Creative Control Vs Editorial Dictatorship?

[Gigrantor]

Howdy guys, this is my first post here although I have been lurking for a little while, in fact, I'm probably one of the oldest members here as I had an account here in the early days when this site first started.

Anyway for my first thread I wanted to share with you a post that I recently created at another board that I would like to hear your opinions on...


Most of us would agree that the best comics,movies and great story telling in general has the best results when the creator/creators are given artistic freedom.

Works by Frank Miller at the height of his success are great examples of this, one only has to look at The Dark Knight Returns, Ronin, Sin City, Batman Year One and most of his Daredevil run for examples of this.

But when an artists ego gets the better of them they tend to churn out excrement that can make the walls of a local sewer look like art.

Works by Frank Miller at the bottom of his success are great examples of this, one only has to look at The Dark Knight Strikes Again, All Star Batman and Robin and Holly Terror for examples of this.

When it comes to film especially comic book based properties the most successful films both critically and commercially tend to come when the director has freedom to produce his vision, Nolan's Batman is a great example of this although some may say that that the final film in his trilogy needed a little less of his ego and a little more of what the fans and general audience wanted to see from one of their favorite characters.

With the imminent release of Antman, one will always wonder what the original vision of the film could've been compared to what we will see when the film arrives in the cinemas.

Getting back to comics, I personally only read comics for the creators that I respect and I avoid all comics written by a commitee, this includes all multi crossovers and so called events. For this reason alone I gave up reading most mainstream comics in the 90's, I used to love reading Batman and Superman but I hated the event titles of the time as I felt that they were contrived and soulless.

So anyway, what end product do you guys prefer, a story where the creator has unlimited control or do you prefer a balance of a good editor working with creators to keep their egos in check?

[Byakko]

Part of the problem is expecting the same quality of work from any given writer/creative artist in any medium consistently. Most times lightning doesn't strike twice, I would say the opposite is the norm.

Alan Moore for example, Watchmen, undeniable classic. Neonomicon? Straight up just violent Lovecraft porn, little substance end of the day.

As someone in the broad term 'creative industry', hero-worshipping the author is one of the worse things you can do. I am not perfect, the guy I have to work with isn't perfect, we're just human. What is produced is being produced by a human, not an all-powerful infallible mighty 'author'. Something isn't good by default just because the person who made it did with 'freedom'. Judge it by its true merits, not to make some statement about 'freedom of art'.

In terms of comicbooks, it's more often times than not, a collaborative work. If a writer finds a great artist and a great editor to work with, if all 3 have just the right wavelength, you'll get something special, you'll get something good. Not all people can work like this, and I don't expect everyone to do so. But I do expect an audience who will respect the work for what is, and not care about whether one person made it or several people made it together.

Edit: Furthermore, most times in the past the company had strong control because they controlled distribution. In this current day and age, this is really not so. Digital distribution has opened up the ability to personally publish or distribute works like never before. So if an artist wants total creative freedom, he/she can do it, and distribute to a wider audience in many ways.

[t hedge coke]

How do you know which comics Frank Miller's ego was in charge of? Or, how heavy of an editorial or tempering hand anyone had on Sin City?

[Tiamatty]

I'm inclined to think a balance is required. An editor probably shouldn't be telling a writer what to write. But at the same time, giving a writer unlimited creative control is a terrible idea and, more often than not, leads to self-indulgent crap. Writers need to hear the word "no." They need to have someone telling them, "No, that's stupid, don't do that."

A good editor is also someone a writer can bounce ideas off of, someone who can help develop the story and the characters. An editor might catch an idea the writer missed.

With comic books, editors also serve another crucial role: Telling them to do their damn work. Comics have monthly deadlines, and an editor should, ideally, be pushing the writer to meet those deadlines. Otherwise, you get Kevin Smith's Spider-Man/Black Cat comic.

As much hate as Jim Shooter got back in the day, I think most would agree that his time as Editor-In-Chief was one of Marvel's best periods. Books seldom missed deadlines, and most were of very high quality.

[HaveAtThee]

There needs to be compromise and teamwork from both sides. No need for extremes.

[XPac]

Any extreme is a bad thing, and in a shared universe some degree of colaboration is necessary.

If I HAD to choose between extremes I'd argue for greater creative freedom. But finding a good comfortable balanced middle ground 9 times out of 10 is probably your best bet.

[jphamlore]

I am just grateful Marvel did not bother to exercise enough creative control to make Rabum Alal be Ultron, as I had so feared.

[shgs]

It's hard to say, without being a fly on the wall during the creation of an exceptional or disastrous run, but I'd imagine there is a big difference between critical and prescriptive editorial interference. For example, the editor saying 'this works, this doesn't work' is good and essential; the editor constantly saying 'do x, y and z' is unlikely to be productive, though even this is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.

[Xalfrea]

Yeah, unless we're present at the offices themselves its hard to say on which is the preferred method. But balance as was mentioned previously is the best bet among both parties.

[TheNewFiftyForum]

A good editor is also someone a writer can bounce ideas off of, someone who can help develop the story and the characters. An editor might catch an idea the writer missed.

Well said. Many comic book fans seem to think of editors as either custodian librarians of continuity or evil creativity smashers, when it's entirely possible that some of their favorite parts of various stories are there as a direct result of editorial influence/control.

[MyriVerse]

There needs to be compromise and teamwork from both sides. No need for extremes.

Pretty much.

Although it's always been my opinion that characters are many times more important than any single creator. The integrity of the character should always come first.

[t hedge coke]

Pretty much.

Although it's always been my opinion that characters are many times more important than any single creator. The integrity of the character should always come first.

Unless it's a brand new character, that ship has probably passed. But, who gets to decide whether the integrity is being challenged or maligned?

[gurkle]

In theory I believe the characters are more important than the creators, but in practice, when editors decide they're more important than the creators, bad things can happen.

The classic example at Marvel is X-Men in the '90s after Claremont left and Bob Harras took tighter control of the line. (Harras, at both Marvel and DC, is very much the kind of editor who rotates writers in and out and sees the overall editorial plan as the most important thing.) The tight editorial control helped the X-Men keep a consistent style across a lot of comics, and led to one massively popular event, Age of Apocalypse, which couldn't have been done without a very strong editorial hand. But from 1996 to 2001, the X-Books were notorious for being rewritten and replotted by the editors, writers got fed up and left when their stories were changed, and not a single memorable X-Men story was produced until 2001, when the new editors gave Grant Morrison a free hand to do X-Men his own way.

One thing about the older way of writing comics is that writing and editing were seen as almost part of the same job, thanks to writer-editors like Stan Lee. Many of the mainstream comics writers up through the '90s had some experience editing. And at Marvel in the '90s, editors were constantly hiring each other to write books, so you had Bob Harras writing Avengers while editing X-Men, or Mark Gruenwald writing Captain America in his spare time from his editorial duties. Being able to think like an editor has some advantages for writers of mainstream comics. But I think today's audience responds more to writers who are quirkier and more individual. This may change someday, but right now the business is very writer-driven (look at Image now, totally dominated by writers, when it started out as artist-dominated) and strong writer voices are what the public expects at the moment.

[Iron Fist]

It's compromise, there's this really good documentary where Claremont, Simonson and some other writer I don't remember, talk a lot about how much editorial control there was on the books. How Claremont fought Jean being brought back from the dead and lost, and how they started really pushing events, even trying to give them plots until the writers lied and said they already had plans in the works, just so they didn't end up with something crappy.

[Tiamatty]

Well said. Many comic book fans seem to think of editors as either custodian librarians of continuity or evil creativity smashers, when it's entirely possible that some of their favorite parts of various stories are there as a direct result of editorial influence/control.

Jean Grey's death at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga was solely due to an editorial decision, and it turned what was already a fantastic story into one of the most important comic stories ever.