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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 June 2014
Posts: 241
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| Posted: 27 May 2015 at 2:13am | IP Logged | 1
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For me comics is a medium that is not restricted by other media. It's not supposed to feel like you are reading a live action TV-series or movie in pictures. Did Floyd Gottfredson's comics about Mickey Mouse or Carl Barks' comics about Donald Duck give you the same feelings as when watching the Disney cartoons about the same characters?
The old Star Wars comics from Marvel published in the 70s and 80s feels like a comic. I have only read a couple of the Dark Horse version of Star Wars, but these felt more like a movie or TV-series in comic form. When a popular movie, for instance Alien, is turned into a comic it feels like the movie itself when you read it. Which is of course the intention. But when Marvel's titles like Avengers or Iron Man gives the same impression, it just feels wrong. That approach puts a lot of restrictions on the medium.
And comics allow you to take certain liberties about hair, clothes, costumes and general appearance that wouldn't work in movies and require a lot of descriptions in novels.
There is also a difference between comics in general and good comics. In a good comic the art feels alive. One can be a great artist but a horrible comic book artist. As in all other media it's not what is flawless you notice, it's what doesn't work you will notice, because it takes you out of the story.
Alan Moore does not like small textboxes in the corner of a picture that says things like "In the meantime, on a rooftop at the other side of the city", but for me the things that really matters is that it works, not how it is done. If there is more than one alternative, you choose what looks best.
Comic books are also something that you could find in second-hand shops and look forward to on a specific day of week instead of buying a compact TPB now and then.
*****
About comics in general: there will never be something like a worthy substitute for comics. They can offer something that novels, movies and other forms of entertainment can never offer. Just as novels and movies themselves have something comics can never get. When it comes to certain emotions, I don't think they can exist alone and on their own. They are always the result of different elements coming together, in the case of comics drawn pictures with text put together in a spesific order.
And I also feels that if the traditional magazines disappear, we will miss something that not even so-called graphic novels will be able to replace.
Quote from Oliver Sacks:
"There is another part of the brain which is especially activated when one sees cartoons. It's activated when one recognizes cartoons, when one draws cartoons, and when one hallucinates them. It's very interesting that that should be specific. There are other parts of the brain which are specifically involved with the recognition and hallucination of buildings and landscapes."
I'm sure there is also an area that is activated by comics and only by comics. Why is why I really hope they don't disappear.
Edited by Olav Bakken on 28 May 2015 at 5:39pm
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Jack Bohn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 747
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| Posted: 27 May 2015 at 9:04am | IP Logged | 2
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The question as asked seems to be about the intersection of art and commerce known as a comic book. Since I'm like an analogy machine, I'll compare them to record albums. Originally, record albums were that; albums which pages had pockets to hold a number of (78 RPM) records needed to record the performance. These were eventually replaced by the LP ("Long Playing" 33 1/3 RPM) record, but kept the name "album." Album Oriented Rock fans may argue about presenting a story or a progression of emotions, but, in a sense, a hand-make binder with the Top 40 singles of 1973 is an album, and Dark Side of the Moon isn't. Today, when it is theoretically as easy to get Jeff Wayne's "Thunderchild" as the Beatles' "Yesterday", perhaps such arguments seem less important.
Are comic books even distributed like magazines, anymore? I've heard newsstands don't want them, and comics shops order them in specific quantities for each title, and non-returnably, like sequentially numbered, short ("floppy") TPBs. (Actually, Trade Paperbacks, are paperbacks sold to the trade -- bookstores, as differentiated from Mass Market Paperbacks, which are sold to mass markets ("the kind the drugstore sells," as the old song goes). They are returnable, but as a whole, while MMPBs can have just the cover stripped off and sent back. TPBs have some other, accidental, properties, such as sometimes being larger than their MMPB counterpart, and on better paper (if they use a hardback's pages, but softcover) and the term has been applied to any large-size soft-bound book.) By a certain definition, comic books may no longer exist! I don't subscribe to that definition, which would seem to include the requirement for a page of text and Statement of Ownership.
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Jack Bohn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 747
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| Posted: 10 June 2015 at 9:10am | IP Logged | 3
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Some thoughts: taking the comment that New Visions is "not quite a comic book," not as a categorical definition, but as groping for an explanation.
Drawn comics have evolved a number of conventions. Some of them may be incidental, or a result of the process, like "blue = black," but some have become part of the storytelling process, and if they aren't (can't be?) used in photoplays it may make them harder to read.
Backgrounds, for example, can disappear to focus attention on the characters. In a photo, it is always there. Star Trek does have nice blank sections of wall (as opposed to some sci-fi where it seems you can't lean against anything without pressing a button or obscuring a display) and I see a few panels where a character has been framed against them.
Action represented by swoosh lines may be an awkward combination of the two art forms. We've seen a few punches thrown, with the action a bit blurred, the only extended fight scene has been in "Made out of Mudd," and even that's not the knockdown drag-out affair of some from the show. I'm told stage fights are exaggerated for effect, but nothing compared to comics fights, even those without superpowered opponents. I wonder how much exaggeration could be gotten away with in a photoplay, and how much could be made from the available stills. Could we get Byrne's famous cause and effect in the same panel? We already get all this in the shots of the starships. I'd think because they are a step removed from people. They are given swoosh lines, and a ship's decloaking effect is represented by four images in the same panel. The warp effect on page 38 of "Time's Echo" looks to me not a "snapshot" of the event, but a time sequence reading from left to right.
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Rich Marzullo
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 January 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 2696
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| Posted: 10 June 2015 at 10:34am | IP Logged | 4
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"However, in the ad, it refers to Fight Club 2 as "a new graphic novel, serialized monthly".
Whahuh?"
Reminds me of how the WATCHMEN movie was advertised: "Based on the best sell graphic novel". Some people jut do not want to use the term 'comic book', even when it is the correct and only term to use.
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