As had been the case with the dawn of the Silver Age, many forces worked together to ensure the continued dominance of the superhero within the American comic book industry, one of the foremost undoubtedly being the continuation of a securely established product within a large industry. Nevertheless, the way that the industry understood itself changed in the 1980s due to the creators’ rights movement, direct distribution, the improve-ment in print technology, and most importantly, the shift in the consumer market. The tra-ditional anonymity of the superhero comic book creators was being lost because of much more than the crediting of writers and artists in the superhero comic books of the 1960s.
During the 1960s, most writers and artists still considered themselves to be skilled workers with very few thinking of themselves as artists. Any industry workers who sought to form associations were doomed to failure because “creators felt too vulnerable and anxious about antagonizing their employers. [The movement] also suffered from a Cold War political cul-ture that tended to equate unionism with Communism and organized crime” (Wright 255–
256). Stan Lee is often identified as emblematic of this mindset in his move from (what others perceived as) a highly creative writer to a figurehead “more interested in marketing established formulas” (256). As such anxious ideas lost their momentum in the 1960s, the fan culture grew in the 1970s and creators became more well known to consumers through the dialogue on letters pages and their presence at conventions. Consequently, the first large step toward creators’ rights (encouraging creators to have individual identities that were more important than their corporate identities) came through complaints made about low wages and job insecurity through the fan press. With a new generation of creators aided by more specific copyright law and led by the likes of Neal Adams, the formation of guilds to bargain for more rights took place.
Among the people within the industry who looked at the financial bottom line, the assertion was widely made that superhero comic book creators were becoming too pretentious and therefore, would no longer appeal to the widest consumer base (Wright 258). While this may or may not have been true, the creators who lobbied for more rights found they had little leverage as the revenue for comic book sales was falling again: “the Marvel- led
resurgence of the 1960s had foundered by the 1970s to the point where extinction seemed like a real possibility.... With their low cover price and tiny profit margin, comics had become more of nuisance than a moneymaker for distributors” (Dean 49). Those distributors dealt with newsstands and drugstores who no longer sold dime novels and instead would rather devote shelf space to glossy magazines that sold for a dollar or more. With most of the revenue coming into DC and Marvel comics through the licensing of their characters, the importance of continuing to produce new stories of superheroes in comic book form was called into question. However, “as traditional comic book retail outlets disappeared throughout the 1970s, new ones opened up” (Wright 260). Direct- market comic book stores were established to cater to the increasingly more opinionated comic book audience, and these stores were financially encouraged to expand by the burgeoning collector’s market for past issues of comic books and collectibles. As this direct marketing model became successful, advances in print technology allowed the established companies to use higher- quality paper and therefore, produce higher- resolution artwork to justify higher prices increasing their profit margin. In addition, since printing was much more affordable this led to the estab-lishment of many upstart companies (such as Eclipse, Pacific, First, and Comico) and a boom in independent black and white publications.
At this time, video games did what television had failed to do: steal the youth and teen audience from superhero comic book publishers. However, publishers worked feverishly to maintain their current audience as they grew older with superhero stories that were darker and more complex; “surveys of the direct market indicated that fans still wanted comic books about superheroes, albeit with more ‘realism’” (Wright 262). Comic book companies found that the lure for readers was no longer just a well- known superhero character but now a well- known writer or artist. This meant greater benefits for workers in the industry, especially those that were identified as star creators:
[The] new publishers, needing incentives to draw popular comics creators from the majors [DC and Marvel], offered deals that creators had only dreamt of before. The bulk of titles published under Pacific, Eclipse, and First were creator owned or co- owned with the cre-ators.... In 1982, a year after Pacific started publishing, DC began offering royalties and Marvel followed suit shortly thereafter [Dean 57].
Suddenly, the issue of creators’ rights was back on the table with the help of political agi-tations from independently published creators such as Dave Sim and Scott McCloud.2After the remarkable survival of the traditional culture of the superhero comic book industry in the wake of Fredric Wertham, these changes to the industry could be read as threats to that traditional culture.
[They] essentially redefined the comic book audience.... The result was a loss of entry point for new readers, and the comics industry found itself serving an aging- fan customer base with stories that were impenetrable to anyone outside that base.... The greatest flaw of the Direct Market may have been that it was too successful ... so successful that it became a kind of closed circuit [Dean 57, 59].
Such changes include things that seem to be antithetical to traditional culture: recognition of the creator, appeal to only selective parts of the population, and a search for and resale of artifacts from the past. However, this state of affairs lasts only for roughly a decade, revealing itself to be a transitional phase (the end result will be discussed at the end of this chapter with each of the above mentioned things revealed as something quite different than they first appear). At this point, I’ll merely mention that these changes give superhero comic
books that adult audience that Walter Ong said the art of oral culture must have.3 More importantly, the actual existence of a real traditional culture becomes less relevant to the existence of new traditionality (rather than emulate and reinforce an existing culture, new traditionality self- consciously seeks ideas that produce virtual cultures). In other words, the
“poet” of new traditionality may live in circumstances that are profoundly literary but choose to seek out the traditional culture evoked by the medium in which the creator works;
at the very least, this creator will choose to negotiate between traditionality and literacy.
With this notion in mind, the proof is in the continued existence of new traditionality in the work of this Modern Age of comic books, regularly dated to the early 1980s but seen most clearly in the germinal works of 1986: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.
The clearest comic book antecedent to Modern Age ideas would be the Chris Clare-mont/John Byrne era of The Uncanny X- Men, a title originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Revolving around Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in its Silver Age beginnings with Lee and Kirby, the story deals with the education of super- powered students in Professor Xavier’s desire for them not only to learn how to master their powers but also to serve all of humanity. Like Professor Xavier, the students are mutants, endowed with superpowers by their genetic makeup and seen as both freakish outsiders and profound threats to basic human existence. Most often, they were placed in contest with other mutants who fought to establish mutant supremacy, believing their actions to be justified as mutants, they were the next step in human evolution. Unlike so much of Lee and Kirby’s work from the 1960s, the X- Men didn’t manage to create popular interest and after struggling to find an audience for 66 issues, the title became a reprint- only series. After much speculation by scholars and fans, no definitive explanation has been reached to explain the initial failure of the title (although the nearly critically useless label of “ahead of its time” has often been used). While they certainly departed from the status quo superheroes loved by the authorities at DC Comics, the X- Men shared many of the characteristics held by other Marvel super-heroes that appealed to teenage and college readers in search of more realistic stories of out-siders. However, it could be the Lee pushed the subtextual outsider status of the vigilante superhero too far to the forefront in an era that still feared the Communist outsider and worried about violent revolution threatened by some black activists. As noted above, these ideas managed to keep Lee and other comic book creators in check (outside the fictional worlds of the superhero stories) as would- be agitators for creators’ rights. In any case, it wasn’t until 1974 with an almost completely new line of X- Men students/superheroes that the general concept and the series managed to develop a loyal and enthusiastic fan base.4
The stylized, detailed, and cinematic renderings of Byrne took reader expectations to a new place, much like Kirby and Ditko before him. However, more important would be that Claremont amplified the dysfunction within the team seen previously and most notably in Marvel series like The Fantastic Four; “the continuing use of unresolved conflicts between the individual characters ... outlasted any individual plot- line and were the main driving force of the comic’s development” (Reynolds 86). These conflicts became significant parts of the formulae of the comic book and served as mechanisms by which the idea of the super-hero was analyzed in a way that was subtly self- conscious. One of the primary sources of conflict within the team was found between its leader, Cyclops (a carry- over from the earliest incarnation of the team), and Wolverine, a coldly determined avenger who fought with indestructible claws. “Wolverine ... is violent without a clear moral center, unconcerned with hiding his identity from the world, and unaware of his origin ... [and thereby] Wolverine works primarily as a foil by which the traditional superheroism of a character like Cyclops
might be reevaluated” (Wandtke 18–19). Through Cyclops and Wolverine, Claremont sets up a dialogue between Silver Age sensibilities and what would become the superhero of the Modern Age: more violent and more appealing to adult disaffection with the world in the wake of Vietnam War and Watergate.5The conflict within the team would be taken to an even greater level as the mutant known as the Phoenix (the object of both Cyclops and Wolverine’s affections) found she could not control her massive telekinetic and telepathic powers. Driven insane, she embraced her more primal desire to destroy and became what most readers would consider evil (and therefore, someone to be fought by the X- Men). As Claremont explored the darker side of someone with nearly limitless powers like those of Superman, the self- consciousness storytelling of what would be the Modern Age took shape.
With this in mind (together with the notion that Miller and Moore most fully represent the new traditionality of the Modern Age), it should come as no surprise that Miller illus-trated Claremont’s well- known Wolverine limited series, a self- aware overall treatment of the character.
This era would be the one in which Miller and Moore enter the superhero comic book culture and become the most articulate arbiters of the tensions between comic book tradi-tionality and the larger forces of literacy: an era of creator renown, limited audience, collector appeal, and increasing self- referentiality. I have already made the case that the infiltration of orthodox literacy into superhero comic book ethos was sporadic and short- lived, unable to infiltrate the orthodox traditionality of the medium and merely a brief point of transition to new traditionality. But at some level, the trajectory of Miller and Moore’s careers leading to The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen do not obviously identify them as bearers for the traditionality or even new traditionality of superhero comic books. While they are very clearly self- conscious practitioners within their medium who invite readers to be self- conscious consumers, their self- consciousness (and careful study) seems not part of traditionality but part of a literate sensibility that gives way to new traditionality. In his introduction to differences between orality and literacy, Walter Ong makes this point about literacy: “[A]bstractly sequential, classificatory, explanatory examination of phenomena or of stated truths is impossible without writing and reading. Human beings in primary oral cultures, those untouched by writing in any form, learn a great deal and practice wisdom but they do not ‘study’” (Orality 8–9). We should not ignore that Miller and Moore’s rise to prominence coincided neatly with the development and publication of Crisis on the Infinite Earths, the prime example of the attempt to make superhero comic books literate.
With this acknowledgment made, The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen serve as narrative studies of the cultures of traditionality and literacy and are followed by works in Miller and Moore’s careers that forcefully embrace new traditionality. Thus, the full trajectory of their artistic output from these self- conscious and influential practitioners suggests an intellectual embrace of Modern Age superhero comic books as new traditionalism. Regardless, both had rather humble beginnings, as great artists often do.
Frank Miller was born in Vermont, far from the mean streets of big cities he became famous for depicting in his comic books; he dreamed of breaking into the monolithic comic book industry as an artist but his realistic and moody illustrations (inspired by Neal Adams and film noir) were rejected by the large companies that controlled the industry. Eventually, his persistence led to a series of freelance jobs for Gold Key, DC, and then Marvel, the pub-lisher that gave him his first big break. After illustrating several issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller was moved to the underperforming Daredevil as a regular artist where he began co- plotting with the writer, Roger MacKenzie. Although his illustration was not a
radical departure from the realistic and detailed style popularized by Neil Adams and John Byrne, he utilized a remarkable sense of pacing, an ability to manipulate time through page layout (similar to the work of Will Eisner).6Once Miller took over writing as well as illus-trating the title, he did this even more effectively as noted by Robert Harvey by referring to Daredevil #164 in which reporter Ben Urich learns that Daredevil is really the blind lawyer named Matt Murdock.
Miller manipulates time with his breakdowns.... The action depicted Urich putting a ciga-rette in his mouth and lighting it — suggests just how long it takes him to decide. Not long, really. But by focusing on each facet of Urich’s action in narrow, precisely parallel panels, Miller stops time with each panel.... the tiers of narrow panels that embrace almost unvarying compositions draw attention to themselves by their uniformity. Our eye is thus directed to the panels that carry the key scenes in the story; the visual emphasis under-scores narrative importance [Harvey 168–169].
In addition to mastering the formulae that constitutes the traditional language of comic books, Miller incorporates into the series aesthetic more heavy shadows and a play between black and white (making the realistic figures more stylized and more iconographic). As a blind superhero with his other senses heightened, Daredevil is regularly depicted with his head tilted in a way the causes his eyes to be lost in the shadows.
After Miller became a regular writer for the series, an extended arc demonstrated his interest in a self- conscious exploration of the superhero mythos. Miller created Elektra, a woman who was once Murdock’s college love but had become an assassin working for Dare-devil’s greatest enemy: the crime boss known as Kingpin. Despite her fairly clear status as a femme fatale and villain, Daredevil continued to see her as noble and merely a victim of circumstance (demonstrating his metaphorical blindness). Much more so than Stan Lee before him, Miller blended the superhero story with another genre (in this case, the crime story) as a means to reveal and examine the underpinnings of the superhero story.7This is most clearly presented in “Roulette,” the last issue of Miller’s first run on the series, in which Daredevil takes turns playing Russian roulette with his then- paralyzed arch- enemy, Bullseye.
Daredevil is brought to this point of crisis by a child who shoots another child, a child who is inspired by his criminal father but also by a videotaped fight in which Daredevil defeats Bullseye. Revisiting a tension in the character often accentuated by Miller, Daredevil reflects on his father, a boxer who asked his son to find a way to live without fighting with his fists.
Daredevil is unable to fully see the irony in his father’s request just as he fails to fully acknowledge the contradiction of his life as lawyer by day and vigilante by night; however, this contradiction becomes clear to the reader. In addition to the above story elements that work to indict Daredevil as a bad influence mostly unaware of himself as a negative role model, he is involved in that game of Russian roulette with Bullseye; the paralyzed Bullseye has no say in playing the game and Daredevil only reveals at the end that the gun has no bullets. At the start, the superhero is portrayed as more culpable than the supervillain and at the end, as patently unfair and selfish, playing the game for his own satisfaction. Miller’s initial send- off to his first extended superhero story exposes the violent fantasy that propels almost all conflict in superhero stories and encourages the reader to question it.
The technical virtuosity praised by Robert Harvey is demonstrated in this issue as Miller develops a connection between the concrete and abstract through panel arrangement and artistic renderings beyond the confines of realism. When the narrative frame for the story (the game of Russian roulette) is established, Miller returns to the most recent morally questionable decision made by Daredevil. After recounting that he is responsible for
Bulls-eye’s paralysis, Daredevil states (within the confines of four narrative boxes), “Of course, in a way, you did worse to me ... / Yes ... much worse ... / You murdered Elektra ... / ... The woman I loved” (“Roulette” 208). Each box is contained within a separate panel, and those panels break up a single image of Daredevil’s face, working outside the standard expectation that each panel takes the reader to another point in time. Instead, the panels fracture a unified visual representation of our superhero. In a variation on this technique taking us outside the movement of time as typically created by the layout of the comic book page,
Bulls-eye’s paralysis, Daredevil states (within the confines of four narrative boxes), “Of course, in a way, you did worse to me ... / Yes ... much worse ... / You murdered Elektra ... / ... The woman I loved” (“Roulette” 208). Each box is contained within a separate panel, and those panels break up a single image of Daredevil’s face, working outside the standard expectation that each panel takes the reader to another point in time. Instead, the panels fracture a unified visual representation of our superhero. In a variation on this technique taking us outside the movement of time as typically created by the layout of the comic book page,