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The
Team Concept, Part 6:
The Post-Modern Approach
by: Troy Brownfield
Note
to the readers: Perhaps I'm jumping out of order a little
bit here. Frankly, a lot of what transpired from the post-modern
experimentalism that took hold in '80s comics resulted in
an early '90s wave of "grim and gritty" comics. The most pronounced
effects of that were felt in the Image team launches that
I covered in Part 5. However, I believe that the most successful
capitalization on the pioneering foundation of the '80s would
end up being the team books that I'll cover in Part 7. Therefore,
allow me to backtrack a bit as we lay down the background
for the future.
1986
changed everything, man. There's not a comic fan, a comic
title or a comic company that wasn't rocked from top to bottom
by the explosive events of that year. DC's "Crisis on
Infinite Earths" wrapped up, ending a year of barn-burning,
character-killing and universe-rebuilding. Marvel's X-books
conducted a "Mutant Massacre", during which the direction
of those books was forever changed. Art Spiegelman's devastating
evocation of the Holocaust, Maus, ended Part One and began
Part Two in Raw even as he won a special Pulitzer.
But
the two real monoliths of that year were two mini-series that
received notoriety and acclaim from sources like Rolling Stone
and Time. One would inevitably lead to a hugely successful
film franchise, and the other drew a line in the sand and
said, "This is what super-hero comics can do. Top that."
Those
two works were, of course, Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and
Lynn Varley's "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns"
and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's "Watchmen". Here
were two things that even the casual reader could grasp as
special, even monumental. They targeted mature readers, they
stretched the boundaries of the field, and they left a genre
changed by their passing.
So
then, how do these two series fit the school of Post-Modernism?
Allow me if you will a little bit of self-plagirism. The following
are ideas that I articulated in a paper that I did on Watchmen
back in Graduate School:
Post-Modernism,
as its name suggests, is a step beyond the Modernist movement
of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Modernists favored
explorations of nationalism, deep looks into myth, and ruminations
on Man and God and Nature. They sought answers, worked at
unity, and tried to define some universal absolutes. Post-Modernism,
if not the opposite of those principles, certainly seeks
a different playing field. The majority of questions in
Post-Modern art and criticism go unanswered; if there are
answers, they often lead to larger, more unsettling questions.
Within this frame of reference, the artist or critic doesn't
just ruminate on God, he or she questions its existence.
There is often practiced dissonance, a rejection of absolutes,
and a lack of traditional modes and methods. Combinations
of or reflections on other ideas and media are often present.
Pastiche and irony stand out. Post-Modernism, regardless
of the artistic form used to express it, is a challenge.
Well
there you go. I don't think that it's too much of a stretch
to say that Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen qualify. But with
all due respect to Mr. Miller and company, the topic is the
team, and for that we'll stick to Watchmen.
In
a turn of irony that nicely fits our definition above, Watchmen
is largely characterized by the fact that there really isn't
a team at the core of the story. There stands a loosely affiliated
group of adventurers, some of whom are descendents of an earlier
team, but there is no "team proper" at the center of the narrative.
Running even deeper is the fact that there is actually no
team named "Watchmen" at all. The title is derived from an
anti-masked vigilante bit of grafitti used in the story, the
phrase "Who Watches the Watchmen?"
That
in itself was pretty revolutionary. Aside from the X-Men,
who've always had that little mutant issue to deal with, the
people in fictional super-hero universes tended to embrace
teams like the Avengers or the JLA. Not here. In Moore and
Gibbons's universe, masked vigilantes are outlawed and public
distrust is a given.
Honestly,
you could write a book about all of the striking aspects that
are injected into Watchmen, from the use of literary-style
foreshadowing to the pastiche involved with the musical selections
or the integration of The Black Freighter (hell, my grad paper
ran 19 pages). What I'm most interested in are two concepts:
the rejection of absolutes, and the rumination of larger,
unanswered questions.
The
heroes in Watchmen aren't just falliable, they're certifiably
fucked up. Nite Owl has trouble maintaing an erection until
after he becomes an adventurer again. Dr. Manhattan has gained
amazing powers but lost touch with his humanity. Silk Spectre
has become so disconnected from her own identity that she
defines herself by the men around her. And Rorschach is, as
one character puts it, "crazier than a snake's armpit". The
characters aren't just depicted as having real problems; they're
handed crippling emotional issues. Whereas in the old days,
Superman's appearances would make people think that everything
would be all right, these characters inspire the reader to
ask, "Wow. What's going to go wrong now?"
By
rejecting that most fundamental of absolutes, the hero is
always right, Watchmen opens up enormous story possibilites.
Moore and Gibbons wouldn't be able to explore every nook and
cranny of that conceit, but by kicking that door open, they
left it available to others. Books like Stormwatch, with its
mad leaders, complicated interpersonal relationships and post-humanoid
gaseous entities that have orgasms if their containment suits
vibrate, can trace a direct lineage back to Watchmen's dismissal
of preconceived notions.
As
for the other major point, the ending of Watchmen leaves the
reader eternally hanging in the air. Our heroes have "won"
through failure, and the fate of the free world is seemingly
left in the hands of someone a little less than qualified
to decide it. While the series gives us a "happy" ending with
Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, it quickly steps over to let us
know that things can still go horribly wrong.
Granted,
the amazing story quality of Watchmen is not something that
could be repeated on a monthly basis in an ongoing series.
But what Moore and Gibbons did, by embracing a Post-Modern
approach and chucking as much cultural baggage as they could
lift, was to blow the doors off the genre and give the writers
and artists that would come after them a new place to start.
Unfortunately,
the dark and violent nature of both Dark Knight and Watchmen
led to a parade of books that were "grim and gritty" just
to be "grim and gritty". What was missing was the introspection
and intelligence, and a number of those books quickly died.
However, some people were paying attention, and some bold
thinkers stepped up and asserted that there was a new way
for the team book to go.
The
guy who did that most successfully was a guy who admits in
Writers on Comics Scriptwriting that Dark Knight and Watchmen
were two of the things that brought him back to reading comics.
He was the guy who revamped Stormwatch and created Planetary
and The Authority. His name is Warren Ellis, and in my seventh
and final Team Concept essay, I'll expand on how he helped
team books end the century while opening up a millennium of
possibilities.
Troy
Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews. For
those who are wondering, he got an A on that Watchmen paper.
Email him at psikotyk@aol.com.
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