Yes, but statistically, and I know this only includes online forum/blog kind of people, I would have expected to come across some positive views of it so far. 

I read blog entries. Facebook posts. Forums like this. Now, of course, I can't know the mindset of those who are not online. I can know the mindset of those who post. So as far as online folk are concerned, I've seen a lot of complaints about decompressed storytelling. I haven't seen any endorsements of decompressed storytelling. They may exist - perhaps I haven't come across the right blog entry yet - but one might have expected to come across them by now. 

I understand the that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The lack of people endorsing decompressed storytelling and "writing for the trade" is a tad disconcerting. Given the blogs, forums and social media I've browsed over the years, I would have thought I might have come across someone endorsing the modern approach by now. Especially on forums where people are usually not shy about such things.

As for fight scenes in comics, I appreciate that there may only be so many ways you can see Iron Fist battle someone on the printed page. And I appreciate good character development as much as anyone. The non-heroic scenes in something like The Untold Legend of the Batman appeal to me. As do the Parker/Jameson scenes in the 60s comics. But at the same time, I feel like we've gone too far, going back to what I said about the price of comics. £3-4 is a lot for one-sixth of a story. Who wouldn't want to save money in this day and age? Why wouldn't I wait for the trade (but even they contain fewer issues, some of them have five rather than six stories)? Some modern issues often feel like build-up. Being able to read a Cap comic in five minutes, and I'm not even a person who tries to read fast, is disappointing. 

Maybe there's a thing I forgot to post about in my initial post: the lack of words. Perhaps a talking heads issue might be more palatable if there were more word balloons. I'm sure an issue of Cap chatting with the president in the White House for a whole issue would be appealing if there were lots of word balloons filled with profound thoughts. But that Captain America #6 had very few word balloons (relatively speaking). It was 100% build-up, I thought. And left no lasting impression. For £3-4, that does frustrate me.

It's purely anecdotal, but back when I was helping out at my friend comic shop I was trying to promote CCF as well. I talked to every pull customer he had, 73 pulls plus me) of those 73 only 4 participated in any kind of organized comic discussion on line. The attitude of most was summed up by what one of the customers told me- I buy my comics, if I like them I keep reading, if not, I drop them. I see no need to see what other people think or tell people what I think. They aren't paying for my comics, so what they think doesn't matter, and I'm not paying for theirs, so what I think shouldn't matter to them. As an aside, I couldn't even get one to even take a look at our forums despite all it had to offer, they just had zero interest in talking comics online or seeing what anyone said online.

And as I said, most who do take to voicing what they think do so because they are dissatisfied. I pretty much regard what people say about comics online (forums, blogs, FB groups or whatever) to be a minuscule fraction of comic purchasers overall and not representative at all of what the totality of consumers think. TO borrow a favorite term form one of my former D&D players who is a statistician and sociologist-online posts are statistically insignificant and any conclusions drawn from them are invalid.

Most people simply speak with their wallets, not on line. You can take slumping sales as a condemnation if you want, but only if you have the numbers to account for how many who stop buying print singles simply switched to trades, buying digital or subscribing to digital services like Marvel Unlimited to see how many people actually stopped buying vs. how many switched how they buy comics, and since we do not have access to complete numbers, anything we infer is simple guesswork and not deductive in any manner.

-M

Watching sports is often a communal activity. People gather in places to watch games together, and depending on the sport, there is a lot of downtime between games so people continue with their communal activity by talking about
it to fill the gaps. As we have seen too, both for good and ill, team fanbases are often tribal structures and create us and them groups to identify with or vilify.

Reading comics is usually a singular activity. There are lots of comics, so if you don't want down time, there are always more comics to read. As one of the folks put it, why would I want to spend my time talking about comics with strangers when I could spend that time reading more comics? There is a lot less tribal identification in comics except when comics become a communal experience (for example a convention where regular attendees year after year form bonds-for example I have dozens of con friends from my time doing self-published comics and attending local cons-bonds formed with other small press creators, comic dealers and regular attendees-but I rarely interact with those people online or outside the venue of a comic con unless it is something pertaining tot he con circuit-and when we do get together, we rarely talk about comics we read-more often it's about the ups and downs of the life of a creator, or items for sale we found, etc. but not about what we have read or trends in the industry unless they affect the con or our particular books we were working on-we do talk a lot about sports though-go to a Sunday con during football season and you know which dealer tables to stop at to get game updates as they are streaming games on their devices or checking scores constantly, but never a word about what's going on in this month's Avengers issue or Bendis going to Dc or anything like that).

Now super-hero stories in other medium have become communal experiences and formed tribal culture, but then viewing a movie or tv show is more of a communal activity than reading a comic book is.

It also doesn't help that a lot of older fans grew up in a time where openly discussing comics was social suicide. There was a social stigma often attached to reading comics that is no longer as prominent, but it necessitated behavior patterns where comics were something you did in private and not a public concern.

-M

All this is true, and I believe and trust people here enough to accept their anecdotes, so I guess it's better to look at sales figures, right?

I mean, I have looked at them and times - and some make for depressing reading.

Also, I am not a fan of the "Comics have competition from Netflix, cinemas, TV, etc..." Hasn't it always been that way to some extent? Yes, there are more options now. There was no Netflix in the 1940s. But there were movie serials, pulp magazines, books, etc. There was TV eventually. Concerts. I don't know, it just seems like that can be a convenient get-out clause from some. I have come across that more than once.

If the majority of readers (the non-online ones) are happy with six-issues of decompression, then so be it. I still feel it's the tail wagging the dog. That is the way of the world, I know. But I think it's utterly absurd to have a mindset which believes you need to have most, if not all, stories fitting the 5 or 6 issue arc so that you can sell the trade down the road. What would happen if a creator told the editors he only had 2-3 issues worth of stories?

I would have loved a forum in the 80s!

A huge part of the appeal here is learning something. Sometimes it's asking a question (has Captain America ever fought Luke Cage?), other times it's considering things you didn't know. For instance, I don't follow D&D, or know much about it, but the context mrp provides, in relation to what we are discussing here, is of interest to me. Always something to learn here.

That can be true. I've long thought studios, publishers and sports teams, to name three, should be akin to the rider on the horse with passengers in a carriage. He or she has to keep control of the reins. The passengers will either enjoy or not enjoy the journey, but it has to be the rider and horses in control.

But I, personally, do not feel it'd be a bad thing if publishers examined decompression (they won't, not with tail wagging the dogs trades to sell). Jim Shooter mentioned something, I'm sure, about standalone tales in a blog entry a few years ago. Of course, that doesn't change what you said about Titanic deckchair rearrangement. And about online fans being a minority. But the sales must speak volumes. I'm not sure everyone in my LCS is on social media or the likes of the CCF, but some of those I chat to (employees and fellow readers) have said similar things to me. Not all of them, but some of them.