenomenon of the celebrity writer and asks, do we really need to look beyond comics to find yet more writers who can’t keep a deadline?

So, Joss Whedon, creator and writer of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, has been anointed as the writer of ASTONISHING X-MEN. Not too far behind him is Bryan Singer, director of two successful movies starring our merry band of mutants, who’s agreed to co-plot a year’s worth of ULTIMATE X-MEN. The top brass over at Marvel Comics are no doubt very pleased about this little arrangement, but to the rest of us it just proves that the ’House of Ideas’ has run out of exactly that. Ideas.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing the creative gifts of either Whedon or Singer. Between them, we have the collective pop-cultural delights of THE USUAL SUSPECTS, TOY STORY, SPEED, and of course, Sarah Michelle Gellar on our television screens for seven years. For all of these I am eternally grateful.

The problem is that the worlds of film and television are growing ever closer to that of the comic book industry, to the point where the unique identity of the medium is in danger of becoming submerged.

In the short term, there is positive publicity, yes, and both the die-hard fans and the casual reader may well snap up the first couple of issues. There’s a crossover appeal, where the TV/film audience for the work of the celebrity wordsmith might be tempted to check out their work in comics. Sales go up, and the industry lives to fight another day.

’The use of celebrity writers proves that the House of Ideas is out of ideas.’ In the long term, however, we should be asking how qualified these celebrities are to determine the futures of our favourite characters. It sounds pompous, but writing funny books is a serious business, and they have a sophisticated audience. If one of these celebrities underestimates the workings of the medium, then their book will be an embarrassing failure, and the market gets cheapened that little bit more (if that’s possible).

More importantly, these same celebrity writers are helping to put more ’conventional’ writers out of a job. These writers don’t have the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood to herald their arrival, they may well have a decent story they want to tell through comics. But they’re not getting the opportunity, because the big names are squeezing them out.

But let’s try and quantify these remarks. Any Kevin Smith fans in the house? If so, then avert your eyes now. If ever there was an "Exhibit A" of the worst kind of celebrity writer, it would be Mr Smith. CLERKS is perhaps the only decent film he’s made in his whole career, and yet the fact that he’s a fan of comic books and that he’s buddies with Matt ’n’ Ben seemed to be qualification enough to let him play around with characters like Daredevil and Green Arrow.

This was plainly a mistake - his comics work is characterised by leaden dialogue, implausible plots, and pathetic jokes. And with the SPIDER-MAN/BLACK CAT and DAREDEVIL/BULLSEYE mini-series he committed an even worse sin; the inability to meet a deadline. Readers have been left hanging for the conclusion to these stories for nearly a year now.

’How qualified are these celebrities to determine the futures of our comics?’ Elsewhere, we have J Michael Straczynski, who made his name as the creator and writer of the TV series. BABYLON 5. Like Smith, Straczynski’s characters tend to suffer from verbal diarrhoea. Perhaps this overabundance of speech balloons is a carry-over from writing for the screen, which is more forgiving of talking heads.

Straczynski’s run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN started off strong, but quickly degenerated because of a preponderance of stories concerning magic, mysticism and ’spider-totems’. Which isn’t to say that he’s a weak writer, but one senses that Straczynski is looking to work on a broader palette than traditional super heroics, and one without the continuity baggage. If you were to read SUPREME POWER, for instance, you’d hardly believe that this politically astute thriller and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN were written by the same person.

Every now and then there is the exception to the rule. Geoff Johns, who built his reputation on scripting titles like FLASH, JSA, HAWKMAN and TEEN TITANS, claims that he learned everything about storytelling at the knee of Richard Donner while working in the film business. Donner, if you recall, was the man who directed one and a half of the immensely popular SUPERMAN movies for Warner Brothers. But Johns has proved his worth to DC by producing one great story after another, and obviously treats writing for comics as his primary profession, not as a working holiday from the stresses of Hollywood.

I’m not saying that celebrity writers shouldn’t be writing for comic books at all, but nor should they be given carte blanche to play with big league characters when they haven’t earned the right to do so. Joss Whedon started out smart with his FRAY mini-series, chronicling the adventures of another vampire slayer in a dystopian future. This was an exercise in learning the ropes of sequential storytelling while using familiar material.

But an enjoyable romp though it was, that eight issue mini-series took three years to complete; can Whedon guarantee better regularity and commitment with X-MEN? We’ll have to wait and see.

’Kevin Smith’s comics work is characterised by leaden dialogue and implausible plots.’ Bryan Singer is probably the more interesting development of the two, because his drift into the comics industry proper means that the Marvel Age of Movies has now come full circle. The ULTIMATE line was initially conceived as a means of introducing new readers to familiar characters by scrapping the continuity and going back to square one. They took their visual and stylistic cues from the first X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN movies, and many of their core readers were drawn from the same people who liked the various film properties that Marvel has produced in an astonishingly brief period of time.

Thanks to Avi Arad, the company has worked very hard to foster ties with Hollywood, and it’s often joked that it’d be cheaper for Marvel to stop producing comic books altogether and focus on making movies.

But the thing to remember about Singer’s employment is that the third X-MEN movie is looming in the minds of many a Marvelite. Is this writing gig just a clever ploy to raise anticipation? Will Singer be using this opportunity to publicly storyboard the next instalment of his cinematic opus?

I could be absolutely wrong, and Singer’s run on ULTIMATE X-MEN could be a wonderful read. But what if I’m right? Many jokes have their origins in truth, and it’s clear by now that Marvel really is using its comics as advertising billboards for film projects. This is wrong, and robs the comics themselves of individuality, value and dignity. DC was bought outright by Warner Bros many years ago for the express purpose of utilising the movie rights to its stable of characters, but DC has never been as ruthless as Marvel when it comes to exploiting the commercial potential of its rich history and characters.

Hopefully, this obsession with celebrity writers is just a fad, and like all fads, it will soon go away. When a reader picks up a comic book, they deserve a decent story written by dedicated craftsmen, and not the vanity project of an odd-jobbing Hollywood exile.

And if it doesn’t? Well, perhaps then we’ll see the day when a schmuck like Ben Affleck guest writes DOCTOR STRANGE: SORCEROR SUPREME. Or perhaps the Comics Code Authority stamp will be replaced by a badge that frantically implores us to catch the film, watch the TV show, eat the Happy Meal, play with the toys, and, of course, buy the t-shirt.