To Be Continued #10

"What's The Name of That Funk?"

I generally write these columns a week or two before you get to read them. Right now, it's Thanksgiving and I don't really feel like putting in a full day's work. So you guys have to suffer through a very slightly re-written reprint, albeit one that almost nobody's seen. Back when I was Editor-In-Chief of Milestone comics, I was often asked, "what's the secret of your success," I usually said "massive self-delusion" but almost no one ever laughed, least of all us. The fact of the matter is, for a company with a full-time staff of less than a dozen, Milestone did ridiculously good comics for longer than even we thought possible. While the press focused obsessively on the race of the owners and the endless and contradictory array of alleged "missions" various factions saw fit to impose on us ("Afrocentrist," "Black Conservative," "Black Supremacist," "Front for The Man" and a few others I'm too polite to repeat here) we were coming from a mainstream tradition that should have been obvious to anybody who has read mainstream comics in the past 35 years or so. This piece was originally written in 1994 as the introduction to a Spider-Man special, I though it might be a good place to explain myself to a new crowd. While you sample the column, I'm going to take another whack at the turkey. The more I eat today, the fewer leftovers I'll have to eat the rest of the week. And speaking of leftover turkeys:

I'm biased, no doubt. But that doesn't change the truth of the matter: MILESTONE represents the state of the art in contemporary superhero comics. And before you flip back to the cover to check, no, you didn't accidentally grab the wrong book out of your stack. This is indeed the SPIDER-MAN SPECIAL. So why, you may ask, am I talking about MILESTONE? Well, in addition to the fact that I'm constitutionally incapable of passing up any opportunity for a cheap plug, it also happens to be pertinent to the topic at hand, thank you. And if you show some patience and stick with me for a few hundred words, not only will I explain its pertinence, I'll also tell you a secret behind the creation of Milestone's Dakota Universe. This secret was once so closely guarded that merely to speak it aloud was to court certain death. Okay, I'm exaggerating. What did you expect? This is comics.

The first issue I remember buying. Don't worry, I filled in all the back issues.

Milestone is state of the art. We strive every month, to produce comics of the highest standard of quality, in story, in art and in the synergy between the two that is comics in its purest form. Our comics feature exciting, colorful heroes and villains, battling in a "realistic," (more accurately, naturalistic) contemporary world that closely approximates our own. They feature a cast of characters driven by clearly externalized internal conflicts. Our heroes' lives are further complicated by the circumstances of their civilian existence. Character behavior is always clearly motivated and in a world of increasing moral ambiguity, actions always have consequences.

That's pretty much the entire Milestone formula, give or take. It's brilliant, isn't it? With a road map this clear, it's no wonder our comics came out so well. How did we manage to create such a sturdy, yet flexible structure? How did we discover a calculus that allows us to move effortlessly from action and adventure, to science fiction, to romance, to fantasy, to humor and more, at will? It was easy.

We cribbed it.

We snuck into the big cave and stole some of their fire.

Or, to put it more politely, we respected the wisdom of our predecessors and built on the foundations they laid down over thirty years ago.

In 1962, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko revolutionized comics by setting the adventures of Spider-Man in a world that more closely resembled the real world than comics ever had before. The juxtaposition of the mundane reality of Peter Parker's everyday life with the, well, amazing fantasy of his superheroic adventures as Spider-Man created a verisimilitude unprecedented in the genre. The world has changed quite a bit since then and today's readers are likewise considerably more sophisticated. Milestone is an attempt to address those changes and to speak with those readers. Just as Spider-Man spoke to me.

When I first read Spider-Man, Peter Parker was a smart, geeky, unpopular science nerd. But that was okay, because secretly, he was much cooler than any of his tormentors. They didn't know, couldn't know, that he was in reality the agile, powerful, swashbuckling Spider-Man. I related to Peter like you wouldn't believe. I was smart. I was geeky. I was an unpopular science nerd. And, I hoped, I also had a noble, secret self, a part of me my tormentors couldn't see. I could be agile. I could be powerful. I could be a hero, too.

In my dreams.

And many of those dreams featured Spider-Man, talking trash a mile-a-minute as he battled a seemingly endless supply of super villains, the Chameleon; the Vulture; Dr. Octopus; the Sandman; Dr. Doom; the Lizard; the Living Brain; Electro; the Enforcers; Mysterio, and that was just the first year. The worst of them never sweated Spidey, though. With web and fist and nerdy science know-how, he took on every deadly one of them and eventually, defeated them all. With wit and style.

You know how ten minutes after an insult you invariably think of the absolutely perfect comeback? The devastating one-liner you wish you had said at the time? This was never a problem for Spider-Man. Perhaps even more remarkable than his ability to stick to walls, was his superhuman wit. Unflappable under fire, he relentlessly berated his opponents in a voice that was part Bugs Bunny and part Woody Allen, with a generous dash of Groucho Marx tossed in for flavor. I'd never read language like this in comics before and I couldn't wait to read more. So I did. And I've continued to till this day.

These days, I'm making comics, taking careful note of the lessons I learned; that action and characterization need not be mutually exclusive; that readers aren't stupid, they want to be challenged by their fantasies, as well as entertained; that super-powers work best as an externalization of a character's internal emotional state and that the wonder of super-powers is intensified by contrast to fully-developed human characters...I could go on all day but I've wasted enough of your time. You should turn now to the task of enjoying this issue-long celebration of Spider-Man. Me? I'm going to pull some of those old Marvel Masterworks off the shelf, kick back and carefully study them all over again. I wouldn't be surprised if Milestone didn't still have a thing or two to left to learn from the first revolution in comics.

Ahem. Not bad for a semi-reprint, huh? Anyway, now you know. If anybody ever asks you what Milestone was all about, you tell em for me, will you? And if anyone ever asks you the musical question, "What's the name of that funk?," now you know the answer is "Spider-Man." Next week, the long-awaited results of the McDuffie Genius Grant. Can comics be saved? Until then, this is To Be Continued…

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