General Category > Comic Related Discussion
Level of Language
John C:
Last year, I read through all the THUNDER Agents books for the first time, and there's a letter in one complaining that the stories read too quickly because the writing is so limited. The response explains that this had been intentional because they were assuming that most customers were buying comics for the art, not the stories.
So that's at least one industry opinion. And the modern books with full-page (and double-page) spreads of disjointed art suggests to me that it's still the way they think.
(Relevant to another thread, Don Markstein also has a letter defending the originality of the line.)
I'm surprised at the "wordy" accusation at DC. In the last ten or so years, every time I've looked at a DC book, it's been (stupidly) staged like a movie, with many instances of consecutive near-identical panels with nothing to support it, plus the full- and double-page splashes that fail to carry the story. Some words would help, as would cutting the length of the stories (so, thumbs up) so that these extended "luxuries" don't take up so much space.
narfstar:
Harry Potter proved that "some" kids will read. Now if you take the large number of copies a HP novel sales and divide it by the number of kids in the reading age range the percentage would still be small. Even when I kid does decide to check out one of my comics they seldom do more than look at the pictures. I will say that I can not enjoy a comic book without "enough" words. Many current comics are designed so that they can be "read" word free. I am unlikely to buy a new title without at least reading the first issue and am glad for that practice.
I have discarded many a book, without wasting money on it, because it had too few words.
Roygbiv666:
--- Quote from: philcom55 on June 29, 2011, 03:25:07 AM ---It's worth noting that a lot of early scripters had a background in text features and really didn't 'get' that comics were a different medium. As a result there was a tendency to produce endless captions filled with redundant descriptions of what the reader could already see for himself in the artwork. A simple example would be a panel in which Superman is shown hitting Luthor with the dialogue balloons "Take that!" and "Owww!", beneath a caption saying "Superman hits Luthor!"
- Phil Rushton
--- End quote ---
And let's not forget that back in the day, a writer and penciller wouldn't even necessarily meet in person. The writer might not even know who would be drawing the book, so they wrote it with a lot of redundancy as you say.
It's interesting that people are complaining on either side - too many words, not enough. In the medium of film, after talkies came around, people like Hitchcock always said that sound shoudl be used sparingly, that the images should carry the story.
I prefer to get my money's worth - the more words, the longer it takes to read!
philcom55:
...Of course it's entirely possible to go too far the other way - as this classic panel from Weird Fantasy shows:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2pt6icg.jpg...Definitely not one of EC's proudest moments! :-[
While I find unnecessary and/or confusing visuals as annoying as anyone I'd have to say that some of the most impressive comic strips I've ever seen were those rare occasions when someone like Alex Toth succeeded in telling a story without any words at all.
- Phil Rushton
John C:
I think the problem is that too many creators (and readers, most likely) think that one extreme or the other MUST be the right one. But the reality is that, in the best comics I've seen, both the text and the art carried the load. Same with movies, dialogue and action need to support each other if you've got both. Restrictive experiments to one extreme or the other are interesting, but not a viable norm when you have greater capabilities.
It'd be like saying that owning a car means that you should cut off your legs, since driving should be able to replace walking. Yes, but...
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