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Making stuff up

Reginald Hudlin is the current writer for the Black Panther. Marvel got him as part of their effort to recruit writers from other ("legitimate"?) mediums. While this has given us Joss Whedon's X-Men and J. Michael Straczynskicynskicy's Spider-Man, it's also given us Ron Zimmerman's Punisher. Interestingly enough, Whedon had previously done Buffy and Straczynskicynskicy did Babylon-5, both critically acclaimed shows of interest to comic book readers. Zimmerman... was a writer for the Howard Stern show. And Hudlin brought us House Party, which was apparently the high point of his career, according to AllMovie Guide:

Hudlin's third film, the Samuel L. Jackson comedy-satire The Great White Hype, may have drawn only mediocre reviews, but it still managed to score better than his next effort, the abysmal Saturday Night Live character feature The Ladies Man, which immediately tanked at the box office. His 2002 comedy Serving Sara didn't fare much better...

So anyway, now this genius is writing Black Panther, previously one of the best books Marvel was publishing. Under Christopher Priest, it was funny, had complex, involved plots, and made much use of Marvel's rich history. Under Hudlin... not so much. There are huge continuity issues, including a complete re-writing of the Black Panther's origin with no explanation, and total out of the blue changes to other characters as well (for example, Radioactive Man, one of the few Chinese characters in the Marvel Universe, and a current member of the Thunderbolts, is now Russian with a totally new backstory). His explanation?

The answer is what you said earlier. I"m making it up. Basically, that's what this gig is. Making up stuff.

I've been reading comics longer than all of you. I remember when there wasn't a Superboy. Then there was. Then there wasn't. Now there kind of is. The Kents were dead, now they're alive. Iron Man used to have been injured in Viet Nam.

All that cool stuff in BATMAN: YEAR ONE? Wasn't in Bob Kane's original story. The basic beats are the same, but it's different.

Priest made stuff up. Most people here liked what he made up. I"m making stuff up too. If you don't like it, that's okay, but don't get freaked out that I'm making up stuff, 'cause that's the job.

Note that the majority of his examples are pre-Crisis DC.

Continuity is important in any type of sequential story telling. Imagine if, in the beginning of Return of the Jedi, Han Solo was walking around with no explanation, and Chewbacca was suddenly a jawa. But continuity is what makes comic books, especially Marvel comics, unique. The current trend of throwing out continuity whenever it doesn't suit a "star" writer's needs threatens that. At the very least, it threatens my interest in it, as well as the interest of a lot of other 30 year old geeks. And we're basically their audience at this point, whether they like it or not. At $3+ a book, kids are better off with video games.

By fnord12 | January 16, 2006, 4:57 PM | Comics


Comments

"i dont think the empire had jawas in mind when they designed it, chewie."

"oom tee dee!"

i dunno, the picture in my head runs pretty funny. they would have to rewrite that chewie swats at the meat bait in the tree scene tho.