Comic book author Matt Fraction is coming to Brisbane. Photo: Ed Peterson
If you need proof that comic books are gaining more respect as a literary form look no further than Matt Fraction's inclusion in this year's Brisbane Writers Festival program.
The writer, best known for his credits on Marvel Comics superhero books Thor, Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Hawkeye and The Invincible Iron Man, will be rubbing shoulders with some of Australia's most celebrated political observers and internationally acclaimed novelists at the Cultural Precinct next week.
The thirty-seven-year-old Portlander, who is used to the long lines of gift-carrying, costumed fans of comic conventions, isn't sure what to expect at this, his first writers festival.
Author Matt Fraction has worked on comic books such as Iron Man.
"I think it's going to be a little bit like Todd Browning's Freaks," Fraction says jokingly.
"Maybe the science fiction guys won't think they're in the skankiest ghetto anymore, I don't know."
One of the subjects Fraction will cover over five appearances at the event is the enduring power of the superhero myth and its impact on modern pop culture.
It's a subject Fraction is more than qualified to cover having spent nearly 10 years writing for Marvel Comics, launching the Invincible Iron Man comic book to coincide with the first film and later consulting on the writing process of Iron Man 2.
Fraction explains superhero stories, at their essence, attract an audience through grand stories of heroism, whether it is the time travelling antics of Marvel's first family in his Fantastic Four run or the everyman heroics chronicled in his best-selling Hawkeye solo series.
But (as Fraction will address in the talk House Rules: Playing Nice in Someone Else's Universe) the biggest obstacle writers face in harnessing the power of the Marvel mythos is dealing with a legacy of stories which stretch back 50 years.
In many cases characters such as Tony Stark, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are meant to be the same age now as they were when they were created in the 1960s, despite the series being continous.
''The first Marvel book I wrote ongoing was Punisher War Journal. My question to the editor was 'what war did he fight in?' Because if it was Vietnam he's now my Dad's age, which makes him a 65-year-old man. At that point you're talking about that Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino,'' he said.
''Well I need a guy who can run and jump off of buildings and chase bad guys and hang on to cars and shoot a million people and I don't believe that a 65-year-old man can do that, at least without superpowers. Right away you run into this logical bump.
''I think there is a way you can take what is important – which isn't that he fought in Vietnam – what is important is that he was a cop and the bad guys killed his family and he lost everything he had and he has now begun a relentless one-man war on crime. That's what is important. Not that it was 1968 or whatever.''
Fraction says part of the success of Marvel films such as The Avengers is they don't try to reconcile the lengthy, convoluted and unrealistic fictional history of these characters (in many cases characters have died and been brought back to life multiple times, while in the case of DC Comics entire timelines and universes have been stitched together, wiped out or reset).
''You can obey history and be respectful of history and not be beholden to it and not be exclusionary,'' he said.
''I think comics fell into a trap for a very long time where they were being written by people who read comics for people who read comics. Nothing else. I'm one of those people, but I think to always speak to people like me is an adventure in diminishing returns.
''I think, as proved by every movie Marvel puts out now, there is a way you can build these myths but create for new readers in a way that obeys it all and respects it all but grows it and honours it and is written in such a way that doesn't punish people for what they haven't read.''
Fraction says Marvel's films have been successful on the big screen because they have stayed true to the essence of the comics, not appealing to trivial details. And he expects the genre's feature film success to continue no matter how many Green Lanterns are thrown into the mix.
''We've had lots of comic book bombs and it's not gone away because the good ones have been better,'' he said.
''And the good ones are better, ultimately, I think, because they speak to the mythic and the mythopoetic and the root structure of what keeps people coming back to these things – these grand stories of heroism. The Joseph Campbell territory.
''Whether it is Star Wars or True Grit or Iron Man, heroes go into caves and come out with strange and mysterious powers that change the world. That's the stories we tell.''
Matt Fraction will be appearing at the Brisbane Writers Festival from Friday September 5 to Sunday September 8.
Tickets can be booked on the Brisbane Writers Festival website.
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