Geoff Johns = ________

Steve: I’m just gonna come right out and say it, knowing full well that Andrew’s going to have a totally different reaction – for my money, Geoff Johns is the pre-1990 George Lucas of comics. Like the Lucas of old, Johns work is respectful, almost reverent of the past and at it’s best can instill a genuine sense of wonder and awe in the reader.

It’s not a perfect analogy – Lucas tends to write his riffs on pre-existing archetypes and story tropes, while Johns has worked almost exclusively with the originals themselves. However both men share the ability to convey to the audience a sense of grandeur you don’t often achieve in movies or comics. It’s also kind of interesting that when people go back and look at their bodies of works, both creators are likely to be remembered most fondly for their epic space sagas – Star Wars and the Green Lantern Corps, the former reinventing the space opera for moviegoers, the latter reinvigorating a stale concept for a stale company and a jaded audience. For both gentlemen, that’s not exactly a bad legacy.

Duncan:I’ve honestly never read all that much Johns, so I really don’t have too much to say. What I have read reminds me mostly I suppose of Brian Singer, another likeable and successful geek-friendly creative personality who’s entirely capable of spinning a good yarn, but tends to take his subject far too seriously and compromises his instincts and talent by being far too concerned with pleasing “fans.” I don’t like the X-Men movies, but they’re not garbage — they’re merely excessively, frustratingly mediocre: predictable, ordinary, lacking in tension and artistry, laughably self-serious, and eager to please to the point of distraction. And so it is with Johns’s comics. The most recent I read of his was the first issue of the latest JSA series from a while back, and that was like flipping through 23+ pages of DC-fan porn. Was it complete crap, though? No.

As with Steve’s comparison last time, the George Lucas connection I don’t see whatsoever. No matter what he’s become, Lucas once accomplished big things: changed the course of an art form, helped invent the modern blockbuster, concocted one of the top three Global Nerd Obsessions, etc. Johns has written some ok superhero comics.

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Mark Millar = ________

Steve: I have to go with Tarantino for this one. As much fun as I find his movies to be, he’s an overly cocky guy who ultimately gets by (for the most part) on shock and flash. Millar’s very much made in the same mold, both in the over-confident public persona department as well as the over the top storytelling tendencies with an intense love for shocking twists, scenes, character behaviors, etc., often at the expense of the actual plot itself.. If it was physically possible for Millar to insert himself into his comics, I guarantee he’d write himself a cameo in every one.

One thing they aren’t altogether similar in is their ability – or in Millar’s case, inability – to write a decent ending. Leaving the mess that was “Death Proof” aside, Tarantino generally wraps things up nicely in his stories, as opposed to Millar’s tendency to seem to remember at the last minute that he’s on the last chapter of whatever arc he’s working on and “Oh shit, I need to wrap this up STAT!” Still, for the most part, I see more similarities than differences.

Andrew: With Millar I don’t see that comparison at all. As far as Tarantino goes, I think Garth Ennis is the (almost too) obvious analogy there since he seems highly inspired by The Q’s style and aesthetic. Not to mention Tarantino dabbles in skillful, dialog-heavy cult film genre mash-ups of noir, blaxploitation, and kung-fu, and Millar’s work is usually an action-oriented, poor man’s version of the epic and confrontational “widescreen” (sorry…) fantasy/sci-fi superheroisms of Morrison and Ellis. True, Millar and Tarantino are both deeply concerned with The Cool, but that’s where the similarity ends.

No, I think Millar more closely resembles another cultishly adored and highly successful director: Michael Bay. Unabashedly big and corny and unafraid to please the crowd with well-worn cliches and elaborate, ridiculous set pieces, both Millar and Bay are brash, and they both think and create huge. Tiny little distractions like plot and character and plausibility and realistic conclusions become secondary to the overall excitement and style of the ride. Not sure if Michael Bay will ever come up with something as nifty as “Red Son,” though…

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Rob Liefeld = ________

Steve: Uwe Boll is basically famous for turning out movies that sound like they’d be pretty cool on paper, yet end up lifeless at best, tediously dull and incompetent at worst. Transfer that magic from film to paper, and you’ve got Rob Liefeld in a nutshell. Much like Boll, Liefeld is arguably utterly talentless, yet manages to constantly land projects and make money from them. Both are able to convince quality people from their respective fields to work with/for them on projects, despite a history of churning out virtually nothing of any discernible quality. Ergo, Rob Liefeld is comics’ Uwe Boll.

Andrew: It is deeply difficult to argue with Steve’s well-reasoned assessment, especially considering both Liefeld and Boll — two people who are successful in two fields notoriously difficult to even make a moderate living at — somehow lack three important things: talent, self-awareness, and dignity. Indeed, it’s been suggested that the combined egos of Liefeld and Boll wouldn’t even fit in the Mariana Trench.

I was actually going to suggest that, since long, long ago he seemed to have some iota of talent and a natural instinct for the over-the-top theatrics of superhero comics, Liefeld was more akin to Joel Schumacher, who jumped into prominence with the once-stylish and trashy-but-still-watchable Lost Boys. But Schumacher, as remarkably awful as he can be, seems to have at least some small sense of humor. At the end of the day, Liefeld and Boll are really more snake-oil salesmen. Wild West grifters, well-dressed and charismatic with a suitcase full of cure-all tonic that’s actually distilled donkey piss. They’re kind of William Castles for our time — except without the acknowledgment that what they’re doing is, for all intents and purposes, crap.

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