I’m going to make a claim that’s going to sound outrageous to those outraged at the every-news-cycle drama in mainstream comics.
Drama like:
Attempts to delete characters by replacing them with what are effectively race-swapped or gender-swapped copies of the same character
Making every significant character conform to Current Year sexual fashion
Entertainment “journalists” pushing atrocious titles or live-action remakes that butcher classics
There are whole careers and very lucrative Youtube channels built around decrying the latest of these outrages. Decrying the comic companies hemorrhaging money. Decrying manga replacing comics.
But let’s stop crying for a moment and consider that we might be blaming a symptom of a larger problem.
What if there is no woke crisis, but “woke comics” is a symptom of the real crisis?
Curing Rigor Mortis
When I say that there is no “woke crisis” in comics, I’m trying to say its a symptom of another problem.
If someone is suffering from a condition known as death, there will be other conditions developing alongside, like rigor mortis. If you want to cure the rigor mortis, you first need to deal with the death. And what I’m suggesting is that mainstream comics have entered a terminal state. Before wokeness it was endless reboots, “crisis” events, or formulaic storytelling. It was also cutting corners on art.
The creative vision had died, the life went out of the mainstream.
The “model” had simply become one of continuing to make “stories” in the same IPs, because it worked before.
Comics had already died in the 2010s.
Woke vultures
One side effect of death are things like vultures, maggots, and other such things eating the corpse. Vultures don’t eat people who are alive and are displaying a will to live. If they tried, they would be easily fought off.
Look at the “woke comics” phenomenon in this light. What I’m suggesting is, when a creator or creative team is so full of vision that a particular kind of story is flowing outward, there’s no space for ‘woke’ perversions of a story. But when there’s a dead story, there’s no reason to say ‘no.’ No will to live.
5 Stages of grief
Now that we’re starting to see that woke is more a sideshow or symptom to the death of creativity in US comics, let’s get through the 5 stages of grief:
Denial
The catch-phrase for this is “Miles Morales is Spider Man,” or for the gender-swap characters like Mighty Thor and whoever is cosplaying as Wolverine (is it worth the time to look up?)
But even more than this, are those who see the above as the only problem
Bargaining
Sure, sometimes there’s still a good run on a mainstream title, but “if I hang on it will get better” is a kind of bargaining.
Anger
There’s no shortage of money to be made in drama streaming. And this is where much of the “anti-woke” sentiment if fueled, and turned into serious cash for drama steamers.
If you pay attention, the “leaders” of this space have no plan for the future, aside from you tuning into their channel and buying their products, if they get around to making them.
Depression
This is the stage that keeps people stuck in anger. This stage hurts. And like Denial its got catch phrases. Phrases like “This is what they took from you” and “The world you grew up in no longer exists.”
But if you get past this phase, you’re going to be glad the world you grew up in no longer exists
Acceptance
There is hope when you look outside of collapsing US mainstream comics and at the big picture:
Manga and European comics are still producing quality stories
New indies creators full of fire, including Iconic Comics and Rippaverse, are starting to gain traction
And if you liked classic US comics, the truth is, they live on as influences the above learned from!
Creativity is still abundant
We can give our eulogies and do what we can to let the classics in comics live on, but if “woke” comics or collapsing US entertainment media is a concern to you, there’s something we can all do beyond “hate reading” and drama videos.
As readers, we can actively seek out and back the creativity that’s already out there.
As creators, we can learn from European, Asian, and successful US indie creators.
And together, we can shift the entire conversation away from the latest outrage and towards what’s good and creative.
This creativity could take a few forms:
Ongoing innovation in storytelling
Outstanding art
New forms of productivity and delivery meant to serve readers
New methods to organize creative teams to deliver “all of the above.”
Its time to leave the drama and fretting about the future behind. This article is closing out 2022, but going into 2023, we’re going to be looking at all of the above, and the creators that are making it happen.
What new projects are you looking forward in 2023? And how can we shift the conversation from drama and what we hate, to new developments we really love? I’d love to hear it in the comments.
Great read once again