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Post by commond on Nov 26, 2022 23:16:23 GMT -5
I'm such a simpleton when it comes to comics. When I read a comic, I'm mostly thinking: "Is it boring? Is it interesting? Is the art good?"
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Post by kirby101 on Nov 26, 2022 23:22:12 GMT -5
I'm such a simpleton when it comes to comics. When I read a comic, I'm mostly thinking: "Is it boring? Is it interesting? Is the art good?" Not me, I think, "is the art good, is it interesting? Is it boring?"
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Post by mikelmidnight on Nov 28, 2022 12:34:56 GMT -5
driver1980 , the comic book legal and penal systems have the same relationship with their counterparts here on Earth-Sorta Prime as does comic book science. Exhibit B: the Joker.
It bothers me more with the Joker than other characters. He was a murderer in his first appearance, and while a harmless clown in the 50s and 60s, and a murderer again from the 70s on. However, as DC continued to up his body count it became less and less plausible that some cop wouldn't 'accidentally' put a bullet in his head while 'attempting to escape,' and all the more so as Batman goes through ridiculous contortions to keep the Joker alive. Plus, DC's treating him as some sort of … avatar of madness rather than just an erratic criminal.
Aside from Sejic's Harleen story (which was pretty much its own thing), I won't even read a comic with the Joker anymore.
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 28, 2022 12:53:15 GMT -5
driver1980 , the comic book legal and penal systems have the same relationship with their counterparts here on Earth-Sorta Prime as does comic book science. Exhibit B: the Joker.
It bothers me more with the Joker than other characters. He was a murderer in his first appearance, and while a harmless clown in the 50s and 60s, and a murderer again from the 70s on. However, as DC continued to up his body count it became less and less plausible that some cop wouldn't 'accidentally' put a bullet in his head while 'attempting to escape,' and all the more so as Batman goes through ridiculous contortions to keep the Joker alive. Plus, DC's treating him as some sort of … avatar of madness rather than just an erratic criminal.
Aside from Sejic's Harleen story (which was pretty much its own thing), I won't even read a comic with the Joker anymore.
Didn't DC turn over its entire line for at least a month to a Joker "event" a few years ago? (Was he driving a Panzer against the guys in GI Combat?) It's not like he's Galactus or Darkseid; at least, he wasn't at some point. I'd've thought that the Joker was pretty much as wrung out as a raggedy dishcloth. But I guess he still sells, so de gustibus. PS: Isn't the Flash now some kind of avatar of fastness?
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Post by badwolf on Nov 28, 2022 13:38:00 GMT -5
Didn't DC turn over its entire line for at least a month to a Joker "event" a few years ago? (Was he driving a Panzer against the guys in GI Combat?) It's not like he's Galactus or Darkseid; at least, he wasn't at some point. Joker: Last Laugh in Dec. 2001. Various villains got "Jokerized."
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Post by impulse on Nov 28, 2022 14:21:28 GMT -5
I agree on the Joker being the most egregious to me. It's easier to just accept that comic book stories don't have to all make sense and consistently work as a realistic narrative. .
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Post by MDG on Nov 28, 2022 14:24:19 GMT -5
I'm such a simpleton when it comes to comics. When I read a comic, I'm mostly thinking: "Is it boring? Is it interesting? Is the art good?" Not me, I think, "is the art good, is it interesting? Is it boring?" Interesting distinction. I'm working through some early DC Flash issues and the art/interesting thing really hits. I mean, in terms of clear, graceful, exciting, well-designed and drawn pages, you can't beat what infantino's doing here. It's like a discussion I had with a friend about EC--if you've read a dozen EC stories, in any or all of their genres (except MAD/Panic), nothing in the 13th is going to surprise you. The art is always high-quality, but rarely are the stories "special."
It's a function of "not meant to be read a chunk at a time," but it's the same w/ most mainstream comics, even after the bronze age, except there, you need to buy into the subplots more than the main plots to find any interest, no matter how they're drawn.
On the other hand, I've never been a huge fan of Kim Deitch's drawing style, but I can re-read his stuff constantly, and there's always more to find. But Xenozoic Tales, no matter how beautifully drawn, never made me want to go back to it.
So basically, ideas and story first, and art that matches it. Good art alone doesn't make something good comics.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2022 14:40:33 GMT -5
When a recurring plot point exceeds my "wearisome" threshold, I stop buying the book. Most recently, I heard good things about the Zdarsky Daredevil, and I tried it out, but while it was well-written, there's already plenty of DD stories that cover the same ground which I enjoy re-reading, so it's pointless for me to collect the Zdarsky run.
To me, Wolverine is not an over-used character (in the sense that *I* never got sick of him), because I couldn't care less about any of his guest (or starring) appearances which I never read, or which I read and rejected. I suppose I would have a different opinion if I was more completist about collecting the X-Men, or Marvel in general, but I won't avoid sampling any future Wolverine stories just because of his general over-exposure.
Maybe I'm unusual, but my head-canon is quick to ignore or jettison the stories I don't like. As far as I'm concerned, Batman's only had about, lemme check my database... 12 encounters with the Joker. Still seems high, though. I don't know how many of these encounters ended in the Joker being apprehended. Let's say half. Suspending my disbelief to allow Gotham (and its parent state, and the DCU feds) to have a criminal justice system terrible enough to allow six escapes isn't too much for me. Because the Joker really is a good character, it's worth it. If I was of the mindset that *every* Joker story was canon, then yeah, I'd be embarrassed to talk about my love of Batman vs Joker battles.
One of the benefits of collecting stories of characters that have been around for so long is that there's been so many published stories, you can take the best and ignore the chaff, and still end up with a decently-representative accounting of the character's career.
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 28, 2022 15:20:08 GMT -5
MDG: Agreed re Infantino's art in those Flash stories, though I do wish that he'd have been inked by Anderson, Greene or even Giacoia rather than Giella, who was in the Colletta category for me: scratchy, light lines that imparted no sense of depth or dimension. Even Sy Barry, whose inks were closer to the Giella side of the spectrum, was much better at inking Infantino than Giella. And yeah, if you can't guess the ending to an EC horror story after reading ten of them, you need to turn in your "Irony" certification. @draketungsten: I'm with you. I keep my head-canon as lean as possible, too, although I'm fine with dividing it by the various approaches to the character and having a canon for various ages.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Nov 29, 2022 12:24:54 GMT -5
I agree on the Joker being the most egregious to me. It's easier to just accept that comic book stories don't have to all make sense and consistently work as a realistic narrative. . I don't want or need all my stories to constantly refer back to one another and hew tightly to a singular narrative, but I also think one can write stories that are exciting while still providing a sense of closure. But once you establish someone as a genocidal-level mass murderer … there's no coming back from that. Such characters don't make good continuing villains (at least not on Batman a scale, it'd work for the Green Lantern Corps maybe). And yeah, if you can't guess the ending to an EC horror story after reading ten of them, you need to turn in your "Irony" certification.
I maintain that the EC line had some of the best written and drawn stories in American comics … but agreed they were formulaic and one can't read too many of them at a time. It's a shame they never developed a serial character. I've avoided the prestige reprints of EC titles for just that reason, although I have ordered the book of Bradbury adaptations (which, honestly, I have been wanting to see for decades).
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Post by MDG on Nov 29, 2022 14:53:50 GMT -5
I maintain that the EC line had some of the best written and drawn stories in American comics … but agreed they were formulaic and one can't read too many of them at a time. It's a shame they never developed a serial character....
Johnny Craig established some ongoing characters in Extra!, and I think there was a recurring shrink in Psychoanalysis, but a lack of ongoing characters provides some freedom for writers.
But EC was built around a formula (or a set of formulas) and I wonder if folks would've gotten tired of it after a while. It only lasted five years, which seems like nothing now.
The company's strength was consistently high-quality artwork, which may also have been hard to maintain long-term. Jim Warren couldn't do it.
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Post by kirby101 on Nov 29, 2022 16:37:10 GMT -5
One of the reasons I prefer the EC Science Fiction line to the horror. They had twist endings, but not as rote as the horror line.
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 29, 2022 18:06:46 GMT -5
I also wish EC hadn’t always hewed to their short page counts for stories. I think the longest stories they ran were eight-pagers, the length of DC back-up stories.It might have been a way to counteract the predictability of the horror stories in particular.
Reading the adventure stories, as well drawn as they were, was frustrating because they often were just so brief and ended so abruptly. They were more like vignettes than stories. Why they didn’t allow for at least a few 12-pagers ( hardly uncommon then) is beyond me.
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Post by Cei-U! on Nov 29, 2022 18:36:07 GMT -5
The only EC material I can tolerate are Kurtzman's Frontline Combat ad Two-Fisted Tales. Everything else is, in my opinion, horrendously overwritten. What good does it do to hire great artists if they're forced to squeeze their drawings in between text-heavy captions and dialogue balloons? No thanks.
Cei-U! I summon the tedious reading!
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Post by MDG on Nov 29, 2022 20:03:39 GMT -5
I also wish EC hadn’t always hewed to their short page counts for stories. I think the longest stories they ran were eight-pagers, the length of DC back-up stories.It might have been a way to counteract the predictability of the horror stories in particular. Reading the adventure stories, as well drawn as they were, was frustrating because they often were just so brief and ended so abruptly. They were more like vignettes than stories. Why they didn’t allow for at least a few 12-pagers ( hardly uncommon then) is beyond me. In many ways, Gaines was pretty conservative in business and didn't like to shake things up. Craig wanted to do longer stories in EXTRA!, but all budgets, schedules, etc. were set up for four stories, an 8-, a 7-, a 6-, and a 7-pager and Gaines didn't want to change it.
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