| Author |
|
Bruce Buchanan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 June 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4797
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 7:21am | IP Logged | 1
|
|
|
You hear Stan Lee talk (notably in 80-plus year old car salesman mode) and he is mind-boggled by how "good" the comics are now. What a load!
*********
That's just mind-reading. Perhaps Stan really does like what today's writers and artists are doing. I don't think it's fair to call him a liar just because you and I don't share that opinion.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Jason Mark Hickok
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 February 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 10472
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 7:23am | IP Logged | 2
|
|
|
I am with a lot of others on the board here who had their first experience with the comic books genre after seeing BATMAN (60s) and ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
e-mail
|
| |
Sean Blythe
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 342
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 8:57am | IP Logged | 3
|
|
|
The whole discussion about the future of printed, monthly (or allegedly
monthly) comics is pretty much futile. That distribution model is in full-
scale chicken-with-it's-head-cut-off mode: dead, just doesn't know it
yet. Like it or not, digital comics make SO much sense for SO many
reasons. The advent of the iPhone, the kindle and the netbook (and the
machines that will follow in their footsteps) are not good signs for
companies mired in paper and ink.
There will be those who say that a computer is not a good way to read a
comicbook. In my mind, that's the same shortsighted mode of thinking
that says "who wants to listen to music/watch TV/see a movie on a
computer?" The method of doing so now may not be ideal, but it's about
to be.
Yes, the romance of going to a store and seeing a shelf full of comics will
be lost, but that's nostalgia, that's not reality. That black and white
picture of those kids enjoying a comicbook may be charming, but it's not
the way kids behave anymore. Add the glow of an LCD display to that
photo, and it starts to make more sense. (And if you'd have told those
kids in the 50s that they could read the same comicbook on a computer
that they had in their room, or carried around with them, tell me they
wouldn't be delighted.)
The good news? The art form will endure, and may even thrive. We may
see a return of the comicbook as a mass market medium. We'll see (and
are already seeing) interesting work from small creators. We may well see
the return of the comic book shop as back-issue business.
The future is here, kids.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134912
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:06am | IP Logged | 4
|
|
|
As I've said before, I think calling the digital form the "future" of comics is a lot like referring to the automobile as the "future" of the horse. Similar jobs, with similar users, but in the end something very, very different.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Anthony Frail
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 09 October 2007
Posts: 960
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:12am | IP Logged | 5
|
|
|
The future using sequential panels of art to tell a story. What's more important-- the content or the format the content's presented in?
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134912
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:18am | IP Logged | 6
|
|
|
How long do you thing the sequential panel form will survive in a digital format? We are already seeing various kinds of animation, limited and otherwise, applied to comics for the digital market. People don't much want to look at still pictures on a screen, it seems. Especially not when those still pictures have to compete with so much that isn't stil!
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Andrew Goletz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 388
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:24am | IP Logged | 7
|
|
|
I can deal with price increases on comics. I can deal with the fact that the big two have events that sometimes affect the titles I like to sell more books. I can deal with a lot of things in comics that may drive other people batty but I won't read comics in a digital format. I've read a few webstrips and the like but a full digital comic? No interest. I like comic books, not comic dot coms or whatever you want to call it
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
|
| |
Sean Blythe
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 342
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:26am | IP Logged | 8
|
|
|
Edit: Posted after you'd already answered my question.
Edited by Sean Blythe on 23 June 2009 at 9:27am
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Sean Blythe
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 342
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:33am | IP Logged | 9
|
|
|
Andrew:
Never's a long time. Are you talking about digital comics the way you read
them now, or the way you'll be able to read them in a year or so? If
technology makes reading "printed" material in a digital format as easy as
listening to music on an iPod, I wonder if you'd change your mind.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134912
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:35am | IP Logged | 10
|
|
|
In the past few weeks I have been reading several collections of newspaper strips. THE HEART OF JULIET JONES. MARY PERKINS ON STAGE. STEVE CANYON. SAM'S STRIP. And one of the things that leaps immediately off the page is this: these strips were not done with collections in mind. Even gag-a-day stips like SAM'S have a stop-start feel to them when a week or three are read all at once. The drama strips, the action and soap opera strips are even worse -- Monday is really obvious, even without checking the dates. And as time goes by, and the writers and artists are called upon to make it ever more easy to miss episodes, the first-panel-is-the-same-as-yesterday's-last-panel becomes more common, and adds to the overall "jerkiness".This is pretty much what always happens when one form is translated literally into another. Comic strips are meant to be read in daily doses, not in pages like comic books. Their pacing is all about cliffhangers and recaps. Comicbooks don't fare too well when collected, either. Unless they were "written for the trade" (in other words, unless the basic format of their original publication was ignored) they will also be jerky and overly expository. That monthly recap becomes an annoying distraction when it happens every 22 pages or so. This is precisely why comicbooks will never properly translate to the digital form. Where are the splash pages? Where are the double page spreads? Where are the very things that make a comicbook a comicbook? Digital may be the Future -- but it is not the future of comicbooks.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Bruce Buchanan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 June 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4797
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:41am | IP Logged | 11
|
|
|
In the past few weeks I have been reading several collections of newspaper strips....And one of the things that leaps immediately off the page is this: these strips were not done with collections in mind
************
One perfect example of this is the Spider-Man comic strip. It doesn't run in my local paper, so when I read it, it's always online and usually I'm reading several weeks worth of strips at a time. And it's just like you said - an endless cycle of recaps and cliffhangers.
But I'm not reading them in the daily manner they were intended to be read in, which is the problem.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
| www
e-mail
|
| |
Martin Redmond
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 June 2006
Posts: 3882
|
| Posted: 23 June 2009 at 9:48am | IP Logged | 12
|
|
|
I'm also reading Juliet Jones and Mary Perkins. Mary Perkins is the most obvious with the recaps but it's fine with me.
Maybe it's that I started with really low expectations but I enjoy both series a great deal. I'm near the end of the first volume of SHoJJ. Eve cracks me up, she's such an airhead and practically the leader in the family while Juliet just sits there and rolls with the punches. >:D There's tons of great establishing shots in both strips.
|
| Back to Top |
profile
| search
|
| |
Topic Closed)
