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Post by impulse on Aug 14, 2019 10:26:17 GMT -5
I believe a case can be made that older comics were objectively better than new ones. The storytelling was certainly better. Every page moved the story along, the art communicated every action, and by the end of each issue you were satisfied. (You may not have liked every issue, but you felt like you got a good amount of story at least.) Compared to more recent comics where panels are pinups and the scripts are full of "realistic" dialogue where characters "um" and "ah" for several pages and you get to the end and "that's it?"...the older ones are objectively better. There is nostalgia, but it's also real. I'm not saying all newer comics are like that, but it's definitely been a trend for a long time now. I completely disagree with this largely because it seems to miss pretty big changes in the way comics are made now versus then. While a lot of mainstream books are a lot more "decompressed" now and art in the big-two is often focused on style over substance, there is a ton of out great output in the independent and creator-owned publishing that largely simply did not exist in the past. If you are still looking at big-two big name books, yeah, the style is different, but if you compare where the good comics from then to now, I think you'll find the quality a lot closer, and dare I say a lot of the modern ones are objectively better in a lot of ways. Also, while the old style were often more dense and you got more story for your money, boy, they were definitely a product of their times. I loved Claremont-era X-Men back in the day, but have you gone back and tried to read some of that stuff now? Man, some of those are a slog. My two cents.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 14, 2019 10:28:55 GMT -5
I believe a case can be made that older comics were objectively better than new ones. The storytelling was certainly better. Every page moved the story along, the art communicated every action, and by the end of each issue you were satisfied. (You may not have liked every issue, but you felt like you got a good amount of story at least.) Compared to more recent comics where panels are pinups and the scripts are full of "realistic" dialogue where characters "um" and "ah" for several pages and you get to the end and "that's it?"...the older ones are objectively better. There is nostalgia, but it's also real. I'm not saying all newer comics are like that, but it's definitely been a trend for a long time now. You can make a case that you subjectively like them better. I don't think there's an objective standard for comic books that has been set up that would allow for your statement to be tested. Being a one-and-done comic story isn't objectively better than decompressed story-telling any more than a single gag comic strip is better than a continued adventure storyline that spread over several months. Gottfriedson's Mickey Mouse isn't remembered for the stand-alone Sunday gags, it's remembered for the long adventure serials. The frequently stilted and unnatural pattern of speech in Studio-era Hollywood movies is neither better nor worse, objectively, than more naturalistic speech patterns by the likes of Robert Altman or David Mamet. They're simply different and a product of their time. It's fine to prefer one to the other but to argue that one is objectively better is inaccurate.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 14, 2019 10:35:26 GMT -5
I believe a case can be made that older comics were objectively better than new ones. The storytelling was certainly better. Every page moved the story along, the art communicated every action, and by the end of each issue you were satisfied. (You may not have liked every issue, but you felt like you got a good amount of story at least.) Compared to more recent comics where panels are pinups and the scripts are full of "realistic" dialogue where characters "um" and "ah" for several pages and you get to the end and "that's it?"...the older ones are objectively better. There is nostalgia, but it's also real. I'm not saying all newer comics are like that, but it's definitely been a trend for a long time now. I completely disagree with this largely because it seems to miss pretty big changes in the way comics are made now versus then. While a lot of mainstream books are a lot more "decompressed" now and art in the big-two is often focused on style over substance, there is a ton of out great output in the interdependent and creator-owned publishing that largely simply did not exist in the past. If you are still looking at big-two big name books, yeah, the style is different, but if you compare where the good comics from then to now, I think you'll find the quality a lot closer, and dare I say a lot of the modern ones are objectively better in a lot of ways. Also, while the old style were often more dense and you got more story for your money, boy, they were definitely a product of their times. I loved Claremont-era X-Men back in the day, but have you gone back and tried to read some of that stuff now? Man, some of those are a slog. My two cents. I was thinking mainly of the "big two", yes. I don't really have anything to compare with "back in the day" in regard to indie comics.
And yeah, some of Claremont can be trying, but I find the classic issues I remember still read well, and I still love the work of other writers as much as I ever did.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 14, 2019 10:36:10 GMT -5
Being a one-and-done comic story isn't objectively better than decompressed story-telling any more than a single gag comic strip is better than a continued adventure storyline that spread over several months. It is when you're paying $3.99 an issue.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 14, 2019 10:52:07 GMT -5
Being a one-and-done comic story isn't objectively better than decompressed story-telling any more than a single gag comic strip is better than a continued adventure storyline that spread over several months. It is when you're paying $3.99 an issue. By this logic movies were objectively better at 50 cents a view than at $2.25. So clearly Mesa of Lost Women was better than Star Wars. Wendy's dollar menu must be the pinnacle of the food industry at this point. Again. You subjectively prefer one-and-dones. That has nothing to do with whether they are objectively better or worse.
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Post by impulse on Aug 14, 2019 10:59:23 GMT -5
I was thinking mainly of the "big two", yes. I don't really have anything to compare with "back in the day" in regard to indie comics. And yeah, some of Claremont can be trying, but I find the classic issues I remember still read well, and I still love the work of other writers as much as I ever did.
Yeah, I didn't get this point across as clearly, but I meant there really wasn't an equivalent to today's indie scene back then as far as I know, so most of the best books were probably published by Marvel or DC in some capacity. I am not saying compare indie to indie or big two to big two, I'm saying compare good books of the past to the good books today, wherever they are. And I think your reaction to a lot of the old comics would be quite different if you read them for the first time today in 2019 instead of when they came out. Even rereading them today you get the benefit of nostalgia to offset some of the changes over time. I mean the general you, not necessarily you specifically. Comics are very much a product of their times, and it is hard to get away from them. I also don't enjoy spending $4 a book for a decompressed arc, but when you can take the money out of it and read completed story arcs in a single sitting, a lot of those stories are as good or better as anything else.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 14, 2019 11:00:51 GMT -5
It is when you're paying $3.99 an issue. By this logic movies were objectively better at 50 cents a view than at $2.25. So clearly Mesa of Lost Women was better than Star Wars. Wendy's dollar menu must be the pinnacle of the food industry at this point. Again. You subjectively prefer one-and-dones. That has nothing to do with whether they are objectively better or worse. I don't prefer one-and-dones. Multi-part stories are great, but each part should provide something substantial.
The movie comparison doesn't hold. Quality is important too.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 14, 2019 11:10:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I didn't get this point across as clearly, but I meant there really wasn't an equivalent to today's indie scene back then as far as I know, so most of the best books were probably published by Marvel or DC in some capacity. I am not saying compare indie to indie or big two to big two, I'm saying compare good books of the past to the good books today, wherever they are. And I think your reaction to a lot of the old comics would be quite different if you read them for the first time today in 2019 instead of when they came out. Even rereading them today you get the benefit of nostalgia to offset some of the changes over time. I mean the general you, not necessarily you specifically. Comics are very much a product of their times, and it is hard to get away from them. I also don't enjoy spending $4 a book for a decompressed arc, but when you can take the money out of it and read completed story arcs in a single sitting, a lot of those stories are as good or better as anything else. Many modern comics do read better in collected form (and that's the only way I'll read them), but I often think that the stories still go on longer than they need to. Think of a favorite classic storyline, and imagine it with a lot of "realistic" dialogue inserted. It would be horrid. Cyclops: You always were a little-- Wolverine: What? Cyclops: What? Wolverine: Did you just-- Cyclops: Help me out guys Storm: I don't-- Wolverine: What?
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Post by impulse on Aug 14, 2019 11:15:52 GMT -5
I mean, yeah, we can pick out examples of horrid issues, but you can do that in any era.
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 14, 2019 11:33:39 GMT -5
I completely disagree with this largely because it seems to miss pretty big changes in the way comics are made now versus then. While a lot of mainstream books are a lot more "decompressed" now and art in the big-two is often focused on style over substance, there is a ton of out great output in the independent and creator-owned publishing that largely simply did not exist in the past. Independent comics and/or publishers (IOW, not DC and Marvel) have existed for generations, and in the case of HM Communications ( Heavy Metal), the various titles from EC and Warren, or Capital/First (e.g. Nexus) it was not uncommon for their output to be head and shoulders above most publishers (including the Big Two). Thanks to the directive for tone always being mature and exploratory for creativity's sake, the work not only holds up today, but has a level of creative honesty about it that was not published because "its what's happening right now," or trying to jump on any social / political bandwagon as many a modern day "adult" book does in a manner that's less heavy-handed and more anvil dropped from the top of a building. It not an exaggeration to say there were near-endless (and still celebrated) work which soared beyond the cape and cowl set, making their mark throughout the 50s - 80s. That said, when thinking of today's independents (or of say, this century), I have a difficult time believing they will be as highly regarded 20 or 30 years from now.
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Post by impulse on Aug 14, 2019 11:47:43 GMT -5
I completely disagree with this largely because it seems to miss pretty big changes in the way comics are made now versus then. While a lot of mainstream books are a lot more "decompressed" now and art in the big-two is often focused on style over substance, there is a ton of out great output in the independent and creator-owned publishing that largely simply did not exist in the past. Independent comics and/or publishers (IOW, not DC and Marvel) have existed for generations, and in the case of HM Communications ( Heavy Metal), the various titles from EC and Warren, or Capital/First (e.g. Nexus) it was not uncommon for their output to be head and shoulders above most publishers (including the Big Two). Thanks to the directive for tone always being mature and exploratory for creativity's sake, the work not only holds up today, but has a level of creative honesty about it that was not published because "its what's happening right now," or trying to jump on any social / political bandwagon as many a modern day "adult" book does in a manner that's less heavy-handed and more anvil dropped from the top of a building. It not an exaggeration to say there were near-endless (and still celebrated) work which soared beyond the cape and cowl set, making their mark throughout the 50s - 80s. That said, when thinking of today's independents (or of say, this century), I have a difficult time believing they will be as highly regarded 20 or 30 years from now. Fair enough. I suppose it would have been more accurate to say there is a larger "mainstream" indie crowd these days than I was aware of back in the day, not to suggest there was the absence of indie publishers. My experience is also largely limited to US publishers, as well, so I concede a lack of detailed knowledge there.
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Post by rberman on Aug 14, 2019 13:19:21 GMT -5
It not an exaggeration to say there were near-endless (and still celebrated) work which soared beyond the cape and cowl set, making their mark throughout the 50s - 80s. That said, when thinking of today's independents (or of say, this century), I have a difficult time believing they will be as highly regarded 20 or 30 years from now. If for no other reason than that everyone who reads comic books will be dead. This is like a 1920s discussion of which wax cylinder recordings will be well regarded in the 1950s.
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Post by beccabear67 on Aug 14, 2019 13:45:55 GMT -5
Interesting discussion about nostalgia... things to think about. I think I'm open to new works of quality but my idea of quality is going to be based on things of the past in large part. I think a lot of people took to Dave Stevens and Mark Schultz as new yet classic. Who could not want more like them?
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Aug 14, 2019 13:54:15 GMT -5
Comic books as a format are dying in America. But comics as a medium are as vital as ever. Maybe more so. Maybe this sounds crazy, but I think comics are in the process of becoming something bigger and broader than the niche they have been stuck in since the code came into being in the 50's. There are new generations of comic creators, fans, and readers who are taking the form into all sorts of new genres, with stories and artwork that are informed by different influences, telling stories by different voices.
Here's a small personal anecdote. When I was doing my Kickstarter, I tested out some Facebook ads targeting this group or that. I had an idea in my head that my comic might do well with women ages 40-60 or so, because they were people who grew up reading things like Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden novels. Even though I was specifically sending the ads only to people who listed comics as an interest, I discovered that demographic was actually one of my lowest performing. I eventually realized it's because those women are part of a lost generation of female comics readers, who were shut out by the direct market and big two's emphasis on superhero books for boys.
The demographic my ad actually performed best with? Women 18-24.
Starting with the manga book around 2003, there are a couple generations now - Millennials and now Generation Z or whatever they are being called - who grew up reading comics without participating in the direct market, or buying superhero floppies. These are people who read manga, graphic novels, and web comics. An now they are starting to make their own books online or through Kickstarter or other platforms.
I was listening to a podcast recently where the founder of Boom! Studios was talking about this, and about the sales of graphic novels. Scholastic is actually one of the biggest comic book publishers in the country now, if not the biggest. He said that the industry estimates there are around 500,000 direct market readers - people who go to comic book stores and buy traditional comics there. Meanwhile, the latest Raina Telgemeier graphic novel sold 1.5 million copies. He said, "if you look at those numbers, three quarters of all comic book readers in the country right now are junior high girls." He added that Boom!'s series of Dog Man graphic novels aimed at middle readers and distributed through book stores has sold over 3 million copies.
All of those readers that the traditional publishers lost over the decades by moving from the newsstand to the direct market are now being found again through the internet and through bookstores, and by companies like Scholastic selling directly in schools. Those kids are growing up fans of comics, just not fans of comic books or the comic books that we are fans of. Take a look at Kickstarter and you'll see tons of new projects by young creators featuring black or latino or LGBTQ or other heroes, starring in westerns, or fantasies, or sci-fi, or soap operas, or all the other genres that the big two let wither on the vine.
I think comics as a medium is more vital and exciting now than it's ever been because the internet and publishing on demand have removed the barriers from creating comics, allowing storytellers to sidestep gatekeepers and do what they want, while finding the people who want to read those stories. I'm really excited to see how comics continue to grow and evolve over the next couple of decades with this new wave of talent coming in and changing the rules.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 14, 2019 14:03:25 GMT -5
The restorative/reflective nostalgia distinction seems far too cut and dried to me: usually it's much more nuanced, with those and other attitudes intermingling to varying degrees. And I think we should beware of automatically writing off any criticism of new versions of a character as a blind refusal to part with fond memories of childhood, or a desire to revert to some imagined state of innocent bliss. It seems quite reasonable to me to question any changes that are made to something that you think worked well in the past and that you also think could work well in the present with less drastic alterations. Note that's "question", not "automatically condemn", which is how any questioning at all seems to be interpreted at times. It's entirely possible the questioning could lead to a positive answer: "Yes, these changes DO work". And even if the answer is "No, they don't work for me", we shouldn't always assume a spiteful, unspoken "so nobody else should like them either!", which is what seems to happen a lot of the time. I often use the example of Sherlock Holmes, as a well-known continuing character that's seen numerous interpretations, mostly outside comics. Take two recent versions, the Cumberbatch tv series and the Downey Jr movies: I thought the Cumberbatch series was pretty well-conceived and executed, though it didn't really click with me personally: they transferred the setting to the present day and even made some changes to the characters but you could see that there was some thought put into what Holmes and Watson were all about and to keep the essence of those personas and their relationship and to play around with how all that might be explored in this new, C21st setting. Not that I agreed 100% with their ideas about what made Holmes tick, etc but you could understand what they were going for. The Downey movies OTOH, to me were just slapped together on top of the flimsiest of bases: let's make Holmes a wise-cracking action hero and not bother much at all with thinking about the basic nature of the character. So I think they can come in for a lot of well-founded criticism as Holmes stories, however enjoyable you may or may not find them in terms of mindless entertainment. But even if someone does criticise the Downey Holmes, that doesn't mean they're saying that no one else should be allowed to like them either.
To finish that thought, the restorative vs reflective paradigm seems simplistic and reductive to me if you try to apply it to something like these comments on the Downey and Cumberbatch Holmes:
the Cumberbatch comments might be characterised as reflective, I suppose, but are we to say that the Downey comments are restorative because they dismiss that version as a weak effort that utterly fails to engage with the basic concept of the Sherlock Holmes character? That anyone who holds this opinion must be in a state of refusal to accept change and therefore indulging in restorative nostalgia?
No, of course not: they are equally as reflective as the Cumberbatch comments, start out from the exact same premise, and reach a different, more negative conclusion because of the inherent qualities of the Downey movies.
I'd be fine with lumping my collective comics related biases as "Anti-Nostalgic" (although with a strong historical focus) so from my point of view there is a lot of bleed and intermingling between the two. The past is interesting, but stupid. I guess I could see how one is very, very, very, very, very bad and the other is just very, very bad.
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