Bottled Thoughts on Fluid Homogeneity

In my last Continuity Bottle discussion (on Fermentation), the comments section got into how the fermentation process creates a cycle of good and bad comics (at least, in the commenters' views). I felt this should show up as a stand alone post, but is frankly a lot of what I've already written in those comments, where the term "fermentation" brought us to talking about reader taste as an appreciation of "vintage". The current vintage was said to be "lacking in flavor". I do agree, though I also believe we don't yet have the distance required to truly judge the "era". The perception is still that today's comics are samey (homogeneous), while older comics seemed to have more variety (heterogeneous).

It's easy to take a nostalgic view and say the good old days were better than today's vintage, I think. But the bias here is that the best (and usually most "different") comics we remember fondly are those that SURVIVED as such in our minds, and we simply forget that they were surrounded by loads of utter CRAP. The 80s weren't all Byrne's FF, Simonson's Thor or Ostrander's Suicide Squad, though perhaps the later part of the decade had a little more going for it than, say, the early 90s that followed it, or the early 80s which preceded it. Why? Because things were changing (the creation of crossover events as a means of super-interaction, new writers like Moore, Claremont and Miller pouring new things into their bottles) creating heterogeneity. These new elements became popular and the fluid started balancing to a new paradigm (the high soap opera of Claremont and the deconstruction of Moore and Miller, for example). This leads to a homogenized state where everybody is doing the same thing, few very well because they are not actively pursuing their true artistic selves (what I call following the Kirby Faith), and to a bunch of forgettable comics (Marvel during the 90s being a prime example). But even in that era, there are some great comics (DC's early Vertigo, Morrison's JLA) - clear and different voices.

I think the best comics come out of a non-homogeneous bottle, myself. As time goes on, continuity entropy takes hold and tends to homogenize the bottle's contents and that's when comics become samey and boring. The best comics usually come from adding elements that do not conform to the house style. And it's our fault as collective readership because we've encouraged certain elements by making them popular.
Homogenization was all well and good back in the 40s or 60s when it was all NEW and EXCITING! But now that the genre and medium have been around a long time, it only leads to repetition and imitation.

If we're talking vintage, this cycle of homogenization and heterogeneity is what makes you sick of the "wine's taste". Note also that like wine tasters, true comics amateurs, especially older ones, will prefer more complex tastes and subtleties, while the masses lap up the cheap stuff because it all tastes the same to them.

So if my premise is a good one, there ARE good comics in both major shared universes, but the continuity fluid is so homogeneous right now that it's hard to detect those flavors. In 10 years, we'll have forgotten the crossover-crazy, dismembering pap that's become the baseline consistency and will remember those pockets of flavor like Batman Inc., Manhunter or Hickman's FF.

Back under the Fermentation post, Wayne Allen Sallee said "kids" were now shaking the bottle. The creators pouring stuff in the bottle are now principally former fans, so they tend to put back stuff that was already in there, elements and consistencies that were present at an earlier point in fermentation. This can be retrograde (again, they've taken something innovative by a writer like Morrison and made it plain and ordinary - the use of old continuity elements). They don't understand the exact recipe, so they just throw all-spice into the mix hoping to create the same effects. Comic book fans turned pro were also responsible for the 90s art fiasco, artists bred and (self-)trained on superhero art who couldn't draw anything else or even that very well. Pop will eat itself, as they say.

So yes, finally, I agree that we're due for a shake-up, and not a "reboot" kind of shake-up, but the addition of something NEW that will create chaos inside the bottles and allow heterogeneity to once again set in (before inevitably choosing a pattern to stabilize into and the whole dance starts again). What we should be worried about is that, in DC's case at least, it's the same old people adding all the new ideas, which likely won't make them new at all.