Reynard
04-26-2006, 07:30 PM
The other day, I was jonesing for something different -- comics wise -- to read, but was short on cash. So, I dove into my local shop's 5 for a Dollar boxes and went on the hunt. What I finally came up with was Judd Winick's 'Blood and Water' vampire 5 part miniseries for Vertigo (published in the summer of '03). Or most of it anyway -- I got issues 1 and 3 through 5. Number 2 was nowhere to be found.
Now, aside from some minor complaints about Winick and his personal political/social beliefs appearing in every damn thing he writes, I kind of liked it. It was derivative, as are most vampire stories, but fun and engaging enough to make me feel like I had not, in fact, wasted 85 cents (gotta pay the tax man).
However -- and this is a big deal with me -- I never once, in reading those issues, felt like I had missed part of the story. At no point did I ever stop and go 'huh? oh, that must have been explained in issue #2' or the like. Not in all the other 4 issues did a single thing happen, or not happen, that made me remember that I had not, in fact, managed to find the entire miniseries in those long boxes. And just to be clear, no issue of this miniseries had a 'last time in...' narrative tool, and the 'next issue' blurbs were exceptionally vague.
I can't think of a more damning criticism of a miniseries or story arc than being able to say there was a cmpletely wasted issue. Sure, in an ongoing series, a reader should be able to jump in and eventually get it. But in a 5 part minseries that covered a single story, having 20% of it not matter in the slightest is horrible storytelling and pacing, and, in a way, ripping off the people who bought the series as it was published.
So, comics writers and wannabes (like myself): make every issue count. hell, make every page and panel and line of dialogue count. It is bad enough that the realities of publishing have such a powerful effect on the way stories are told in comics. Don't make it worse by writing meaningless filler that isn't going to matter to anyone, ever.
/rant
Now, aside from some minor complaints about Winick and his personal political/social beliefs appearing in every damn thing he writes, I kind of liked it. It was derivative, as are most vampire stories, but fun and engaging enough to make me feel like I had not, in fact, wasted 85 cents (gotta pay the tax man).
However -- and this is a big deal with me -- I never once, in reading those issues, felt like I had missed part of the story. At no point did I ever stop and go 'huh? oh, that must have been explained in issue #2' or the like. Not in all the other 4 issues did a single thing happen, or not happen, that made me remember that I had not, in fact, managed to find the entire miniseries in those long boxes. And just to be clear, no issue of this miniseries had a 'last time in...' narrative tool, and the 'next issue' blurbs were exceptionally vague.
I can't think of a more damning criticism of a miniseries or story arc than being able to say there was a cmpletely wasted issue. Sure, in an ongoing series, a reader should be able to jump in and eventually get it. But in a 5 part minseries that covered a single story, having 20% of it not matter in the slightest is horrible storytelling and pacing, and, in a way, ripping off the people who bought the series as it was published.
So, comics writers and wannabes (like myself): make every issue count. hell, make every page and panel and line of dialogue count. It is bad enough that the realities of publishing have such a powerful effect on the way stories are told in comics. Don't make it worse by writing meaningless filler that isn't going to matter to anyone, ever.
/rant