(2017-2019,
Marvel,
Haymarket) Nobody really cares what I have to say about post-1980s comics or poetry, but reading Ewing's recent
New York Times piece about positive fan feedback experiences and negative racist hater attacks related to the poet/scholar's comics career inspired a few thoughts I really wanted to get out. In contemporary comicbookdom a number of actors, filmmakers, authors, comedians, podcasters, and other celebrities have dabbled or dove into scripting mainstream comics. Some have been great at it and some have been pretty bad, but what is most striking about it to me is the idea that anyone can just write a comic, like it isn't a specialized skill. In the late 60s and especially the 1970s, when the Marvel age was established and DC was experimenting with younger, more boundary-pushing creatives, comics writing became more convention-challenging and cosmic and timely and I think it's really important to note that even the people who were really good at it were often really bad at it. Writing serious or compelling or funny or critical stories featuring superheroes in 20 page segments meant to appeal to a broad range of ages and locked into tyrannical continuity is super hard if you want it to be good (though pretty easy if you don't care). What fueled the 70s breakthroughs, which were honed in the 1980s, is understood to be the fandom generation joining the party: people who breathed comics from birth took over. And maybe (ok, definitely) Brian Pohsen and Kevin Smith were just as goony and nerdy as Roy Thomas or Steve Gerber as kids, so it's possible they can be good at bams and pows and zaps despite establishing another career before taking up comics. I am not going to say which ones I think are great or not-so-great at it, with two exceptions. I feel hesitantly comfortable being critical of one genius because he is the most successful carpetbagger comics writer. I, like pretty much everyone, think Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant writer. And one of the things that makes his writing so good is that he does not take easy paths or spare details. In his most revered work he gets to arguing compellingly for reparations by taking a long, winding path through Chicago, and wonderfully including so many thoughts, stories and arguments that the journey is an illuminating, painful, joyful revelation. But because comics are a medium that combines words and pictures in a way that the artwork and visual language can allow a richness of storytelling to happen with a lot less text, the best comics magically balance words and pictures. Thus, many of Coates greatest skills do not make for comic writing I like. To be fair, I only read his earliest comics work, his initial run on Black Panther, but I didn't dig it. The ideas were great, but I just felt that the power of a good comic was not served by the way
all those words and ideas were set out. Conversely, I think Eve Ewing is the best comics writing part-timer I have ever read. As a poet (and to a lesser, but not insignificant extent, as a 280 character limit social media master) she know how to parse words and pick perfect prose. Her poetry books, specifically "Electric Arches," feature powerful pieces that never speak down or intimidate readers outside of the Academy or unversed in verse. Her anger at injustice, her reverence for culture and elders, and her love of the people and places that made her, are profoundly powerful because she knows how to say more with less. And that deftly translates to the comics medium. It is obvious why a young Black woman from Chicago would be the perfect writer to tackle Ironheart, a black teen girl superhero. That said, she had her work cut out for her. Miles, the teen Spider-Man, and Kamala, the teen Ms, Marvel, were rich, fantastic characters, and Riri still needed some work when Ewing took over (characters whose tech genius is front facing are frequently some of the least compelling, which is why nobody's fave is Mr. Fantastic, and Batman and Spider-Man stories play down their engineering skills). But Ewing triumphed, really finding authentic voices for Riri and her friends and family, and telling stories with the poetry one would expect, but also a recognition that the poetry of comics can involve a pared down language that says more with less. This was really brought home by one of the most enjoyable comics I read in the last few years, a multi-part Spider-Man/Ms. Marvel comic that was an all-ages, gimmick laden, body-switch tale that was just a purely super fun comic book. This completely regular tale of heroes and villains and families and friendships and action and humanity and silly superhero stuff was executed with chef's kiss perfection. Plus Ewing gets to take jabs at the academic life that is her own secret identity. Anyone who sends hate Ewing's way just didn't even try to read her comics, because she is a superhero of comics scripting. (Also, I am pretty sure I will read Coates' Captain America sometime soon and hopefully change my first impression; his cameo in Ewing's
NYT article was better than an MCU after credit sequence).
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