New Brevoort Formspring

G'day Tom.

Just want to chime in on the bigotry/diversity.casting/remake stuff. That one guy, Brad, said its because he wants it to be close to the source material, wants it to evoke Kirby’s designs. And as far as it goes, thats a thing I guess. But here’s the other thing - Marvel aren’t making films in homage to Kirby or Ditko. They aren’t putting out books in the 21st century with the prime motive of saying “Look at how good Jack and Steve did stuff”.

You are telling stories. Story comes first. Story is paramount. Story is the method by which you earn a quid and the raison d'etre you turn up at work each day. And therefore, story is the sole arbiter of whether you are doing your job right.

And story doesn’t consist of casting or depiction. Those things may be used to assist the narration of the story and very occassionally they may be germane to the story, but they should never be crucial elements of whether a story is good or bad, well presented or poorly done.

So if people are focussing on whether John Storm is played by an adukt black guy or Spider-Man is drawn as a bisexual Latino, then hell yes, they are being superficial. I always hesitate to say people are reading the comics or watching the movies for ‘the wrong reason’ (because there’s no 'right reason’) but surely they are missing the intention of the creator - which is the only reason art and story exist after all.

These properties do not exist to cater to fan desires.They exist because people want to write and draw and act and film them. If they happen to coalesce with fan love, then thats an added win and a profitable exercise and a license to go around again next month or next year, and if they don’t then they won’t, and something else will be there in its place. But comics and movies - they are a subset of art, and art’s first purpose is to express the artist’s imagining.

Understand that, gentle readers. Don’t go to your LCS or your cineplex demanding that your whims be acknowledged. Go there seeking art, and enjoy it when its to your taste and ignore it when its not. Don’t roll up with your hard-earned dollars and begrudgingly part with them, and then bitch about how you were ripped off, just because you think you MUST participate in the exchange becaue you dd last month and will next month, and therefore the artist MUST provide you the same fare he did previously and his predecessors before that.

There’s no correct way to present Johnny Storm. There’s a traditional way. There’s an original way. There’s a Kirby way and a Byrne way. There’s a comic way and a cartoon way and a movie way. There’s a 1963 wa and a 1983 way and a 2003 way and there’ll be a 2023 way and a 2053 way as well. Its not how he looks that matters at all. Its what he does, and that’s all in how the story is told.

Pax eternum

Darryn