Timing in comics

[Jason Green]

Really enjoyed this week's column on the topic of timing in comics. My question: whatever happened to the step-by-step guide to creating a comic? As I recall, this wasn't ever finished, and I was enjoying reading it quite a bit.

[Steven Grant]

Oddly, anytime I ran the Down And Dirty Guide, hits plunged like debris from a ballplayer's airplane. So it has been subsumed into something else. I'll keep you informed.

- Grant

[Bright-Raven]

Steven Grant wrote:


Oddly, anytime I ran the Down And Dirty Guide, hits plunged like debris from a ballplayer's airplane.

Steven's comment > thumbtack match = more tackiness

[Inkthinker]

Really?

Man, the D&D Guide was what made me START reading your column. Now I'm a steady regular. I've been hoping there'd be more of them... even if you have to sneakily wrap it up as something else.

I guess more people come for the politics after all...

[bartl]

Man, the D&D Guide was what made me START reading your column. Now I'm a steady regular. I've been hoping there'd be more of them... even if you have to sneakily wrap it up as something else.
The fact that it was Steven Grant is what brought me; I have been conversing online with him for years, and he is well spoken and quite knowledgeable on many subjects.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

http://www.luchins.com/blog.html

Have a look at the bottom panel in the page from Daredevil #44.

I think that's a great example of what Steven was talking about with having multiple events in the same panel.
The panels pull you from event to event, so that even if you looked ahead to see that Matt Murdoch enters the scene, when reading it, you do get the feeling that he has just opened the door.

[Eumenides]

Another fine column, Steven! You're at your best discussing comics craft and our medium's history; I enjoyed reading your previous column about Krigstein and Steranko too.

In a time when readers and creators don't seem to know what they want from their comics, I wish more people would discuss what goes into making a comic artistic. Every other art medium is obsessed with self-analysis, especially cinema. No Kubrick or Hitchcock movie has been left undissected, each photogram thoroughly analysed. Some of it even borders on parody, but I wish people would rather treat Watchmen with the same excess of zeal than not care why it's such a great comics experience.

Perhaps I shouldn't expect artistic considerations from those who work for the big companies, but I don't think I find it either in the independent scene, which produces the same time of dreg that comes out from Marvel and DC. Artistic laziness is institutionalized: I keep finding the same page layouts, the same panel angles, the same story structures, the same colouring, the same lettering wherever I search. The 'denser reading experience' which you talk about and I crave for doesn't seem likely to happen. Contemporary comics seldom excite me as they used to; I've become a collector of this medium's past glories. I have more fun discovering Will Eisner, Robert Crumb and Winsor McCay than waiting every month (sometimes two or three months) for the few comics that are still great experiences.