thinks Paul Jenkins might be right!!!

So yesterday, as I was going through my twitter feed, I came across a tweet by Andy Diggle. This tweet included a link to an email that writer Paul Jenkins had sent to Comic book resources (see it right here) announcing that he was exclusively joining Boom Studios for the forseeable future. The reason behind his doing this was, for the most part, down to one simple reason; the big comic book publishers (that's Marvel and DC) having "removed their focus away from the creators and towards the maintenance of the characters"  which had meant "We have taken away the consequences of the stories we present to them, and I feel the mainstream product is becoming a homogenized puddle of 'meh.'"(his own words in the email).

Now, having read it over (a couple of times) I gotta admit that Paul Jenkins is right. When it comes to the comic books released by DC and Marvel, the stories have less to do about character development and more about the status quo. Now, in fairness, this is not entirely true. At the present moment I'm reading Daredevil, which writer Mark Waid has turned from a dark, brooding noir title of the Bendis era into a more jovial, swash-buckling book. I'm also reading Indestructible Hulk (as by Waid, maybe that's the common denominator), which has Hulk working for the government instead of running away from them. But the question that's always in my mind, regardless of how much I'm enjoying these books with their new takes, is 'how long will it be before they go back to where they were before?'

Now, if we go back a couple of years, my pull list consisted of 60% Marvel and 40% DC titles. But as I've grown up and gotten more into comics Marvel and DC combined consists of 50% of my pull list, with that number dropping still. At the end of the day, I'm now finding independent titles more appealling than the Marvel/DC books, for what I think is the very reason that Jenkins is highlighting; Indie books have a greater degree level of character development, which is down to the fact that the writers (who most likely also created the book) have a larger level of control as to where the story goes, while the big two will simply maintain the status quo of their characters.

In the end, this annoucement probably won't make me say "That's it, I'm swearing off Marvel and DC comics" (because I'm a little more fickle than that), but I respect Paul Jenkins for not only doing what he believes in, but also bringing this out into the public and giving people a chance to debate over it (because debate is healthy, or so I'm told). I just hope, that if he changes his mind and wants to go back to the mainstream, what he's said won't be held against him, because the big two might just be doing themselves a disservice.