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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | 1
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Yeah, agreed. I'm not getting this whole "writers write better now than
they did a decade ago" thing at all. I feel like I can pick up a book
from Marvel or DC and read it in about five minutes...and it's only a
sixth of the story at best. Still a ton of talking heads and non-action
dragging out the thin plot to extend to a trade comfortable length.
Maybe I've missed something, but it's the same old, same old as far as I
can tell with a few notable exceptions aside.
***
I read some 70s Avengers issues recently. Took me an age to read them all. Lots of dialogue but lots of action, too. Complete stories (mainly). Felt good.
Some 2004 DC issues I read recently, well I'd be surprised if it had taken me more than 5 minutes to read some issues, many of which lacked word balloons.
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Brian Skelley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 February 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 231
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | 2
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I've come to feel that the plots of the books are still decompressed but the dialogue isn't. Which wouldn't be as bad if the dialogue wasn't delivered as everyone stands around. In my youth I seemed to remember a lot more action in the books where the team members would banter back and forth. Now it seems like we may have a quick fight and then talk about it for a few pages, if the book is lucky. The interesting part to me is it feels like the books are written as if they were a show on say FX, or AMC. It's another reason why I feel like most of the "creators" are creating TV/Movie pilots and not comic books. They seem to want to create that slow Breaking Bad burn rather than write the medium they're in.
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | 3
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One thing I grew tired of quickly was the modern method of having an action scene, but the writer having an internal dialog going on that has nothing to do with what's going on in the panels. Almost as if the writer felt he was "above" focusing on the action itself or that by doing this it made the book more sophisticated.
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Perry Haslem
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2013
Posts: 86
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | 4
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I suppose publishers do it simply because they can. Back when I bought comics off the newsstand, there was no guarantee I would ever see the next issue. I imagine editors and publishers were aware of the hit-and-miss nature of comic book purchases and favored scripts that told a story in a single issue. Readers might avoid books they knew were likely to be continued. These days, we know well in advance what's being published. And with online shopping,comic shops, and trades, missing an issue is almost a thing of the past.
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Greg McPhee
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 August 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 5071
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | 5
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Watchmen would take a modern writer 100 issues to complete now. Good, bad or indifferent to it, at least Moore and Gibbons took their 12 issues, and told the density of their story in it. Whatever your feelings on the comic, at least they progressed and moved a story of that magnitude without slowing it down.
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Marc M. Woolman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 April 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 2096
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | 6
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So Secret Wars, and Crisis on infinite Earths were written for the trades because they were multi-part stories that you needed to read multiple issues of in order to get the full story?
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35786
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | 7
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Deliberately missing the point. Both Secret Wars and Crisis were written and sold as maxiseries, later to be collected into TPB. Big difference between that and editorial mandate years ago for long running ongoing series to "write for the trade" by writing longer arcs that fill 100+ pages with the express purpose of selling as a TPB.
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Marc M. Woolman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 April 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 2096
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | 8
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I'm not missing the point, nor am I doubting the editorial mandate of 10 to 14 years ago, I'm saying it doesn't seem to be in effect anywhere near as much now, today. It was suggested that Batman Year Zero is a current example of the decompressed, writing for the trade editorial mandate, despite the fact that each individual issue is densely written. If each individual issue is well packed with story, that by definition means it's not decompressed, and just because a story has multi-parts to it does not mean it is the length that is only so it can be collected for a trade. Today trade collections are put out that only collect a half or a third of a multi-part story. Other trades are released that capture 2 different stories that lead into each other over a stretch of issues. This is very different than 10 years ago when one 22 page comic was a quick 2 minute read where nothing really happened because a 2 or 3 issue story was stretched over 6 issues in order to be trade-collected.
Edited by Marc M. Woolman on 18 January 2014 at 9:17pm
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17678
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| Posted: 18 January 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | 9
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I haven't enjoyed reading CHEW or THE WALKING DEAD on a monthly basis
for quite a while. In fact, THE WALKING DEAD isn't enjoyable for me at all
unless I read multiple issues back-to-back. I can read THE SIXTH GUN issue
by issue, but enjoy it much more when I wait to read the TPB. And Stan
Sakai's USAGI YOJIMBO is so consistently entertaining that I find reading the
stories monthly or in collected form equally enjoyable. The only reason I've
stopped buying single issues of that is to cut back on my practice of double
(and sometimes triple) spending.
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Greg McPhee
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 August 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 5071
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | 10
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Marc, Batman: Year Zero is designed as a year long storyline. It may progress every issue, but none the less, it is designed to take a year to tell. Surely that is deliberate decompression?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | 11
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One way to spot decompression (ie, padding) is by taking note of how long it takes for actions to unfold. Like taking a whole page to fall out of bed, for instance. Over the years, I have posed this "test": Batman gets a call from Commissioner Gordon saying the Mayor has been kidnapped and is being held by the Joker in the penthouse suite of the Gotham Plaza Hotel. Batman races across town, climbs the outside of the hotel, and sneaks in thru a window. Once there, he discovers it's all a hoax, and the Mayor is in on the "kidnapping." Taking full advantage of the language of comicbooks, how many panels/pages is that? (Hold on your answers to give others a chance to think about it.)
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Michael Roberts
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 20 April 2004
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Posts: 14831
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | 12
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It was suggested that Batman Year Zero is a current example of the decompressed, writing for the trade editorial mandate, despite the fact that each individual issue is densely written.
-----
As I was the one who cited Batman: Zero Year in this thread, I'd suggest rereading what was actually said and what that was in response to, and not going by what you think was said.
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Topic Closed)
