Thought Ballons are 'Feel Fresh And New'

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

From www.Newsarama.com


I remember you talking a while back about the absence of thought balloons from comics. You said something about the writers (or the company or medium) going for a more cinematic feel. I was kinda irked at first but got used to it. And then I read Mighty Avengers #1, which reintroduced, in a way, the thought balloon. What are your thoughts on its use in Mighty Avengers and have you received any feedback from people concerning them, positive or negative?

JQ: Let me just say, Stormbreaker, that I loved the usage of the thought balloons in Mighty Avengers. They were also used in a much different way than previously used in the past. Rather than give us just plain exposition of what a character was clearly thinking of doing or thinking about a person or situation, Brian handled it differently where the thoughts were more like asides - the kind of random thoughts and snide remarks that we think to ourselves in every life situation but that doesn’t make it out of our mouths because we have this internal filter that keeps us from being total jerks.

What’s also fun about the thought balloons in Mighty and in another upcoming title which you’ll dig, is that after not using them for so many years, now they’re a shock to the system and feel fresh and new.

When creatively discussing Mighty Avengers the idea was that that title was going to be the title that gets us out of the heaviness that was Civil War. Just fun, #@!!$ to the wall superhero fun. It just seemed appropriate to bring back the thought balloon at this juncture and on this title and also in our upcoming mystery title and project.

Much like Justin Timberlake, Brian Bendis is bringing thought balloon back.


So what do you all think?

Personally I thought it was rather silly to throw out a tool just because some writers weren't using it correctly (or more as a crutch than a tool).

Did anyone miss it, or is it's comeback a throwback to a past best forgotten?

Are there any other tools that should be thrown out or brought back?

I think that cramming as much into a page as you can should come back into vouge, but I'm not sure if that belongs in this discussion....

(I know that many comics from many other publishers didn't do without them, but it's from a Joe Friday column, so make like they do and pretend there's only one publisher and that their comics are the best the world has ever seen.)

[stealthwise]

I think that, like any tool, there's a time and a place for thought balloons, and a time and place for caption boxes. Caption boxes do tend to work for that "cinematic" feel, but not every book is suited for that, and the trick gets old after a while (say, the ten thousandth Watchmen-knockoff). Thought balloons are great for just getting right to it, and caption boxes are good for those panels where the character is not immediately present.

Hopefully we'll see more people making use of the balloon when and if it's necessary.

[MartinRedmond]

Why not just let writers chose weither they want to use thought balloons or explanatory captions or not and stop giving a shit about weither it's cinematic or not. Movies also have animation to them, music and sound effects. They're not the same medium.

[Joe Rice]

The interesting and (as far as I can tell) new use of thought balloons was probably my favorite part of Mighty Avengers. I liked it so much I can ignore the art and roster and point of the book and still enjoy it.

I think most comic writers are terrible at thought balloons, but then most comic book writers are terrible.

[Strannik]

Personally, I prefer caption boxes to thought balloons, but if thought balloons work for a story that the creators are trying to tell, then more power to them.

[Nitz the Bloody]

Personally, I prefer comic stories where internal monologue and narration is used sparingly ( if at all ). Even the thought balloons in Mighty Avengers seem unnecessary; if Carol is upset that Tony is trampling over her authority, wouldn't it be better for the artist to show it with a subtle facial expression, rather than a " **** you " balloon floating over her head?

[Alan2099]

As a gneral rule, I feel thought balloons actually work better for comics, but there are a lot of writers that don't know how to use them correctly.

Then again, there's a lot of writers that don't know how to use captions corectly either.

The big difference there is when thought balloons aren't used right, they seem a bit silly.
When Captions aren't used right, they seem a tad pretentious.

[trickster]

From www.Newsarama.com (http://www.Newsarama.com)



So what do you all think?



I read my first comics at the age of 12 or 13, Teen titans, Marvel's Defenders and obviously at the time they had thought balloons. Fast forward 12 to 14 years later (I'm going on 27 now), after a long interruption 'cos my mom hated me spending time indoors and wasting my time with comics, so she threw them all away, and I'm reading comics again. I hadn't really noticed they were gone, so I guess they weren't really that essential. I actually thought they were annoying as hell in Mighty Avengers. I hope the trend doesn't go back to thought balloons. They obscure the artwork and make it look cluttered. Disco is never coming back, thought balloons shouldn't either.

[Reptisaurus!]

Personally I thought it was rather silly to throw out a tool just because some writers weren't using it correctly (or more as a crutch than a tool).

Did anyone miss it, or is it's comeback a throwback to a past best forgotten?


It's a perfectly efficient way to get exposition to the audience. But I didn't notice much when they're gone.

But exposition inanof itself has to be handled very carefully. You NEED it in a serial medium, need it by the metric shit-ton, but y'can't let if over-run your story.

I'm a little down on 'em in Avengers style books. In solo hero comics y'almost need 'em (or caption boxes) to have character development. Spider-man's probably the most interesting example of this; Spidey provides the dialouge, but Peter Parker does the word balloons. Y'take the "window into Parker's head" away, you lose most of yer thematic resonance.

The Avengers? Your hero has 73 other Avengers to talk to. Weird that you'd need them.


Are there any other tools that should be thrown out or brought back?


Damn good question. I have nothing against today's more cinematic comics, but I kind of miss the more literary-styled comics of the past.*

Like I was reading old Ditko Spider-man, and there's A LOT of symbolism there, used in a way that wouldn't be today. Like it was symbolism used to further or summarize the plot, not symbolism as plot-point unto itself. (ALA the Pirates in Watchmen.)

But I guess as goes popular culture, so goes comics. People read less, and watch more TV an' play more video games. So comic, bein' commercial art, are gonna try'n make their audience more comfortable.


I think that cramming as much into a page as you can should come back into vouge, but I'm not sure if that belongs in this discussion....

Aaaagree, but I don't think it's gonna happen.

Hey! You read Mome? You saw that Gabrielle Bell one-pager in Mome? Awesome!

It's fairly common if'n you get away from the mainstream, actually.

But I'm sure it's a pain in the ass to draw, and it's the full page shot that sells for the beaucoup dollars at conventions, so if you try to drop that shit on your freelancers TOO often, they're gonna bitch.

So I don't think it'll come back.

On the other hand, I love the big show-offy double page spreads, too. I'm absoulely fine with comics that are art-object first and story second. (Best example: McKean's Cages.)

Or I'll read EC comics and I'll almost get pissed. Like, "Holy Crap Wally Wood is good, but I'd like to see what he could do with more'n a three inch by six inch panel!"

But the wider variety of techniques artists have access to, the better off comics'll be.

* Well, SOME of the comics of the past. Artists workin' at the level of Ditko and Woody were a rarity then much as they are now. Maybe what I REALLY want changed most is Ditko back and Wally Wood not to have killed himself.

[Reptisaurus!]

The interesting and (as far as I can tell) new use of thought balloons was probably my favorite part of Mighty Avengers. I liked it so much I can ignore the art and roster and point of the book and still enjoy it.

I think most comic writers are terrible at thought balloons, but then most comic book writers are terrible.

Completely disagree.

I can't think of anyone who's done more than, say, two dozen issues for the majors who I'd call a really bad writer.

[Joe Rice]

Terrible was a terrible exaggeration. "Not good."

[Reptisaurus!]

Terrible was a terrible exaggeration. "Not good."

Well, we're back to "What's Good?" I guess.

I can't name anyone who can't produce a comprehensible story utilizing your basic pulp or sitcom originated three act structure. And do it fast.

Mainstream comics are deadline based commercial art that doesn't want to make the audience nervous. Only so much you can do, y'know. Unless your both good enough as an artist and as a pitchman to let the editors give you some leeway.

I blame the form more than the writers.

[Joe Rice]

Well, we're back to "What's Good?" I guess.

I can't name anyone who can't produce a comprehensible story utilizing your basic pulp or sitcom originated three act structure. And do it fast.

Mainstream comics are deadline based commercial art that doesn't want to make the audience nervous. Only so much you can do, y'know. Unless your both good enough as an artist and as a pitchman to let the editors give you some leeway.

I blame the form more than the writers.

Limitations in form don't make them good writers all the sudden, though. I'm a little hesitant to call the above "good" and I certainly think a large portion of the big companies DO have trouble with it anyway.

[MWGallaher]

A point I've never seen made on interior monologue via thought balloon vs. interior monologue via caption boxes:
The thought balloon is more realistic.
Everybody has immediate thoughts going through their heads during the events of their lives. This is what's conveyed by thought balloons.
Almost nobody narrates those ongoing events to an unseen listener--especially if the narration involves trading off the story-telling between various participants. This is what's conveyed in today's first-person caption boxes.
What intrigues me now, though, is wondering what will come next. We've seen thought balloons go out of vogue, and first person captions become so ubiquitous in comics as to be tiresome. So what comes after writers and readers burn out on this technique? A return to thought balloons? Pseudo-cinematic absence of direct insight into character's thoughts (some of the writers of the late 80's employed this technique)? Narration in the past tense (I haven't seen this done much since Mark Evanier's wonderful Crossfire comic of the 80's)? Or, God forbid, second person narration?!

[Sijo]

I liked thought balloons too, but I didn't miss them much either. Or I didn't until recent times; they're writing stories now that supposedly have a lot of inner conflict but the art doesn't carry it well by itself. Civil War is a good example- we needed more exposition on what several characters were thinking, but mostly, the story was carried by what the characters did (and what little they said) which left many of us wondering at their true motives. Such a story begged for more commentary. Caption boxes are ok as well, but again, they're not being used that much. (And please, don't tell me we are "supposed to provide our own inner monologues" for the characters- in that case I could just imagine the whole story and save myself the $$ I spend on the comic.)

Another comics convention I miss are sound effects. Yeah, I know those got a bad reputation due to the Batman TV series, but without them, the art just seems silent to me. I can imagine the characters' voices from their dialogue, but when I see, for example, Goliath struck by lightning or Spider-Man pushed thru a wall, and there's not a single sound effect in sight, it just feels static to me. The illusion of reality becomes harder to mantain. I can understand that the younger generations of readers who grew up without them would not miss them, but seeing what sound FXs an artist would come up with for a scene was part of the fun in the old days (And they found some creative ways to do so, too; I remember an issue of The Hulk where he landed thunderously, and the sound effect (THOOM!) was drawn vertically, along Hulk's speed lines, making it seem more dynamic.) :)

[berk]

yeah, nothing wrong with thought balloons in themselves; Elizabethan drama had its monologues and asides, comics have thought balloons.

I looked at the Mighty Avengers thing, and Bendis did basically what you'd expect: he used the thought balloons as an extension of his usual style, and I thought he did a good job with them from that POV. IWO, if you like his style you'll like his thought balloons and they'll add to your reading experience.

[Reptisaurus!]

From Estoreal (http://estoreal.blogspot.com/index.html)


Panel 1. RAB sits at his computer, frowning in thought, his chin resting in one hand.

RAB (thought): Maybe the chronic inferiority complex of comics creators is to blame for this.

RAB (thought) 2: It's like a child trying to look adult by eliminating anything that seems childish.


Panel 2. Looking up from street level as the anarchist character V leaps from a rooftop in a scene from V FOR VENDETTA as drawn by David Lloyd. Something like this image.

CAPTION: Alan Moore and Frank Miller made comics look "cool" and "adult" by not using thought balloons. Or sound effects.

CAPTION 2: They made comics look like movies -- like "grown-up" entertainment.


Panel 3. A shot of the Marvel S/M fetish character PENANCE with his fists clenched in a moment of supreme angst.

CAPTION: It worked for them as individuals...but in general, what could be more childish than trying to look all "serious" and "adult"?

CAPTION 2: You just end up looking silly.


Panel 4. RAB gets up from his desk, leaving the computer behind.

RAB (thought): Most old people would give anything to be young again.

RAB (thought) 2: Real maturity goes beyond that, to an appreciation of good things from both childhood and adulthood.


Panel 5. RAB sitting in the living room, in front of a television set. In one hand, he has a remote control pointed at the screen to turn the tv on.

RAB (thought): Comic books don't have motion, they don't have music, they don't have the sound of human voices. They're not movies or television.

SFX: *click!*


Panel 6. On the tv screen, we see KIM POSSIBLE talking into her Kimmunicator.

RAB (thought, off-panel): With all these limitations, it's stupid to throw away some of the few tricks we have out of some misplaced desire to look more "grown up"!

KIM (voice from television): So what's the sitch?


Relevant to the post AND to what I was talkin' bout earlier.

Although I'm not actually bothered by comics trying to be TV or movies. There's lots of techniques there that can be applied, and no reason not t'.

But other than that total agreement.





* And also Cerebus. The narrative style in current Marvel books? COMPLETELY ripped off from Cerebus.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

I do miss caption boxes as well, especially those by a different narrator (either another character or 2nd person).
They are a good tool for bringing the audience in and getting them to see what the author wants, or even pushing them away to make the action seem dispassionate (if wanted).
An example I gave for their usefulness a few years ago when they started dissapearing was from a Ken Loach film, who's title I cannot now remember.
In the film (made in the 60's/early 70's) a female character ends up getting a backyard abortion, as a legal one wasn't availabe (this is toward the end of the film).
As she's getting the abortion, a voice with no emotion recites facts/figures about the amount of deaths/injuries/sickness from backyard aborrtions, and figures on how many are done each year etc.
On one level it pulls you from the scene, and on another it gives it more impact as suddenly you're not watching one persons story, but thousands of people's story.
It wouldn't work for every writer, and it doesn't work for every story, but it's silly to throw the tool out altogether in some vain attempt to be more cinematic or adult.

I also once read a quote attributed to the Warchowski Brothers (apprently they speak as one), which said something to the effect that they were inspired by comics when they were growing up and it influenced their films, but now that comics are copying films there's nothing in there for them.
I believe Morrison's somewhat recent Vertigo triptych Sea Guy, We3 and Vinamramamama were an attempt to tell stories that could only be done in comics or at least took influence from comics rather than film.
Ironically, if this is the case, We3, the most cinematic of them (and in my opinion the lesser of the three), was the most popular.

[Mark Wallace]

I think most comic writers are terrible at thought balloons, but then most comic book writers are terrible.

I'd amend that to "most American comic book writers are terrible".

In Europe, if they produce bad comics, the comics don't sell. In the US, it appears that the crap sells as well as the good stuff, so the crap writers never have to seek other employment, and hang around screwing money out of the industry forever.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

In the US, it appears that the crap sells as well as the good stuff, so the crap writers never have to seek other employment, and hang around screwing money out of the industry forever.

There is a line though - Chuck Austen and Ron Zimmerman were rejected by the fans due to their truly terrible work, and I can run off a few more if you want (anyone ever actually brought a Ben Raab book?), so while the the audience at large may accept a high level of crap, some writers just can't get a gig despite their connections.

[founder81]

There is a line though - Chuck Austen and Ron Zimmerman were rejected by the fans due to their truly terrible work, and I can run off a few more if you want (anyone ever actually brought a Ben Raab book?), so while the the audience at large may accept a high level of crap, some writers just can't get a gig despite their connections.

The fact that you're right just makes me cry. Things have to be really really really bad before the "sheep" stop buying it.

[dancj]

Thought balloons never reallly went away. They just started drawing them as rectangles rather than clouds.

What went away (and what I never want to see return) is narrative thought baloons. Seriously if you read the 80's Blue Beetle series then practically every issue you get his thought balloons explaining how the bug is going underwater to get to the secret entrance to his base. Deary me - I didn't care the first time I read it, I'm just irritated by the 5th time.

Other things I don't want to see are voiceless narrative captions. Mainly these are just used to either tell you what you can already see, what you don't care or what the writer can't work out how to (or hasn't got the space to) tell through the pictures. They're clumsy and I hate them. There are odd exceptions here though. In TDKR Miller told stories in a single page here and there through expert use of these captions - the one that springs to mind had some woman on a subway getting a hand grenade put in here handbag. Warren Ellis did the same thing well in Stormwatch too.

Sound Effects though - they're good and really never needed to go away.

[dancj]

Completely disagree.

I can't think of anyone who's done more than, say, two dozen issues for the majors who I'd call a really bad writer.

It's all subjective, but:
Jeph Loeb
Doug Moench
Ron Marz
Brandon Choi (unless by majors you mean Marvel + DC)

A lot of people would say Chuck Austen but all I've read by him was his Ultimate X-Men two parter which I quite enjoyed. I do think he's a crap artist though.

Dan

[Kirk G]

I am surprised by the return of tiny thought balloons in the Mighty Avengers, but I know that it is the style of humor in that book.

[Reptisaurus!]

It's all subjective,


Or maybe you're missing some stuff?


Jeph Loeb


I really like (often) and defend constantly. Enough so that I can cut and paste:


Sure, he can't plot, but he has a good sense of what his artists can do an' gives them cool stuff to draw. An' he hits the storytelling beats at the right time, if that makes any sense. Like, the pacing works really, really well in most of his stuff even if the plot (virtually always) doesn't.

Also: Has his characterization ever NOT been spot-on?

Plus he honestly and genuinely loves mainstream superheroes, and you can feel that. (I b'lieve that Tim Sale says he doesn't read much, other than comics.) A guy enjoying himself is always more fun to read than, say, Ellis writing the Fantastic Four.


Doug Moench


I know he wrote Batman for a long time, but I haven't read any of his second run. He always sort of struck me as a good writer not cut out for superhero books; His Master of Kung-Fu was very good. Much more subtely and effectivelly characterized than the Chop-Sockey karate movies it was derived from. Can't think of when I've seen the "reluctant warrior" archetype has never been so well utilized in comics.



Ron Marz


I'm not sure I own any Marz-written comics, but I'm at the library, so I found three of his books. Emerald Nights[i], [i]The Path, and Scion.

In other words: Better analysis and less talking out my ass here then the others.

Some stuff I noticed from quick perusals:

Dude can BEGIN a story really well. Like virtually every issue has an immediate hook and gives you a good reason to turn the page.

In fact, he's really good at making every two pages end on a cliffhanger, one of THE skills needed to function as a mainstream comic writer.

The Path is a really, REALLY well designed comic, and there's a bunch of stylistic techniques being utilized; There's a sequence of pages that's just a scroll through the middle panels with no dialouge, with white text on black background on top and on bottom. And the whole book kind of coheres to that visual LOOK. Most pages have long, cinematic "framing" panels on top and bottom, with shorter skinny panels in the middle.

Hard to describe without posting scans, but believe me: This is a REALLLY well put together comic.

There's some of this in Scion, too, but it's much more a straightforward storytelling style book than a design based book like The Path.

Each individual issue of Scion has a pretty good mix of action sequences and character bits. And it's not overly formuaic in it's presentation. (Which means sometimes the action sequence is on page 6, sometimes it's on page 17.) Not really groundbreaking comics writing, but it's got all the basic elements of an engaging story in every issue, and the structure is varied enough to keep us interested.

On to Green Lantern...

Eeeeb. That was MUCH worse. He's still got his talent for openings and cliffhangers, but the dialouge's a lot more trite, Kyle's kind of annoying, and the production values are way down. Read the first two stories, don't really wanna finish this.

But after that he turned into a good writer!


Brandon Choi (unless by majors you mean Marvel + DC)


Had to google that one. Gen 13, huh? Well, you gotta take the nature of the book into account, and what the writer's paid to do. Gen 13 was mostly just a forum for half-naked girls, right? And didn't he provide lots of chances for Fairchild to get her costume "strategically" ripped? Pandering to the audience, sure. But he's doing what he's paid to do, and I don't see that as bad commercial writing.


They're all give-the-audience-what-they-want writers, not make-the-audience-THINK writers, and I wouldn't call any of them at the top of their game, 'cept maybe Doug Moench circa '77.

And they've all done terrible work. It's the nature of the deadline based collaborative medium... Everyone's gonna squirt out some crap. Can't be helped. You read Alan Moore's Voodoo? Hoo DOGGY, that was some terribleness.

But I don't see any of 'em not grocking the basic components of commercially
aimed genre storytelling.

[MartinRedmond]

I'd amend that to "most American comic book writers are terrible".

In Europe, if they produce bad comics, the comics don't sell. In the US, it appears that the crap sells as well as the good stuff, so the crap writers never have to seek other employment, and hang around screwing money out of the industry forever.

Bull! Europe sells tons of crap writers. If you like american comics right now, you should like europeans too. They're just as bad except they show rape on top of it because mysoginy is more tolerated there like Japan.

[NickThompson]

I dislike thought balloons, as generally they are used to tell us exactly what we can see anyway. The way Bendis uses them in MA is better, but I'm still not 100% on it.


I'd be happy if they were used a bit like they're used on Scrubs or other TV shows, where it is just instantanious thoughts that aren't ever descending into "say what you see". But overall, I wouldn't shed a tear if we never saw them.



Also for me, caption boxes are different as they are narrating more than thinking.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

A lot of people would say Chuck Austen but all I've read by him was his Ultimate X-Men two parter which I quite enjoyed. I do think he's a crap artist though.

Dan

Then do yourself a favour, don't read anything else by him.


Had to google that one. Gen 13, huh? Well, you gotta take the nature of the book into account, and what the writer's paid to do. Gen 13 was mostly just a forum for half-naked girls, right? And didn't he provide lots of chances for Fairchild to get her costume "strategically" ripped? Pandering to the audience, sure. But he's doing what he's paid to do, and I don't see that as bad commercial writing.

Yeah, but you haven't acutally read it, and it really wasn't great at all. Maybe for an issue or two when I was 14, but even then I saw the holes in his stories straight away.
You're also not mentioning his WildC.A.Ts, Stormwatch and a heap of other terrible Wildstorm stuff that only sold on the strength off the artist.

Defending a guy who's work you've never read... that's an odd call to make when you think about it.

[Reptisaurus!]

You're also not mentioning his WildC.A.Ts, Stormwatch and a heap of other terrible Wildstorm stuff that only sold on the strength off the artist.

Defending a guy who's work you've never read... that's an odd call to make when you think about it.

Didn't say I never read his work, just said I didn't remember his name. I forgot one of the major artists on Reptisaurus the other day. My memory - Not that good. But I'd read Gen-13 before, and the library had copies, too.

If you say everything else he did was incompetent, I believe you. But the examples of his work the library had - all of which were Gen 13 - were certainly not terrible. Fast moving and entertaining fluff with that lets Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell show off their skills. I never had trouble following the story, and, more importantly in a commercial medium it did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do. IE fast paced action and ass shots. And the dialouge is .... well, good is pushing it. But surprisingly good about half the time is fair.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Didn't say I never read his work, just said I didn't remember his name. I forgot one of the major artists on Reptisaurus the other day. My memory - Not that good. But I'd read Gen-13 before, and the library had copies, too.

If you say everything else he did was incompetent, I believe you. But the examples of his work the library had - all of which were Gen 13 - were certainly not terrible. Fast moving and entertaining fluff with that lets Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell show off their skills. I never had trouble following the story, and, more importantly in a commercial medium it did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do. IE fast paced action and ass shots. And the dialouge is .... well, good is pushing it. But surprisingly good about half the time is fair.

Well if we want to measure him by letting the artist show their stuff, then he was fantastic when he had a Jim Lee or a J. Scott Campbell working with him.
Put him with anyone else and he suffered big time.
I didn't mind his stuff as a teenager when I hadn't read much else (I thought Spawn was a masterpiece well after everyone else had given up), but it didn't take long to realise he wasn't up to scratch - and if to ram the point home, Wildstorm started getting Alan Moore and Warren Ellis in, and there was no going back.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Didn't say I never read his work, just said I didn't remember his name. I forgot one of the major artists on Reptisaurus the other day. My memory - Not that good. But I'd read Gen-13 before, and the library had copies, too.

If you say everything else he did was incompetent, I believe you. But the examples of his work the library had - all of which were Gen 13 - were certainly not terrible. Fast moving and entertaining fluff with that lets Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell show off their skills. I never had trouble following the story, and, more importantly in a commercial medium it did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do. IE fast paced action and ass shots. And the dialouge is .... well, good is pushing it. But surprisingly good about half the time is fair.

Well if we want to measure him by letting the artist show their stuff, then he was fantastic when he had a Jim Lee or a J. Scott Campbell working with him.
Put him with anyone else and he suffered big time.
I didn't mind his stuff as a teenager when I hadn't read much else (I thought Spawn was a masterpiece well after everyone else had given up), but it didn't take long to realise he wasn't up to scratch - and if to ram the point home, Wildstorm started getting Alan Moore and Warren Ellis in, and there was no going back.

[Tony Bang]

Plus he honestly and genuinely loves mainstream superheroes, and you can feel that. (I b'lieve that Tim Sale says he doesn't read much, other than comics.) A guy enjoying himself is always more fun to read than, say, Ellis writing the Fantastic Four.


Which brings us to the problem with most mainstream superhero writers. Their only writing inspiration comes from other crappy mainstream superhero comics.

[Reptisaurus!]

Which brings us to the problem with most mainstream superhero writers. Their only writing inspiration comes from other crappy mainstream superhero comics.

I just think work by people who enjoy what they're doing are fun to read.

I really liked the first arc of Superman/Batman, 'cause Loeb just accepted that a lot of superhero mythology is silly-bordering on surrealistic and didn't, like, try to expain or rationalize it.

Like some writers.*

Just seemed like an exhubarently joyful superhero book. Which I'd like to see more of. (Although, admittedly, it was RIGHT downhill from the first six issues.)

Edit to add: But in general I agree with you. Innovative work trumps re-re-mixes of old stuff, nine times outta ten.


Well if we want to measure him by letting the artist show their stuff, then he was fantastic when he had a Jim Lee or a J. Scott Campbell working with him.
Put him with anyone else and he suffered big time.
I didn't mind his stuff as a teenager when I hadn't read much else (I thought Spawn was a masterpiece well after everyone else had given up), but it didn't take long to realise he wasn't up to scratch - and if to ram the point home, Wildstorm started getting Alan Moore and Warren Ellis in, and there was no going back.

I cheerfully admit he's not Warren Ellis and Alan Moore. They've both done a buncha stuff I haven't liked. (In Ellis' case H-A-T-E-D.) But they're definitely both definitely on the "artist" side, rather than the "competent crafstman" side.

And I'm not arguing that most of the audience for superhero comics wants "comfortable" rather than "challenging." But you do have to be a good writer to even do comfortable but not boring on a regular basis.

Hey! Did Choi do 2 dozen issues? Do I have an out there?

If not I was wrong. But I think I can safely claim that Image was... a special case. Although admittedly more commercially successful than Image now.

Shit! Did the guy who did Bomb Queen do two dozen comics? That was completely-the-fuck indefensable.**

* But the JLA vs. Deathstroke fight was cool.

** But I bet it was a good pitch, and the *idea* is worth somethin' in and of itself. I can totally see those guys trying for a a Natural Born Killers type vibe. Failing miserably, but if they'd pulled if off it would have been cool.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

I cheerfully admit he's not Warren Ellis and Alan Moore. They've both done a buncha stuff I haven't liked. (In Ellis' case H-A-T-E-D.) But they're definitely both definitely on the "artist" side, rather than the "competent crafstman" side.

If you read his mature readers 'Disavowed' (I think that was the title) you'd question compentant craftsman and settled to comparing him with much lesser names.


Shit! Did the guy who did Bomb Queen do two dozen comics? That was completely-the-fuck indefensable.**

** But I bet it was a good pitch, and the *idea* is worth somethin' in and of itself. I can totally see those guys trying for a a Natural Born Killers type vibe. Failing miserably, but if they'd pulled if off it would have been cool.

I can live with it in the world - I flicked through and there was one page that made me chuckle.
Completely inde-fucking-fensable was his post on CSBG where he acted like he'd created something worth a damn, and blamed fans for comics not selling, and that we owed him more than just money for the issue.
To make it worse, when EVERYONE who read it told him to go take a jump, a whole bunch of other creators (including Tom 'Burgas is a vagina' Beland, and Erik 'Gotta defend the kids' Larsen) jumped in to back him up.