I’m about to suggest something that could make my life a lot harder. It just as easily could make my entire profession a lot stronger.

It seems like everyone wants to create comics and graphic novels. Stephen King has presented the latest stories in his Dark Tower series as comics. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon has his own super-hero, The Escapist. Best-selling author Jodi Picoult has written DC Comics’ Wonder Woman, Jonathan Lethem has Marvel’s Omega the Unknown, science-fiction star Orson Scott Card has written Iron Man, and so on.

It’s not just novelists. Screenwriter-director Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, has written comics based on his own creations as well as long-established Marvel super-heroes. So has Clerks writer-director-actor Kevin Smith. Musicians are involved, too, from KISS’ Gene Simmons to cutie-punker Avril Lavigne to burnout rocker Courtney Love. Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage created the comics series Voodoo Child with his son Weston. The book’s publisher is Virgin Comics, which has also produced comics from author Deepak Chopra, porn star Jenna Jameson, and filmmakers John Woo and Guy Ritchie.

Gol-durn Johnny-come-latelies, I’ve occasionally grumbled. For decades, comics bumped along, often without making much money and almost always without attracting much prestige. Now that graphic novels have started getting some respect, amateurs from other fields want in. Where were they when the business needed them? (I may start manufacturing T-shirts bearing the line “I was comics when comics weren’t cool.”) Like TV stars who get a contract to write picture books or movie actors who get music-company record deals, celebrities are crowding into the graphic-novel world. And I suspect that they might crowd out lesser-known talents like, well, me.

Nevertheless, I want more celebrities to join them.

As a reader, I want to see great graphic novels, which means reaching out to any people who have the talent to make them—even famous people. And as a guy who works in comics, I’m all for anything or anyone that’ll bring the business more attention and higher sales.

But a lot of people who could make great graphic novels haven’t yet grabbed the opportunity, and I want them to. Here are some people who deserve a chance much more than a porno actress or a movie star’s son.

• Comic strip cartoonists. This category would seem to be a natural, but few strip cartoonists do much work in graphic novels. Crafting a three-panel gag requires different skills from sustaining a 200-page narrative.

But some strip artists could do it brilliantly. In Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau weaves stories that run for weeks at a crack, and his characters develop depth and maturity. Calvin and Hobbes’ Bill Watterson has a superb visual talent (look at his Sunday strips) and great skill at making vivid characters. For Better or For Worse’s Lynn Johnston and Funky Winkerbean’s Tom Batiuk have produced long storylines of considerable emotional punch as well as humor.

• Comedians who tell stories. Like comic-strip artists, some comedians are simply great gag writers. But others go further. Bill Cosby tells tales -- from memories of his family to the adventures of Fat Albert and Old Weird Harold to the episodes of The Cosby Show’s Huxtable clan—that indicate a genius for character and story structure. Ellen DeGeneres’ discursive anecdotes seem to run off in a dozen directions, but she always pulls them together into something hilarious. These storytellers could create great graphic novels, and they wouldn’t even have to draw. The field has a long tradition of fumetti, also known as photo-comics. Besides, a lot of artists would love to work with Cosby or DeGeneres.

• Artists who went astray. A lot of creative people studied art but became rich and famous elsewhere. Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood went to Ealing Art College and has kept up his skills. I’d love to see him do a comics memoir of his days in the Stones. Filmmaker David Lynch, famous for movies like Blue Velvet and the TV series Twin Peaks, trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has created both animated and print cartoons. Horror novelist Clive Barker is a skilled painter of visions every bit as weird as the ones in prose volumes like his Books of Blood. Tim Burton, who started as an animator before going on to direct Batman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and other movies, has written and drawn books such as The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories.

There are so many more. Suspense novelist Walter Mosley knows comics well; he’s even published a lavish, panel-by-panel tribute to the first issue of Fantastic Four. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, could produce terrific graphic novels. Editorial cartoonists like Pulitzer Prize winners Don Wright and Dick Locher could deploy their remarkable skill at staging scenes, capturing characters, and making points into superb narratives.

As long as I’m dreaming, I’d like each celebrity guest to do all the work of making comics. No ghostwriters, as-told-tos, or other crutches that let a celebrity come up with a few ideas and turn the bulk of the work over to professional writers. In my ideal world, celebrity creators of graphic novels would have to do what the rest of us do: face the blank sheet of paper and muck through every detail of structuring a plot, building a world, and devising each characters’ words, actions, and emotions.

I can’t forget the way screenwriter Sam Hamm reacted after he first tried writing comics. “Comic books are damned hard to [create],” he admitted in the introduction to his graphic novel Blind Justice. “I did my harrowing stint and came away with enhanced admiration for the talented guys who turn this stuff out on a regular basis.” Still, he added, “It’s an experience I wouldn’t have traded.”
 
I don’t know about you, but I hope that Bill Cosby or Ron Wood would feel the same way.

Posted by: David Seidman