Hacks: The Next Generation

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When I started reading comics - as I've said in several threads - especially at Marvel there'd be writers who were good company boys and able to churb out uninspired but vaguely coherent spandex material with no fuss and less recognition. Milgrom, Fingeroth, Layton, Kaminski, and so on.

When I got back into comics recently one of the things I remember saying (probably on here) is that even leaving aside the standout titles, the basic level of competence in mainstream comics production had risen immensely - everything was a lot slicker and more sophisticated than it was back in the 80s.

I'm not actually sure, anymore, if this is true - especially reading a lot of DC's One Year Later titles. The art is often fine, but the writing? Plodding plots, well-telegraphed twists, sparkless dialogue - like I say DC comes off worst but Marvel suffers too. The names "Palmiotti and Gray" on a comic, or "Daniel Way" or "Stuart Moore" or "Bruce Jones" (who I know is much older) - these fill me with as much ennui as Fingeroth ever did. They're just so....BORING at writing. (No doubt in 5 months one of them will google this and I'll feel awful.)

Anyway name-naming aside I think the point of this thread is to ask - what's wrong with comics writing at the moment? What are the good writers doing and the bad writers not doing? And - this is the real baffler - why don't editors notice when the comics they're making are bad?

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:20 (nineteen years ago)

This was partly sparked by thinking about story beats on the other thread and partly by the Freedom Fighters preview on Newsarama.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

why don't editors notice when the comics they're making are bad?

Yes!!! Although I would imagine that with tight deadlines it's hard to re-work, fire people because they're boring, etc.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:36 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, I imagine deadlines are key in this - better to have a tolerable guy that's on time versus a great guy that's always late.

Also: maybe the editors got worse! I read something on Priest's blog about Ye Olde Marvel Bullpen under Shooter's reign, & how he demanded his editors also write. Granted, a few of the names Tom mentions as the first wave of hacks (Fingeroth, Budiansky) were better known as editors, but I imagine having to write & submitting themselves to the editing process made them better editors (which is Priest's contention). Nowadays, writers write, editors edit, and the twain ain't meeting.

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:40 (nineteen years ago)

As I mentioned on a 52 thread (and ignored this one for a while thinking it was about Manga), DC especially (though I don't read enough Marvel to really be sure) has become editorially mandated. If you want to write DCU Comics, and you're name isn't Busiek, Morrison, Johns, Rucka or Waid (and presumably Dini and whoever the mega-high-profile-super-secret-Superman-writer turns out to be--and probably Meltzer & Heinberg, too), you're going to be merely servicing the greater editorial requirements.
Guys like P&G seem to be writing every single shit-dull mini coming out of Infinite Crisis.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:43 (nineteen years ago)

That's probably why I've only been reading out-of-continuity minis.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:48 (nineteen years ago)

Marvel used to have editorially-mandated stories, IIRC (cf. the Bob Harass editorial run / dictatorship on the X-titles post-Image; SPIDER REILLY), but now I'm not so sure. I think any hackery nowadays in the House of Ideas is purely the stuff of mediocre writing (cf. Way).

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:53 (nineteen years ago)

But the editorial mandate doesn't explain the basic lack of flair! I mean, my job involves copywriting stuff that my boss has drafted but that lack of an involvement puts even greater stock on my ability to bring the ideas to life and put them over, it doesn't excuse the lack of it.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 11 May 2006 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

Do one trick ponies count as hacks?
(i don't want this thread to slip off the page)

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:16 (nineteen years ago)

My idea of a hack is someone who can handle a wide range of material competently but without inspiration. An example from cinema would be Ron Howard.

― chap who would dare to be a nerd, not a geek (chap), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:19 (nineteen years ago)

splash was "without inspiration"?!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:21 (nineteen years ago)

EUGENE LEVY = INSPIRATION

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

Maybe its better to identify the peoplw ho aren't hacks, but churn out interesting, flairy bog-standard spandex stuff. And surely the current poster boy for this at Marvel is Slott.

Also Hacks cannot be really outstandingly Devin Grayson on Nightwing bad. Just, you know, dull.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

Slott isn't bog-standard is the problem! He should be a minimum level - you must be at least this competent to write comics.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:44 (nineteen years ago)

bog-standard

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:46 (nineteen years ago)

blog-standard?

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:49 (nineteen years ago)

James Robinson's current Batman/Detective Comics thing is utter hackery in auteurish clothing. I'm not entirely sure if his Starman is any good or not, since I haven't read most of it, and when I did read it, I was still at the point of not having read that many comics in the past decade where I was v. easily impressed. So I don't know if he's actually a hack, or if he's just hacking it up on Batman.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 18 May 2006 15:57 (nineteen years ago)

Is Steve Niles a hack? Because anyone who would say the following (re: his new origin of The Creeper to Nullarmada): gangsters don’t have costume parties so that part is g - o - n - e GONE! would get punched in the nuts on my block.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 18 May 2006 19:02 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure if the writing's got worse, or we've just got older, and therefore more hip to goodness/badness. There's certainly a lot of comics from the mid-to-late 80s that I really enjoyed, but seem pretty godawful when I read them again. (They're usually written by D3nny O'Neill or John Byrn3.)

I don't see Marvel being any better than DC at the moment -- the violence and hackery in the last Moon Knight was miles worse than anything I've seen from armripper Johns.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Thursday, 18 May 2006 20:31 (nineteen years ago)

WTF Battle for Blutclot 25th biggest selling comic for April

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 19 May 2006 15:22 (nineteen years ago)

MOON KNIGHT IN AT #6 ??????

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 19 May 2006 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

Nightwing outsells Captain America???

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 19 May 2006 15:28 (nineteen years ago)

And wrapping up the month we have the all-new, all-different Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1! Look for signed copies by Jimmy Palmiotti in July!

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 25 May 2006 17:51 (nineteen years ago)

seven months pass...

JMS is quickly becoming a high-profile hack. Tho he might've been one from the get-go. Ah, me.

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 12 January 2007 17:37 (nineteen years ago)

When I read his 'Rising Stars' I was really intrigued at the start - and as it went on (and got more and more delayed) it really did seem to become very hacky. The last "volume" might as well have been written by a guy who really didn't give a shit or have any involvement in the characters, and who was doing it for the money.

― James Morrison (JRSM), Friday, 12 January 2007 22:25 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't read anything he's done recently but his old Spidey is ok to pretty good execution of kinda lame to god awful ideas

― A B C (sparklecock), Saturday, 13 January 2007 01:27 (nineteen years ago)

I kinda like Stuart Moore and that guy who does Manhunter, kneejerk affection for DC books that seem like they were published just to get cancelled I guess. Opening this thread I was thinking JUDD WINICK but he's distinctive enough not to meet the criteria laid out here I suppose, he just sucks. Dare I say GAIL SIMONE fits the bill tho

― A B C (sparklecock), Saturday, 13 January 2007 01:32 (nineteen years ago)

Simone can clearly be a hack if she wants to be (see Gen 13, which is pretty execrable), but she has a fairly distinctive voice, even if it's not always an especially interesting one.

Mark Millar is being quite hack-y write now.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Saturday, 13 January 2007 19:05 (nineteen years ago)

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