So here's the thing. When I was a kid and had a flu, my father bought me a comic to get well. Imagine my disappointment, when instead of popular x-men, he gave me a copy of superman. I was like"paaa, but superman is soo old"and my pa was like"classics never get old"I took the gift, and I was reading it. It was literally a middle of the story, I had no idea what happened beforehand, who the fuck Blaze or Satanus were. Nor that Perry White was a cuck to Lex Luthor. But I've read it ravenously, and I've read it again and again and again.And I loved it.I asked my dad to buy more of the superman comics, and so he did. It was right before the Doomsday / Death of Superman scenario, but I was hooked on Superman for life.I've did some research about Blaze and Satanus like in 10s, and it didn't bother me, that I didn't know everything. The issue stood strongly on its own. Additionally, my pa got me part 2 of the "Blackout" storyline, apparently there were some back issues still avalaible, as well as some parts of the "Panic in the Sky". While, my knowledge was patched, it never took anything away from my enjoyment. Each issue stood strongly on its own, every chapter had a story on its own resolved.That's why I consider the argument that comics should be reader-friendly is bullshit. Everything I needed to know was explained either in caption boxes, or through the dialogue. And you know what? I had more fun trying to figure out things on my own, rather than a straightforward answer. If back then someone gave me a synopsis or some fucking link to wikipedia, I would probably just discard this shit altogetherI just explained to you, what is wrong with modern comics, and why the industry must die, because it's not going to be fixed, it's not going to get better. Instead, it's going to get worseBut this isn't my problem
one of the things that my pa hated though, were the prices.he was really angry that the comics were becoming more and more expensive. and that's how I've missed out on Batman: Venom story the first time
>>155409041>he was really angry that the comics were becoming more and more expensive.This is a hobby I couldn't have as a kid. They only sell tpbs where I live and they're expensive
>>155409129In the 90s, the comics were still pretty cheap
>>155408986Unfortunately modern comics aren’t written like how comics used to be with caption boxes, through new reader friendly dialogue or even thought bubbles.Writers these days only see comics as movie or tv adaptation material, because that’s where the real money is. So they write the comics as if they were movies or tv shows. New reader friendly isn’t the priority.
>>155409170Thing is, new writers don't know how to writeSecond thing is, new writers are phoning their mainstream job, because they focus more on their personal properties. And while there's nothing wrong with that, they forget that if you phone your mainstream job, nobody will give a fuck about your indie work as well
>>155408986Back when I was a kid, I just got random issues from flea marts or whatever my grandma, who knew nothing about comics, would buy me. I never had more than 3 consecutive issues of anything (I think it was Untold Tales of Spider-Man) and had to use my imagination to fill in the gaps.Good times.
>>155409239Filling the gaps was the best. And the thought "someday, I will read them all"
I remember in school we would read excerpts and passages of books l. There would be footnotes of important details not explained, but context clues were something often emphasized as well. That’s something that seems to be lost, you can pick up context in the middle of any story just by using educated guesses
>>155409276Also, it gave some gravity to the issue you were reading, as in, this is an important issue that is also a pay-off to all of the stories that lead to it. It made the issue more important than a new shiny #1 on the cover
>>155409301>Nor that Perry White was a cuck to Lex LuthorOne thing that I wanted to elabore. I knew that Perry White was the publisher of Daily Bugle, where Clark Kont worked. And I obviously knew who Lex Luthor was. But I must say, each one of them had a dedicated 1 page, where they explained their feelings toward "their" son, and it was extremely moving. Even not knowigh their history together, it made you FEEL their pain. It was very well articulated and described. It made you emphatize with their loss. The death of Perry White Jr didn't feel cheap. You probably guessed where I'm going towards with this rant, and you're right. The comics then cared about making the consequences of the storytelling hit harder
>>155409340Daily Planet, man. Jameson runs the Bugle.
>>155409349Shit. Sorry bro. Freudian slip, as I was reading Spider-Man recently ha ha. Ouch
>>155408986>When I was a kid my father bought me a copy of a Breaking Bad episode>I had no idea what was going on, who this Gus guy was or why Walt was upset with his co-worker. I think they were cooking meth but it wasn't really clear>But I watched it ravenously, again and again, I loved it.>I did some research and found out that the main character has cancer, and the other guy ran a chicken joint as a front.>Even though my knowledge was patched, it never took away my enjoyment of it>That's why I consider the argument that TV shows should be watched in order is bullshit. Everything I needed to know was explained in the blurb on the back>And you know what, it's more fun figuring it out on my own rather than watching it normally.
>>155409459Unironically true. You probably saw every Sopranos episode when it first aired
>>155409459>>155409498Go figure, that I was an avid Sopranos fan, and I missed the Pine Barrens episde. Next day, everyone, including my parents, who hated sopranos, were discussing this episode and reacting the best parts. Imagine this feel. I watched that episode years later, and I asked god "why? why did you do this to me?"
>>155409182>Second thing is, new writers are phoning their mainstream job,A lot of them probably could do good work at the big two with the help of a competent editor to get the characterizations and lore right. I don't blame them for treating it as a gig
>>155409948To be fair, editors are known to rewrite the scripts as well. This is something that isn't touched upon. The guy who wrote spider-man 700.1 to 700.4 publicly criticized his editor for rewriting his story. Guess what? He never got to write Marvel ever again.
>>155408986Having expository dialogue or information on what happened last issue IS being new reader friendly. The Triangle Era was definitely an active attempt to be reader friendly.Modern comics aren't because the decompressed storyline means everything is now a 4-8 issue arc instead of a two parter. It's a lot easier to understand part 2 without reading part 1 than it is to understand part 6 without reading 1-5.
>>155408986>That's why I consider the argument that comics should be reader-friendly is bullshit. Everything I needed to know was explained either in caption boxes, or through the dialogue. And you know what? I had more fun trying to figure out things on my own, rather than a straightforward answer. If back then someone gave me a synopsis or some fucking link to wikipedia, I would probably just discard this shit altogetherI'm not into comics that much but as a Kingdom Hearts (and SaGa Frontier weeb but that's unrelated cause KH has didney) I understand completely. Also Twin Peaks kinda feels like this. Or just fucking anything in the 90s I'd just throw in random syndicated episodes of Deep Space 9 and Lexx and have to figure out what was going on and I loved it too. Pic sort of related
>>155410820You say expository dialogue, I call it, narrative. The way that writers were being creative with it, you could make memes with it. People really undermine it, because it helped the writers not only to connect with the character, it helped to make the characterization more clear with the readers to avoid any potential misunderstanding. Caption boxes were a hindsight into character's psyche
>>155410863>Also Twin Peaks kinda feels like this.SO MUCH FUCKING THIS. You unintentionally nailed it, with this particular example
>>155410863>BusiekI wish he wrote mroe comics
>>155408986First comic I got as a kid was a Spider-Man comic with this really cool cover art with the costume hanging from a noose and burning, I don't have it anymore 'cause I donated all my comics to a youth shelter and can't seem to find it online either. Fuck, one of you knows the one I'm talking about.
>>155410879I just love being thrown into a world. ReBoot was my favourite show as a kid in the 90s and it just starts. It's very kid oriented at first so it wasnt that hard to get but there was no origin episode. BAM YOURE in a fucking computer. Gamecube are things. Everyone died. Just go with it. I didnt watch David Lynch till years later when was an adult though. But I think growing up like this is why. I'm surprised I never got into comics but it just never happened. (No local comic book store in the middle of nowhere I guess.) I feel like I missed out but now I have decades of insane shit to throw myself into
>>155410867I am not sure what you are saying. It sort of sounds like you thought that when I said 'expository dialogue' I was talking about narration boxes. I was talking about dialogue; that is, a conversation between two characters (I guess sometimes it was more than two) in which one character explains things ostensibly to the other character but in reality it is done for the benefit of the audience.Narrative and dialogue (expository or otherwise) are different aspects of writing. Narrative refers to the overall plot or story while dialogue is the moment to moment conversations. A writer can be excellent at dialogue and shit at narrative or vice versa. JLI for example has 10/10 dialogue and characterization but most narratives are 7/10.I am not trying to undermine (did you mean underestimate?) narrative text boxes and am in fact a big proponent of them. My entire post was about how being new-reader friendly was a regular thing in comics without the need for every story to be in a vacuum and have no references or continuity with previous stories.>Caption boxes were a hindsight into character's psycheI don't think that is what 'hindsight' means.I'm not a fan of narration boxes delving into character thoughts or motivations. I think thought bubbles work better for that. Narration boxes should be for narration ("The dark knight detective leaps into action!" "Suddenly the webbed wonder hears an explosion from downtown").
>>155411049To be fair, I don't know if you had it too, but when I was a kid, sometimes, I was making up the plot in my head, for lulz. And I also liked doing my own dubbing on the vhs tape. But maybe that's just me
>>155411157What I've meant, is what you've explained. I just wanted to call it art. To give it some justice, some nuance, some gravity.Caption boxes, helped us understand the character better. Do you agree?
>>155411196nta but caption boxes are a totally clunky way to convey information. It's quite literally telling instead of showing. Comics are an harmonious combination of art and writing. If you want to show batman leaping into action or spiderman hearing an explosion, you can far better show that through the art. Using narration for such things is total amatuer hour and shouldn't be considered printable by any publisher
>>155411343it literally depends on the writer. one writer will treat it as a chore and make them unreadable. The other, will make them an enhanced experience. It cannot be compared
>>155411360>The other, will make them an enhanced experience.You got any examples of this?
>>155411987Si Spurrier, Rick Remender, and we are talking about modern writers. For old school? Stan Lee (yes), Mark Gruenwald, Steven Englehard, Roger Sten, Mike Baron (read Punisher and Nexus, and you will learn what humanity really means). And of course, Christ Claremont and Byrne, even if they deserve criticism, they did both wonders to explain the psychology between their actions>insert cyclops speech against apocalypse in x-factorI don't have this page, but it tells everything. AFAIK, it's endgame issues, before Peter David comes to the series
>>155412041Especially Si Spurrier, because he toys with the format and he utilizes it to his strenght. You can see it in both X-Men Legacy, but also Crossed: Wish you were here, probably the only acceptable Crossed story. But then again, Si puts a lot of thought into his work, so he's not a standard, but a good example, that is not really followed
>>155412041>Stan Lee (yes)>Christ ClaremontNo. You're just listing guys who did it, not who did it well. It was a chore from these two especially.
>>155412144You just didn't read them. You just fell for youtube propaganda. But let's say you're right. You didn't comment on the others
>>155408986I've always had the same opinion. My first comic was pic related. Which beyond the overarching immediate story and villain had a whole bunch of bullshit to take in. Who was Black Cat, Who was this mysterious guy in the background. Why are Spider-man's parents around? He's married? But all of it made sense because if something wasn't obvious from context it was explained as it went on. I didn't freeze up because something wasn't explained in full wiki entry detail before I even tried t o read it.
>>155412340OP here, one of my first Spider-Man issues ever. I don't remember how I got it, but I had to go through a lot of struggle to get the rest of the Spider-Slayer arc with Mark Bagley art. It took effort, but I was so happy when I got it. And then, the cartoon adapted these comics and I could finally pretend to be smart, and tell my colleagues what's going to happen next, well, I was halfway right with Alistayre smythe being a spider-slayer himself
>>155412172Of course I read them. I didn't read Spurrier or David, but I don't remember whether I liked or disliked the rest doing it.
>>155412396Then it means, you should start with reading Si Spurrier works. And also Peter David. Si Spurrier's Crossed: Wish You were here should be a proof that caption boxes work. But his work is greatly inspired by what Peter David did. And Chris Claremont - it's easy to criticize him, but he put a lot of work into explaining the psyche of the characters, if you ever read a claremont issue, put some effort and try to read it, you might be surprised by the tidbits that Claremont was giving in his prose - keep in mind that Claremont was a failed writer and an actor and comics was where he vented his feelings
>>155412457I read Claremont already. He's shit. Either didn't try hard enough or didn't have it.
>>155412640What about the others?
A big problem with trying to get people into comics is that retards always try to explain a characters entire history upfront rather than letting the new reader take things as they come. I've given friends and coworkers the most basic information on where to start and they always got rolling just fine. A coworker of mine complains he can't get his friends to read and I ask what he's telling them and he basically tried to give them everything all at once. It's too much information. People can take things as they come but if you overload them they just get annoyed.
>>155413412>It's too much informationwooooooooooooooord
DIFFICULT EVERY STEP
>>155408986Well at least you've been enlightened on the sensibilities of consumers and producers, it's the only good you can take from the situation.
>>155408986Your dad rules
>>155411196I already said that I think that they shouldn't. That should be the purpose of thought bubbles.>>155411343I disagree with this as well. Narration boxes are exactly that, narration. Narrators can add a lot to novels and narration can add a lot to comics. Something like "The scent of blood still lingers in the air as Chaz opens the door" would be very difficult to convey purely through visuals and in many situations would be extremely clumsy to have a character say outloud or in some cases even think depending on the context of the story and whether other characters are around them.>>155411987I felt that Len Wein's work on Batman added an atmosphere to the issues that made for a more interesting (if somewhat purple) experience.The EC horror stories (Tales From The Crypt et al.,) also elevated their stories through their text boxes, some authors and stories more than others.
>>155408986>That's why I consider the argument that comics should be reader-friendly is bullshit. Everything I needed to know was explained either in caption boxes, or through the dialogue. And you know what? I had more fun trying to figure out things on my own, rather than a straightforward answer. If back then someone gave me a synopsis or some fucking link to wikipedia, I would probably just discard this shit altogetherBut the thing is the way the comics were written in the 90s like that issue of Superman and other comics, THAT was them being reader-friendly, but reader-friendly keeping in mind that people were going to jump on board one comic, and not always know what happened priorWhat happened was that somewhere in the late 90s when the crash happened, people assumed that 90s comics were the problem and that they needed to be more "reader-friendly" which means the decompressed comics intended to be collected in a TPB format, and made to look like movies on paper
>>155412748I'm not reading Crossed. I was planning to read David's Atlantis Chronicles.
>>155413412Yeah I'm trying to get into comics and I looked up reading order for Hellboy and it gave me a massive fucking flowchart infographic from some reddit post. I said fuck that and just started with Hellboy and am going to move on to the rest one omnibus at a time.It wasn't a simple flowchart either it was like read 3 of this some of that some of this etc then start Hellboy etc.
>>155408986Thats what happened to the crash test dummies guy and why he wrote a song about superman
>>155419154Information overload is a real issue now. It's easy to look up a character or series but none of the information is ever sorted or presented well. Back in the day we basically just had to accept their might be parts of the characters history that we wouldn't see even if we went back issue hunting.
>>155420025back in the day you just jumped in issue #209 or whatever and half the time you wouldnt know the origin and shit
>>155420064I think, at least in the case of major characters, their origins were pretty well known through cultural osmosis. But the truth of the matter is that origins, I won't say are unimportant, but they're not often immediately important. Books would often do a retelling of them every few years to catch new readers up to.
>>155419154What's annoying is that I've been reading a bunch of older comics and back then you could just read a random issue and be fine because it was, at most, a 3 parter.With characters like Batman or Superman or Spider-Man or Daredevil or Captain America it was kind of assumed that you knew their origin and basic supporting cast. I get so tired of seeing faggots on social media talking about 'where to start with Batman' because you don't need a place to start. You know the story already and you know who 90% of the supporting cast is. You can pick up any issue by O'Neil, Wolfman, Dixon, Wein, Moench or whatever and you'll be fine outside of some extremely specific stories. The idea that you 'have' to start with Snyder's nu52 or Killing Joke or even Year 1 is retarded. And god damn do I hate the retards who say that DKR is a must read for new Batman readers.
>>155420124I always get annoyed when people try to recommend mini series or off canon books to new readers. Not because I think they're bad, I love a lot of them, but there's a difference between telling someone a good Superman story and telling them how to get into Superman. I can tell someone to read All Star, and they might like it a lot, but when they're done they're going to be back asking the same question.
>>155420124I think the issue being that people don't want to pick up old random single issues, or even know how to go about doing that, and you really can't just go pick up a random issue if whatever is coming out currently, because decompression and writing for the trade has absolutely ruined comics.
>>155420614At this point I question why we don't just switch to a purely trade industry. The comic shops may suffer but, eh, fuck em.
>>155422092>At this point I question why we don't just switch to a purely trade industry. The comic shops may suffer but, eh, fuck em.It really should have decades ago, keeping floppies around is like if pulps were still being published despite being an outdated delivery format, at this point it makes no sense economically.
>>155422092That's exactly what publishers want to make things easier for them.With the way things are now floppies and LCS don't exactly force them into any quality control but for the first case it does mean they need to at least avoid too many issues becoming a sign to drop a writer's run early, sure there'd still be reviews for people buying trades but if you've heard the phrase "this probably reads better collected" it indicates precisely how much more forgiving people can be when there's more material to sift through. Bad art, missed deadlines, egregious dialogue, mischaracterization, melodrama, standard panel and page wasting atop an ultimately lukewarm plot because of Status Quo and Editorial mandates are less visible if you don't have a month to really mull over how subpar 20 pages read before and really fume at the next being just as bad.So, floppies have their problems, price, page count, preservation, but they sort of act as a litmus test to prevent nepo and crony hires pulling a fast one, Marvel's new 5 issue cut off is likely a result of fewer customers humoring too much for too long.As for the LCS thing it's another case where it's not an inherent quality check but as pic related shows the multiple individual business owners cause a tard wrangle effect since the publishers can't negotiate a bullshit deal with a few suits and walk from the consequences, whenever they pull antics with variants and pricing they have to answer at a convention to the guys who don't have any space and finances or patience for nonsense that could ruin their business. I'm also not one for obnoxious gatekeeping and have ran into a few obnoxious clerks myself, but I do think if customers all have to get over themselves and buy nerd media from a nerd the world will be better for it. Waiting until comics are available in a socially acceptable space is a symptom of irony poisoning and why a lot of adaptation media is still trying to wash out the source.
>>155408986>And you know what? I had more fun trying to figure out things on my own, rather than a straightforward answer.yea it's a retarded meme that you can't jump onboard at any moment
>>155408986>Brett BreedingWhat a name.
