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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 2, 2014 12:08:46 GMT -5
I loved All-Star Squadron when it was coming out. My favorite book at the time. I find it kind of excruciating to read now. Thomas' insistence on having the characters describe every damn thing we're seeing is painful.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 18:02:26 GMT -5
I never understood people's problem with "verbose". But then, I don't agree with "show, don't tell", either. It's about WHAT'S written, not how much. Show what you can show and tell me about what you can't show. Or, even better, show me something and tell me about something completely different.  I agree, and in fact, I'll rarely read a comic I can get through in a couple minutes. I think Walking Dead is the only "quick" comic I read regularly. Sometimes I'll get in on a miniseries that I can blow through, but I mostly want some dialogue. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 18:34:26 GMT -5
I never understood people's problem with "verbose". It's not a problem per se...I still like those classic Spideys...but at the same time, a sea of words can turn off a casual reader of if there's too much to wallow through. |
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Post by Paradox on Oct 3, 2014 14:51:55 GMT -5
See, that makes no sense to me. "I came here for a story, not a bunch of WORDS!"  |
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 3, 2014 19:55:30 GMT -5
Claremont? McGregor? Thomas? Pikers, every one of 'em, compared to some of the writers at Dell in the '60s. This page from Voyage to the Deep #1 is one of the LEAST wordy of the issue.  (click to enlarge) Cei-U! I summon the waders! |
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Post by foxley on Oct 3, 2014 23:40:32 GMT -5
See, that makes no sense to me. "I came here for a story, not a bunch of WORDS!" It can be an indicator that the writer is not taking full advantage of the medium. Comics are a unique combination of words and an images and, at their best, make full use of that unique combination. Would you watch a television show that consisted of a character describing the action rather than showing it? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 1:44:46 GMT -5
I wouldn't watch a television show that was mostly grunts, exclamations, and sound effects.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 1:48:50 GMT -5
I wouldn't watch a television show that was mostly grunts, exclamations, and sound effects. Sounds like most modern sitcoms  -M |
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Post by Paradox on Oct 4, 2014 2:26:48 GMT -5
See, that makes no sense to me. "I came here for a story, not a bunch of WORDS!" It can be an indicator that the writer is not taking full advantage of the medium. Comics are a unique combination of words and an images and, at their best, make full use of that unique combination. Would you watch a television show that consisted of a character describing the action rather than showing it? Well, no, but there's a lot more to comic writing than "describing the action". There's a lot of ways to be "verbose" and not be violating "show, don't tell". Being wordy in and of itself isn't the weakness. Like almost always, it's not the tools, it's how you use them. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 4, 2014 15:54:55 GMT -5
Billy Graham, in my opinion, is one of comics great underappreciated artists-- he was doing design stuff that was very much against the tide of the mainstream at the time, but comparable with what people like Simonson and Chaykin were doing on their DC books to more fanfare. These efforts would flower in a few more years when artists like Paul Gulacy and Frank Miller would become popular, but Billy never got his due as being one of the post-Steranko forerunners of heavily designed storytelling.
That makes sense... At least that's the only way a writer/artist team COULD pull off stuff like they were doing in BP, given the constraints involved working for '70s Marvel. And then it could probably only work on a bi-monthly book. I should track down more of Graham's stuff - I really do like his style. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 21:20:59 GMT -5
See, that makes no sense to me. "I came here for a story, not a bunch of WORDS!" And I quote... “Wall of Text” is a name given to overly long or large speech balloons in a given panel, strip or comic. Walls of Text are often considered too slow for a given comic’s pace, too redundant to the situation and/or intrusive, since they take away space otherwise used for drawing. A Wall of Text is often pointed as a sign of both bad writing and lazy art, since either the author doesn’t know how to express himself in fewer words, or he doesn’t make enough drawings to pan out the writing.
A Wall of Text can be any such case where written words are either too redundant or intrusive in relation to the comic’s art. Sometimes it is very obvious, such as when a single speech balloon fills a considerable amount of space in the panel, making the art incomplete or blocked and the text too long or boring in comparison to the drawing. Sometimes, it is part of the comic’s style, like story plots that often require characters to engage into long conversations or speeches to get through the action.
Comics are a visual medium. A comic can consist of images without words, but no amount of words without images can be a comic. Hence, words are second seat to images. Most of us may know how to write and/or draw, but it’s a different thing to know how to put both together in a comfortable proportion.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2014 21:42:38 GMT -5
That's one person's opinion. Another person's opinion would be a comic without words is a result of "decompression", which is also a term I do not like, but it shows how some people expect a level of dialogue in their comics while others expect considerably less. I prefer more dialogue than less.
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Post by Paradox on Oct 5, 2014 7:34:00 GMT -5
"A Wall of Text is often pointed as a sign of both bad writing and lazy art, since either the author doesn’t know how to express himself in fewer words, or he doesn’t make enough drawings to pan out the writing."
Lazy ass absolutist thinking. It's VERY conditional. Execution trumps theory.
Reminds me of Amadeus' famous "too many notes" quote.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2014 9:46:42 GMT -5
Lazy ass absolutist thinking. It's VERY conditional. Execution trumps theory.
And it could still be executed poorly, hence his meter of thought |
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Post by dupersuper on Oct 8, 2014 3:35:30 GMT -5
I wouldn't watch a television show that was mostly grunts, exclamations, and sound effects. Sounds like most modern sitcoms -M More like porn... |
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