I was reading through a recent pile of marvel and dc comics and started getting the feeling that I was getting ripped off. So many pages were suddenly made up of these giant splash pages with a few words of story on them. I mean occassionally, these pages have great effect ... but come on.
Now I see mags like Daredevil that are heavy on story and action -- few splash pages. But in Batman Confidential I'm treated to virtually a full page to show me that Bruce Wayne can go to bed with a woman. What enlightenment!
The Countdown series seems to be one of the worst offenders. In the latest issue, I got 3 panels of art over two pages of a book that already short because of the background story each issue. Another full page is taken up to show me Mary Marvel say that she's going to tackle a job herself.
And one of the worst recent offenders was a JLA story called "Buried Alive" ... with 7 full pages taken up with basically one piece of art and one line of story copy. Oh wait, 8 if you count the page that drew 5 holding patterns around black space and called that panels.
With the cost of these book running $3 a pop and more each ... and the few minutes it takes to read them ... I'm starting to get the feeling that the cost/value ratio is drastically out of sync.
Anyone else feel this way? Or am I way off the beam here?
You're not off the beam. Seriously.
I can go through about five current comics in one sitting in about the time it would take me to read one or two about five years ago. The last issue of Wonder Woman I got only took me a little over five minutes to read (but keep in mind I'm a fast reader).
It's not the art, it's the writing that sets the pace.
Or possibly the editorial or publishers or even the publics taste for six part stories reprinted as TPBs.
I've been moaning about decompression for so long that I hardly notice it anymore.
I will say that I liked that JLA issue though. It told a story in one issue, and I like that. I appreciate that it had few characters in it, and relatively little action, but I thought for a one issue piece it worked.
It's funny that you mention that many DC books. I was listening to the around comics podcast where a marvel and DC artist answered questions about drawing and curiosly enough the DC guy kept making references to the obligatory splash pages required by his editor.
Either way I agree with the above... more panels and story with only the ocasional splash for effect. That's why Im a huge fan of daredevil, punisher max, the vertigo books.. they are just well done.
I love the splash pages when used for those "Holy Cow!" moments. Whether its the arc's/issue's plot twist revealed, or the climax of the story. One of my favourites has got to be the Colossus/Wolverine 'fastball special' splash in the first Astonoshing X-Men arc. Anything less than a two-pager would've done that moment injustice.
I echo those exact same thoughts Ancient spirit, I have been thinking the same thing for some time now, giant splash page after splash page with very little dialog. I collect new comics and also I still collect back issues from the 80's and early 90's. And its not uncommon for those 80's comics to have 6-8 panels per page with alot of dialog plus fighting. It takes me twice as long to read the older comics that the new ones.
I'm also not a fan of some the new artist's look, especially the New Avengers style where every page is really dark and full of shadows, it just seems lazy and sloppy. Maybe its just because I grew up with the 80's comic where everythinig was bright and campy, buts thats how I feel comics should be.
Quote from: tommyboy on August 12, 2007, 05:09:37 PM
It's not the art, it's the writing that sets the pace.
It depends actually, although that statement's probably true for the majority of today's comic industry. Teams that work using the "Marvel method" devised by Stan Lee and Ditko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Method) depend as much (or even more) on the artist for the pacing as the writer. I don't know if too many creative teams still work that way, though (and I doubt if any in DC do things "the Marvel way"). All the artists I know work from finished scripts and I'm willing to bet most of the current Marvel creative teams work from finished scripts (which is just as well... the Marvel Method was a good fit for natural storytellers and/or artist-writers like Ditko, Kirby, and Buscema but your typical comic book artist would probably work better with a tighter structure laid down by the writer).
Quote from: tommyboy on August 12, 2007, 05:09:37 PM
Or possibly the editorial or publishers or even the publics taste for six part stories reprinted as TPBs.
That's true... it's one of the reasons I've switched to reading TPBs, you get much more story for your dollar and the relative brevity of the individual issues isn't evident, although it's one of those chicken-and-the-egg things... did readers' buying habits motivate the switch to a six-issues-per-story-arc format or was it vice versa?
Quote from: tommyboy on August 12, 2007, 05:09:37 PMI've been moaning about decompression for so long that I hardly notice it anymore.
The thing about the "decompression" storytelling technique in comics is that it was first widely utilized in
manga where it fit the format perfectly (although it's also been a staple in
bande désignée and European "albums").
Manga, at least in Japan, is relatively cheap and the most popular titles come out bi-weekly and they're also collected regularly in thick digests, so readers don't feel like they're getting ripped off because of the brevity of the installments. In North America, where comics are much more expensive relative to other forms of entertainment and the wait between issues is longer (not to mention the fact that TPB collections and digests of story-arcs aren't assured except for the most popular titles), the trend towards extending a story over multiple issues for no other reason than to fit the six-issues-to-a-story-arc format ("letting the story breathe", I think is the euphemism most often used) isn't really doing the single-issue buyer any favours.
Economics.
The fewer panels on a page, the more you can usually sell it for at a convention.
The proliferation of spash pages, however, does affect the pacing of a story. It's like driving with your foot riding the brake, so that it is like "VroooomSCREECH,VroooomSCREECH,VroooomSCREECH,VroooomSCREECH".
I wonder about DC editors asking for more splash pages, though. I mean, the "Death of Superman" issue was done with single page panels, and then issued as a card set I believe, and there was a story in (I think) Marvel Premier (Jim Starlin? Maybe) where there was one panel per page, but these were exceptions.
There aren't many people who know how to REALLY pace a story anymore, and the last person I saw who knew how to utilize the negative space on a comic book page was Frank Miller (and then he started doing postage stamp panels). Too many comics I've seen have no depth to the art, no shading, no feathering (and both Neal Adams and Wally Wood could do work without either shading or feathring shadows, and it looked right), making the art look like that of a coloring book.
This is suppsoed to be what "sells" now, but I wonder...
I have actually started a new habit at my comic shop -- before I'll buy any "special" issue of a comic, I'll flip through the book to see if I'll get my money's worth. Many times I wind up buying anyway, but there have been some issues I just turn back in disgust.
What really brought this to a head for me was that this week I bought one of those black and white compendiums (this one featured a favorite from my youth, Mystery In Space's Adam Strange) ... and I was amazed at how much story they packed into those panels and stories. This isn't to say that the writing was better; unlike today's comics it really was targeted to a child. (With lots of science facts, to boot!)
And then I started thinking about what Tort said about how great splash panels were for those Wow moments -- and remembered back to how effectively these splash pages were once used. (I still remember one in particular -- in an Fan Four comic -- where the team was underwater going after Namor I think and it was the 4 color team superimposed over a full page black and white photo of some sort. Really strange -- and powerful.
I still like some splash pages -- especially for a big reveal at the end of an issue. But when every other page is a Wow moment -- then the wow just disappears for me -- and I think that a monetary motive is at work.
It was one thing to use those pages when you were paying 10 cents, 12 cents or 25 cents for a comic. But man, at today's prices you can drop $30 + some weeks -- and then read the whole slew of them inside 30 - 40 minutes.
Hell, for the price of 6 comics I was able to buy the last Harry Potter book -- which had over 700 pages -- and not a single splash page! ;)
Quote from: zuludelta on August 12, 2007, 07:43:05 PM
("letting the story breathe", I think is the euphemism most often used)
Actually, I think "Padding" is the most commonly used term. But I might be wrong on that.