In late 2004, Warren Ellis (
Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Planetary) launched an intriguing project - a series of one shot comics, each representing the first issue of imaginary comics series. Each was set in a different genre --
Stomp Future (Science Fiction),
Simon Spector (supernatural),
Quit City (aviator),
Frank Ironwine (detective). In the back of each book, Ellis explains:
"Years ago I sat down and thought about what adventure comics might've looked like today if superhero comics hadn't have happened. If, in fact, the pulp tradition of Weird Thrillers had jumped straight into comics form without mutating into the superhero subgenre we know today. If you took away preconceptions about design and the dominant single form....If you blanked out the last sixty years."
Ellis's fantasy, of a world without superhero comics, is scarcely unique. Several decades earlier, Alan Moore's Watchmen (1986-87) constructed a much more elaborate alternative history of comic genres. In a world where superheroes are real, comic fans would seek out alternative genres for escapist entertainment. Moore details the authors, the storylines, the rise and fall of specific publishers, as he explains how the pirates' genre came to dominate comics production. Passages from the imagined DC comic series, Tales of the Black Freighter, run throughout Watchmen, drawn in a style which closely mimics E.C. comics of the early 1950s.
Would a filmmaker conjure up an imagined history of Hollywood in which the western or the musical never appeared? Would a television creator imagine a world without the sitcom? Why would they need to? In both cases, these genres played very important roles in the development of American popular entertainment but they never totally dominated their medium to the degree that superheroes have overwhelmed American comic book production.
In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud demonstrates what we would take for granted in any other entertainment sector - that a medium is more than a genre:
Scott McCloud said:
"When I was little I knew EXACTLY what comics were. Comics were those bright, colorful magazines filled with bad art, stupid stories, and guys in tights....If people failed to understand comics, it was because they defined what comics could be too narrowly....The world of comics is a huge and varied one. Our definition must encompass all these types."
I fully support McCloud's efforts to broaden and diversify the content of contemporary comics. I fear that what I am about to say might well set back that cause a bit. But what interests me in this essay is the degree to which comics do indeed represent a medium which has been dominated by a single genre. After all, nobody really believes us anyway when we say that comics are "more than just men in tights." So, that if we accepted this as a starting premise - "you got me!" - and examined the implications of the superhero's dominance over American comics.
....
Comics are not immune to industrial pressures towards standardization and differentiation yet these forces operate differently in a context where a single genre dominates a medium and all other production has to define itself against, outside of, in opposition to, alongside that prevailing genre. Here, difference is felt much more powerfully within a genre than between competing genres and genre-mixing is the norm.
The Superhero genre seems capable of absorbing and reworking all other genres. So,
The Pulse is about reporters trying to cover the world of the Marvel superheroes,
1602 is a historical fiction depicting earlier versions of the superheroes,
Spiderman Loves Mary Jane is a romance comic focused on a superhero's girlfriend,
Common Grounds is a sitcom set in a coffee house where everyone knows your name - if not your secret identity,
Ex Machina deals with the Mayor of New York who happens to be a superhero, and so forth.
In each case, the superhero genre absorbs, reworks, accommodates elements of other genres or perhaps we might frame this the other way around, writers interested in telling stories set in these other genres must operate within the all-mighty Superhero genre in order to gain access to the marketplace. And alternative comics are defined not simply as alternative to the commercial mainstream but also as alternative to the superhero genre. As Brian Michael Bendis explains,
Brian Michael Bendis said:
"In comics, if it don't have a cape or claws or, like, really giant, perfect spherical, chronic back-pain-inducing breasts involved, it's alternative."
