Hey, superhero editors!

Superhero universes appealed to me as a kid because they had everything in them. Real-world elements, fantasy, space opera, magic. You could do a sci-fi story, a detective story, a mystical story, historical fiction, parallel worlds; stories about slavery, war, domestic violence; romance, soap opera, stories about kids; or combinations of things. The one thing you can't do is something that depends on one of your elements not existing.

Even then, if you dump universal consistency you can. Ever see the Moon Knight miniseries that dealt with UFO's in a more real-world/UFO lore way? It was as if Moon Knight was not a part of a world with Galactus, Mar-Vell, or other terrestrial manifestations of extra-terrestrial life. But Marvel published it, not as part of "Avengers" or something, just as its own series. Hey, why not?

Still, you aren't going to do a realistic space exploration story with characters who live on an implausibly human-habitable Titan (moon of Saturn, well past the "snow line" of the Solar System) or travel to & from the Large Magellanic Cloud in a few weeks. So yeah, certain categories of realism get defined out.

But you can do kinds of stories, realistic or not; a wide variety of kinds of stories; and that's my point.

The Incredible Hulk is not a superhero, narrowly defined. He's a monster, mostly. Dakota North & Slam Bradley are non-powered detectives. Swamp Thing may have super-hero type moments, as may Man-Bat, but they, and the Man-Thing, are strange creatures in horror comics. But they all exist, or are permitted to exist, in super-hero universes.

And then there are concepts like Damage Control (the Ernie Colón series) that exist in a world with super-heroes but aren't action heroes themselves.

Or heroes of a more psychological bent: I wasn't familiar with Nightmask, but I did read some Jenni Gregory: Dreamwalker, & I remember when Mesmero found a legitimate use for his talents in Claremont's Excalibur run. Dream manipulation, hypnosis/hallucination--there's some neat stuff there, which is qualitatively different from Thor punching Air-Walker or Superman stopping a lynching.

So, comic-book universes, super-hero universes, they used to be amazing. Cool, wild, diverse, vast playgrounds for horror, romance, teen romps, political fiction, what have you.

You know what ruins superhero comix? Focusing on a narrow definition of superheroes & superhero stories. If someone refuses to step outside a given box, and the box is defined narrowly, then are they going to produce good work? Well, it won't be very diverse, will it?

Now, I like classic superhero stories, but which I mean roughly two kinds:
1) The original Superman premise, a sort of sci-fi action hero who was able to use his inhuman powers to take shortcuts in solving cases. Early supes went after real-world problems: lynching, corruption, organized crime, & so forth.
2) The superpowers match-up/puzzle stories, which I associate with the Flash for some reason. Come up with an antagonist with a defined power (probably weird & magical) & then use the defined power of your protagonist against it. How does your guy apprehend the bad guy? Or does he?

Add to those the stories that are about characters with weird powers & explore their lives in other ways. Spider-Man is partly a soap opera where the main character is a superhero; the lives of Petey himself, MJ, & May, as well as minor characters like Robbie, Jonah, Harry, Betty, & Glory, serve as story fodder even when the story & its resolution have no use for "guy with spider-powers."

You could write about a school where students learn to use their mutant powers, & make the stories about students learning to use their mutant powers rather than fighting bad guys as such; or about getting out of your shell & seeing the wider world (based on the real world), or about falling in love, or just learning to be a functional adult (who incidentally has powers), or whatever. Claremont's X-Men won me over with the real-world elements more than the supertights stuff alone--it's the way he could focus on elements that were reality-based as much or more than the elements that were not.

Too many comix are focused on a narrow idea of conflict. There's this strange idea that the readership really want to see big fights. I say bullcrap. I'm a guy, I was into comix as a teenage boy & as a child. I read comix for a whole lot more than fights then. There was stuff I learned about, bits of real-world knowledge the stories were salted with. There were nifty aliens, non-combat uses of fantastic powers, strange landscapes, interesting characters unlike me through whose eyes I could see for a change from myself--characters I grew to care about

I actively want to see fights if they're part of a reasonable larger story—if there's a reason for them. Remember those old Siegel & Schuster Superman stories? He was fighting for justice. That phrase has become a cliché, but it meant something then. It was about making the world a better place, even if it was sometimes an adolescent desire to bully the world into niceness. I like that; even as a teenager I could see it was optimistic, not a realistic solution; but it is in fact trying to do something. Conflict without reason is just stupid violence, plotwise.

That said, I find big fights exciting, apart from plot & context, if they're done well. A static image of combat can be exciting if it's not formulaic. A martial arts book that manages perspectives that a movie can't match, that's cool. But most comix will lose to a good action movie if they're trying for visual excitement. Thinking that a static image of “big muscly guy fighting monster” is the one proper use of your art, your medium, or company? Kind of stupid. You're missing so freaking much. And if you don't have a cool drawing? It doesn't matter.

I long ago got sick of comix that just try to be, say, “professional wrestling, but with lasers.” I'm sick of superheroes fighting supervillains in a meaningless dance. Fans may ask whether Batman could beat the Punisher in a fight; but we don't need to see Batman beat up the Penguin again, that outcome has been proven, no point in a rematch. We don't need to constantly reuse substantial rogue's galleries. Ask yourself: Is there a point to having these particular characters masochistically fight the protagonist over & over again?

What is the point of fight scenes that mean nothing, violence that magically heals, crimes that go unpunished, serial killers that walk free at the end, with precious little story context around it? Or for that matter, stories where, yes, the fights have consequences, but all there are fights. You might get away with that in one serious hardcore martial arts book, or as many as two or three small mags for that sliver of the market that digs pure violence; but can you build an entire line, dozens of books a month, on it? No. Liefeld couldn't & neither can you.

The most boring part of a comic is the part we see over & over again. Lots of fights that aren't interestingly drawn? Boooring.

In those old Superman strips where he fought corrupt businessmen & the like, the physical stuff was over fast; it was Superman. And that makes sense.

Am I overstating this? I do appreciate the physical stuff. And if we take the stance that "every comic is someone's first," then it makes sense for a character with a physical power to use it. If Quicksilver runs fast, a new reader can expect too see some fast running, or fast something-doing, in the issue about Quicksilver. (Characters with a diverse power set don't have to show every power every issue, though.) That said, the action should have some context, or you may as well just do a pin-up or make a poster. And if you keep doing the same story, maybe you should just find the classic version of that story & keep it in print.

And not everything is going to be about supervillain grudge matches. Or you'll just bore your customer base & shrivel away. You know, like you have been doing.