Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Christopher Priest

[skyvolt2000]

I don't think Priest suffered as a result of readers being racist, but rather the editors who tried to pigeon-hole him as the "black writer". When Geoff Johns tried to bring him into Rebirth, Preist first reaction is that they were going to have him write another black character because that's all editors seem to want to have him write. To Johns's credit, he offered him Deathstroke and Preist accepted immediately;)

He was actually offered Cyborg FIRST.

What I completely don't get though is why you thing you think Priest "has been denied opportunities". From what I can see he's written loads of comics. Every one of those is an opportunity.

Take Dwayne McDuffie-he had to edit for Marvel, create Damage Control, co-write and reboot Deathlok, be the MAIN editor for 257 Milestone books, do Static Shock, Ben 10, Justice League, 4 DC animated movies and pretty much hire a LOT of guys whose first gigs were Milestone books like Humberto Ramos. To be the SOLE main writer for Justice League of America comic-that book SOLD. He had to wait 20+ years.

If we go by what comicgate "tried" to say-the body of WORK matters more than the skin color or sexuality-McDuffie should have any gig he WANTS. Same with Priest.

Now here is where the issue arrives.

For SOME people be it editors, store owners and fans-they don't see the resume of Priest or McDuffie-they see BLACK MEN and that is a DEAL breaker. That is all they see. That is enough to reject them. Resume be DAMNED.

Now where folks take issue with the racism claims is when they see the likes of Fabian Nicieza, Jim Lee and others on books. So yes you have to question it but understand it DOES happen to some people.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

He was actually offered Cyborg FIRST.

Yes, but not by Geoff Johns during Rebirth. He was offered Cyborg by DC editorial during a prior relaunch, just as he was offered Steel by them years before that. This is why, when Geoff Johns called him up for Rebirth, Priest assumed he just wanted him to write another "black comic".

[Crazy Diamond]

A writer who is anything less than top tier isn't going to get that on any book other than a real C/D list character. Morrison and Moore had that with Swamp Thing, Animal Man and Doom Patrol.

Priest has that with The Ray. I suspect he didn't have that much editorial interference on that one.


He hasn't earned that yet.

Christopher Priest already wrote Green Lantern. He was one of the writers of the GL stories in Action Comics Weekly and wrote a series of novels called Sleepers.

The real question is why can say somebody like Dan Jurgens be allowed to write Superman in 2011 despite not having a major hit in years and yet Christopher Priest was never considered (to my knowledge)? Why did they put someone like Dan Vado on the main JL book in the 90s and have Priest do Justice League Task Force instead?

I know that Priest had some accounts about his time working in comics on his old site. What he wrote about was really eye opening and if I find the links I'll put them in this thread.

[Crazy Diamond]

Alan Moore went on about how writers should come up with their own ideas and not use his. Alan Moore, who is best known for Watchmen, which used analogues for the Charleston characters. Alan Moore, whose second best known work is probably on Swamp Thing, which he didn't create, or Superman, who he didn't create... ALAN MOORE, who "created" the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is literally a greatest hits collection of past adventure characters, none of which were created by Alan Moore.

It's absurd. When I read his comments I thought he must be joking. I didn't think anyone could be so lacking in self awareness.

Moore did work for hire. It was a job. And even then he brought a radical twist to characters like Swamp Thing instead of just rehashing what Len Wein did but adding more violence and silly BS to it. There are only so many new ideas but when the best you have to offer is a crossover built on two short stories that brings nothing interesting to the table yeah maybe there's a problem.

As far as Lost Girls and the like, those are all characters in the public domain so they are free for anyone to use. That's a bit different then taking a work which was meant to be a limited story with a beginning, middle, and end and then trying to shoehorn into the typical model of DC and Marvel stories especially with the shady way DC kept the rights to Watchmen.

Moore reminds me of Bret Hart in that because they are critical of the companies they used to work for they get labeled as being bitter. To me, they're just telling the truth from their perspective and they're passionate about their craft. If they take themselves too seriously then you know what? It would be nice to see more people like that and less bootlicking and apologizing.

[iron chimp]

Take Dwayne McDuffie-he had to edit for Marvel, create Damage Control, co-write and reboot Deathlok, be the MAIN editor for 257 Milestone books, do Static Shock, Ben 10, Justice League, 4 DC animated movies and pretty much hire a LOT of guys whose first gigs were Milestone books like Humberto Ramos. To be the SOLE main writer for Justice League of America comic-that book SOLD. He had to wait 20+ years.

Or he was far too busy playing with much bigger budgets and much bigger audiences and making far more money to be arsing around with some random issue of a Justice League comic. The comics department is the little league department of the whole media conglomerate - its for those writers whom comics is their favourite medium, or those who cant break out into mainstream.

No company exec is letting 1980s / 1990s Moore, Milligan, Ennis etc anywhere near their animation departments - that = a massive headache, endless complaints about content from parents and warners, and you having to justify why your superhero cartoon has a 20 foot vagina monster fighting the Time Chimp behind the wall of sleep or some such nonsense. That's just not going to happen at all.

[dancj]

I read and formed my own subjective view of his comic writing believing he was the Christopher Priest that wrote “The Prestige”, “Inverted World”, etc...and that view was “good, but surprised, given quality of his prose novels that the comics aren’t even better.

When I realised the two guys were different...I didn’t alter opinion of the comics (why would I?), still thought they were good but not outstanding reads.

In all honesty...I think rating him at same level (for DC output) as Moore or Morrison would be a subjective view that very few would share. Certainly it’s not my view..I greatly prefer Peter David’s and John Ostrander’s work, and Geoff John’s work (although I don’t really like it) has been massively important to DC in commercial terms.

I first knew his as Jim Owsley - and didn't like his writing.

When The Ray #1 came out written by the excellent "Christopher Priest" I got very excited, bought it, read it and thought it was crap. Then I got to the back page and found it was actually written by Jim Owsley, it all made sense - except for the part where he stole the name of a successful writer.

[dancj]

Take Dwayne McDuffie-he had to edit for Marvel, create Damage Control, co-write and reboot Deathlok, be the MAIN editor for 257 Milestone books, do Static Shock, Ben 10, Justice League, 4 DC animated movies and pretty much hire a LOT of guys whose first gigs were Milestone books like Humberto Ramos. To be the SOLE main writer for Justice League of America comic-that book SOLD. He had to wait 20+ years.

If we go by what comicgate "tried" to say-the body of WORK matters more than the skin color or sexuality-McDuffie should have any gig he WANTS.

I'm not going to argue with you if you suggest McDuffie hasn't been given enough opportunities. That guy has more than proved himself.

Priest hasn't IMO.

[dancj]

Christopher Priest already wrote Green Lantern. He was one of the writers of the GL stories in Action Comics Weekly and wrote a series of novels called Sleepers.

I don't know about his novels, but in Green Lantern and ACW, he didn't blow people away they way Moore and Morrison did on Swamp Thing and Animal Man. If he had, he would have been given more opportunities - like Moore and Morrison were.

The real question is why can say somebody like Dan Jurgens be allowed to write Superman in 2011 despite not having a major hit in years and yet Christopher Priest was never considered (to my knowledge)? Why did they put someone like Dan Vado on the main JL book in the 90s and have Priest do Justice League Task Force instead?

Naming mediocre writers (in the case of Jurgens - I don't know Vado) given gigs they probably shouldn't have been given isn't really a good argument that another mediocre writer should have been given the job.

[Daniel22]

All this talk of discrimination in comics is just so strange for me considering that the only reason the American comic book industry exists was because, in the early 20th century, a bunch of immigrants (mostly Jews but a few Irish Catholics and Italians too) who were kept out of "respectable" industries because of discrimination, were forced to make something of the burgeoning and widely reviled comics scene at the time. The comic book is literally the artform of the dispossessed, the outcasts and the discriminated against.

The irony of something like Comicsgate is unbearable and it's a real pity that this is still such a big topic of conversation in this medium.

Incidentally, though, I'm not much of a Priest fan. I have somehow not read very much of what he's written and what I've read, hasn't exactly blown me away. Frankly, I find the premise of this thread just really, really weird. Do people really put him on the same level as Moore or Morrison?

That's a good point and I agree it does make it even more disheartening when it happens today. It also shows how some minority groups have been able to advance faster and further than others and how some haven't been able to due to facing stronger, more deeply ingrained prejudice. Jewish writers could change their names to pass for "normal" but others didn't have that option.

I'm not blaming readers for Priest's lack of big opportunities. Comics readers are just like everyone else: some prejudiced to varying degrees, some not. I question editorial and whoever decides what writers get to write what books, because they have the final say on opportunities. If Priest doesn't get a chance to write an ongoing for an A list character after he's proven himself (yet again) with his Deathstroke run, I'll have even more reason to question.