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Here's a problem with too many current writers, especially those who insist on working full script: they forget that the most important part of what they are writing is the PICTURES, not the WORDS.

Comics are traditionally described as a VISUAL MEDIUM. The words should be there only to cover those elements which absolutely cannot be covered in the art. Like I've said before, if it is a vital element of the scene that it takes place at 4:30 in the afternoon, that's something the writer is most likely going to have to TELL us. It's pretty much impossible to DRAW 4:30 in the afternoon. (And, no, slipping a clock into the background is NOT the way to do it.)

Equally, there are some degrees of emotion that cannot be expressed fully in the pictures -- especially if, for example, the character is experiencing emotions s/he does not want to show.

Keeping in mind that comics ARE a visual medium, the writer would be best advised to AVOID scenes/emotions/elements that cannot be handled primarily in the art. And the writer should also keep in mind that comics are flat, still pictures, and the art better be EXCITING in some way, to keep the readers interest up. Stan Lee understood this, when he used action scenes for exposition and reflection by the characters, and didn't ask his artists to provide "pauses" where such could take place.

(Famously, working from a plot, not a full script, Gene Colan once drew three pages of Captain America WALKING DOWN THE STREET. I suspect the pages were turned in on a tight deadline, as Stan didn't send them back to be redrawn, but used them for what became a classic moment of introspection for Cap. Unfortunately, it also created a moment later writers and artists wanted to COPY, and the circumstances under which the original scene was done were forgotten. This is one reason the first issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA Roger Stern and I did opens with Cap pondering while he runs, jumps and swings thru the city.)

I think his criticisms of DC are valid but once again, if your best Superman story is killing his parents or his wife so that you can really give him a challenge, I'm glad that he doesn't want to work for DC. At the same time, if he's hired by DC to write Batman and an editor is standing over him making him re-write everything then the editor is essentially trying to write the book with his name. We all know that something stinks at DC. I also took the article as a slam on Bob Harras quite honestly.

He's not a bad guy for calling out DC, I'm not even calling him a bad guy for wanting to write the stories he's suggested but he's better off doing things like Death Match than working with the characters owned by the Big Two. If you can't play nice with someone else's toys then you need to go get your own.

   I'm inclined to think that Jenkins and others like him should just stick to their Hollywood scriptwriting ambitions and leave the dark and gritty stuff out of the Big Two superhero comics, but they aren't the only bad guys in this whole mess.  The editors and marketing staff have their own "big ideas" about how to make characters like Spider-Man and the Flash more hip and "with it" in today's media environment, and much of what we're being turned off about gets past their desks.  I don't think there's an innocent bystander in the current situation.

In thinking about this "reveal" about Grimm and Doom, I was reminded that many of the brilliant, exciting concepts modern writers bestow upon us out of the kindness of their hearts and inability to restrain their own genius are essentially jokes about the characters and the stories we fans all know, but told straight-faced. Preferably with violence thrown in so everybody knows This Is Serious.

The gag of Grimm as a hijinx-loving college prankster putting one over on the rich, snotty European kid would rate a one, maybe two, page gag in a Marvel humor 'zine like "What Th'?" or its later incarnation, "Wha-Huh?" It's not quite up to "Not Brand Ecch" standards, but who knows? With Marie Severin tweaking the joke, it might have flown there.

Today, though, what would once have been correctly recognized as a goofy, out-of-character punchline becomes established lore and a reason for self-congratulations as the staff celebrates coming up with an FF story that has not been done before...

Depressing on so many levels.

For me the rot did indeed start to reach boiling point with Grant Morrisons X-Men. Then Ed Bruebaker's X-Men (because neither are the X-Men, they are their interpretations of characters that share the same name) sealed the deal - Cyclops and Xavier are not the characters that appeared in those comics. Since then, those characters just moved further and further from who they were.

Marvel NOW provided the perfect point to, just stop. And I did. I just stopped. And I just read old stories about the characters I knew. Characters that my son will know through the back issues, not the crazies, the terrorists, the flawed, the liers, the cheaters, the abusers, the abused, the killers, the molesters, the murderers, the torturers, the foul mouthers, the maimers.

But the noble, the heroic, the savers, the trustworthy, the HEROs

That's who he will read about.