Mutants, Everywhere!

June 21, 1991

Well, here’s a lead sentence that will sell lots of copies of CBG: Why all creative people should be perpetual mutants.

Every so often I will see some interview, or hear some author or artist or director say the single most insidious thing someone in a creative endeavor can say. That thing is something to the effect of, “I am as good as I am going to get. If I never become a better (actor/writer/artist/whatever), then I will be satisfied with what I am right now.”

As soon as a creative individual says that, they are finished as a source of creativity. Done. Time for them to depart and leave recorded organ music going in their place.

Why? Because when a creative individual takes that attitude, what they’re saying is that they have nothing left to accomplish except what they’ve accomplished already. The key to being a contributing member to the creative community is that you must constantly change, constantly reinvent yourself, constantly develop new techniques, new styles, new subject matter.

Look at the trend in show business. Mel Gibson, hero of “Mad Max” and “Lethal Weapon I & II,” takes on Shakespeare. Arnold Schwarzenegger branches out into comedy (although he still hasn’t worked up the guts to make a comedy in which he doesn’t hit or shoot someone. That’s the next step.) Madonna mutates every year and a half and continues to sail past the career debris of other rock stars.

In the writing field, you don’t even have to switch genres. Stephen King had three of the top ten bestselling books in the 1980s, and continues to be a writing powerhouse. You could argue, but he still is “just” a horror writer. True. But he hardly would have become such a force in the field if he’d never written a better book than “Carrie” (which was a so-so book, albeit it a great movie). Also, as years passed his tomes become more ambitious in length and scope, and he was also not afraid to trade in such standard horror devices as vampires (“Salem’s Lot”) for the far more horrific, and real, terrors that human obsession can provide (“Misery”, which was a great book albeit it a so-so film.)

The reason that creative people must mutate is twofold. First, if you do not change and grow, you run the inevitable risk of becoming a known quantity. Familiar. And familiarity, as anyone can tell you, breeds contempt. The only circumstance under which familiarity does not breed contempt is when that familiarity provides for the audience a sense of pleasant nostalgia for their own youth, which explains why Frank Sinatra singing standards continues to work and why Ethel Merman singing disco never did. (I mean, who in hëll is ever nostalgic for “The Village People”?)

Secondly, we must remember Woody Allen’s superb description of love in “Annie Hall”, to wit: “A relationship is like a shark. It has to keep moving forward or it dies. And I think what we’ve got here is a dead shark.” To be creative means very much the same thing. You must move forward or you’re dead.

Nowhere is it easier to become a dead shark than in the field of comics. Under the strain of writing a monthly title, it becomes insidiously easy to fall back onto the standard trappings and cliches of the genre. It becomes so easy to say, “And then Villain X shows up and causes trouble!” or “And then everyone gets into a big fight,” because the fans have been clamoring for the return of Villain X and big fights (a) are always popular and (b) are easier to write than character interaction and (c) are usually very popular with artists. It’s rare these days to get an artist who is just as interested, or even more interested, in drawing characters standing in a room talking. “There’s no way to make normal people talking visually interesting!” wails a generation of artists who apparently have never read anything by Will Eisner or Milton Caniff.

Comic fans are living contradictions. On the one hand, they constantly demand to see what they’ve seen before. “Let’s see Spider-Man fight Doctor Octopus again!” For crying out loud, Why? It’s not like wanting to see the Yanks play the Red Sox again, because in that instance, there’s no telling who’s going to win or what might happen in the course of the game. But if Spidey fights Doc Ock–big newsflash here–Spidey’s gonna win.

But then, the hero always wins. Everyone knows that. And if everyone knows that then, sooner or later, they’ll get bored. Which is why creators are obligated to come up with new and interesting stuff, because otherwise the readers are going to lose interest.

Badmouth the Marvel mutant books all you want, but the bottom line is that the modern-day “X-Men” bear no resemblance whatsoever to the characters or team from “Giant Size X-Men #1.” That is the continued story of their success–there is a sense that something you don’t want to miss could happen at any moment. (Sure, sure, there’s the people who buy it and don’t read it but just keep it up for their collection. They would have you believe they’re the majority. I don’t accept that. I think they’re the minority, but are just the crankiest and, therefore, the noisiest).

And while constantly altering his characters and stories (sometimes, admittedly, to the point of distraction) Chris Claremont has also expanded to distinctly unmutant comics (such as “Black Dragon”) and unmutant novels.

Or look at Bill Sienkiewicz. Remember when he was a Neal Adams clone? And then he drastically reinvented himself, and caught lots of attention and kudos. Love his new style or hate it, you still have to admit that the one thing he wasn’t doing was recycling himself. As opposed to other artists whose individual style–if they had any–becomes hopelessly lost beneath panel after panel of swipes from their betters. And no, I’m not thinking of anyone specific here–but if any artists see themselves in that description, well, that’s their problem, not mine.

But it’s not just the current generation of artists. Many of the artists of the 60s and early 70s were just as highly acclaimed then as the artists of today are now. But there are some who continue to work in the industry today and, if you compare their work then to their work now, you’ll find virtually no difference. These are artists who have become stagnant, and they are no longer creators, because to create means to do something new. They are, instead, recyclers, which is normally nice for the environment but, in this case, is a waste of trees.

I don’t mean to be singling out artists here. There are plenty of writers who have fallen into the same trap, as I noted above. Their creative ability has atrophied in favor of just getting the job done. But writing, to quote the armed services, isn’t just a job. It’s an adventure.

Writers, artists, actors, directors–they owe it to their audience to risk screwing up. To risk making a total mess of things, at least once a year. When a child begins to run, he also has a good chance that he’s going to fall flat on his face. But that does not deter him from running. To be a creator means that you must live dangerously, or you are not a creator. You’re a hack.

To live dangerously is one of the reasons I changed the Hulk yet again. When I first started the series, and readers saw that I was keeping the gray Hulk around, many letter writers demanded that I get rid of him and return to the brainless, “real” green Hulk. But the gray Hulk stayed on for almost four years, as sales and reader interest climbed. The gray Hulk’s appeal, however, is the uncertainty about him, and he was in danger of becoming too known a quantity. Hence the lengthy storyline that created the present incarnation of the Hulk–one who, by his built-in unstable nature, seems to have a great deal of flexibility to him. Of course, many letter writers are demanding I get rid of the new Hulk and bring back the “real” gray Hulk. So I know I’m doing something right.

To live dangerously is one of the reasons I decided to undertake this column in the first place. I’d never done a weekly column, and wanted to see if I could. Furthermore, I’d never communicated directly with an audience before, instead always having the luxury of hiding behind characters. Investing pieces of my perspective in Rick Jones or the Hulk or Spider-Man. For all I knew, people would read BID and ask the burning question, “Who is this idiot and where does he get off thinking he’s a columnist?”

Thus far response has been extremely positive–so positive, in fact, that in recent months I began to get concerned that BID might be stagnating. Whether others thought so or not is irrelevant. (I mean, people like much of my earlier comics and novel work which I personally can’t stand because all I see are flaws). I was concerned. So you may have noticed that in recent weeks, BID has been pushing the envelope a bit more. Discussing personal failures, or creating Vic Chalker in order to hold up a mirror to fandom (and risking offending fellow professionals for the purpose of making a point), or even taking stands on various issues.

Curiously, the people I seem to offend most are those who are part of a phenomenon only recently brought to my attention: The Politically Correct. Usually censorship of thoughts and words is associated with extreme right wingers, who try to stamp out thoughts or notions that offend their personal sensibilities. But the Politically Correct are usually far left, free-thinkers gone berserk. They object to thoughts and notions because those thoughts or notions might offend others; they are the champions of the trod upon and misunderstood. As if this offers up an excuse. Indeed, being politically correct is even more insidious than straight-up right wing censorship, because it’s cloaked with a veneer of being a good samaritan when, in fact, it’s holier-than-thou.

As a result we get one letter writer who, while certainly entitled to his own opinions on capital punishment, takes me to task over my mourning the loss of human life by chastising me on behalf of American soldiers, against whom I have said and done nothing. Why? Because any criticism of government policies or any lamenting of war’s after effects is perceived as a slam against returning soldiers… and this country, still feeling guilty over the cold-shouldering of returning Vietnam vets, has now moved to the other extreme.

Or the letter writer who decided I was making fun of lesbians when I was, in fact, making fun of Disney, because it’s not Politically Correct to make any sort of joking reference to the term “dÿkë.” How alarming that I found the letter writer’s “Scrooge McJew” joke to be a pretty funny rejected Disney character, which would make me antisemitic, I suppose…a nice trick since I’m Jewish. Maybe we could come up with “Fighting Myke, the Kike Ðÿkë,” and offend everybody. Thank God he didn’t know what “poof” meant.

Perhaps it’s because, as a writer, I’m not afraid of words. Words and ideas are friends, not enemies. What I find far more frightening is that we live in a country where both liberals and conservatives are trying to be thought police, and the highest court in the land has, by a 5-to-4 decision, unofficially amended the First Amendment by having it be that Congress shall make no law infringing on free speech, except in certain instances where government money is involved, in which case it’s okay. Remember free speech? Remember free thought? Remember jokes? Remember America? Nice country if you can find it.

So for those who were getting overly familiar or comfortable with BID–sorry. Welcome to the column of living dangerously.

On a different note, Peter David, with a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism, endeavors to nail a scoop which no one has publicized at the time of this writing–“Twin Peaks” is not dead. David Lynch’s next major film project will be “Twin Peaks: The Movie,” a major motion picture that will reunite the original cast. Although there isn’t a script yet, it will be co-written and directed by Lynch, and be a totally self-contained story. Of course, this may be public knowledge by the time this sees print, since we can’t exactly overcome a two-week lag time in publishing. Something should be done about this. Looks like a job for Fighting Myke…