RIP Keith Giffen. Where do you even start? An important comic book creator for my childhood– he was everywhere for a time, at least for DC Comics, but in such an astonishingly peculiar way, at least from the modern era.
The way I remember it, Mandela Effect and All: Because it was a time when they didn’t know how to move forward– the pure fan era that I think Giffen came out of was ending, and the “let’s deconstruct all this” guys had blown in and blown out of comics, and the “let’s treat this all as Big Icons doing Big Iconic Stuff so that Hollywood Notices Us” era wasn’t in comics yet. And Image had either just hit or was about to and people were saying “let’s break everyone’s backs and make them alcoholics and replace them with characters who have more pouches and put their girlfriends in refrigerators.”
And people seemed lost, especially at DC, especially there because you know, they’d published Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. So how do they move forward? And Giffen seemed to be the guy who maybe didn’t know the answer to that question but wanted to find out! And so you had that Justice League run with Kevin Maguire where… if I like the DC characters at all to this day, that run is 90% why, and it’s a big swing in the opposite direction. Anytime people are like “The Justice League must include so and so, there are trinities at stake here” , all that lame-o religious-y talk, I’m still to this day like “why isn’t this person mentioning G'nort??”
And you had a Legion run that certainly had its detractors at the time, but that was very much trying to find how far he could push almost everything about what that comic could be to something new– he had a 9 panel grid, it had characters with trauma, it had a massive cast it did nothing to help you with, , everyone knew each other by their first names. And then you had him as an artist, and not just all the different things he did at DC, but also trying to play ball with Image, with Trencher. And out there in Valiant comics, in one of its “What the hell do we do” phase with Punx. He’s playing with the form, and he’s making fun of the industry, and he’s … he’s trying. He really was trying– that is a career of trying, in a way I think you’d be kind of heartless not to admire, a little (or for me, a lot).
As an artist, Giffen I think has really aged the best, though just because he was someone … who was trying to find out what other people were doing and how he could bring that into his own work and how he could find something new. Too much so famously, perhaps early in his career, but when you look at the whole scope of a career– you know, there’s a lot of Kirby to Giffen but he’s definitely not a guy who stopped there. He was a guy looking for the next thing to study so when I see modern guys (Michel Fiffe or whoever else) talk about Giffen and admire him– you know… it makes me… There’s a way of viewing English-language comic art as a relay race that’s to me very beautiful and it was … Maybe getting lost?? when I checked out. I don’t really know. But. But Giffen for me being in that relay race… I like that, I guess.
People talk about “loving comics” and usually I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Batman? I don’t fucking know. But Keith Giffen– that guy fucking loved comics. At least, I think when you read his comics, he wanted you wanted to love them too, you know? He wanted you to love Rocket Red. And you know, I still kinda do…? Rocket Red was a good dad!!! Or he wanted you to really love what you could do with a 9 panel grid. Or what you could do with a weird ass squiggle. Or…
I don’t know. This one makes me a little sad, maybe in a “it’s not them dying, it’s knowing you’re also going to die” kind of way, maybe a selfish kind of way, but still. Nevertheless. I don’t know– I’ve not really fully processed this one yet so there’s probably something better to say here, but.
My condolences to those who knew him best and loved him most. And I hope he enjoyed his time here.
(Pictured: a page from Victory #1 with Keith Giffen on Kirby characters, a page from Punx, and an ad for the final JLI arc).
“The best thing we can do with power is give it away” - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:
The ongoing “Jason Todd is a cop” debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:
“A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power.
I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large.
But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read.
The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact…
The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return.
Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story.
But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive.
We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies.
But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you).
The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take.
So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson…
The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY.”
