The Few, The Proud, The Unproductive
By Dan BrownLet us now praise those comic creators who had a big impact on comic history despite spending very little time in the spotlight.I’m talking about your David Mazzucchellis, your Michael Goldens, your Paul Chadwicks. You may have your own favourites.What do these artists have in common? Compared to such stalwarts as Kurt Swan and Jack Kirby, they were . . . not all that productive. Which hasn’t stopped them from inspiring wildly loyal fandoms.Some of them are still active today. Once in a while.They had brief runs (that are still remembered 50 or 60 years later), they did an amazing job, they revolutionized comics. And then they more or less disappeared.Perhaps some of them had a hard time meeting the grind of monthly deadlines. No doubt some of them made more money as illustrators in other fields. For whatever reason, they found other vineyards to toil in.Oh, we young comics fans loved them. If it was up to us, they would have had their choice of assignment.Mazzucchelli we knew as the artist on Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, which reset the Dark Knight’s origin for a new generation. The Neal Adams Batman belonged to our older brothers, but this one was OURS. The brilliance of his style was that you couldn’t tell which era this Batman came of age in. Was it the 1970s? The 1930s? The modern day? You couldn’t pin this Batman down, he was timeless.Oh yeah, Mazzucchelli also worked on Daredevil briefly, then years later came out with the graphic novel Asterios Polyp. Might he be a perfectionist, might that be the reason that prevented him from doing more?Michael Golden lit the comic world on fire with his 12-issue run on the Micronauts. It was a comic adaptation based on a toy line, and like Mazzucchelli he also created an otherworldly milieu, with exhausted heroes and truly diabolical villains. Then, a glimpse of something even more awesome: For one issue, Star Wars No. 38 in 1980, Golden showed us a vision of a galaxy far, far away with art that we actually dug.It had seemed up to that point Marvel was abusing Star Wars fans on purpose by using mediocre artists.When we got a little older, graduating to more mature stories, Chadwick spoke to our young-adult selves with his thought-provoking Dark Horse series Concrete. A book built around a superhero who wanted only to sit around and think? We were intrigued, It was as if Ben Grimm had become a philosopher.But unfortunately for us, it didn’t last. He was another creator who, it seemed, had found other things to do outside of comics. Perhaps he just lost interest.Like I said, not everyone is blessed with the work ethic of a Kirby or the endurance of a Swan or a John Romita. Not every comic creator even wants to be in the conversation.Some are destined to be excellent, then be gone. Could be it’s a blessing in disguise? One byproduct is we will never get sick of their expressive lines.Nor am I suggesting any of these talented people are snobs for finding other pursuits. Not everyone has thousands of individual issues in them, I get it.Heaven forbid they should ever be among the most productive people in the industry’s history. Because those folks get a different label: We deride them as hacks.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Colin Kaepernick Not Making Friends with AI Comics Venture
By Dan BrownYou may know Colin Kaepernick as the NFL quarterback who struck a blow for civil rights.But now the former football player wants to revolutionize the comic industry. And that’s not a good thing.Sports fans are familiar with Kaepernick because eight years ago he took a knee during the American national anthem at a San Francisco 49ers game to protest police brutality and racial injustice. More kneeling ensued, as well as much controversy.He came to the attention of comics fans this summer when he announced the founding of his artificial-intelligence company, Lumi, which aims to “free creators and democratize storytelling.”Sounds great, right? The unsaid part is that he wants to replace work done by comic artists and writers with images and words generated by an AI. This has not endeared him to the comics community.It probably didn’t help his cause when he made his intentions known in a press release that sounds like it was generated by a robot.With $4 million in funding behind it, Lumi is a “groundbreaking platform that empowers creators by providing them with the tools needed to independently create, publish and merchandise their stories both digitally and physically.”How will this be done? By putting the human creators who would have otherwise created these stories out of work.I haven’t done a survey of people in the field, but I’m not currently aware of any comic creators who were looking for this kind of shortcut. “By leveraging advanced AI tools, Lumi enhances the creative process, allowing creators to focus on bringing their stories to life, while the platform handles all of the logistics,” the statement adds. The company boasts this will make every creator into a Walt Disney. But whatever you think of Disney’s labour practices, he at least employed actual human animators.It seems Kaepernick has himself run up against “gatekeeping” in the comic industry.“Currently, a few large corporations dominate the narrative landscape, limiting the diversity of stories told. Lumi aims to open the funnel, enabling anyone to access storytelling superpowers, ultimately fostering a more inclusive and equitable world.”The reality, of course, is that the internet has made the barrier to entry ridiculously low. For better or worse, all you need to be a comic creator in 2024 is a computer and an idea. And anyone who has been paying attention to the graphic-novel market over the last dozen years also knows there are now graphic novels and comics for almost every taste. Besides, AI art and writing is just . . . weird.Granted, I haven’t seen the finished product of a comic produced with the help of Lumi. Who knows, it might be better at drawing than all the other AIs out there.But even if it’s the best AI art ever invented, it still can’t match the creativity of the human mind. You could argue that it’s the flaws, the human element, that make comics attractive to human readers in the first place. Someone like John Porcellino is not a master illustrator, but his simple images are the perfect vehicle for making the emotional points he wants to make. The results are comics that verge on the poetic.Nor am I against the use of technology in the making of comics. If it makes drawing or writing easier for a human, go for it, but the comic creators I love don’t give up those functions entirely to a machine.“Creators today face significant challenges, including exploitation and lack of independence,” the statement claims. “Lumi addresses these issues by providing an end-to-end solution for storytelling leading to more financial stability, creative control, and ownership of their work.”Yup, sounds like the comic biz to me!Oh, and at the risk of belabouring the point – there was and will only ever be one Walt Disney!Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
