I did actually manage to get some writing done. 526 words worth, even. Seeing as I kind of fell off the Earth last month (I wonder if this is the kind of statement people will use in future to prove we thought the world flat?) I am not going to be aiming for 300 words a day like I had been planning for May. Instead I will see if I can manage 200 words/day like I was supposed to last month. Let's see how that goes.
Nothing much special in what I did write. Just some plopping and a suspiciously evasive Mystos. Now to go write some suspiciously straightforward exposition, a conveniently placed observation and a promise that does not mean what it is supposed to mean.
Ami wrote an
interesting post (don't worry, not suspiciously interesting, just interesting!) about one of the inspirational strengths of comics. Unfortunately the comments there got sidetracked by a spot of negativity, but I still have some thoughts on her actual post. :-) I was tempted to say that outside of fantasy stories there is much more variety in who is the star of the show until I realised that outside of fantasy, perhaps, there are also far fewer heroes. Well, I am not so sure of that. But inside of fantasy stories, at least most of the ones I read, she is right. There are too few characters to identify with as the hero. A lot of the more interesting characters are relegated to side roles and there is just not enough variety in the leads.
What I am wondering is how this difference came about. Novels generally take a fair bit longer, months to years, to produce than comics (I think), but this does not
have to be the way things are done. Comics could be made in large books covering whole arcs at a time, written and drawn over however long it takes. Fantasy stories (or other novels of course) could be release quickly, a chapter a month of the overall story for sale down the road. Sometimes they are. Robert J. Sawyer's novel
Rollback is currently being serialised in
Analog magazine (heh, I hope I got the signifiers right) although I am nearly certain he had it all written with this and the collected publication arranged long before the first part appeared. And it is not appearing in individual chapters but maybe six parts. Anyway, my point should be clear enough even through the muddle.
I don't think there is any essential difference between the two mediums or genres that has caused this situation to come about. There is no reason I know of (and people are welcome to correct me if I am mistaken) why it could not have been reversed. So, I am going to go out on a limb and state my guess as to why there are heroes for everyone to identify with in comics but not so much - or at least
not so publicly - in fantasy. Or whatever.
In my opinion it is because comics are such commercial properties. Because they are, most famously, owned by a few largish companies rather than by individual writers, to the point that loyalty to company is more visible from the outside than loyalty to an individual writer (I say so because such has been my experience). To make a profit it is in the interest of these companies to diversify their cast list and make sure they have
someone to appeal to any customer. That's why they sell heroes before stories, that's why they need a diverse roster and that is why everyone gets to (or should be)
the hero in their own story.
This does not work with fantasy at the moment because most fantasy properties are owned by the writer who created it. So far as I can tell the vast majority would not allow anyone else to work within their world(s) and, indeed, many forever abandon a world and all its characters after telling the one story they wanted to tell in it. There are a few exceptions where the property is owned by a company rather than an individual. You get
Dungeons & Dragons where they sell worlds rather than heroes (although also heroes - see Drizz't Do'Urden),
Magic: The Gathering,
Star Trek and
Dr Who tie-in novels. And
Star Wars (which is owned by George Lucas, I am sure, but we can pretend he is a large company without
too much difficulty, I should think). Star Trek sells by heroes, the various diverse crews of the
Enterprise, there are a few folks to identify with in there and they probably all get starring roles at some point, and they even create new ships+crews (heroes) exclusive to their range of novels.
Star Wars has expanded its cast of characters considerably in the Expanded Universe.
Dr Who still plays around with Doctors past, though not so much as the current one of course. Contrast with some other big name titles like Harry Potter (owned by J.K. Rowling) or The Lord of the Rings (still owned by the family). No one gets to touch those but the creator.
There have been a few cases in the past where a writer who has stopped working on a series has been replaced by others, The Shadow springs to mind, not sure what the ownership situation was there. And there are a few shared world projects in which many writers collaborate, filled with many not-necessarily likeable characters who take the forefront at various stages (usually when their creator is writing) like the
Wild Cards series
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grrm edits or
Thieves World.
The main flaw in my speculations would be that I really do not know what I am talking about. I know very little about the history of comics, a bit more about the history of fantasy and I conducted no research before writing this. It could easily be the case that what I have written is near-completely wrong (the parts which are true are not wrong).
Anyway, that is enough from me for now, I am going to go back to writing for a bit, then sleep.
Love and stuffs,
Trish
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