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On the Difference Between The Avengers Reader and the X-Men Reader

1am... Stupid pseudo-intellectual theories suddenly seem sufficiently important to clog up good bulletin board space...

It's often said that the appeal of the group book is that it presents a set of friends, or a family, for the reader to identify with. At its most basic, it's a fantasy about a cool gang, with a great clubhouse, an in-crowd who look after one another. Sure, they might squabble and romance, but that's all part of the stuff that makes them a family. And the theoretical stereotypical comics reader, the slightly lonely brainy kid who'd prefer to read his Iron Mans than play ball games in the sun, probably needs those four-colour friends, right?

That's the commonly offered reason for why team books sell. I suggest another reason is that there is usually better character interaction in team books. In Spider-Man, for example, Spidey fights the villain but has to change back to Peter Parker to deal with his hang-ups and his problems with his friends - unless Betty Brant has been kidnapped yet again. In the FF, the interactions can carry on even while they're fighting the Frightful Four, because all the main characters are there while the main action's going on.

But today I want to examine the appeal of team books, and I can best do that by comparing what I think are the selling points of the Avengers and the X-Men. I've chosen these two because they are Marvel's bestselling team books, both have had multiple creators over the years, both have had tremendous highs and some pretty dire patches, both have spawned multiple spin-offs and imitations, and both have very ardent fan followings. They even started publication in the same month.

Both titles offer the "club" feel, of course. But the Avengers tend to be the establishment, the most respected heroes in the Marvel Universe. Conversely, the X-Men are the outcasts, sometimes the outlaws, doing good despite a world that fears and rejects them. The Avengers are the police force, the varsity team, the crack troops, the Knights of the Round Table (post on this last one to follow). The contemporary X-Men are the angels with dirty faces, the underground resistance, the Western drifter walking into the mean town to clean it up and walk off into the sunset. The former X-Men motif of the academic institution has been ceded to other X-books over the years from New Mutants to X-Force to Generation X.

And I submit that each of these set-ups attracts a different kind of reader (although I'm not saying that a person can't enjoy both - my X-Men collection goes back as far as my Avengers stack - I'm just suggesting that most readers' primary loyalty is with one or the other).

The X-Men reader presumably enjoys the feel of the group out on the edge. They perhaps identify with being misunderstood, being mocked for being different, being outcast even though - in fact because - they are special. Or perhaps the appeal is that the X-Men do defy authority, consistently fighting ignorant bureaucracies and monolithic institutions. If all team books are about groups to identify, the X-Men is the nearest comics gets to a street gang.

The Avengers reader probably has a stronger feel about law and order. They watch the Avengers maintain the peace against world-shattering menaces, always (well nearly always) upholding a high moral code, risking their lives again and again not for self-preservation or partisan politics but simply because it's the right thing to do. The Avengers is about professionalism, and comradeship, and being the absolute best at the work they do. Presumably these are qualities which appeal to the Avengers fan, and are part of the reason why they enjoy identifying with Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Note please that I'm being very careful not to say which group is better. That's not the point. Only that there are at least two kinds of team book reader. My personal preference? Well, the fact I'm posting this on the Avengers board might give some hint!

Note also that I haven't really included the FF in this essay. My take on them? Same as Kurt Busiek, I guess. If the Avengers are the Varsity and the X-Men are the Maquis then the FF are the Royal Family. So where does this observation lead us? Well, I guess if the "typical" Avengers fan has this kind of world view that says "yeah, the bad guys should get stopped, no matter the danger" and "yeah, I want to see someone draw a line between what's right and wrong", then it's not surprising that we see so many "Wonder Man must face justice" posts. And even more than other fans we might expect Avengers readers to get annoyed when plot details are muddled up or forgotten, or characterisations are just plain wrong. The same mindset that attracts us to the team makes these injustices and imperfections seem important. And its probably no accident that Captain America usually tops every Avengers popularity poll, because he typifies many of the values inherent in the Avengers concept.

I wonder how much of this is true? I wonder what attracted the bulletin board posters to the Avengers? Would you say this team had your "first loyalty"? If so, why? Are there other team-types that don't fit the Avengers / X-Men split?

IW

Somewhere in the Twilight Zone

Follow-up:

Flap: Character development is a slippery eel. If it spins out of stories, or drives them, as you say, then it's in its place. And of course it is essential. But why has it earned itself a phrase ? I put the phrase 'character development' in inverted commas not because I disapprove of it, or disbelieve in it, but because I'm unsure of the actual meaning ascribed to this phrase. I see it as something a bit uncomfortably well worn. Really, it should be so inseparable from the art of storytelling, that it wouldn't be able to support a separate piece of terminology.

Ouch! Good point! I'll have be careful throwing that phrase around in future.

That said, I guess we develop jargon as a means of shorthanding complicated things easily, so when I talk about character development I don't mean characterisation (which is how consistent the protagonist is in their personality, motivation, and behaviour), but how the story before me has developed my understanding of the protagonist and their interaction with the story.

For example, early in the new X-Men (I'm talking here about when Wolverine and Co were the new guys) there was a story where Storm got buried, and it turned out she was claustrophobic. This harked back to her as-then unrevealed origin and provided an opportunity to examine her past, her strengths and her weaknesses. It developed her character. This in turn prompted reactions from other team members, who supported and cared for her in her moment of vulnerability, so the character development here drove a whole slew of revelations about all the members present and changed the course of the plot. It was also the first time a hero in comics had been shown with some kind of serious phobia as far as I know.

But how often have you read something from a fan saying `there was good `character development' on page 17', or something like that.

My point is, that it gets used as an ingredient, as if the writer was baking a cake. And often, the fans who like to think of themselves as the discerning, mature sophisticated ones are satisfied with this.

Some of this harks back to the special blend that Stan Lee put into his very early Marvel works. For the first time we had characters who interacted in a less than black and white way (the original Thing characterisation broke the mould). Other heroes like Spider-Man lived in a world where they fought crazy villains one moment and worried about their aunt's health the next. Stan brought a huge slice of soap opera into superhero comics which partly defined the early Marvel age and evolved into the character-related subplots of many books today (by these I mean the plots where the hero's worrying about his secret identity or something which has no direct relevance to his quest to bring whoever to justice).

And this substitution of complication for depth happens in comics. It happens big time. Because the ongoing episodic nature of the Medium is ripe for it. Sure enough, there are some characterisations in comics which are subtle. But often there are the other kind. characterisations based on huge histories, many facts, little depth.

I think it's very hard to do complicated motivations and characterisations in comics, because of the limited amount of captions for dialogue and exposition. Even those series which I would readily acclaim for their brilliance in these areas like Watchmen and Sandman cannot reveal their characters in anything like the depth a text novel could. The accomplished comic book creator is one who can summarise a character in just a few words or an expression and make the reader fill in the rest of the detail in his or her own mind. They don't call Superman an archetype for nothing.

And this is the fodder of the sophisticated mature fan boy. As a kid he may have spent his time arguing about who is the strongest, the Hulk or the Thing. But now he's on the internet, arguing about whether Wonder Man is evil or not. Whether John Byrne should be crucified or not.

Hulk is the strongest one there is, but Ben's more determined... sorry, teen fan flashback!

So when a fan says there's not enough `character development', or that he likes to concentrate on `character development', I always get suspicious. What is the person really telling me ? That he wants realistic believeable exciting stories between believable people, or that he wants more than the standard monthly two pages of cake mix in his soap opera soufle?

A little bit more sugar in the diet.

I think that the hardest part of writing a comic is the fight scenes. Virtually every superhero comic has one, and how many of these have been published. Let's take Captain America as an example. Around, what, three hundred and fifty solo adventures since 1964, maybe another two hundred and fifty with the Avengers? How does the creator do something new with a hero who leaps about, hits people, and throws a shield? Very few writers and artists can really write interesting fight scenes, especially for groups, which transcend "Uh oh! Hawkeye's in trouble! Better switch to repulsor rays and help!"

So the best way to leaven these fights is with some character interaction. Stan did it first with Spidey's banter against his foes, and there it worked. Often afterwards it hasn't. At its worst we've even seen characters arguing about their love lives whilst fighting the villain.

I believe that fans often want more "character development" because there are only so many times one can buy a comic rendering the same generic fight scene before one reaches a boredom threshold. It's not a function of maturity so much as longevity. The Avengers have fought Ultron maybe a dozen times or more. We've seen that fight so often in various permutations. So if it is to be made interesting next time, we need some additional element in the mix. If Ultron has once again betrayed and shattered Hank Pym, destroying the life he has so painstakingly rebuilt, that spurs the rest of the Avengers to new heights. Each plays off the new element, adjusting how they react to the battle, to the villain, to each other, and so to the storyline.

I hope somebody understands what I'm wittering about.

Flap

Your wittering makes sense to me.

IW

Follow-up:

Flap, earlier in this thread, suggested that it is assumed that new readers require their comics to be accessible. He then went on: On the face of it this seems like a natural assumption. But when I think back to how I got interested in comics, actually it was the complexity that hooked me.

Space Phantom: Me too.

Flap: I don't think this is a barrier to new fans... We shouldn't underestimate their ability to assimilate this stuff quickly. We shouldn't feed them with simple, reduced, rebooted universes. To do that would be to take away the very appeal of comics.

IW comments: I think the issue here isn't accessibility vs complexity, it is the value of texture. By this I mean that the successful comic should work on several levels. It should deliver a story in its own right, even as it takes forward the ongoing continuity of the title. It should also form part of a wider body of work, as one issue in a series and sometimes as a contribution to the shared universe other sister titles also belong to.

Texture (at least as I'm preaching about it here) is having a range of different ways to enjoy the comic. The new reader might well be intrigued as Flap suggests because they are aware that there are other layers to what is going on than it is possible to perceive as a first-time reader. In this way a really good comic is worth a second read, because the story gains new meaning in the light of what the reader now understands of the background, or because subsequent issues have cast things in a different light. I suspect Avengers Forever will prove a good example of the sort of story we will read again differently at the end than we do now.

My five year old daughter sometimes reads comics with me. Last night we read Avengers (vol 1) #7 - the first time for her. Clearly she gets a different experience out of the story than I do. Even the very simple motivation of the Enchantress wanting to use spells to defeat Thor so that he wouldn't be hurt fighting the Executioner was lost on her, but she was concerned that Thor had to take on his enemies while his friends were all sent away. When she is older she may well reread this issue and fully understand that motive. Doubtless if she chose years from now she could post a message on this board about the subtext of the attraction between Thor and Amora over the years. My point really is that every reader will read and understand at a different level, with more or less knowledge of the characters. But without "depths" - of which history and background are part - the comic is that much less satisfying and enduring.

Characters have been returning for sequels at least as far back as Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor because fans just love to see what their favourite does next. But part of that fun is tracking the evolution of the character over time - hence the success of romance between superheroes as a staple of action comics (with heavy doses in the current Avengers team).

Phantom wrote: I suppose it should be incumbent on any new writer to do his/her research & develop the same level of understanding Kurt has, but there comes a point when it all starts to look a bit scary. The Avengers not only have 36 years of their own continuity & characterisation (trying not to confuse the 2) but also Cap's, Iron Man's, Thor's & a multitude of one-shots, cross-overs & mini-series for a legion of different characters.

IW comments: I believe that it is the editor's job to have read those 36 years. The writer has to do his research, but in a genre based upon consistent episodic publications the final responsibility for the integrity of the concept lies with the editor.

Phantom wrote: Perhaps this is the main reason for the current wave of revisionism ('modernising' origins) & relaunching titles from #1, to give new readers the impression they are 'in' from the start.

IW comments: I'm sure that's part of it. But it's another example of short-termism in comics sales. I bet a special #500 would sell as well as an #1, and still give the message about the quality of a title that has managed to keep going for five hundred issues.

Phantom: My earlier reference to the 'Boom - Slump' cycle in the sales of comics (it seems so long ago now) 'could' suggest that the continuity lifespan may only be about 10 years, after which a major revision usually occurs which begins to attract a new generation of readers. As stalwarts we may not like the idea of reduced or revised universes, but I just wonder whether it always happens.

IW comments: This is an interesting point. I'd prefer to posit that slumps usually follow a period when the creators have digressed so far from what has gone before that the characters become unrecognisable and reader loyalty has been eroded through overmarketing, too many crossovers, poor and sloppy storytelling, and too much bandwagon-jumping. This seems to me to be the problem with the current x-universe. But I would certainly take your theory seriously.