Within the comics industry, most everyone knows what to expect from various publishers and imprints. "Too Vertigo," you might say, after reading a comic about a quirky hired killer with a history of childhood abuse; "Too D & Q," you might think, after shuffling through 24 pages of a self-obsessed cartoonist mulling over his non-life while masturbating in his rented room. Dark Horse has the Legend/Maverick guys, licensed properties and manga; Highwater and Top Shelf put out indy with panache (and, occasionally, rounded corners); Image has one, although Valentino might be changing it; DC, in these post-acquisition days, has multiple imprints, and each has a fairly distinct aroma. So what constitutes a Marvel book besides sucking?

Marvel is unarguably the company that raised the bar for superhero comics. Their line in the '60s epitomized the new chic of the superneurotic, making characters extraordinary but human. When picking up a Marvel comic, the customer knew what he would be getting. Even post Stan and Jack, Marvel had a tone that was virtually unique. "Rascally" Roy Thomas was adept at reproducing Stan's oft-alliterative everyman dialogue, and an army of great journeyman artists -- led by "Big" John Buscema, who might be the One Great Marvel Hack, whose work I love -- cranked out hundreds of pages a month that, while never equalling the dynamic frenzy of the King's pencils, certainly fulfilled the Marvel promise to a certain degree. '70s Marvel, lightweight but fun: Tomb of Dracula, Conan the Barbarian, Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu... even Spidey fighting Equinox (or was it Will-O-the-Wisp?) in Rockefeller Plaza. It wasn't going to change the world, but it satisfied in an empty-calories way (the way an almost-food should).

The Marvel Promise: when exactly did it die? It is dead -- Do I hear any questions about that? -- and I want to know where to point the finger of blame. I had hopes as high as anyone's (read: guarded optimism) with the re-launch of their non-X flagship titles, but only the Jurgens/Romita/Janson Thor made any impression on me, and that was basically because they returned to the simple formula of the Lee/Kirby days. Many people I've spoken to about this (and that's quite an admission -- I do talk mainstream comics, more often than I'd like to admit) believe that Marvel failed to grow, hitting an evolutionary dead end that omitted them from appealing to the Vertigo readership. This is horseshit, since Marvel was doing Vertigo ten, fifteen years earlier with Epic (the magazine and the comics). Marvel evolved, then consciously devolved, like some deranged salamander scraping its head on a rock to slough off gills mother nature put there for a purpose. Epic Comics should have ushered in a new readership for Marvel in the way Vertigo did for DC. They had some interesting titles -- the sexually provocative anti-hero Coyote springs to mind as a character concept that would lend itself well to the Brit-Vertigo school of filthy language and ultra-violence -- but failed to capitalize on them, choosing to abandon the line. Epic Illustrated was, for my money, much better than Heavy Metal, and featured material similar to what Dark Horse has made its own: P. Craig Russell's Elric work ("While the Gods Laugh," I think), Steranko covers, a large Vaughn Bodé section in one issue -- good stuff. If Epic had been given the room to grow and a supportive atmosphere, who knows... it stands to reason that characters like Concrete and Hellboy could have debuted in those pages and reached the same audience. Those two characters, more than any others, seem like a natural outgrowth of the Marvel that I remember. Artistically, Chadwick and Mignola recall Ditko and Kirby (respectively), and developed their styles beyond their influences in a way which Marvel needs: good and bad, but with a more mature storytelling methodology.

Some say that Marvel hasn't had access to the talent to dominate the industry the way it did, which is also horseshit since they have had and lost almost every name artist in the business. I won't list them (since, even in the ether, there are space limitations), but it's a fair bet that many of the top-shelf mainstream guys wouldn't be as forgiving as Kurt Busiek was after Marvels (see TCJ #216's interview). Image exists in large part as a thumb to the nose of Marvel -- "Don't want to treat us good? So there!" -- and at least one of those books, Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon, out-Marvels anything Marvel is putting out now. That book more than any other conveys the spirit of fun, the sense of action and the momentum of issue-to-issue plot that made the best of '70s Marvel click. Perhaps if Marvel didn't make such a practice out of screwing creators that book would be a Marvel title, as might have been Astro City, American Flagg!, BWS' Storyteller, certainly any Frank Miller... of course it doesn't help when you bankrupt yourself every few months and ask for paltry refunds from freelancers, but Marvel has been on a steady road of decline for more better than 15 years. Even Stan Lee has headed to the Internet with his "new" characters, which -- despite not being much of a loss -- must have been a slap in the face to the True Believers in the boardroom at Toy Biz.

Yes, I understand that bands rock harder when you're 15, but Marvel's creative and spiritual bankruptcy is not a product of my adult mind attempting to recreate childhood diversions. (There are plenty of comics, several of which are named above, that fill that niche quite nicely, thanks.) Marvel's Epic Comics in microcosm, Strange Tales, was aborted before it was given a chance to develop; Marvel Knights, despite being a decent superhero line (see Christopher Priest's Black Panther) promises something it fails to deliver: adult, or even mature adolescent, fare. For lack of a better term, I'll invoke an overused Hollywood buzzword: vision. Marvel doesn't have one. After ten years of grabbing any gimmick and exploiting any short-term sales scheme, the House of Idea(s) needs to buckle down and figure out if they're about anything anymore. Stan and Jack have moved on, and those halcyon days are gone anyway. You can't get more down-and-out than DC was after Marvel's rise in the '60s, and I'd say Marvel's lot today is awfully similar. DC found ways to grow and improve. What remains to be seen is if Marvel can do the same. I'd certainly like to see what Marvel could do after a real editorial shake-up and a few years of consecutive financial security. If all else fails, Marvel could coax "Big" John out of his retirement, back from Italy and in front of a drawing table -- even the staunchest critics of How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way must flip through this month's batch of Marvel titles and wax nostalgic about the storytelling virtues in Savage Sword of Conan.

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