posted
I copied an essay below, by Alasdair Watson from ninthart.com. It's all there if you want to read it, but the main point:
Comics would be a lot better stories if they were not written as 22-page serials with a cliffhanger or "big moment" at the end, but as whole stories taking however many pages they naturally take.
This rung a bell with me, given our recent discussions about Dream Crime being drawn out to fill a TPB.
It would be great (I think) if The Legion were written as graphic novels. You could have a wide variety of writers and artists producing different books; they would just have to conform to some character and appearance guidelines for some degree of uniformity/continuity. We the readers would benefit from different creative teams (at last, room for all the artists and writers we love!) and there would be lots of space to cover all the legionnaires (at last, room for all the characters we love!). DC editor(s) could map out a general storyline in a given time frame, so that you don't get Garth killed off in one book and still going strong in another set in the same time period.
Would it be a coordination nightmare? Maybe - but it could be a lot of fun.
The editorial by Alasdair Watson follows:
SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
Some nights, people hear screams in Charterhouse Square.
I was in Charterhouse Square last night, although I didn't hear any screams. This will mean nothing to most of you, because you don't live in London, and even if you do, it probably still means nothing to you. It's quite a pleasant little patch of green on the edge of the City (by which I mean the London district, not the whole of the capital), lit by a couple of old gas lamps.
One of the reasons that it's still green and pleasant is that building on it would be, well, risky. It's the site of one of the great plague pits of London. There are diseases down there. The number of dead bodies down there has been estimated at between 15 and 35 thousand people, not all of whom will have been dead when they were tipped in. I find this faintly staggering, and - if I think about what it must have been like for those unlucky few souls who were judged terminal cases and simply dumped in prematurely, rather than waiting for the formality of death - deeply horrifying.
I mention this because I learned that it was a plague pit for the first time last night, as part of a walking tour I went on, entitled "Ghosts of the Old City". The screams that are heard are supposed to be those of the unquiet dead - those that went too soon into the ground, and found themselves trapped in amongst the cold, dead flesh of the plague victims.
But more particularly, I mention this because I was told this by quite the worst storyteller I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. He finished telling us about the fact that there were anything up to 35 thousand corpses under our feet, not all of them dead when they were buried, by saying, "I think that rates an 'Ewww' don't you?" and giving a camp little shudder. I wanted to beat him to death with his dopey wee document wallet.
To my mind, failure to tell a true story well is a high crime. These are people's lives - and often, their horrible deaths - we're talking about, and they should be treated with some respect. Sure, embellish the details if it makes a better story, but for god's sake, line your gut up behind it, and engage some honest emotion in thetelling. Try and make your audience feel something.
This applies equally well to fiction, too, of course. You'll hear writers talk about "the heart", "the spine" or "the emotional core" of a story. If a story's not got some honest feeling in it, then there's no point in telling it. No-one wants to hear about a sequence of events. We want a story.
This is something that I've often felt the serialised format of most comics can get in the way of. The 22-page format imposes certain requirements on a story, some stricter than others, but in just about any serialised issue (particularly for on-going titles) you'll find a "big moment", or a cliffhanger ending, or similar device. You'll find a lot of comics shoehorning in some kind of re-cap too, although the trend does seem to have moved toward a brief "Previously..." text piece at the front, a device I heartily endorse.
The problem with this is that is skews the market to the sort of stories that support "big moments" or cliffhanger endings. Action pieces. Thrillers. Horror, to an extent. Stuff with spectacle. Which is all well and good, but it means that everything else gets squeezed to the edges, to sell less, or to come out in trades with low print runs, because no big publisher will push them, because they're not going to have the same rapid return on investment that an action book would have.
But I can't help wondering how different things would be if there were no single issues being published. At all. What the sorts of stories we'd see, if writers were freed from the artificial constraints imposed by serialisation. If they could just tell the stories the way that best suited.
Note how I'm carefully not talking about genre here. I'm not talking about my dream market; I'm simply positing a market where X-MEN is still the best selling title, but it's published in sporadic bookshelf editions, as and when the creative team has something ready, like normal books. Because I'd argue that a book that's a metaphor for either the alienated teen or the minority in society isn't necessarily best served by being constantly forced into high drama and action sequences. And I'm sure the same is true of a lot of other titles - their central metaphor isn't well served by crowbarring it into an artificial format.
I know that it's hardly a new or exciting idea, the notion that comics would be a very different medium if the serialised form were removed, but still, apart from the economics and the likely genre shifting, what else would it do the stuff that's currently published in serial form?
SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK AGAIN
On a related topic:
Saw JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 today. Horror movie sequels fascinate me, because outside of stuff that begins in other media (comics, TV, novels) horror is the single most common movie genre to go to sequels on the big screen. It has its own form of serialisation. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, FRIDAY THE 13th, HALLOWEEN, SCREAM (OK, so that's lampooning the sequels, too, but still...), the list goes on.
What fascinates me most about them is the rules or conventions that any given sequel chooses to follow or flaunt. There's the twist, where new information is revealed about the "monster" from the first, that maybe they weren't quite what we thought. There's the generally increased screen time the monster gets - the big reveal already took place in the first one, so there's very little in the way of creepy points to be scored keeping it off screen in the second.
Which has also set me thinking: how different would horror films be if they knew they were going to have a sequel?
Which in turn set me to thinking - how different would comics be if they knew for sure that they weren't going to be cancelled, or that the writer was going to be changed? That it wasn't a concern, wasn't even possible for a set period of time (although if sales fell, they would end immediately that point was reached, so there's still a requirement to keep to some of the elements of the serialised form)? Would they simply become collected editions, being serialised slowly, like CEREBUS? Or would they be something else entirely?
I have no idea why this sort of thing is on my mind lately.
Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.
This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.
posted
Hmmm, that is radical. I don't know how I feel about it. It would be nice to have complete stories published monthly though.
Could you imagine - Dream Crime one month Foundations the next etc...
Of course, you are right, different creative teams would have to be involved. I just don't know how much of a shared vision we would see.
This shared vision is what makes many books successful. If you have different creative teams doing different things, well... I'm just not sure how I feel about that...
Now, If this were like a Tales of the Legion kinda thing, where it's about stories that happened in the past. That might not be so bad.
I just think that alternating creative teams (writers, mostly) would not be as cohesive as I prefer.
-------------------- Touch the magic...
From: Morganfield, KY | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I think this is a very good idea. One possible drawback is that comics fans are used to their monthly fix, even when it's drek. (A possible indication of this can be found on the "What's your cut off point?" thread, wherein many posters indicate that they're willing to give a title 3-5 issues before dropping it.) Comics are habit-forming. It's difficult to drop a title or a character in which you've invested months or years.
But I have become increasingly jaded by the 22-page, ongoing format. Even titles that are still relatively good reach a point of stagnation when you realize that next issue it's going to be more of the same. You can only raise the bar of excitement in a story so high before it becomes nauseating. Every carnival ride has to go down as well as up and then finally stop.
Watson's proposal sounds like comic books would come out in complete form a couple of times a year or so. That would be fine with me: Publishing a complete story in one setting would give the creators plenty of time to craft an excellent story, and give us fans enough time to digest it before going on to the next one. These anthology-style comics could be compared to music albums, perhaps, though albums take much longer to record and release.
This idea has actually been bandied about before. I remember Kurt Busiek saying something similar years ago. But it will probably never fly with the executives at Marvel and DC. The corporate big-wigs are too steeped in the traditional way of publishing comics and providing fans with their regular fix. There would be terror in their hearts at the mere suggestion that fans might not wait around for a sequel six months down the line.
[ September 12, 2003, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: He Who Wanders ]
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
When the newsstand market is truly dead and buried (not, to allude to the author's anecdote above, mostly buried but still barely alive), this books-only setup might happen. Until then, the publishers are not about to get past the inertia of the serial format ... or, rather, the nostalgia for it.
It'll also result in the demise of the "comic book store" as we now know it, as well. Or, rather, the relatively few stores that are left will mitose into two varieties.
One will change into straightforward bookstores, with the TPBs -- for we'll only have TPBs then -- and SF, fantasy, mystery, horror, and other genres of books. As well as new varieties of what CrossGen already is doing, digitized "comics." And, to some extent, back comics issues. All but the last will involve what comics stores now cannot do, and bookstores can do: returns of unneeded, unsold stock to the publishers.
The other will sell action figures and other comic-related toys, along with RPG, Pokemon, and other such items. If the smaller retailers still exist at all, that is. Providing an RPG playing venue will become a service they charge for, not a loss leader to get customers in the store.
Comics stores won't endure past the end of serial publishing, for one simple reason: Serial publishing is about all that's left to get frequent foot traffic into the stores. If all that's left are books, they become booksellers, period, and they can't sell just one genre.
Would we Legion fans, specifically, wait for a semiannual or quarterly collection? I used to think not, but I see how CrossGen is marketing its collections in diverse formats and getting solid response, and I have to wonder.
I do know one thing: Monthlies are becoming 30% to 40% ads, or more, and this is getting as annoying as sitting through the same percentages of ads for a movie on TBS. I'm glad to pay for uninterrupted showings on HBO. I'd pay for uninterrupted Legion tales, too. I already did with "Universe Ablaze" and "Superboy's Legion."
From: Starhaven Consulate, City of Angels | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I don't see the "de-serializing" of comics in place of TPB type novels succeeding for the publishing industry over the long run. TPB's (as well as Archive editions) exist in large part due to reprinting of existing material, which is inexpensive to produce compared to new artwork. Along with cost, I think continuing series do need to come out on a frequent basis, like the monthly serials. A year between book-length stories is too long a wait for graphic novel formats. If you look at the Harry Potter novels for example, they have been produced at a rate of about one per year, as per the design of the author. She intended to produce one novel per year to coincide with each school year of Harry and his friends. The characters would age normally along his seven years of education at the wizardry school, eventually producing seven novels of his adventures. However, two problems occur with even this hugely popular series - first, the volumonous pages of story are still quickly consumed by readers, leaving months of waiting for the next novel; and second, many of the readers the first stories were aimed at (aged 10-12) will be well into high school or graduated by the seventh novel. For Harry Potter, its success is largely due to acquiring new readers along the way who also delve back to the previous strories. Would DC even be able to duplicate or come close to that kind of success with its titles? I wager that they would only be willing to risk JLA or Superman or Batman as possibilities, cutting out at least many of the smaller titles - like the Legion. And even if extra creative teams were devoted to putting titles out more than once a year, again those resources would be pulled from the smaller titles.
-------------------- "My dance card was getting fuller than a contestant's at a Jandan shurg-off." - Exnihil, The Lost Klordny
From: Frederick, MD | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
The author forgets the fact that most movies are edited for length. Every medium tends to have its limitations imposed by format. Even novels are rarely longer than 300 pages long: a publisher would prefer to break a long book into two books, and push the writer for a third to complete the trilogy (there is more money in it doing it that way).
Comics tend to work on the cliff-hanger principle, its true, but this is hardly unique to comics. Charles Dicken's works were published in serialised segments, with a cliffhanger or teaser at the end of every "chapter" so the reader would come back for more.
Soaps work in the same way: I remember ages ago reading an interview with Cary Bates, when he was then writing the Flash (we're talking mid-80s here). Bates said he copied his style of writing - building up a subplot until it overtakes the exhausted lead plot - directly from soaps. Nowadays this form of writing is the norm.
Registered: Sep 2003
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