December 7, 2004

I thought I'd post some thoughts about Bob Haney that might have seemed out of place in an obit, and these tie in with Irwin Donenfeld, who passed away last week. One of the problems that has always plagued the comic book industry is how to evolve in order to remain relevant to an ever-changing youth market. This is a never-ending concern for every entertainment form but it seems especially acute in comics, given how precarious that market has always been.

In the last few decades, I think the business has erred mightily in both directions. At times, you've had the then-current talent pool trying too fervently to re-create the era of comics they'd enjoyed when they were ten years old. Imagine a video game company today trying to market the original Pong machines. Conversely, there have been periods in comics when the makers seemed too desperate to seem contemporary, to the extent of trashing their characters and abandoning what it was that made them popular in the first place. This extreme has usually manifested itself by ripping off current hit movies and by replacing perfectly competent (but older) writers and artists with younger folks whose work sometimes isn't any better...and often, doesn't sell as well.

In the sixties, DC Comics produced some fine, successful comics but the firm still managed to take a general sales downturn, owing mainly to competition from Marvel. Around the DC offices, there was a certain clueless arrogance: They knew Marvel was overtaking them and couldn't figure why. We all knew that Marvel was doing fresher, more dynamic stories and that DC suffered from a certain avuncular stodginess...but up at DC, they thought they were doing the best comic books humanly possible and couldn't fathom why they were losing market share. There's a quote often attributed to Donenfeld that I suspect is apocryphal, but it was widely believed because it was not at odds with the company's editorial attitude around 1966. It was that "The secret of Marvel's success is bad art. Kids relate to crude artwork." The "bad art" to which the alleged quote referred was primarily that of Jack Kirby and most folks today would tell you that it wasn't bad, it was better. But DC slid out of first place because only a few folks there — none of them in positions of power — understood that Marvel was successfully reinventing the super-hero comic for the current generation.

Two of those few were Bob Haney and Arnold Drake, two freelance writers. In 1963, Drake and Haney collaborated to create The Doom Patrol (drawn by Bruno Premiani) and a year later, Haney co-created (with artist Ramona Fradon) Metamorpho the Element Man. These were two of the few starring super-hero creations of the day that were wholly new as opposed to updatings of older characters. They were also written with a bit more of what we might now call the "Marvel sensibility," adding depth and personality to stories that might otherwise have just been about catching the bank robbers or stopping the alien invasion. Metamorpho, especially, was Haney's attempt to bring to DC the kind of thing Marvel was doing...though this was not an intent he dared say aloud in the office. The result was a book that briefly showed signs of being a big hit. Two try-out issues in The Brave and the Bold sold well, as did the first four issues of the regular Metamorpho comic...but then Fradon left.

Though she was replaced by artists who slavishly traced and imitated her style, sales did a nosedive. It may not have been just because of that. The comic seemed out of place at DC and as comic book readers became more fervent about following their favorite titles, it became suicidal for a book to be, as Metamorpho was, bi-monthly. I think DC missed a real opportunity then by not publishing their best comics more often and by being too hasty to cancel new books that didn't seem to be catching on. Readers learned the hard way not to fall in love with anything the company put out. It seemed like forever between issues and you came to feel that whatever you liked would be gone in the not-too-distant future. Marvel was on the move...DC was in a state of constant, hesitant retreat. They retreated on Metamorpho but the fondness some still hold for the character suggests that maybe giving up on it wasn't such a hot idea. Certainly, very little they tried instead did any better and much of it has been largely forgotten.

Haney continued to work for DC but soon began struggling to find the right note in a changing industry. The editor of Metamorpho was kicked out about the same time that Irwin Donenfeld was forcibly retired. Thereafter, Bob did most of his work for Murray Boltinoff, who for a time was the only editor in the office who actively preferred to work with "older" talent. That was good because it kept Bob employed but bad because Boltinoff was forever resisting progress in content. When readers cried out for more continuity between titles, Boltinoff decided this was just the plea of fringe, atypical fans. He clung to a probably-obsolete belief that steady buyers were vocal but few and that the mass audience only cared if a tale made internal sense. Under Boltinoff, Haney wrote The Brave and the Bold, a book that featured Batman teaming up with everyone else in the DC Universe...but those characters often — and even Batman at times — did not act quite like they had in previous appearances. The stories, taken by themselves, were often very good but readers squirmed at the discontinuity. Because of that and his other work (like the wonky "Super-Sons" series in World's Finest Comics that made no continuity sense, whatsoever), Haney became the archetype "old school writer" of comics. Some of his attempts to modernize his work with "hip" language went over like a senior citizen in bell-bottoms.

He was not the only creator of his generation to find himself in this position. About the same time, I spent a few hours with Bob Brown, a veteran artist who had drawn everything from Batman to Challengers of the Unknown but who now found his work regarded as "old-fashioned." It wasn't so much that Brown couldn't take a more modern approach to his work as that he just plain didn't understand what that meant. Editors kept showing him the work of new artists, he told me. They'd say, "This is what we want now," but Brown couldn't grasp just what it was he was supposed to learn from the examples, which often struck him as displaying weak anatomy, poor perspective and other fundamental errors.  It was almost like they were telling him that "Kids relate to crude artwork" and he knew it wasn't that.

The first time I met Bob Haney was not long after Brown had passed away. We got to discussing his problem and Haney identified. He was a smart man but he had an underlying bitterness, believing that the work of younger writers who'd replaced him was not very good, and no more successful than his would have been. The latter is arguable but not insane. Certainly, some comics produced by folks who were thought of as "hot, new talent" have sold so poorly that a comic written by Bob Haney and drawn by someone like Bob Brown would not have fared worse and might even have done better. In terms of quality, Haney's work is already more highly-regarded than a lot of what was produced by those who replaced him. Could he have produced more like that? We'll never know. Some talents, once they get off track, never quite get back on.

I find it interesting to think that Haney, who was ahead of the pack in the sixties, came to be perceived as someone who'd fallen hopelessly behind. Like most who've worked in comics, he produced good work and bad, and I'm sure they generally felt the same from his vantage point. And I guess I find myself wondering if the decided downturn in comic book circulation the last decade or two is a result of people like Bob Haney moving away from comics...or of comics moving away from people like Bob Haney. It could, of course, be neither. But it could also be one or the other or both.