It was that simple thing which made Marvel so very different from -- and superior to -- the books DC was producing at the same time, most of which were editor-driven."

It's interesting to compare those artist driven stories to today's decompressed books, which are very visually oriented but all those visuals are often specifically dictated by the writer.  Then, "artist driven" meant dynamic images that strongly flowed from panel to panel.  Today, writer-dictated "artist driven" books are all about how pretty the individual panels are.

Mike

"With the speculator implosion, it seems that the Vertigo school is on top
nowadays, but what worked for quirky, obscure characters aimed at older
audiences should never have been applied to the mainstream heroes."

How well did the Vertigo school ever work, commercially that is?  It seems to me that the history of Vertigo has had one no-question-about-it mainstream success - Gaiman's SANDMAN.  All of Vertigo's other "hits" have really only been successful on a smaller scale.  And that includes the trades sales of Vertigo product.  If Warren Ellis (for example) was making a lot of money from TRANSMETROPOLITAN trades, what in the world is he doing back at M****l doing work-for-hire?

I'm not criticizing Vertigo-type work or the people who like it.  But it hasn't, by-and-large, demonstrated a commercial appeal that equals or surpasses super-heroes or other genres of the past.  Yet the immense critical acclaim that Vertigo has won, seems to have given that style a disproportionate influence over the entire comic industry.

Mike

" I'm reminded of an instance that Mark Waid talked about. He has said that then-Marvel EIC Bob Harras told him that "We consider writer-driven comics as an experiment that's failed. "

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

No.  At first Waid did not name the assistant editor who told him that.  Later he claimed it was X-book assistant editor Jason Liebig.  Liebig denied the story, though admittedly with a name like that he faces an uphill battle in any dispute over an unverifiable fact.

No one has ever claimed that Bob Harras made that statement.

Everyone wants to make a splash.  Al ot of 'professionals' in the field want to write a screenplay as opposed to a comic.  Look at the first couple of story arcs in ASTONISHING X-MEN and NEW AVENGERS. There is no way humanly possible for those stories to have taken 6 issues to tell! Stan and anyone could have told it in 1 or 2 issues - tops! Everyone wants to be the next Moore, Miller, Simonson, Byrne, Claremont, Lee, Kirby...etc and they think by doing the next big thing that they can

a) stretch out the story and sell more books

b) become canonized in comic history

and it just ain't working.  A way to fix it is for M***** and DC to look at the past...then forget it.  Try to get a 'feel for the characters and do a WWPPD? (What would Peter Parker do? for example.)  Think back to what made the characters great in the first place and embellish that. Stay within the confines of the character.  Another thing they can do is to restore continuity within the universes.  For Joe Q. to "ignore continuity in favor of good storytelling" is ridiculous especially when we the fans aren't getting good storytelling.  The reason I stopped reading M***** was Magneto destroys Manhattan. The event is totally ignored by the rest of the M***** universe!!! Un-fucking-believable!  Unfortunately, I think we may be too far gone for this to be fixed.

Underlying all these arguments that criticise the Marvel of today is a contradiction. We want originality but we want the same as went before - we want Spider-man to stay the same (some even argue he should be 16 forever) but we want new and dynamic stories. I don't think you can have both. If you want Marvel to be a House of Ideas then you have to take the good with the bad, you need a Marvel willing to take chances, not all of which will succeed. Since Jemas left and Marvel has become more successful and profitable it has become more conservative.

Lee, Kirby and Ditko took chances - they didn't worry about being true to the characters, or respecting the genre, or making sure the toys were all back in the box when they finished, they made great comics.

edited: remove possible spoiler ...