Separating Creators From Content

Question: how much are your views about comics colored by the creators themselves? Not by their talent, but by their personality?

Quick example: John Byrne. Byrne's taken flak for a lot of years for his thoughts on this, that or the other. He's gotten into arguements with other creators and editors and fans, and that's dragged out into the public from time to time. It's frequently presented in a light that makes him look bad. So does your opinion of John Byrne, the person, affect your reading of Spider-Man: Chapter One?

Byrne's an easy example because he was one of the first "casualties" of what you might call the Silver Age of Comics Fandom. He became professional (and a popular one, at that) right around the same time that comic fans were really getting together and publishing professional-grade fanzines and organizing conventions and such. Prior to that period, fans' knowledge about comic creators was extremely limited, and they were judged almost solely on the quality of their work. But now fans had the opportunity to share information and rumors, and news of a comic professional's gaffs/quirks/opinions could be shared with nearly the entirety of the fan community. (Can you imagine if someone like Steve Ditko tried starting a career even as late as the 1970s?!)

Of course, reporting of information didn't have a 100% guarantee of accuracy. The old game of telephone was often in full operation, and a stray comment could be mis-construed and mis-interpreted and reach the ears of fans in the form of a full-blown, knock-down-drag-out between a writer and an editor.

Here we are, a few decades later, and the Internet has broadened the scope of the issue considerably. Not only do more people have access to the information, but it's also transmitted much more quickly. So a creator who might casually say at a convention that they don't like rice can find that they've got a flood of e-mails by the time the get back to their hotel room demanding to know why s/he is leading a boycott against the rice industry.

And, for good or ill, that seems to color how a creator's work is perceived by a large number of people.

Now, there's certainly something to be said for context. Without context, you won't understand jokes, social commentary, or subtexts. But if a creator writes a string of stories, none of which involve guns or shooting, his/her thoughts on gun control are pretty much irrelevant. His/her approach to dealing with editors is almost never relevant unless s/he is specifically writing about that. There's only so much context you really need and, for most comic books, you shouldn't need any to follow the basic story.

Personally, I try to separate the two as much as possible. In some cases, it's easy -- I've never actually met John Byrne, for example, so I can't really speak to his personality. In other cases, I have to admit, it's more difficult. On that end, I had a series of very nice, extended conversations with Salvador Larroca and it's harder for me to look at his work objectively. But even so, I have criticized his work on occassion, when I felt there was room for criticism.

So here's a suggestion to try. Select a creator who you don't like on a personal level. Doesn't matter why you don't like them. Then have someone loan you some of their work you haven't previously seen, and make an active effort to judge it on its own merits. I might also suggest mixing that loaner in with other material you haven't seen before, and try to skip over the credits in all the books, so you don't know which book is by the creator you don't like. (Although, artistic styles are sometimes distinctive enough that that might not prevent you from spotting whose work is whose anyway.)

Give it a shot -- you might find some work you might actually like.