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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 9, 2018 20:37:28 GMT -5
Huh.. that's really blowing my mind.. I never really thought of them as comics, but I can see it if you consider each page a panel. I really just saw it as his style (The Pigeon books are the same), but now that you guys point it out I see it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2018 23:10:51 GMT -5
Huh.. that's really blowing my mind.. I never really thought of them as comics, but I can see it if you consider each page a panel. I really just saw it as his style (The Pigeon books are the same), but now that you guys point it out I see it. it fits the traditional mold of comics much better than something like Gil Kane's Blackmark...   that is more of a mix of illustrated prose and bits of dialogue here and there, but Blackmark is considered comics despite being first published as a paperback book. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 9, 2018 23:36:54 GMT -5
I definitely wouldn't call those pages a comic.. that's a book with really cool pictures  |
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Post by rberman on Jan 10, 2018 0:04:58 GMT -5
There's a spectrum between illustrated books and wordless comics, of course. Prince Valiant newspaper strips were illustrated narratives. Watchmen was mostly in comic book form, punctuated with a prose article at the end of most issues. Marvel's B&W magazines sometimes had a mix of straight comics and illustrated fiction. The variations are endless!
I have never read Blackmark, but as I look at those page samples, I'm struck that the narrative text, while verbose, is completely unnecessary. Everything you really need to know from those paragraphs is already communicated by the pictures.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 10, 2018 9:35:25 GMT -5
I have never read Blackmark, but as I look at those page samples, I'm struck that the narrative text, while verbose, is completely unnecessary. Everything you really need to know from those paragraphs is already communicated by the pictures. It's almost like Don McGregor was writing it. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2018 15:34:36 GMT -5
It;s been a couple of days without a shp annoincing it was closing, until today, A Timeless Journey in Stamford, CT is closing after 28 years. I think I visited that shop once in the 90s when I was living in CT. We're 10 days in to 2018 and we've almost had a double digit number of shops closing already. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2018 15:40:36 GMT -5
I definitely wouldn't call those pages a comic.. that's a book with really cool pictures Except the words and pictures act in conjunction to tell the story and the dialogue is told as part of the art with dialogue balloons. The question of what is or isn't comics is a complicated issue, one that engenders a lot of discussion. McCloud spent almost an entire chapter wrestling with that question and still had to settle on an approximate working definition and not an absolute one. By many definitions of comics, a one panel gag strip like Family Circus or Far Side wouldn't qualify as comics because they lack images in sequence, but to the "man on the street" they would definitely qualify as comics. I have no problem calling Blackmark comics rather than an illustrated prose piece because the images are central to the storytelling. That's usually the litmus test I use. If the images are the basis of the storytelling, it's comics not prose. Even if the story is told in one panel. -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 10, 2018 22:05:43 GMT -5
I've read the Scott McCloud book... it's definitely interesting. Definitions are always tricky... using the definition of 'images are central to the storytelling' does that mean when Bendis has page after page of talking heads it's not a comic? Those images are definitely NOT central to the story.
In my head 'illustrated prose' what that Blackmark book is.. a book with frequent pictures that replace some of the text... a comic has multiple panels. In retrospect, things like Family Circle and Far Side are really memes, not comics.. they just didn't know it yet.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2018 22:45:07 GMT -5
I've read the Scott McCloud book... it's definitely interesting. Definitions are always tricky... using the definition of 'images are central to the storytelling' does that mean when Bendis has page after page of talking heads it's not a comic? Those images are definitely NOT central to the story. In my head 'illustrated prose' what that Blackmark book is.. a book with frequent pictures that replace some of the text... a comic has multiple panels. In retrospect, things like Family Circle and Far Side are really memes, not comics.. they just didn't know it yet. Except in many of those multiple head panels (especially those done by Mike Avon Oeming in Powers, the subtle changes in facial expression as the dialogue continues tells information important to the story and in fact those visual cues are more informative about what is happening than the actual dialogue. And in the frequent pictures replace some of the text, is something that says here Superman punches Lex Luthor with a picture of Supes punching Lex Luthor really comics if the pictures aren't necessary to the narrative being conveyed? Comics is a visual medium, the narrative has to be conveyed visually. Words without pictures is not comics, pictures without words can still be comics. The story is told through images, the words can either further the narrative or further the thematic underpinning of the narrative, but the words alone are not comics. In Blackmark you will lose the flow of the story without the images, it is told visually, the words alone do not tell the story, so it's not prose. If everything you need is in the text and not in the images, then it can be prose, but unless the whole story is conveyed completely via text/words, it's not prose. -M |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 11, 2018 8:41:58 GMT -5
I've read the Scott McCloud book... it's definitely interesting. Definitions are always tricky... using the definition of 'images are central to the storytelling' does that mean when Bendis has page after page of talking heads it's not a comic? Those images are definitely NOT central to the story. In my head 'illustrated prose' what that Blackmark book is.. a book with frequent pictures that replace some of the text... a comic has multiple panels. In retrospect, things like Family Circle and Far Side are really memes, not comics.. they just didn't know it yet. Except in many of those multiple head panels (especially those done by Mike Avon Oeming in Powers, the subtle changes in facial expression as the dialogue continues tells information important to the story and in fact those visual cues are more informative about what is happening than the actual dialogue. And in the frequent pictures replace some of the text, is something that says here Superman punches Lex Luthor with a picture of Supes punching Lex Luthor really comics if the pictures aren't necessary to the narrative being conveyed? Comics is a visual medium, the narrative has to be conveyed visually. Words without pictures is not comics, pictures without words can still be comics. The story is told through images, the words can either further the narrative or further the thematic underpinning of the narrative, but the words alone are not comics. In Blackmark you will lose the flow of the story without the images, it is told visually, the words alone do not tell the story, so it's not prose. If everything you need is in the text and not in the images, then it can be prose, but unless the whole story is conveyed completely via text/words, it's not prose. -M ...which is why Big Little Books aren't comics: the text can be fully understood without ever looking at the pictures. Cei-U! I put an old argument to rest! |
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Post by rberman on Jan 11, 2018 9:21:19 GMT -5
Comics is a visual medium, the narrative has to be conveyed visually. Words without pictures is not comics, pictures without words can still be comics. The story is told through images, the words can either further the narrative or further the thematic underpinning of the narrative, but the words alone are not comics. In Blackmark you will lose the flow of the story without the images, it is told visually, the words alone do not tell the story, so it's not prose. If everything you need is in the text and not in the images, then it can be prose, but unless the whole story is conveyed completely via text/words, it's not prose. -M Ideally, there's reciprocity between the pictures and words rather than redundancy. I was reading an issue of Richard Morgan's 2004 Black Widow series this morning that brought this home. The text boxes were from a voice recording that Natasha had sent Matt Murdock about a situation she was dealing with in Miami. But the pictures showed Daredevil busting through the skylight to mess up some malfeasants in Hell's Kitchen. Each of the two stories was complete in itself so far as it went. But the craft of the piece was in the way that the visuals and the text reinforced and commented on each other. This happens all the time in good film as well. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2018 11:07:20 GMT -5
Comics is a visual medium, the narrative has to be conveyed visually. Words without pictures is not comics, pictures without words can still be comics. The story is told through images, the words can either further the narrative or further the thematic underpinning of the narrative, but the words alone are not comics. In Blackmark you will lose the flow of the story without the images, it is told visually, the words alone do not tell the story, so it's not prose. If everything you need is in the text and not in the images, then it can be prose, but unless the whole story is conveyed completely via text/words, it's not prose. -M Ideally, there's reciprocity between the pictures and words rather than redundancy. I was reading an issue of Richard Morgan's 2004 Black Widow series this morning that brought this home. The text boxes were from a voice recording that Natasha had sent Matt Murdock about a situation she was dealing with in Miami. But the pictures showed Daredevil busting through the skylight to mess up some malfeasants in Hell's Kitchen. Each of the two stories was complete in itself so far as it went. But the craft of the piece was in the way that the visuals and the text reinforced and commented on each other. This happens all the time in good film as well. McCloud went into the various different types of relationships between the text and the images in Miking Comics (I believe) including the type you describe here (which I believe he said originated in Japanese comics (manga). -M |
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Post by rberman on Jan 11, 2018 12:14:40 GMT -5
McCloud went into the various different types of relationships between the text and the images in Miking Comics (I believe) including the type you describe here (which I believe he said originated in Japanese comics (manga). I don't know whether contrasting dialogue and images first entered comic books through manga. I'd be surprised if there aren't Golden Age or at least Silver Age examples in comics, but may there aren't. I'd be surprised also if it didn't happen first in cinema, though I can't think of an early example off the top of my head. Any cinema buffs here? |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2018 11:08:27 GMT -5
According to this report comic shop sales were down 10% overall year to year in 2017 as opposed to 2016. Sales of both single issues and trades were both down about 10%, so there was no growth in either area in the direct market, but in other reports I have seen trade sales overall grew 10-12%, so that growth must be coming outside the direct market in the book trade (brick & mortar book stores and online sellers like Amazon who don't get their stuff through Diamond). I've been saying for a while that what's holding back comic sales overall is the direct market model not the material itself, and last year's sales seem to bear that out. People are buying books an there is growth in trades, just not in the niche market populated by destination shops that aren;t designed to find new customers or grow sales (they were designed to more effectively sell books to existing customers). -M |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 12, 2018 23:45:42 GMT -5
Just a random thought.... Does Newbury Comics count as the Direct market? For those not from the New England area, Newbury comics is a local chain (6-8 stores) that started on Newbury Street in Boston that feature pop culture stuff, music, movies, and comics. They do have a rack with currently monthly books, so I assume they're a diamond account, but I would by no means consider them the same sort of store as a legic comic shop.. it's really a music store that does Comics as a side light.
I'm sure sales wise it does, but really in atmosphere, location, etc, I'm sure it acts much closer to a book store. I'm pointing it out because it's probably not the only store like that in the country, so the line between Direct Market and others might not be so clearcut.
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