Writer or cast? What actually makes a book?

[crimsontt]

Hellions this week was incredibly fun to read. The book has a catch o many readers in this forum. And the cast? Havok + Z-Listers. And Psylocke which has potential, but so far is a shell, a tabula rasa of a character.

On the other hand Tini Howard is sinking a book with an stellar cast.

Zeb would be amazing in Excalibur. When the office will hear the echoing voice of disapproval for the current excalibur run?

[Frobisher]

Creators. Claremont proved that you can make your characters interesting by fleshing them out as real people and figuring out what makes them tick. The artists used to be part of this process too, though nowadays they just seem to be shuffled around as "resource".

Hellions is really good at the moment, and that's using characters for largely comedic purposes rather than as a Claremontian soap opera, but the principal still stands that it's now who you write, but how you use them that counts.

[Riv86672]

Creators. Claremont proved that you can make your characters interesting by fleshing them out as real people and figuring out what makes them tick. The artists used to be part of this process too, though nowadays they just seem to be shuffled around as "resource".

Hellions is really good at the moment, and that's using characters for largely comedic purposes rather than as a Claremontian soap opera, but the principal still stands that it's not who you write, but how you use them that counts.

That was really well put.

[Glio]

I prefer Zeb Wells's Hellions with Egg Woman and Greycrow to Rosenberg's Uncanny X-Men with Cyclops, Wolverine and Magik.

[PrezValentine]

Writer, 100%. Even the most problematic or weak character can be interesting with effort and actual writing skills. On the other hand, even the most iconic character can't affect reality to the point of improving one's skills. I had a better time reading Ewing writing a bunch of Z-listers + Sunspot than reading Guggenheim wanking Claremont's creations.

[DarkMagnus]

Writer obviously.

Tini problem is that she want to us like Betsy and Apoccy that is fine but she have 5 more characters to play with.

Its like Professor Carey with Rogue.
Just is not fun. At least he get Havok, Polaris and Rachel. Back form space

[Purplevit]

Writer. I accidentally voted wrong on poll

I follow books for cast but only good writer can make cast shine.

[jwatson]

Artist. If your book looks like crap i'm just not getting it. Art is always my first choice in giving a book a chance.

[Captain Nash]

Writer for sure. We all have our favorite characters, but if they're in a book with bad or bland writing, it's less of an investment. Look at the current Excalibur, or for the reverse, Hellions. Remember Peter David's second run of X-Factor? None of those characters were my favorite but it was still a great book. X-Men Gold- great, classic cast that had been written well in the past (well, with regular Logan vs. OML) but it's a book that was picked apart because of the writing.

[Pumpkin King]

Writer for sure. I admit I'll follow my favorites through books, even when the writing's bad (partially because a some of my faves are underused, so I'll take any appearances I can get), but it's the writer that actually makes a book work. A good writer can take any character off the scrap heap and make them shine, just like Wells is doing with Hellions right now. That's also one reason why I don't like D-list characters getting slaughtered for shock value, because it seems wasteful to just toss the character into a meat-grinder when another writer could potentially do something interesting with them.

Of course, if we're talking about getting a book to sell, that's probably a different story.

[Killerbee911]

Cast because writers don't stay on books forever, They are far fewer writers capable of elevating bad characters than writers who can. As good Hellion it is going to take an act of God for it consistently stay the quality fans like and after one bad arc the book will sink like a rock, Hickman is one of the more consistently good writers you can see on the forums people are tearing into his average or solid stuff. If people aren't giving Hickman the benefit of the doubt. Who is going to get it and not every story arc is going to be classic.

People keep pretending that it is some easy task to fix bad characters and writers like say Geoff Johns are a dime a dozen. The possibility of something happening doesn't mean it easily happens, Yes any character can be made good by a good writer. Also in the same vain If you win the lottery most of your issues will go away. People overlook the degree of difficulty, Wolverine or Cyclops are good characters because you have multiple paths for them to be good. But for a character like Glob or Beak there might be one set lane that works for them. And the difficulty of transitioning to them might not be worth it. The best example of this is Psylocke because we physically see the change that happened (Note I am not calling Psylocke a bad character). Yeah, a writer can literally change another into a whole different character that works but with Psylocke, we can see the effort to do so might been not have worth it. And in hindsight making a new character would have been the better idea.

Obvious yeah if you can lock up a great writer for 2 or 3 years sure then that is the choice BUT in the comic industry where they are more miss than hits. I am going with a great cast and decent writing that to me feels more like the path of success.

[Sin Nick]

Cast. I'll only check out a book if Wolverine, Storm, or Bishop is involved in someway.

[Kingdom X]

Cast because writers don't stay on books forever, They are far fewer writers capable of elevating bad characters than writers who can. As good Hellion it is going to take an act of God for it consistently stay the quality fans like and after one bad arc the book will sink like a rock, Hickman is one of the more consistently good writers you can see on the forums people are tearing into his average or solid stuff. If people aren't giving Hickman the benefit of the doubt. Who is going to get it and not every story arc is going to be classic.

People keep pretending that it is some easy task to fix bad characters and writers like say Geoff Johns are a dime a dozen. The possibility of something happening doesn't mean it easily happens, Yes any character can be made good by a good writer. Also in the same vain If you win the lottery most of your issues will go away. People overlook the degree of difficulty, Wolverine or Cyclops are good characters because you have multiple paths for them to be good. But for a character like Glob or Beak there might be one set lane that works for them. And the difficulty of transitioning to them might not be worth it. The best example of this is Psylocke because we physically see the change that happened (Note I am not calling Psylocke a bad character). Yeah, a writer can literally change another into a whole different character that works but with Psylocke, we can see the effort to do so might been not have worth it. And in hindsight making a new character would have been the better idea.

Obvious yeah if you can lock up a great writer for 2 or 3 years sure then that is the choice BUT in the comic industry where they are more miss than hits. I am going with a great cast and decent writing that to me feels more like the path of success.

Is there really such a thing as a "bad character" in comics? Character voices change so often that I think everyone has a chance under the right writer. Sure characters like Glob and Beak are probably never going to be the center-piece of huge events, but that doesn't mean that they can't be written well and have an endearing supporting role.

[Grapeweasel]

Comics went to hell when they started putting the creative team's names on the cover.

[Daedra]

Please don't underestimate editors interference/competence/incompetence