Comics

[Elemental_Elf]

Wow, I've been gone a long time.... Sorry, lethal combination of school, Team Fortress 2, Pokemon, and the discovery of obscure cartoons that I feel guilty about not knowing anything about them.

This is both on and off topic, but i've been collecting alot of DC animated stuff, like Batman: Gotham Knights, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, and Justice League: Unlimited Vol. 1, being the most recent inclusion to my collection.

So here's a question for the comics industry; Why aren't comics written like cartoon episodes? The first episode of Batman: The Animated Series I showed to my mom was "Heart of Ice", and she loved it! Didn't have any real background in Batman except the Nolan films, and I think the Adam West batman. I didn't have to force her to watch all the episodes from the beginning, I just showed her the episode, and she got it immediately. So the point i'm trying to make is, that most of the Batman TAS episodes are self contained and don't require much background information. Why don't any comics I've heard of ever do the same, and why would it be so difficult to do so?

To be honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that the fact that TV shows almost universally favor minimal to no continuity where as comics favor heavy continuity is due to the general audience they are each tapping. TV shows try and appeal to the broadest spectrum possible because it gets better ratings. If you have a show with a lot of complexity and inter-woven, cross-episode, cross-season plots, then it (generally speaking) dissuades new viewers who feel they have to start at the beginning to get everything that is going on. This feeling leads to them not watching the TV show because they never come back to it, while it is on air, and see when the re-runs begin. Furthermore, people who ARE invested are less likely to continue watching the show if they happen to miss and episode or two (preferring to wait until re-runs or the DVDs). Put that together and you can see why TV generally favors minimal continuity.

Comics, on the other hand, do not appeal to the general audience and resemble books more than TV. The medium of comics is much, much slower in that it takes an entire month for the story to continue. Potentially a single fight could eat up half a year's worth of comics (6 issues), where as TV shows could finish the same fight in just a handful of episodes (if that). This time delay generally means people will be more invested in the story because, if you can't wait, you aren't going to enjoy comics. Furthermore, because of the time delay between installments, cross-overs between different comic franchises become very popular since the reader can see his favorite characters multiple times a month, which increases sales for the franchises who participate in the cross over (fans one one will buy the other just to see their fav and vice versa, even if they don't necessarily like the second hero). Because comics take so long to complete a story, and because cross overs are so popular,  there's already a feeling that continuity exists, even if one story line has nothing to do with the next.

I'd also wager that continuity also exists because the fans LIKE it. Golden Age comics very rarely had one long running story arcs, rather they simply focused on one-shot adventures and battles. There's only so many times you can watch Superman pummel Bizzarro before it gets to be old hat. Comics have been alive and well, with the same franchises, for 75+ years. If you don't have continuity, comics simply get boring. Each individual comic is small, 22-30 pages long, there isn't enough space to develop a good story and still have the gorgeous art in such a small space.

Also remember that a half-hour TV show episode will encompass 2 to 4 comic strips alone, so what looks like a self contained story on TV actually spanned 2-4 months in the comic form.

[Ninja D!]

If the continuity in comics weren't so important, I would feel less connected to the characters and less compelled to continue to buy every month.

Not to say that there aren't some comics like that...it's just not the norm.

[Elemental_Elf]

If the continuity in comics weren't so important, I would feel less connected to the characters and less compelled to continue to buy every month.

Not to say that there aren't some comics like that...it's just not the norm.

I agree completely!

[Elemental_Elf]

Oh! forgot to mention, I picked up some new comics yesterday:

- Bat Woman
- Batgirl
- Batman and Robin

I have read all three titles and enjoyed each thoroughly. I will definitely be picking each up every month

[Ninja D!]

The first Batwoman arc was fantastic. The art was mind-blowing. There's a new artist now but I hope to still enjoy it.

Batgirl has some awkward parts but, overall, Gail Simone is doing a great job with it.

Batman and Robin has been pretty enjoyable but I was hoping for something a little different. Tomasi is a character writer and I really want to see him work with some traditional Batman villains. Of course, the Joker is currently out of the picture.

[LoA]

Okay, I was at a library, and I checked out a few books. Some of them were comics.

Cowboys and Aliens:
I was raised by a pair of cowpoke. And thus I was raised around westerns my entire life. And sorry people, but I loved WIld, Wild, West (yes the Will Smith one) as a kid. I absolutely loved the giant robot spider, the scary super-train, and well, I'm a Will Smith fan, go figure. But I loved the fact it was a genre-blended western. I once read another really cartoonish comic book in the library that was a crazy mix of stuff thrown into a western setting. All I remember was a giant robo-train (pure adrenaline powered geek-out), alien sasquatches, and skeletal cowboys, or something. I also once did a review of Transformers: Hearts of Steel here on this thread a while back, and my basic complaint was that it was to short and to anti-climatic. I would still be keeping up with and buying a series about steampunk/western Transformers that was just as long and "big picture" as the old transformers comic books, or Beast Wars.

The point is I love and would give a chance to anything that tries to blend westerns with Sci-fi, and so I of course was eager to see Cowboys and Aliens when it came out on DVD (sorry I rarely go to the theater), and I watched it with my parents. They liked it, but I wasn't having fun, and considering the fact that its practically a concept that somebody had to have come up with by watching there kids throw there entire toy collection on the floor and going nuts, that's really saying something. I mean how do you screw up a casting with Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde? I heard it was based off a comic book, and when I saw it in the library, I decided to give it a look at... And I love it! Look, I'm part Cherokee, and Sue, and there was one thing that stuck out to me the entire time. No irony. It's not to say that the cowboys being blasted by technologically superior beings isn't ironic, it's just that they don't do anything with it. And that's what I love about the comic. It's entirely about the irony. It establishes the irony at the beginning, and takes it from there. So I had fun with the comic book, and It has given me the idea to start brainstorming my own crazy western stuff.

Mouseguard: Winter 1152
This is my first medieval/fantasy comic ever, and I absolutely love it! I'm the only male sibling in my house out of four, and I have read Beatrix Potter (the one about the pesky squirrel who get's his tail bitten off by the owl he keeps harassing), and have watched several animated adaptations of her work. The moment I began reading Mouseguard: Winter 1152, I was like "oh my gosh, i have to show this to my mom and sisters". And I did and they loved the artwork, but they didn't read it, which is a shame because it's such a glorious combination of Beatrix Potter, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

I also recently discovered the webcomic Imagine This, which I love for so many reasons.

[Kindling]

Finally got round to reading some Tank Girl. So happy I did. From Odyssey's constant digs at the film through Apocalypse's Illuminatus!-esque shenanigans to Barney's "Frankie says you're a cunt" t-shirt in Royal Escape, it's quite simply flawless. I feel I was unwittingly channelling it with my abortive post-apoc setting, Drust: The Tumult

[LoA]

To be honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that the fact that TV shows almost universally favor minimal to no continuity where as comics favor heavy continuity is due to the general audience they are each tapping. TV shows try and appeal to the broadest spectrum possible because it gets better ratings. If you have a show with a lot of complexity and inter-woven, cross-episode, cross-season plots, then it (generally speaking) dissuades new viewers who feel they have to start at the beginning to get everything that is going on. This feeling leads to them not watching the TV show because they never come back to it, while it is on air, and see when the re-runs begin. Furthermore, people who ARE invested are less likely to continue watching the show if they happen to miss and episode or two (preferring to wait until re-runs or the DVDs). Put that together and you can see why TV generally favors minimal continuity.

Comics, on the other hand, do not appeal to the general audience and resemble books more than TV. The medium of comics is much, much slower in that it takes an entire month for the story to continue. Potentially a single fight could eat up half a year's worth of comics (6 issues), where as TV shows could finish the same fight in just a handful of episodes (if that). This time delay generally means people will be more invested in the story because, if you can't wait, you aren't going to enjoy comics. Furthermore, because of the time delay between installments, cross-overs between different comic franchises become very popular since the reader can see his favorite characters multiple times a month, which increases sales for the franchises who participate in the cross over (fans one one will buy the other just to see their fav and vice versa, even if they don't necessarily like the second hero). Because comics take so long to complete a story, and because cross overs are so popular,  there's already a feeling that continuity exists, even if one story line has nothing to do with the next.

I'd also wager that continuity also exists because the fans LIKE it. Golden Age comics very rarely had one long running story arcs, rather they simply focused on one-shot adventures and battles. There's only so many times you can watch Superman pummel Bizzarro before it gets to be old hat. Comics have been alive and well, with the same franchises, for 75+ years. If you don't have continuity, comics simply get boring. Each individual comic is small, 22-30 pages long, there isn't enough space to develop a good story and still have the gorgeous art in such a small space.

Also remember that a half-hour TV show episode will encompass 2 to 4 comic strips alone, so what looks like a self contained story on TV actually spanned 2-4 months in the comic form.

Yeah, fair enough. I don't have anything against the continuity of comics, just that comics seem to be entirely about the continuity. I love Captain Marvel. He's a little boy who turns into a superman-esque hero, and his arch nemesis is an evil-genius caterpillar from outer space. The moment I heard the backstory alone, I fell in love with Captain Marvel. And so I began looking around, and lo and behold I found this great website called Digital Comic Museum, and they store scans of old and out of print, public domain comics (perfectly legal), and they have so much Captain Marvel stuff on there. And yes I began with the story about the Evil Genius Caterpillar from Outer Space. That was 23 issues in or so (possibly 50 or something, I can't remember right off the top of my head). I didn't have to read from the very beginning to get what was going on, Heck I didn't even have to get on a wiki, and read summaries of what's been going on since issue #1. Just read from the beginning of the story, and read into it's conclusion two issues later.

I heard it once said that the old rule of thumb for writing comic books was to write it as if it was someones first issue. And it certainly worked with getting me into the old Captain Marvel comics, and considering how dense the writing was in those old books, that's really saying something.

Oh and how could I have forgotten that I read Superman Red Son? The first Superman comic I ever read, and I like it a lot! Although I would've done it a lot differently myself. But then again my vision would probably take up to five or eight issues to tell, as apposed to the 3 issue limit imposed. So I dunno. Is anybody interested in a "How I would do it differently" style review?