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James Owen on Indy Comics Epics
posted August 5, 2005
 

James Owen
Via The Internet

You wrote:

From where I stood as a young reader back then, it seemed that a big part of all the comics at the time was an underlying notion that each cartoonist had deep within them a massive world, an epic story that was all theirs, and given the chance to express it they would unveil these worlds for our benefit and never create anything else as important or grand. You know what I mean? One creator, one world, one story, one impressive vehicle... I miss the obsessive purity that seemed to come with that, particularly in a day when comics aimed at a similar audience feel mixed and matched out of some passed-around duffel bag of movie-ready high concepts.

I know what you mean. It seemed like anything else they did was 'fun' dabbling, but their CORE work, the work they were Destined To Do, was the big Epic.

Jack had FIRST KINGDOM. Richard and Wendy had ELFQUEST. And Dave had CEREBUS.

A lot of the rest were non-starters (will Simonson keep doing SLAMMERS? was a question circa 1982...), but the best footnote to your comments is NEXUS. (Okay, so that's two creators, but when they do NEXUS, they are in sync - as evidenced by the reception of Mike's non-NEXUS books - without Steve - and Steve's non-NEXUS books - without Mike.

But the 'one creator, one massive canvas' thing... I know what you mean. I'm about to sign for two more novels with Simon & Schuster. My manager looked at the contracts and said "Hey - maybe now you can take a long vacation".

I looked at them and thought, "Hey - now I can finally finish STARCHILD".

Obsessive, without question. Time will tell about the purity.