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I do have a question for the Q&A thread. I had a discussion with a graphic designer friend about times comics took advantage of the medium to experiment and play with the stories in only a way they could. The example given was how you can have panels represent seconds in time or change it so years pass between panels. I impressed him by telling him about the recent Dan Slott/Mike Allard Silver Surfer issue which is drawn as a mobieus strip that loops until they break the time loop they are stuck in. The only thing was I thought was drawn as a loop in the centre of the page with art depicting characters outside the time loop at the fringes of the page until they eventually burst into the main loop. Then when I re-read it I saw it was just a loop running through the pages. Still impressive, but less experimental then what I remembered. Does anyone have any other examples? I remember Geoff Johns had a really good issue of JSA where the top half of the comic told one story set in the present day and the bottom half told a story set in ancient Egypt. And they collide in the middle. But any examples would be appreciated.
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Apr 10, 2018 13:04
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I wanna say that the Sienkiewicz run on New Mutants has some pretty experimental storytelling in it, but it's been a long time since I read it and I can't remember any specific examples.
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Apr 10, 2018 13:19
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The Question IRL posted:I do have a question for the Q&A thread. Alan Moore did a lot of unusual stuff (including a similar trick with panels forming an infinite loop) in Promethea. (edited to add) Here's what I was thinking of: 
Selachian fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 13:29
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This strip from Cyanide and Happiness is the first example I always think of. http://explosm.net/comics/606/
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Apr 10, 2018 13:30
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Somebody posted this one recently, which might be something in the neighborhood?
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Apr 10, 2018 13:43
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Uthor posted:This strip from Cyanide and Happiness is the first example I always think of.
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Apr 10, 2018 13:51
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Webcomics specifically do interesting things with their medium (aka, digital on a screen). I've seen many examples of scrolling = falling. I've seen cool single "page" comics where you have to scroll around the screen to read/reveal the story while also showing movement in space. They can play with animation.
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Apr 10, 2018 13:59
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Which Emily Carroll one is it where you follow a guy as he climbs into a spooky cave by scrolling down?
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Apr 10, 2018 14:32
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The Question IRL posted:I do have a question for the Q&A thread. Building stories by Chris Ware might be what you are looking for. Also Trillium by Jeff Lemire is pretty much an entire comic built around what you are describing.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:39
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Wheat Loaf posted:Which Emily Carroll one is it where you follow a guy as he climbs into a spooky cave by scrolling down? His Face All Red
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Apr 10, 2018 15:21
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The Question IRL posted:I do have a question for the Q&A thread.  It's a combination of three scenes: one before a murder, the murder itself, and a later one where a character investigates the murder. The panels represent both the passage of time within each scene and the physical space the action takes place in. Doctor Spaceman fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 15:39
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That one's great.
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Apr 10, 2018 15:41
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Pax Americana in Multiversity has does a few interesting things, like this double page Quitely's done a lot of stuff like that, he's stupidly talented.
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Apr 10, 2018 15:43
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Which is the one he did with cube-shaped panels where one character gets punched through the bottom of one into the next?
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Apr 10, 2018 15:46
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These are some excellent examples, thanks guys. I'll be sure to show them (along with the Silver Surfer one) to him on Friday.
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Apr 10, 2018 16:20
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McKelvie did similar stuff in Young Avengers, and there's a Loki story in the Zine issue of Squirrel Girl that has opposite meanings if you read it backwards or forwards. Edit: Here's the Loki story 
Air Skwirl fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 16:51
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I haven't read most of these, but I was just going through this blog the other day and there's a bunch of examples. http://www.comicscube.com/2011/06/comics-techniques-and-tricks-index.html
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Apr 10, 2018 18:05
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I'd never seen that before, but it's amazing. Thanks for posting.
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Apr 10, 2018 19:16
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Okay, I got home and found two of the three comics I was thinking of. I love how this tells six different stories depending on which path you follow, simultaneously moving in time and space.  (looks like this is from Scholastic Pop #1) This is a creep  horror manga that does a super interesting thing with page layouts.https://didjelirium.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/abstraction-by-shintaro-kago/ I wish I could find the old, old comic that took advantage of the infinite canvas to follow some characters down into a subway, sideways along with a train, then scrolls back up out of the subway.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:35
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Has there been a Spider-Man story where it's found that Aunt May and Uncle Ben had a child (not step children)?
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Apr 10, 2018 22:59
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bessantj posted:Has there been a Spider-Man story where it's found that Aunt May and Uncle Ben had a child (not step children)? IIRC, Roger Stern once had May thinking about how she "lost a child," but no one ever followed up on that.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:07
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Rhyno posted:Quitely's done a lot of stuff like that, he's stupidly talented. Damned right 
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Apr 10, 2018 23:26
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bessantj posted:Has there been a Spider-Man story where it's found that Aunt May and Uncle Ben had a child (not step children)? If anyone says “Trouble” you’re going on the ignore list
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Apr 10, 2018 23:27
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Skwirl posted:McKelvie did similar stuff in Young Avengers, and there's a Loki story in the Zine issue of Squirrel Girl that has opposite meanings if you read it backwards or forwards. This is a really neat idea
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Apr 10, 2018 23:59
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bessantj posted:Has there been a Spider-Man story where it's found that Aunt May and Uncle Ben had a child (not step children)? No but Peter does have a sister now. Or everything is pointing to it as of this moment. It's been an ongoing part of Zdarsky's Spider-Man run and was a followup to Waid's OGN where it was introduced.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:13
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X-O posted:No but Peter does have a sister now. Or everything is pointing to it as of this moment. It's been an ongoing part of Zdarsky's Spider-Man run and was a followup to Waid's OGN where it was introduced. Didn't they firmly and definitively make it clear that she was not his sister in the OGN?
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Apr 11, 2018 00:18
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SonicRulez posted:This is a really neat idea I wish I could remember where I read a short story like this. It wasn't a comic, but was about someone setting off a time machine and getting stuck in a loop going forwards and backwards. You could read it in both directions to get two stories that made it so you didn't know when the beginning was.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:22
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bessantj posted:Has there been a Spider-Man story where it's found that Aunt May and Uncle Ben had a child (not step children)? Trouble? Ahahahaha Retro Futurist posted:If anyone says “Trouble” you’re going on the ignore list
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Apr 11, 2018 00:34
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Rhyno posted:Didn't they firmly and definitively make it clear that she was not his sister in the OGN? Actually quite the opposite. She made it clear she thought she wasn't but then we as the audience see something that tells us she probably is. Zdarsky finally followed up on it his run.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:48
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Uthor posted:I wish I could remember where I read a short story like this. It wasn't a comic, but was about someone setting off a time machine and getting stuck in a loop going forwards and backwards. You could read it in both directions to get two stories that made it so you didn't know when the beginning was. One of the dialogue chapters in Godel, Escher and Bach uses it (the dialog is almost mirrored too). It got used this political ad too (I have no idea what the candidate was actually like).
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Apr 11, 2018 02:56
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As a manga fan, there's something that puzzles me a bit about American comics fandom: Why is there a subset of the fandom that's so annoyed by what they consider excessive depictions of violence in superhero comics (n52-era DC in particular seemed to get a lot of this)? I don't think I've ever seen a manga fan complain about the gore in, e.g., Hunter x Hunter (be surprised that the Shonen Jump editors allowed it, yes, but not complain). There are times when manga fans are understandably upset about gore they didn't expect, especially when other fans of the series had sold them on it misleadingly (Golden Kamui in particular got a fair amount of this), but that's not really the same thing.
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Apr 11, 2018 05:32
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Silver2195 posted:As a manga fan, there's something that puzzles me a bit about American comics fandom: Why is there a subset of the fandom that's so annoyed by what they consider excessive depictions of violence in superhero comics (n52-era DC in particular seemed to get a lot of this)? I don't think I've ever seen a manga fan complain about the gore in, e.g., Hunter x Hunter (be surprised that the Shonen Jump editors allowed it, yes, but not complain). There are times when manga fans are understandably upset about gore they didn't expect, especially when other fans of the series had sold them on it misleadingly (Golden Kamui in particular got a fair amount of this), but that's not really the same thing. I think, at least from my perspective, it stems from the "gore they didn't expect" thing you mentioned, and some of the fundamental differences between American cape comics and manga. Most manga is written by one creator from start to finish, so it has a fairly consistent tone and you (mostly) know what kind of violence to expect. Example: Goku might beat someone up, he might vaporize them in a ki blast, but he's not gonna rip someone's heart out like a Mortal Kombat finisher. But superhero comics have been written and drawn by a whole bunch of different creators over the years, and those creators inevitably have different interpretations of characters and different ideas of what's acceptable to print. But since they're all writing/drawing characters that have been around for decades, readers that love those characters frequently find the new directions shocking. I mean for (an admittedly extreme) example, read the Batman comic from the 60s where Joker gets mad because people are chortling at his boner, then read the N52 comic where Joker literally has his face surgically removed... kinda hosed up, right? There's also the more simple fact that most people enjoy superhero comics more... lighthearted, I guess would be the word? Superhero comics in particular are still ostensibly for kids (even if the audience these days contains very few kids) and seeing graphic violence out of the blue is jarring. It's like if you were watching a PG-13 action movie like oh say one of those Marvel flicks and suddenly a character gets very graphically disemboweled and you're like "holy poo poo I hope there aren't any kids here this probably should've been an R  "
TwoPair fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Apr 11, 2018 |
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Apr 11, 2018 05:58
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Re: weird format comics, it’s “for teens” but Meanwhile is a fun choose your own adventure graphic novel.
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Apr 11, 2018 06:32
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The problem is that writers think Gore=serious/mature. Want to show the stakes are high? Have someone decapitate someone else? Want to have a villain be a threat? Have him make a mural of live mutaliated bodies on the wall. It becomes shorthand lazy writing that almost becomes parody for how over the top it is. It is almost like the comic industry took the wrong message from Lobo.
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Apr 11, 2018 07:06
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I don't think even most shonen manga really compares to Sentry ripping Ares in two, or a lot of the stuff Geoff Johns has written.
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Apr 11, 2018 07:47
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TwoPair posted:There's also the more simple fact that most people enjoy superhero comics more... lighthearted, I guess would be the word? Superhero comics in particular are still ostensibly for kids (even if the audience these days contains very few kids) and seeing graphic violence out of the blue is jarring. It's like if you were watching a PG-13 action movie like oh say one of those Marvel flicks and suddenly a character gets very graphically disemboweled and you're like "holy poo poo I hope there aren't any kids here this probably should've been an R Lighthearted or inspiring. Some people wanna read cape books to get uplifted, to see that the world can be better, and seeing them tear each other to pieces goes against that. There's also a lot of superhero books, but the Big Two tend to (mostly) have similar tones across the line. You can get annoyed at every DC book having lost limbs just as you can get annoyed with every Marvel character being too quippy. All the manga titles don't try to be a consistent universe, so you have a variety to choose what you want want to read.
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Apr 11, 2018 11:58
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I mean kids can enjoy violence but it needs to have a proper context. Zombies/aliens/orcs getting blasted away or Robocop style over the top action is one thing, Spider-man watching his friend helplessly get eaten alive by a monster is gonna give them nightmares.
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Apr 11, 2018 12:45
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Lurdiak posted:Spider-man watching his friend helplessly get eaten alive by a monster This is just Attack on Titan.
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Apr 11, 2018 13:50
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For decades the only comics being published over here were superhero comics, so that's the only thing a lot of comic readers will even look at. You see how cranky and hyperbolic people get when anyone posts a manga panel in any of the panel threads. Honestly that's a big part of the reason people complain less about violence in manga, is that they don't read manga. Comic nerds will trip over each other in a mad rush to tell you how much they hate it. But they also don't want to read goofy stuff because they've been trained that goofy stuff is for little kids and Superman turning into a mountain lion when exposed to Mauve Kryptonite is not a Serious and Mature Story. They also think that serious and mature stories contain lots of blood and death, because hey, kids cartoons aren't allowed to show it, so it must be only for serious mature adults! On the other hand there's always been a wide variety of manga aimed at little kids, teenagers, young adults, etc so if you don't like the gore in Hellsing you can always go read Yotsuba&. American comics don't (or rather, didn't) have that kind of variety. Especially when you consider the stories that are always recommended to new comic readers are Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen the expectation is that these are what superhero comics are like, and since superhero comics are the only ones getting made, that's what all comics are like. So since the late 80s the trend is marketing 'mature content' stories featuring safe, familiar characters from the average reader's childhood doing gruesome things to each other in the name of not upsetting the reader's fragile concept of themselves as adults. CS Lewis famously said that there are stages to maturity and how you relate to fiction - as a child he read fairy tales, as an adolescent he would hide them from his peers for fear of mockery, and as a grown man he again reads fairy tales openly. Superhero comics are stuck in the adolescent phase, where they're obviously childish in huge ways, but self consciously trying to prove to the world and themselves they're mature adults. Terrified of being seen as childish and too insecure to enjoy childish things, they insist that childish things instead change to fit them. As far as the backlash against gore and t&a goes I'm pretty sure SA is in the minority for objecting to it. I think there's a gradual shift going on to allow some goofy, lighthearted content, like Squirrel Girl and a few similar books at Marvel, and the American comics market is very gradually diversifying with more genres and more varied tones, even within superhero stories. But you don't have to look far to see the old guard comic nerds fighting it. Especially considering how many of them are aimed at young women specifically.
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Apr 11, 2018 14:37
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Silver2195 posted:As a manga fan, there's something that puzzles me a bit about American comics fandom: Why is there a subset of the fandom that's so annoyed by what they consider excessive depictions of violence in superhero comics (n52-era DC in particular seemed to get a lot of this)? I don't think I've ever seen a manga fan complain about the gore in, e.g., Hunter x Hunter (be surprised that the Shonen Jump editors allowed it, yes, but not complain). There are times when manga fans are understandably upset about gore they didn't expect, especially when other fans of the series had sold them on it misleadingly (Golden Kamui in particular got a fair amount of this), but that's not really the same thing. Tbh right off the start you're asking why excessive violence in [subset of western comics] is treated differently by readers than excessive violence in [entirety of Japanese comic media, including what you could describe as "r-rated" material and porn] which isn't a great place to jump off from But anyways superhero comics just in general aren't that kind of story. They are more or less adolescent power fantasies about people saving the day against bad guys and there just isn't anything in that that requires you to have gore and stuff. Like, just because Spider-Man has the strength to punch a hole through a guys head doesn't mean I want to see him do it Moreover there's decades of history behind what people think of as western superhero comics and when people start trying to shove that stuff into the formula, esp into preexisting series, they most often aren't doing it because they think it has some sort of storytelling value, they're doing it because they think violence and gore and rape etc is edgy and that those things automatically make a book mature and good and different when that's not the case at all I think gore can have a place in western comics, I mean i love Uber and that's gory af. And i think there can be western superhero books with excessive violence, there's kirkmans invincible which I haven't actually read most of but it works because its a superhero universe that was built ground up on the premise that This Is A Universe Where Hero Fights Get Bloody, but I think that those spaces are more limited and need to be from the start built on the idea that gore is gonna be a thing for it to work properly
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Apr 11, 2018 16:27
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