|
Post by defiant1 on Oct 10, 2011 19:40:40 GMT -5
Not only are there ways, but it's intelligent to recap so that people don't get lost. If more than a month goes by, I've already forgotten what happened in the last issue.
df1
|
|
|
Post by G on Oct 11, 2011 19:44:05 GMT -5
Not only are there ways, but it's intelligent to recap so that people don't get lost. If more than a month goes by, I've already forgotten what happened in the last issue. df1 I've seen some books start with a "The story so far" kind of page to open books up and they keep this going monthly. It's 1 page and takes up the splash page with an opening shot or symbol. In the old days it didn't feel to me like things needed to be rehashed all the time, it just felt easier to jump on and get an understanding with what is happening on a quicker timeframe. There wasn't really a lot of "story arcs" back then. Yes, there was a few but they all fell within the range of continuation within the series. If they didn't do a full out rehash of what happened, they may have had a thought balloon or a caption box referencing just a glimpsing piece of the story with the old editor star like so * followed with an editor's caption saying something like "* As seen in issue #67 - Roy" You could piece shit together if you desired. If you didn't, you could keep up with what you currently had and just kept going forward. It never seemed to take long to make sense. Now books are such a slave to owning the beginning of a story arc and understanding what went on in that issue that if you popped in on the 4th issue of an arc, you'd be totally lost and it may take 3 or 4 issues to even feel like you're getting the gist of whats going on and still feel like you're missing something. I think in the interest of stories like that where you're going to be lost if you didn't start from the beginning, I think a "The story so far" recap is almost totally necessary. It's really not half as necessary in the old time continuing serial type comics. But for books with a single story arc and that's it, you need to know what's going on if you ain't there from the beginning. Otherwise, you might as well just skip the rest. It's 2 types of story telling and I get that. And I hear a lot of newer readers say its insulting to have to rehash things. I don't necessarily think it needs to be THAT extreme. But I do think you have to consider people who come into a story half way into it. You can either pick up readers by making sure they can follow it even if they didn't start from the beginning or you can alienate them and say fuck em and it's their own fault. As Jim Shooter said, every issue should be a jumping on point. And I agree with that.
|
|
|
Post by G on Dec 10, 2011 11:00:24 GMT -5
I know I'm obviously biased but I think its really hard to argue if you lived through it. Not that you were a toddler when these books came out and then you went back and tried a few and based your own thoughts on them some 15-20 years after they came out. I'm talking, if you lived through it. Were old enough to experience it and enjoy it. If you didn't, you really don't have the perspective. You really cannot appreciate what took place then. But I have to consider the Jim Shooter Marvel Era as perhaps the greatest era of comics ever produced. You cannot even fathom how strong comics were then. You cannot understand how one issue led into the next and into the next and so on. Please, please....please don't tell me you get bored reading them. They are too immature for you. So much other pure BS that I hear when it comes to those comments. To put it mildly....shut the fuck up. You were sucking your thumb back then or your mommas titty. By time you were old enough to get a grip on comics you were running into McFarlane's Spawn or running around chasing issues of Youngblood. Yes, Jim Shooter had created another amazing example of his ability to run a company at Valiant, but it was too short lived and jumped the shark too quickly that I don't think it compared to the driving force and success that Marvel was during the earlier years. Comics in the early 90s did a little spike upwards to start the decade off and then just shot way downward and ultimately, I don't think it has ever recovered from the way it was raped and molested. To this day I still see it spiraling downward and out of control. Comics has never enjoyed a level of strength and success that it had when Shooter ran Marvel. And amazingly it wasn't a formula that was hard to understand and implement. Tell comic stories in serial one after another format. Make it easily blendable with any other comic series out there so any could cross into the other. Combine great writing talent with top artists. Have dynamic covers that made you want to look inside and find out what this story was about. Take care of your creative teams and give them things they hadn't had before but also make them work for the incentives. Know how to judge and take action. Be a leader who was firm and in control but also be seen as fair. Get the word out with advertising and marketing. Continue to expand in all available media outlets. And just consistently put out good product, on-time. Month in and month out. But be consistently reliable. Don't be a company that fed your fans excuses why your book didn't come out. Be professional. Reliable. On-time. Be a go-to company. It honestly couldn't fail. And it didn't. As the picture shows, the sales went up and all they had to do was tell good stories. Comics had matured to a point where young and old could both enjoy. I don't think we've had a leader like this or an era this good before or since in comics. I think the Shooter era of comics was the best comics era of all time. And too bad for you if you weren't old enough to experience it.
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Dec 10, 2011 17:44:50 GMT -5
I know I'm obviously biased but I think its really hard to argue if you lived through it. Not that you were a toddler when these books came out and then you went back and tried a few and based your own thoughts on them some 15-20 years after they came out. I'm talking, if you lived through it. Were old enough to experience it and enjoy it. If you didn't, you really don't have the perspective. You really cannot appreciate what took place then. But I have to consider the Jim Shooter Marvel Era as perhaps the greatest era of comics ever produced. You cannot even fathom how strong comics were then. You cannot understand how one issue led into the next and into the next and so on. Please, please....please don't tell me you get bored reading them. They are too immature for you. So much other pure BS that I hear when it comes to those comments. To put it mildly....shut the fuck up. You were sucking your thumb back then or your mommas titty. By time you were old enough to get a grip on comics you were running into McFarlane's Spawn or running around chasing issues of Youngblood. Yes, Jim Shooter had created another amazing example of his ability to run a company at Valiant, but it was too short lived and jumped the shark too quickly that I don't think it compared to the driving force and success that Marvel was during the earlier years. Comics in the early 90s did a little spike upwards to start the decade off and then just shot way downward and ultimately, I don't think it has ever recovered from the way it was raped and molested. To this day I still see it spiraling downward and out of control. Comics has never enjoyed a level of strength and success that it had when Shooter ran Marvel. And amazingly it wasn't a formula that was hard to understand and implement. Tell comic stories in serial one after another format. Make it easily blendable with any other comic series out there so any could cross into the other. Combine great writing talent with top artists. Have dynamic covers that made you want to look inside and find out what this story was about. Take care of your creative teams and give them things they hadn't had before but also make them work for the incentives. Know how to judge and take action. Be a leader who was firm and in control but also be seen as fair. Get the word out with advertising and marketing. Continue to expand in all available media outlets. And just consistently put out good product, on-time. Month in and month out. But be consistently reliable. Don't be a company that fed your fans excuses why your book didn't come out. Be professional. Reliable. On-time. Be a go-to company. It honestly couldn't fail. And it didn't. As the picture shows, the sales went up and all they had to do was tell good stories. Comics had matured to a point where young and old could both enjoy. I don't think we've had a leader like this or an era this good before or since in comics. I think the Shooter era of comics was the best comics era of all time. And too bad for you if you weren't old enough to experience it. Jim got a lot of criticism for that Newlin Company press release. If you read Jim's blog, you see that people like John Romita Sr was in charge of covers and that a lot of things we liked about comics were in capable hands. Jim fine-tuned some processes which can be as important as creating a process. df1
|
|
|
Post by cyberstrike on Dec 11, 2011 21:29:32 GMT -5
And amazingly it wasn't a formula that was hard to understand and implement. Tell comic stories in serial one after another format. Make it easily blendable with any other comic series out there so any could cross into the other. Combine great writing talent with top artists. Have dynamic covers that made you want to look inside and find out what this story was about. Take care of your creative teams and give them things they hadn't had before but also make them work for the incentives. Know how to judge and take action. Be a leader who was firm and in control but also be seen as fair. Get the word out with advertising and marketing. Continue to expand in all available media outlets. And just consistently put out good product, on-time. Month in and month out. But be consistently reliable. Don't be a company that fed your fans excuses why your book didn't come out. Be professional. Reliable. On-time. Be a go-to company. It honestly couldn't fail. And it didn't. If I may play the devil's advocate here (because someone has to if not we won't have a discussion just a suck up session) for a minute. The plan you outlined has been tried by several publishers in the past, Valiant, Defiant, Broadway, Claypool, and Crossgen just to name a few and what happened to all of them? They all went out of business, that is what happened to them. Because that old fashioned business model doesn't work in today's world. It has always been and always will be about the money. The best product is the one that makes the most money. Also at Marvel he never gave a break to the next generation of talent a real break especially top-tier British talent like Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Brain Bolland, Grant Morrison, and more. I'm through playing devil's advocate.
|
|
|
Post by G on Dec 12, 2011 7:54:21 GMT -5
I could argue that the mentality of comic readers and collectors had changed by then. By the late 80's, the Shooter era of Marvel comics was over and comics was waiting on the next big thing. We went through a transition period during the early 90s and the people in charge of comics as well as the people reading comics shifted from the old style to the new style. We went from all those values I mentioned to the values we have today. Mini-series, Poster Covers, One-Shots, Mega Crossover Events, Shock and Awe Storylines, Creators putting their own stuff out, etc, etc, etc. In terms of dollars at the time, it was being ate up. At that time, it was new and the shift happened. Since then, any attempt to regain the old ways have failed. I'm as much inclined to blame the readers of today as I am to blame the creators who created it. Also, except in some instances, I think it was inferior product. Marvel didn't start out at a peak, it steadily built towards it. It had a winning formula in the 1960s, but the Shooter era of comics didn't arrive until the late 70's. That's quite a build up to start peaking. Comics today are expected to peak right from the start and that's one reason why they fail so quickly. They don't follow a winning formula long enough or they don't capture the fickle audience of today for any period of time. You could put blame on both sides of it. But I don't think the formula is wrong. I'd argue that the formula worked and it doesn't work today because it hasn't been done as well. Sometimes briefly it has, but now it seems like it cannot even be attempted. The Fanboys want the posters, endless mini-series, directionless stuff more. Considering where sales numbers are today compared to the early 90s (and before), I'd hardly say what we have today is a successful formula. In fact, I'd say what we have today is a mess.
|
|
|
Post by cyberstrike on Dec 12, 2011 12:06:11 GMT -5
Playing the Devil's advocate here again:
The problem with Shooter as Marvel EiC was he didn't hold on to some great talent he had like Frank Miller and John Byrne. He didn't get the talent who were going to usher comics into a new age. Marvel could have had their version of Watchmen (and not that lame ass Squadron Supreme) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Hell they could have had Marvelman and V For Vendetta, but again Shooter said no. Also Shooter gave guys Peter David crap books because of office politics. Also Shooter had the next generation of talent like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Marc Silvestri and all they needed was polish and they could have led Marvel to sales that were never dreamed of.
Done with being the devil's advocate for now.
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Dec 12, 2011 21:40:31 GMT -5
Playing the Devil's advocate here again: The problem with Shooter as Marvel EiC was he didn't hold on to some great talent he had like Frank Miller and John Byrne. He didn't get the talent who were going to usher comics into a new age. Marvel could have had their version of Watchmen (and not that lame ass Squadron Supreme) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Hell they could have had Marvelman and V For Vendetta, but again Shooter said no. Also Shooter gave guys Peter David crap books because of office politics. Also Shooter had the next generation of talent like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Marc Silvestri and all they needed was polish and they could have led Marvel to sales that were never dreamed of. Done with being the devil's advocate for now. Shooter put what was best for the characters over the whims of the creators. The people you name shined because they happened to be better than the rest out there at the time. There was a lot of crap being sold. Shooter made careers for Miller, J.G Jones and whole boatload of creators. He hand picked their talent and teamed them with capable inkers that made their work look more professional than it was. Even Georges Jeanty who is the artist on Dark Horse's best selling titled says he owes Jim Shooter a lot and that Jim taught him how to tell a story with art. A lot of what Jim advocates is marketing. He want the titles clear. He wants the covers to represent what's in the comic. He wants the fundamental elements to be as plausible as possible. These are elements that attract readers over time. Defiant didn't fail because of Jim's storytelling techniques, but I'd argue that they don't even feature Jim's storytelling techniques. Jim was in the courtroom and meeting with lawyers when he should have been managing the company. Broadway didn't collapse because of Jim's storytelling. They were bought out. Jim builds stories for the long run. It isn't a one shot deal or like Watchmen, a story with no future. Unless he has a year or two to build his stories and link them, you don't get the snapshot of what he's trying to do. Many of his stories are plotted over 4 to 8 issues and they flow organically to present an even bigger picture. Judging Jim's stories based upon one comic (unless it's a quality problem with the artist) is like judging a full puzzle picture based upon looking at one piece. Only when you link the pieces do you get a clue to what he was trying to build. The hobby has fallen into a rut of fans stroking the egos of creators and no one cares about the characters anymore. The characters are so irrelevant... creators just kill them on a whim and bring them back when they know you'll miss them. df1
|
|
|
Post by G on Dec 13, 2011 9:09:30 GMT -5
The hobby has fallen into a rut of fans stroking the egos of creators and no one cares about the characters anymore. The characters are so irrelevant... creators just kill them on a whim and bring them back when they know you'll miss them. That is one element missing from today. Although we knew who the big creators were back in the day and they did help sales and hype, they weren't the 1st thing mentioned. You mentioned the character 1st. You mentioned what was going on with that character. The character was important to you. You liked the character. You wanted to know more about them. At the end you were going "oh yeah, such-in-such is drawing him and that dude is writing". It wasn't as important. Yeah, there were creator's you followed because they were the best, but the powers that be had a better grip on things and ran much tighter ships. You never had to wait for issues. There was a certain consistency in quality. Today the 1st thought is who is drawing or writing it. What is going to be their big change to the character. What story arc are they going to implement. Will this be a mega-crossover? When will the TPB come out that they did? Etc. We turned the creators into stars. Not that they didn't deserve to be so because they always have deserved it. But they got to where they viewed themselves as the most important piece and forgot about the basics that happened before them. I often wonder what comics would have been like had creators like Byrne, Buscema, Kane, Kirby, Perez, Pollard, Adams, Aparo, Ditko, etc had decided they were going to do the things creators of the last 20 years have done. Would I still view the books of the 60's - 80's the same way? I don't think I would. There would be quality control issues. Books being late or not published at all. Egos breaking teams up. Phone-in issues. Lackluster story arcs. Etc. I really think the egos of yesteryear was held in check by the powers that be. The ship was tighter back then. The creators worked for a company. The creators needed the company. They followed the company's rules and deadlines. They worked their ass off to get a job done. They were MUCH more professional. It's hard for me to look at the type of books out now and see that same commitment to the company, the character and the project. (Image United anyone???) Because the creators put themselves in front of all of that and see themselves as the most important element. The company doesn't make them pay for not meeting deadlines. You think creator's of yesteryear could miss deadlines more than once or twice without a good damn reason? Do you think it would have been put up with like it is today? A lot of the books I ordered in the last 2 years, I had to wait for delays in them just to come out. That's not professional. It's disgusting really. And yet we allow it to happen. We continue to support what these creators do even when they make excuses for not getting books out. Shooter ran a much tighter ship. Trust me. I'd like to see a company today just run a tight ship. If creator's don't meet deadlines, demote their asses or even worse. Fire them. It used to be an honor for creators to work on comics of the highest selling characters. It was something that was earned. Not a right because you were the flavor of the month. The best books were put into the most reliable hands. And backup plans were firmly in place in case things went wrong. A tight ship is a tight ship. Its clearly what is lacking today. And a lot of people just never experienced when comics did run as a tight ironclad and unsinkable, no excuse ship. Today the inmates run the asylum. Or worse yet, remain clueless.
|
|
|
Post by cyberstrike on Dec 13, 2011 11:36:29 GMT -5
Playing the devil's advocate again.
Shooter also helped to create a lot of crap that we have to put up with now of days. the crossover events (Contest of Champions, The Secret Wars, The Secret Wars II, and Unity). Hell Shooter paved the the way for mini-series, limited series, maxi-series, one-shots, and digital coloring. He allowed Miller to kill Electra off (even though according to Miller Electra was more popular than Daredevil was at the time).
He also started the trend of stupid PR stunts like Spider-Man's black costume, the deaths of Phoenix, Captain Marvel, and the New Universe.
How can you guys support the man who basically helped about everything in comics that you claim to hate?
End of being the Devil's advocate. For now at least, unless anyone else want to take over the role of Devil's advocate?
|
|