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Post by rberman on Jul 17, 2018 10:20:43 GMT -5
That type of dialogue was for new readers. Exactly. The constant perceived need to explain the action for new readers resulted in a distinct style of exposition.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jul 17, 2018 11:48:16 GMT -5
That type of dialogue was for new readers. Exactly. The constant perceived need to explain the action for new readers resulted in a distinct style of exposition. Every comic is somebody's first: excellent advice, sadly forgotten by most comic writers these days.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 17, 2018 13:28:29 GMT -5
Writers these days expect the reader to have an encyclopedic knowledge of 60 years of continuity.
Many of us don't know that obscure villain from Detective #157.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 17, 2018 14:47:48 GMT -5
Writers these days expect the reader to have an encyclopedic knowledge of 60 years of continuity.
Many of us don't know that obscure villain from Detective #157.
Um, everybody knows the Highwayman!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 17, 2018 15:16:29 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. There is no overwhelming (or even underwhelming) need for a writer to break up the story with extraneous exposition when you can find the info in a simple Google search.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 17, 2018 15:17:14 GMT -5
Writers these days expect the reader to have an encyclopedic knowledge of 60 years of continuity. I disagree with this. Writers today are by and large ignoring continuity in order to write the stories they want to write without being burdened by what Roy Thomas or Stan Lee wrote decades ago, or they just retcon away anything they don't like in order to do what they want.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jul 18, 2018 4:29:56 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. There is no overwhelming (or even underwhelming) need for a writer to break up the story with extraneous exposition when you can find the info in a simple Google search. This is true, but I'm not sure you should really have to do "research" in order to enjoy a comic book. Far better to have a quick recap in the dialogue or narration boxes to bring new readers up to speed, I think. Some writers of yester-year we're actually pretty adept at getting a lot of biographical info across about a character in relatively few words or in a way that didn't interrupt the flow of the story too much.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 18, 2018 5:51:41 GMT -5
Or even a short sentence and a footnote in which issue it happened, served to want a reader to look for the back issue.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 18, 2018 7:00:50 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. There is no overwhelming (or even underwhelming) need for a writer to break up the story with extraneous exposition when you can find the info in a simple Google search. This is true, but I'm not sure you should really have to do "research" in order to enjoy a comic book. Far better to have a quick recap in the dialogue or narration boxes to bring new readers up to speed, I think. Some writers of yester-year we're actually pretty adept at getting a lot of biographical info across about a character in relatively few words or in a way that didn't interrupt the flow of the story too much. Here, here. Nothing can take you out of the story more than having to put down the comic to spend 20 minutes on the interwebs to find out who is who and what is what.
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Post by The Captain on Jul 18, 2018 9:26:06 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. There is no overwhelming (or even underwhelming) need for a writer to break up the story with extraneous exposition when you can find the info in a simple Google search. This is true, but I'm not sure you should really have to do "research" in order to enjoy a comic book. Far better to have a quick recap in the dialogue or narration boxes to bring new readers up to speed, I think. Some writers of yester-year we're actually pretty adept at getting a lot of biographical info across about a character in relatively few words or in a way that didn't interrupt the flow of the story too much. I think we're getting the two issues conflated. The original comment was about the monthly exposition explaining how Spider-Man's webshooters were built or how Thor's hammer worked (strike two times for this, strike four times for that) or inner-monologuing the crushes that Pepper had on Tony, Happy had on Pepper, and Tony did for Pepper but acted like a playboy cad to push her away because of him having a weak heart. Sure, every issue is someone's first, particularly back in the Silver Age, because comics were cheap, disposable entertainment, so the writer's needed to put that in there is case Journey Into Mystery #92 was Billy's first experience with Thor, while JiM #93 was Bobby's, but it seems stilted by today's standards because (1) most of today's readers aren't 8 year-old kids picking up a book for the first time, and (2) stories are so decompressed that to do it every issue now would drag out already interminably long stories even longer. The point that you make about not needing to do "research" in order to enjoy a comic book is true. I am sure that most people can read and enjoy a book featuring a villain that had one appearance decades ago without having his entire backstory provided that the story does not hinge on having intimate knowledge of what happened in his previous appearance, but others, myself included, are a bit more obsessive and want to know everything. Case in point: Mr. Fish showed up as the villain in Power Man #29, cover date February 1976, at the end of which he disappeared, presumably never to be seen again. However, 40 years later, in December 2016, Mr. Fish shows up in Cage #1 (which, in full disclosure, I have not read). Now, if one has to know everything that occurred in the 1976 issue in order to be able to follow the 2016 story and the writer does not provide those details, that writer has done a poor job. However, if the only tie to continuity is perhaps Luke saying "Didn't I beat your ugly ass years ago?", then the reader can either enjoy the story for what it is or they can, if they care to, track down the previous Mr. Fish appearance to find out how that beat-down happened.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 18, 2018 9:34:35 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. There is no overwhelming (or even underwhelming) need for a writer to break up the story with extraneous exposition when you can find the info in a simple Google search. This is true, but I'm not sure you should really have to do "research" in order to enjoy a comic book. Far better to have a quick recap in the dialogue or narration boxes to bring new readers up to speed, I think. Some writers of yester-year we're actually pretty adept at getting a lot of biographical info across about a character in relatively few words or in a way that didn't interrupt the flow of the story too much. And a lot weren't. What you got was a lot of unnecessary exposition that broke up the flow of the story. I'm not fully convinced the original premise that you need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of comics to read them is correct. And I'm not actually suggesting that you should have to do research. But it's there. Which it absolutely was not in the past.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 18, 2018 9:40:15 GMT -5
I am not saying every modern writer does this, but some do. Grant Morrison is a big offender of knowledge of past stories is instrumental in following what is happening.
There are also times when the relationship of a character or villain to others is a pivotal part, but the writer fails to inform us, we are just suppose to know it.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 18, 2018 18:07:13 GMT -5
I'd probably be happier if comics had stayed a cheap medium readable by all ages and not taken terribly seriously too often.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 18, 2018 19:17:16 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. The Highwayman was a cheap criminal who died in an accident before being resurrected as a cyborg who was then incorporated into the short-lived super-villain team The Scoundrels. He perished with the rest of his team in the crossover series Crisis on Infinite Internets. Resurrected again by the villainous Necropsist, he next appeared several times in Ragman Team-Up, posing as the bodyguard of Arnold Warheit (a parody of Andy Warhol). The Highwayman was next seen in Warren Ellis’ revamped Inferior Five comic, wearing a trenchcoat and smoking cigarettes, before being killed by Mister Mallah during a torrid love scene. Highwayman did not stay dead long, however, as his left arm became the host of Hal Jordan’s soul for a while, and the rest of his body was consumed by the worm Ouroboros, giving the creature sentience. The soul of Highwayman was then transferred to a cloned body, and he decided to become a mailman and retire from supervillainy. This plan came to naught when Brian Bendis rebooted the Inferior Five franchise, and Highwayman resumed his criminal activities -now inexplicably granted the ability to telepathically control emus. He was then revealed to be Prez’s long-lost son, a plot point that was never mentioned again after Bendis left the mag after three issues.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 18, 2018 20:51:50 GMT -5
Thirty, forty, fifty years ago you also didn't have his magic box that put the distilled knowledge of the world at your fingertips. If you need to know who The Highwayman is you can find far more than you'd likely ever want to know within seconds. The Highwayman was a cheap criminal who died in an accident before being resurrected as a cyborg who was then incorporated into the short-lived super-villain team The Scoundrels. He perished with the rest of his team in the crossover series Crisis on Infinite Internets. Resurrected again by the villainous Necropsist, he next appeared several times in Ragman Team-Up, posing as the bodyguard of Arnold Warheit (a parody of Andy Warhol). The Highwayman was next seen in Warren Ellis’ revamped Inferior Five comic, wearing a trenchcoat and smoking cigarettes, before being killed by Mister Mallah during a torrid love scene. Highwayman did not stay dead long, however, as his left arm became the host of Hal Jordan’s soul for a while, and the rest of his body was consumed by the worm Ouroboros, giving the creature sentience. The soul of Highwayman was then transferred to a cloned body, and he decided to become a mailman and retire from supervillainy. This plan can no naught when Brian Bendis rebooted the Inferior Five franchise, and Highwayman resumed his criminal activities -now inexplicably granted the ability to telepathically control emus. He was then revealed to be Prez’s long-lost son, a plot point that was never mentioned again after Bendis left the mag after three issues. I would buy that comic...
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