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Greg Kirkman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 May 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 15775
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | 1
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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.)
++++++++++
Please remind me--the forum's inviso-text is ineffective these days,
right? If that's the case, just say when!
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Rick Shepherd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 June 2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1095
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | 2
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Greg - last time I checked, writing things within 'inviso' html tags ([ ]) should work, like so:
INVISO TEXT (Click or highlight to reveal):
| Make sure to add the / in front of the last 'inviso', obviously! |
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Holding my horses on it, but I suspect the most glaring trap with a scenario like this is not to think like in cinematic terms (be it live-action or animation). That's why a lot of single-issue comicbook stories would actually work a lot better verbatim on film than some would think - mainly because showing all the actions between each panel play out in real time would pad out the run-time a fair amount!
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Steven Legge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 866
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | 3
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Holding on to my answer, but that sounds like the plot to at least a whole book nowadays.
Edited by Steven Legge on 19 January 2014 at 6:51pm
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Rick Shepherd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 June 2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1095
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | 4
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Here's my answer, but inviso'd, and using a very silly, arbitrary (and likely meaningless unless explained!) cypher to avoid spoiling it for anyone who decides to click on the text box:
INVISO TEXT (Click or highlight to reveal):
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Done more to show that I'm not cheating when the actual answer is revealed, than anything else - it'd be all to easy to wait and then just say "hey, that's what I thought, too!" to look clever. Nuts to that - if I'm wrong, I'll be wrong and proud of it, darn it!
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Marc M. Woolman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 April 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 2096
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | 5
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Greg Mcphee: "Marc, Batman: Year Zero is designed as a year long story line. It may progress every issue, but none the less, it is designed to take a year to tell. Surely that is deliberate decompression?"
Just because a story is a 12 part-er, or a 6 part-er, or a 3 part-er does not mean it is decompressed/padded out. Otherwise you'd have to count every maxi-series like Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Korvac Saga, etc as decompressed story-telling.
Decompressed/padded out stories by definition means that each individual issue is a very quick read because not much story or plot advancement happened in that issue.
Writing for the trades means purposefully writing a story to be have enough parts to it that it will be long enough to be collected into a trade paperback collection.
Today I think every comic story that's written is intended by the comic book company to eventually be resold in a trade, but that does not mean that the stories were stretched thin and padded out over more issues than were appropriate, in order to do this. It also does not mean that the writer deliberately chose to make the story "X" issues long so it could be collected. Every issue of Paul Dini's Detective Comics run was a standalone, done-in-one story, yet Dini's run has been collected and sold as trades.
In the case of Batman: Year Zero every issue is densely packed with story/plot advancement, so the story is not decompressed/padded out, and while the story is meant to be a year-long (12 part-er?) story, that is simply the writer, Scot Snyder's style. He likes to tell long stories, and I doubt he's calculating that each story he tells must be at least 6 issues long so it can be collect into a trade.
Writers know that whether they tell a 4 part story and 3 done-in-one standalones, or a 6 part story, or a 12 part story, or whatever combination of stories during their run, it is all eventually going to be collected into trades so there is little need to purposefully set any given story to an exact number of issues in length.
I'd also like to point out that the title of this thread is about Decompressed writing, which is not the same thing as writing for the trades. People seem to be confusing the two.
Edited by Marc M. Woolman on 19 January 2014 at 7:36pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132673
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | 6
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The answer is ONE. One panel, one page. Foreground, Batman climbs in window. Background, Joker and Mayor seen thru partially open door. Caption: An urgent call from the Police Commissioner brings the Batman to the penthouse suite of the Gotham Plaza Hotel. Batman (thinks): Gordon said the Joker had KIDNAPPED the Mayor, but... Joker: Well, yer honor, isn't our little PLAN going JUST as smoothly as I SAID it would? Technically, of course, doesn't even have to be a splash page. Could be the first panel of a page that then tells a lot more of the story. The William Goldman rule: always start as deep into the story, and as deep into the scene as you can. What were the solutions you folk came up with?
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Eric Ladd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 August 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 4506
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | 7
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I saw a 5-6 panel page. A single panel certainly works.
Back in the 90's when the Marvel Masterworks were coming out, a friend had the first Spider-Man volume and remarked to me how it took so long to read an old comic book because they were packed with story and actual words to read. Today's comics don't compare.
I think the newspaper comics are great examples of storytelling. Just 3-4 panels with no half or full page splashes, but capable of lots of story.
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17678
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | 8
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JB, I didn't offer a response since I remembered you sharing this a
while back. Have you ever posed the same (or a similar) question to a
fellow professional? If so, and you are okay with sharing, what was that
person's reply?
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Steven Legge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 866
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | 9
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I had one page, 5 panels. I broke it down literally from the beats in your description, which was probably the most obvious method, but not the most efficient as far as using the medium to its strengths. Great lesson.
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Rick Shepherd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 June 2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1095
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | 10
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Well, darn - I thought 2 (hence 'Virgil' - as in Virgil Tracy, as in Thunderbird 2. Yeah, I know...).
First panel, Batman getting the call from Gordon ("To the Batcave!")
Second panel, caption reading something like "later, at Gotham Plaza Hotel...", and the hoax reveal with the Mayor.
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Monte Gruhlke
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3303
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | 11
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One could almost argue that any one page of Kirby's Spider-Man carried enough story to equal one issue at today's relaxed standards.
(Updated because I wuzzint thinking)
Edited by Monte Gruhlke on 19 January 2014 at 8:48pm
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 19 January 2014 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | 12
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Some time back, one of the contributors to this forum (I wish I could remember who) cited a past storyline in which Batman is hit by a bullet, nearly killed, operated upon & saved, but loses his morale and resigns from crime-fighting, taking Robin with him. How many issues was that storyline? It was actually just the first story page of Worlds Finest #143. We hadn't even gotten to the part where Superman takes him to Kandor so the two can operate on equal terms, never mind the upcoming feud and sword fight between the two... Worlds Finest #143's basic, one-issue plot could easily be spun into the next two years of the Nu52's output. I was certain that JB had a one-panel answer to his challenge, but I hadn't thought to reduce the initial phone call to a passing caption... My question is, how are we going to find room in that one panel for Hawkeye and a couple of other knuckle-dragging male Avengers to discuss at length which super-villainess they'd most like to bang and luridly suggest to She-Hulk that chicks with green hair, like, say for instance, Madame Hydra, are just naturally sex-bombs and male fantasy fodder...? Can we also show Hank and Jan trading sexual favors in the bed behind the Joker and the Mayor? Scenes like that are SO necessary in today's creatively progressive marketplace...
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Topic Closed)
