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Anyone here "Okay" with the modern "Written for Trades" comics?
biffsmackwell
Posts: 4,739 Arc User
I've been reading a bunch of comics lately (mostly from big two) and I'm absolutely hating their methods. They say they do it so that new readers can have easy "jumping in" points but I think that's complete BS.
Back in the day, you would get an entire story, beginning to end, in one single comic. They had story arcs that spanned the length of several books, but each book was still a self-contained story. Nowadays, you pick up a book, you read it, and you get the equivalent of the first 5 pages of an older comic book. You get the setup to the story. The hook. You read the trade, and you gotta read through a hundred pages before you finish a simple story.
We pay more for comics now, and they're little more than artist galleries. Ironic, me being an artist, and wanting more of the story instead of the art. So many wasted panels, so little dialogue, so little story. I can't believe writers are getting paid the same amount for turning in a fourth of their work per issue.
I've read a few comics that were not from the big two that didn't suffer from this crap, and it makes me want to buy more of their comics.
So uh, yeah what do you guys think? Do you think it's better now, you wait for the trades to come out and you just buy them and read real slow-paced stories, or do you like when you could read a whole story in a single issue?
Back in the day, you would get an entire story, beginning to end, in one single comic. They had story arcs that spanned the length of several books, but each book was still a self-contained story. Nowadays, you pick up a book, you read it, and you get the equivalent of the first 5 pages of an older comic book. You get the setup to the story. The hook. You read the trade, and you gotta read through a hundred pages before you finish a simple story.
We pay more for comics now, and they're little more than artist galleries. Ironic, me being an artist, and wanting more of the story instead of the art. So many wasted panels, so little dialogue, so little story. I can't believe writers are getting paid the same amount for turning in a fourth of their work per issue.
I've read a few comics that were not from the big two that didn't suffer from this crap, and it makes me want to buy more of their comics.
So uh, yeah what do you guys think? Do you think it's better now, you wait for the trades to come out and you just buy them and read real slow-paced stories, or do you like when you could read a whole story in a single issue?
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If editors want graphic novels, they should take more time to produce it and release it as a complete graphic novel. I'd wait for longer for a complete story.
When I'm purchasing an ongoing, I want an ongoing, a resolution in max two issues. More is good only for crossovers or bigger story arcs.
Which is why I like Magneto's ongoind or More Than Meets The Eye. At most two issues per story and no splash panel pornography.
Except now I have to wait till the Secret Wars are done... *sigh*
And yet again I have the same link to sum up the rest of everything that sometimes irks me in modern books:
http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/07/storytelling-rant.html
Ongoing run of the Silver Surfer also has proper pacing. Oh, wait... Secret Wars. I have to wait till it ends...
That and was hyper violent. Then that damn cartoon happened and ruined it all U_U
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They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
You can tell that it was an industry-wide change, because a lot of the older, big-name writers who wrote complete chapter stories early on, changed pacing around the same time. I feel their popularity/sales suffered for it, but hey, I'm no big-time slaver... er; I mean, publisher. So who am I to say? The manga from the more indie publishers (like webcomics) still have that complete feel to their chapters.
Edit: As far as how it all feels to me now when I read them, I've described it on a lot of forums as 'permanent set-up mode.' In that, they seem to be forever setting-up a story, but never deliver on a conclusion. It's like they thought, Hey! What better way to have a hook for the next Tankoubon-Trade, then to have a cliffhanger at the end of this one? So, it's neverending.
Specifically, I blame the readers who say repeatedly that they're "waiting for the trade" to read a given title. When the publishers keep hearing this, it only makes sense for them to have the writers modify their storytelling style appropriately.
I do miss the days when a story was told in one to three issues, with maybe a thread or two carrying forward to the next story arc - but the beginning of the end for that came back in the late '80s to early '90s, when some of the artists got the idea that they didn't need writers. So we started to get huge two-page splash panels without dialog, which didn't advance the story but did make the artists feel good about what they were doing...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Maybe the writing for trades just makes sense now, due to writers and artists having the inability to actually stay with a comic now.
Also, I avoid Marvel's steaming pile of trash. That helps.
I really can't wait till the Secret Wars are done and it's all back to regular ongoings...
In older comics, you would get the same amount of story told in a more concise way, in one book or more books.
I get that buying the trades is good, but what you get in the trades, are you happy with that? You get one story spread out to three to six or whatever issues that you have to buy, trade or no trade. You get the same amount of story for more than three times the price. Are the extra pictures and larger pictures really worth it that much to you?
Most new comics don't take very long to read. You read comics, you don't watch them. Getting less to read seems like a big ripoff to me. I don't often ogle at the art, so if I see a panel empty of dialogue, I give it a one or two second glance, and I'm onto the next panel. An entire page with very little dialogue (I "read" a comic once where on two pages, all you had was one balloon that said "OUCH!" or something like that) will be flipped in a few seconds. This few seconds doesn't translate into entertainment to me. Big splash pages are nice, when they're necessary. But taking an entire half a page just to see one dude hit another dude is silly.
This is one of my favorite "built for trades" moments. The artists have so much space to just screw around in, you get crap like this:
Two pages of "storytelling" that could have been told in one panel. Lazy writing, lazy artist.
That's something that actually gets to me. This kind of decompressed sequential art is cool...
...but in a full blown graphic novels released in a one go with 50+ pages, or in big fat manga books.
In a 22 page issue it's just robbing people. But at least artist had less to draw, it looks like digital or traced, the same image pasted few times. :biggrin:
And I rememebr DC again and again inserting crossovers into their runs, these are also made for trades. It was not enough that I need Action Comics or Superman&Batman to know what is happening in a story started in World's Finest. Let's follow with H'el on Earth. And then with Doomed all over their series.
None of these crossovers was in the end even remotely as consequential for continuity as Avengers vs X-Men.
Good thing at least Red Daughter of Krypton was involving only two DC series I was really interested in.
Because you can't just read your favorite monthly series, but (if you want to know what is happening) you have to jump to other series you are not interested in.
Not to mention everything is suspended before all series tied into crossover are back to their usual run.
And it's a cash grab. Crossovers are written to make you buy other series with other characters.
I felt that way with some of the scenes in Lucy though with the wild animals.
And more importantly, gave them something to sell at cons.
It was really weird watching creator rights affect things like that.
That was the "rockstar artist" era. Basically what caused Image to crop up. And it's sad that writers and editors seemed to kowtow to this.
That's a silly point to bring up when we're talking specifically about reading comic books. What people do in their video game RP has nothing to do with trade-style writing.
Bonus points when artists were also writing and editing for themselves, as it was with Image comics.
And a one big splash panel is faster to draw than an entire page of sequentials so it was also easier to keep up with monthly deadlines. Another "great" practice started with Image and their superstars.
The first four issues of Spawn could be easily made as a one book, max in two, but it had to have half page panels with people just standing and talking.
...
It's a bad habit when artists are also writing for themselves and are either editing themselves, or are edited by their close friends. Either way nobody tells the superstar: "Ok, bud, this needs to be fixed or remade".
It persists to this day, and it's this way with star writers as well.
This one is one of my favorite "fake sequential" moments from recent books.
All-New X-Men #40
Ok. I couldn't care less about this "shocking" reveal. Things like that are going completely over my head, I just skip to pages with facepunching. Or actual plot-relevant dialogues.
The book actually has enough meaningful dialogue and other things happening. Fine, whatever, it's an issue about character socialising. I can live with that. Not like I'm wildly interested in a romance plot between X-23 and Angel, but ok.
But this one page was wasted and I suppose it's just a filler.
This isn't even a real sequential dialogue, because the only changes in facial expressions and gestures are on the first and the last panel. The rest is copy&paste.
Still, it's a weak issue about socialising. Compare it to the last Captain Marvel before the Secret Wars started and the only thing of note here is Bobby Drake being gay. Revealed on a lazy filler page.
Well, imho putting a letters column there would be more useful. :rolleyes:
But I salute to the artist's ingenuity, because he was paid for a full page anyway.
Things you can get away with when the books are written by names like Bendis...
Could be much worse. Marvel was mildly merciful with it.
When I saw the reading order for their Black Vortex event I bailed out of it immediately.
Superman Doomed required not only going through the mini, but also a slew of other titles.
At least Marvel's Axis event did not require from me buying anything more, the way how it was written I could stay only within Magneto's ongoing because everything important to him was kept in his book.
And at least I don't have to read every single Battleworld tie-in with the Secret Wars. I do not intend to go further than the main mini-series.
...what action is that meant to indicate that she is doing?
...is she shooting some kind of power out of her hands?
...she looks like she's having some sort of fit.
...well I mean, the panels are pretty small... isn't it basically like two normal sized panels that are four* mini-panels each? Granted, would have been nice if they didn't copy-paste into six of them...
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Yeah but if I follow the movement lines and try to make her hands move along them in my head, I need to start giving her extra sets of hands...
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I still cant see Ice Man as gay. Ice Man is a straight written character and they just came out with Ice Man is gay for no real character development reasons.
But Marvel can handle sexuality right. Look at how over the last 2 decades Marvel has hinted The Human Torch might just MIGHT be bisexual..but to be fair Johnny Storm flirts with anything be it giant insects to dinosaur people to Logan's emo son.
And lets not forget this >_>
So much for Parker's Spider Sense the dude seem oblivious.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Which is also wonderfully accented by its face frozen in this uneasy expression.
Best drawing of a glitched android I saw in years. So subtle, yet so telling.
This artistic choice of copying and pasting these flawlessly drawn panels only highlits how still and unmoving it is, despite its struggle.
...
Not sure what you mean.
I thought these panels were easy to read; the motion lines made sense to me, but after looking again I suppose they could have been made more clear. The cheap copy-paste here at least has a purpose, but again, it is just lazy page-filling. This whole thing could have been two panels.
Writers need to start putting more in their pages. It sucks that this artist-as-a-writer copy-paste-page-filler crap started in the first place, but now even worse that writers are perpetuating it. Writers should go back to writing for comics, instead of using comics as a way to fill their screenwriting portfolio.
The copy-pasta defeats the composition of the scene. To me, if they insisted on playing that out over one entire page, I'd have one side-by-side at the top, with alternating speech bubbles spanning the frame, then make the rest of the page one frame with the two of them facing each other in profile, because a conversation that serious needs to show eye contact. (I'd also be happy to talk with my hands for the artist, so he could see what an "I'm trying to get you to say something" gesture really looks like.)
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Aha! So, Jean Grey has been a fembot all along. Why didn't I see it before!
But yeah, seriously, in the amateur realm, if you had a page like that in your webcomic, you'd get your butt blistered by critics for being lazy.
I still don't get why a character.. or real life person.. being gay is such a big deal. It doesn't seem like a compelling plot hook to me.
Cyclops: Wolverine... I'm gay!
Wolverine: ...um... okay... you know there are giant robots attacking us right now right?
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EDIT: Ha! My old pal, Brian Cronin has the whole scene online.