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It’s great to listen to writer speak about comics. It’s kind of a “behind the curtains” if you will. I attended a conference on superheroes and was able to listen to some more discussion from “behind the curtain.”

I had the great privilege of listening to three great writers at a conference this past weekend: Matt Fraction, Gail Simone, and Kurt Busiek. Each one of these writers has made a name for themselves in the super hero comic medium. All three were a part of a panel discussing their work in writing the contemporary hero. There have been changes to how modern heroes are being as opposed to how they being written a few years ago. Most of those changes I was not even aware of until spoke be these panelists.

Matt Fraction is the current writer of Uncanny X-men, Invincible Iron-man, and Casanova. Gail Simone is the current writer for Wonder Woman, Secret Six, and Welcome to Tranquility. Kurt Busiek has had a long industrious career with both DC and Marvel. Busiek is most well known for his work on Marvels, DC’s Trinity, and his independent book Astro City.  As you can see this was a representative slice of current writers in terms of experience and history.

Similarly, they have all worked, or currently work on, characters with tremendous amounts of history: Gail with Wonder Woman, Matt with Iron-Man and X-men, and Kurt Busiek with the entire history of the Marvel Universe. When an audience member asked how they felt about continuity, they each voiced a similar idea. They stated that continuity was great but could have the tendency to choke out all the fun of a story. They each reached the conclusion that continuity isn’t important but consistency is. I think that catches the main idea of a contemporary writer in comics.

Being a current writer for a character that has existed for over 30 years can be a daunting task, especially when you try to maintain the absolute integrity of the entire history in each story. It can become manageable when you decide that each story involving a character, or set of characters, does not need to reference all 30 years of history. That is way too much information and may actually be a deterrent to new readers, which is counter to what writers should be doing. It’s possible to do that but its not always a great story, there are exceptions. Writers should be writing great stories accessible to everyone, not everyone who has been reading for 30 years. That’s why I want to say thank you to Matt Fraction, Gail Simone, and Kurt Busiek. Thank you for writing great stuff that doesn’t involve me always having to start at issue #1.