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Post by tolworthy on Sept 11, 2014 4:21:09 GMT -5
Loved them. I wonder if being British made a difference though?
It did not bother me that I was told about an out of print issue. To Brits, ALL Marvel comics were out of print. Yet all of them might suddenly appear at any time. We did not see these issues as "old" but as part of an always current universe "out there" somewhere beyond the Atlantic.
I bought most of my comics in piles from jumble sales (rummage sales) so footnotes added to the excitement: "I keep reading footnotes about series X, and wow, here it is!" I was a treasure hunter and the footnotes were the map.
Love those footnotes.
In contrast, I despise the recap pages. When I open a comic I want to be knocked over by exciting events: I don't want the first thing I see to be "you irritating outsider, you are not one of us, here is some boring text." The sign of a good comic (to me) is that they can maintain continuity yet only need a brief (EXCITING) recap on the splash page. If they need a long recap, or they ditch continuity together, they are amateurs IMO.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2014 20:42:10 GMT -5
I loved them , they kinda tied every thing together . I also like the hidden panel note as seen in Conan the Barbarian issue 8 pg 14 (I must be mad to sit here drawing ) . I wonder how many comics have those .
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 16, 2014 20:48:45 GMT -5
Artist Vicente Alcazar snuck a message into a panel of a Thongor story in Creatures on the Loose. It got past editor Roy Thomas until I showed it to him 40 years later. He told me that Stan frowned on that sort of thing but Roy thought they were kind of fun. He hadn't noticed Vicente's message at the time but he published my scan of it in Alter Ego.
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Post by dupersuper on Sept 17, 2014 19:56:36 GMT -5
Artist Vicente Alcazar snuck a message into a panel of a Thongor story in Creatures on the Loose. It got past editor Roy Thomas until I showed it to him 40 years later. He told me that Stan frowned on that sort of thing but Roy thought they were kind of fun. He hadn't noticed Vicente's message at the time but he published my scan of it in Alter Ego. What was the message? |
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 17, 2014 20:02:06 GMT -5
It was in Spanish, in mirror-image letters: "Esta viñeta se la dedico a Neal" - roughly, "I dedicate this panel to Neal". Neal Adams had helped Alcazar get started in the American comic book industry.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Sept 17, 2014 20:24:55 GMT -5
Editor's notes are one of the most common complaints about comics. "You start reading an issue and all of a sudden there is note after note telling you to pick up some other story to understand a reference!" These people interpret them as indications that they are starting on Chapter 11 and the Editors Notes are point at Chapters 1-10. Personally I think thats hogwash and like Editor's notes since they help with organizing collections and whatnot.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2014 16:38:48 GMT -5
Organizing a collection should be as simple as arranging a single title in order from publication date and number on cover. If it's any more complicated than that, I don't read it.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Sept 18, 2014 17:48:45 GMT -5
Organizing a collection should be as simple as arranging a single title in order from publication date and number on cover. If it's any more complicated than that, I don't read it. Nice sentiment, doesn't work out in practice. |
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Post by Phil Maurice on Sept 18, 2014 18:21:27 GMT -5
Organizing a collection should be as simple as arranging a single title in order from publication date and number on cover. If it's any more complicated than that, I don't read it. Nice sentiment, doesn't work out in practice. Oh, I don't know. If you have no interest in the predominant shared-universe, hard-continuity model, it isn't terribly difficult to avoid. Two modern examples that I enjoyed/enjoy tremendously are Y: The Last Man and The Walking Dead. Both are closed universes (at least thus far with TWD) devoid of footnotes. There are some "inside" references that are fun for those in the know, but the narrative doesn't depend upon your "getting" them.
There are tons of other examples, such as anthologies which don't depend on an arcane knowledge of decades of continuity. dupont2005's point is well taken; there are a myriad of ways to collect and enjoy comics and almost none of them are wrong. Except for eating them. Don't eat your comics.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Sept 18, 2014 19:53:30 GMT -5
Nice sentiment, doesn't work out in practice. Oh, I don't know. If you have no interest in the predominant shared-universe, hard-continuity model, it isn't terribly difficult to avoid. Two modern examples that I enjoyed/enjoy tremendously are Y: The Last Man and The Walking Dead. Both are closed universes (at least thus far with TWD) devoid of footnotes. There are some "inside" references that are fun for those in the know, but the narrative doesn't depend upon your "getting" them.
There are tons of other examples, such as anthologies which don't depend on an arcane knowledge of decades of continuity. dupont2005's point is well taken; there are a myriad of ways to collect and enjoy comics and almost none of them are wrong. Except for eating them. Don't eat your comics.
In other words, ignore 90% of American comics out there. I get that. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2014 20:04:47 GMT -5
Organizing a collection should be as simple as arranging a single title in order from publication date and number on cover. If it's any more complicated than that, I don't read it. Nice sentiment, doesn't work out in practice. It does with every comic publisher outside maybe three. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2014 20:06:14 GMT -5
Oh, I don't know. If you have no interest in the predominant shared-universe, hard-continuity model, it isn't terribly difficult to avoid. Two modern examples that I enjoyed/enjoy tremendously are Y: The Last Man and The Walking Dead. Both are closed universes (at least thus far with TWD) devoid of footnotes. There are some "inside" references that are fun for those in the know, but the narrative doesn't depend upon your "getting" them.
There are tons of other examples, such as anthologies which don't depend on an arcane knowledge of decades of continuity. dupont2005's point is well taken; there are a myriad of ways to collect and enjoy comics and almost none of them are wrong. Except for eating them. Don't eat your comics.
In other words, ignore 90% of American comics out there. I get that. We're all ignoring the overwhelming majority of comics published. I just think I'm reading the good ones. |
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Post by Phil Maurice on Sept 18, 2014 20:34:33 GMT -5
In other words, ignore 90% of American comics out there. I get that. We're all ignoring the overwhelming majority of comics published. I just think I'm reading the good ones. Repeating in bold for accuracy, and it's also a pretty good burn:
We're all ignoring the overwhelming majority of comics published.
Couldn't be more true. While we argue about publishing models, the prestigious awards are being given to creative people working outside that milieu. Women, to boot! I know!
www.salon.com/2014/09/17/this_isnt_literary_alison_bechdel_roz_chast_and_why_its_so_hard_for_us_to_take_comics_seriously/
I just think I'm reading the good ones.
That's because you totally ARE, just like the rest of us. 
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Post by chadwilliam on Sept 18, 2014 21:34:25 GMT -5
I remember one issue of Detective Comics had Robin referring to Blockbuster as a "freep*".
*Editor's Note: Combination/Slang for a 'Freak' and 'Creep'
I found it amusing that notations ordinarily reserved for educating us on the height of Mount Kilimanjaro or the distance of Earth from Jupiter could also be used to inform us of the proper usage of slang. And slang that was invented for this story.
Actually, that's something else these Editor's Notes would do:
*Editor's Note: Translated from Kryptonese.
Because it's something they had to do. From reading the letter column's in Silver Age DC comics, it's clear that much of an editor's time was spent responding to readers who couldn't figure out how Superman could say something like "I'm getting tired of this, Luthor!" when past issues of Superman had made it clear that Superman cannot get tired.
Editor Notes were therefore sometimes employed as a way by which editors could anticipate a complaint and head it off at the pass.
One letter to DC pointed out that the result of Superman catching Lois Lane with his steel-like arms everytime she fell out of a window should be like that of a woman landing suddenly on two steel girders after a several story fall. A fair point actually and Mort Weisinger responded with the explanation that Superman makes sure to release a cushion of superbreath before catching Lane everytime he's called upon to do so. I don't recall an Editor's Note explanation being employed in any instances where Superman had to catch someone like this, but I have read at least one panel thereafter in which Superman, instead of simply saying something like "I've got you", now had to state something like "I've got you. Fortunately, a pillow of air released from my superpowerful lungs will soften your landing thus ensuring that you suffer no adverse consequences of landing on my superarms". Great. Thanks a lot, kid. An Editor note would therefore have been more welcome than such unnatural dialogue.
And it happened so often, too!
Dialogue: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!"
Thought: "Of course, with my superconstitution, I can go indefinately without eating, but I don't want to offend our host!"
Dialogue: "No Lois, I haven't seen Clark!"
Thought: "Of course, I am secretly Clark Kent, but so that Lois doesn't discover this, I have to pretend to be in the dark over his whereabouts. I'm not actually telling a lie either, as I haven't seen myself".
Dialogue: "Great Caesar's Ghost!"
Thought: "Caesar was a complicated man. Recent evidence uncovered by modern historians suggest that..."
So, yeah. I would have prefered more Editors Notes (even just an *Editor Note: Use Your Brain!) over the above.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Oct 5, 2014 20:20:52 GMT -5
I think I found my new favorite editor's notation tonight while reading Fear #19:
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