Comic Book Resources

This was a great free magazine!

I got at least a couple hours from reading through it all, very well done.

A couple of problematic things in the Bendis/Fraction conversation:

Comics, though they do have sisterly rules to film and television, it’s not the same. And I think we should embrace that more often than we do. That we don’t have to do it just because it’d look cool in a movie like that.

Bendis’s frame of reference is off. So much for the claim that decompression isn’t an attempt to emulate film.

Assuming that the Kang arc in AVENGERS is going to be about problems in the future caused by the Avengers’ descendants — the logic doesn’t work. Any future is only potential. If someone wants to prevent a dystopian future from happening, all that’s needed is a change of intent in the present to eliminate that particular future. If the number of possible futures is infinite, then no future actually exists. Yes, Kang recruiting the Avengers to fix a problem in the future hasn’t been done before, but time travel mechanics prevent the story from being done.

SRS

“So much for the claim that decompression isn’t an attempt to emulate film.”

How do you arrive at that conclusion?

How do you arrive at that conclusion?

Because, decompression in practice is inseparable from the decision to eliminate narration and thought balloons. The old approach to comics storytelling was comparable to prose stories. The artwork served the function of descriptive text.; the other elements were equivalent. The writer could throw the balance off by cramming in too much exposition, describing what the artwork already showed, etc., but those were mechanical flaws comparable to bad prose writing, not intrinsic problems with the use of narration and thoughts.

The use of cinematic effects rarely produces benefits proportional to the space used. The non-use of narration and thought balloons constrains the writer from using types of plot material or certain character types. The typical decompressed story that lacks narration and thought balloons is the equivalent of a prose story that has elaborate descriptions of the setting and the action in any particular scene, and has dialogue, but lacks narration and descriptions of thoughts. There’s no balance.

SRS

“Me and Alex [Maleev] are going to be debuting our new Icon book at San Diego”

Goddamn– FINALLY!!! I have been waiting more than 10 years to hear something like that.

In the past hour, I’ve read several essays and a bunch of comments re decompression, with the best material located at — http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2007/08/decompression-in-action.html — without a single argument for decompression that’s more than baloney. Even its proponents say that it’s a style used in storytelling, but it’s a style that take precedence over content and routinely assumes perfect performance by the writer and the artists. Any mechanical flaws in the storytelling ruin the content that there is and render the stylistic touches irrelevant. If professional cinematographers were to handle an amateur porn film, would the film be worth paying money for? Of course not.

It’s not as if wordless panels can’t be used in normally paced stories. In Englehart’s VISION & SCARLET WITCH #4, the page in which Wanda tells Vizh she’s pregnant has several wordless panels, and the sequence is more effective because of them.

Arguing that decompression is a superior style of storytelling requires ordering readers to react in specific ways to the effects, whether it’s the widescreen panels, reaction shots, or cinematic pauses. Comics readers aren’t all, or even mostly, film students, film makers or other types who extol the virtues of film. Praising decompression strictly on the basis of its aesthetics, and then bungling the story’s content, sets up the writer to be justifiably clobbered.

SRS

Who’s “arguing that decompression is a superior style of storytelling”? You’re the only one arguing anything here.

Kevin, this is Steven R. Stahl. Have you two met?