[Op-Ed] Are Hollywood writers good or bad for comics?

Unless you completely ignore any news relating to comics (which you don’t because you wouldn’t be here) or you’ve been living in a yert at the North Pole for the last week, you’ve probably heard the news about Amazing Spider-Man’s “mostshockingrevealindecadesOMGyouwon’tbelieveit” reveal. In Amazing Spider-Man #26…

[SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW]

Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel dies.

If your immediate gut reaction is, “Huh?”, you’re not alone for a number of reasons. Putting aside the twimblr half-truths and overreactions, Ms. Marvel is generally not part of Spider-Man’s regular cast of supporting characters, she has no deep personal connection to Peter Parker, and Ms. Marvel has only popped up cursorily since issue #1 of Zeb Wells’s increasingly infamous run on the title.

Generally speaking, Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man have almost nothing to do with each other. So, the next logical question is, “Why did Marvel do this and make such a big deal out of it?”

To answer that question, I’m going first lay out a very big caveat. I have no insider information confirming the following theory, and I’m no mind reader. What follows is a model based on observation and probabilities aka an educated guess.

My educated guess, in a word, is Hollywood. Let’s look at what we know from the past year to piece this together.

Zeb Wells (the ASM writer at the heart of this mess) signed an exclusivity contract with Marvel way back in 2006, but he also splits duties writing and producing film projects, most notably Robot Chicken. When you look at Wells’s list of credits, the major television and film work dropped significantly around 2014, with the only major writing credits listed for an online streaming show called SuperMansion. Nothing much of note followed until Wells started writing for Marvel again in 2021. It’s not fair to say Wells did nothing for seven years, but the volume of Hollywood work reflects an occasional one-off project peppered in with longer but much smaller projects during that 7-year stretch when compared to the previous decade.

What happens afterward? Wells gets attached to an increasing number of Marvel-branded TV/streaming projects. Wells is listed as the EP on She-Hulk (red flag) and listed as one of the writers on the forthcoming The Marvels film, which appears to be a continuation of the Ms. Marvel show (red flag).

I’m going to take a big leap here by suggesting Wells’s desired career focus is on film projects. Can you do both? Sure. Can you be a master of both at the same time? Unlikely to impossible. Contrary to the average layperson’s opinion, scriptwriting for comics and scriptwriting for films are not the same, so achieving mastery of both is a tall order.

When you put these pieces together, there’s a very strong suggestion that Zeb Wells is a Hollywood scriptwriter who shifts to comics when the film gigs aren’t plentiful, and now, he’s using his relationship with Marvel Comics to carve a path back to Hollywood.

Am I wrong? I certainly could be, but all outward signs point to a creator wanting to do more in Hollywood, and when the traditional channels dry up, he uses comics to find a backdoor into the studio set. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with forging your path in life. If Zeb Wells finds success using comics as a backdoor into movie and television projects, more power to him.

Back to the original topic – Are Hollywood writers good or bad for comics? When you look at the facts and theories above, the answer is, generally speaking, ‘no’.

It’s a ‘no’ because (and Zeb Wells is not the only creator whose taken this route), the quality of the comics suffers. Storylines are constrained to demonstrate a creator’s cognizance of film budgets, making comics feel small and creatively muted. Comic lines are adjusted for “synergy” with related film projects, resulting in nonsensical plot developments, character introductions, and character departures.

For comics to be at their best, stories need to be told without Hollywood influences and able to stand on their own. When producers and scriptwriters farm comic publishers for material, you’re left with comics that read like bland storyboards produced by intentionally limited imaginations.

Are Hollywood writers good or bad for comics? Ultimately, it’s Hollywood that isn’t good for comics, and we’d be better off without it.

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