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Comics After Losing a Laptop

NO FLY ZONE: Blue Screen of Death
© Mania

In the grand scheme of things, comics don't last very long. The industry produces reams of pages filled with art and dialogue. The thin, glossy magazines clutter the shelves every month at our local comic shops. Many of them sell. If the owner orders wisely, he won't have much stock left. But, a lot end up in 50% off boxes, or as common backstock--worth a dollar or two at most. So many stories, dreams, and aspirations--forgotten like the deadlines that preceded them in the face of those on the horizon. For every cherished arc or well-loved graphic novel, ten others sit on the shelves unremembered.

A comic is a fleeting thing, when you consider its place in the world. Sure, all the newer ones come out on glossy laminated stock that would survive a spilled cup of coffee. But, the earliest examples were printed on newsprint that decays and yellows with age, even as your read this. Like all art, a comic is not long for this world from the moment its creators release it. In a field crowded by towering caped titans, only the strongest survive. Most are first forgotten by readers, then destroyed by time.

If you've read this far, you're probably thinking that this admittedly bleak assessment covers most works of art--though the digital age will at least preserve works in a way previously unseen. This is a comics column, so stay with me. Think about how many comics you've read in your lifetime. How many can you remember? How many compared to the number that you've bought, read, and stashed away? One wonders what that says about the ones you've forgotten. You probably enjoyed them well enough at the time, but then you put them away. But, you can still remember Watchmen. I remember staying up until 5:00 a.m. in college reading through Preacher for the first time. I've probably read a couple of hundred issues of Wolverine and I can't recall most of them in detail. It almost seems tragic not to remember the labors of so many comic creators, many working under deadline for less pay than they deserved--many of them working on an established character to pay the bills, because their own creations never would. That raises all sorts of questions. Bad art made with good intentions is one thing. We've all seen a million noble failures. But, so many mainstream comics are cranked out as if there was a factory that produced them. Wolverine might be good enough every month (I still read it), but it will probably never be brilliant. It will probably never rise above simple entertainment. There's arguably a place for that sort of thing. But, one wonders why, given the fleeting nature of art every creator doesn't try to achieve something magnificent. Maybe they don't have the talent to begin with, but it's hard to tell someone who loves comics not to try their hand.

I started thinking about all this because a recent security patch for Windows XP turned my laptop into a paperweight. It sends your system into some kind of OCD-like endless cycle of rebooting. It's repairable if you have a Windows XP disc to boot from, but I lost mine ages ago, and the onboard DVD drive died a while back. I've been using one connected by USB, but it still wouldn't work with a substitute disc. I lost everything on that drive. Fortunately, I had all of my past comic work on a separate drive, along with most of my writing. I lost a few installments of The No-Fly Zone, but they're still on the web. Still, had I not had the foresight to keep my work off of the laptop, I might've lost all of my Dead Souls stuff. I might've lost the scripts I'm working on for the next couple of miniseries, or the play I wrote a few years ago. Five years of work could've been gone in a flash. I type this on a new Dell that I rather like, but this evening could've gone differently. It just makes one consider how easily things--comics in this case--can slip away. And, it makes you hope that every single comic that comes out is a creator's, editor's, and publisher's best effort--because it might someone's first; because it might be the one that changes a life; or because it might be the last one a person reads. That's why we complain so much here about superheroes and about mainstream publishing. Comics were a whipping boy for other mediums for years before they gained a modicum of respectability. The industry didn't do much to help itself during those times, as it rarely dared to take itself or its audience seriously. Now that it has the attention of the literary critics, it still relies on superheroes going through the motions, while still asking for respectability. And yes, that's clearly what most fans want. And, that's sad. We should ask for steak. We get hamburgers. Then, a lot of us claim we got the steak anyway, as we defend the medium on principle. But, money is money and the art suffers. It's been that way forever, and it's not likely to change.

What does this all mean? I don't know. I was just shaken by how quickly my laptop became a brick, and how I could've lost so much work. It made me think about how quickly comics pass by, as hundreds hit the racks and the net every month. Most of them are okay, and some of them are pretty good. A number of them are bad, and a precious few are fucking brilliant. I just wonder why it has to be that way--why creators, publishers, and fans settle for less. This rant applies to just about every other art form on the planet as well. For every Beatles or Elvis Presley we know about, a hundred other rock bands couldn't hack it. It makes you want to grab anyone with artistic aspirations and shake them, yelling, "Do your best or don't waste our time!" The comic industry creates and then it forgets. Fans read, and then move on. One wonders if it's the inevitable way of things or if both creators and fans need to respect the medium more. A while back--and at different times--Warren Ellis and Robert Kirkman both said they would move away from Marvel and DC work to concentrate on their own creations. That's a step in the right direction. Similarly, Erik Larsen wrote a column at Comic Book Resources calling everyone a bunch of pussies for spending their careers on corporate characters. And yet, we know damn well that most creators wouldn't survive in that world. The market wants Spider-Man, the X-Men, Batman, and the like, and few fans will shift gears for something different. Thus, here we are back again at the same problem.

You are now exiting The No-Fly Zone.