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Beau Smith
by beloved Smith
I have a Beauology 101 class assignment/challenge for marvel and DC Comics super-hero books. give the readers one full month of stand-alone stories.
Stan Lee used to invite you into the clubhouse and did his best to make you feel like you belonged. Today it’s a lot more like trying to get into studio 54 in the 1970’s. marvel and DC don’t seem to want new readers and are doing their best to make the long time readers feel confused with event after event, and stories where the weight of the dialogue would test the shoulders of Hercules. There’s the misconception that a lot of dialogue and blocks of text correspond into good writing. In the craft of writing comic books, that ain’t so.
It’s not hard or interesting to take good vs. evil with a huge cast and drag that story out over six problems as well as spread it out over the rest of your publishing line. It’s an editorial headache and triggers writers to be late with deadlines – which must rarely happen. With the first part of the relay being clogged up, it only puts a lot more pressure on the art team, letterer and colorist, not to mention sales and marketing.
Continuous events and crossovers can only enhance a story and characters when it is just that: AN EVENT. When they happen every week, they are no longer awe-inspiring. They become mundane and boring to regular readers and nothing short of confusing to someone trying to step into mainstream comics.
Currently, it’s meant to be a writer’s stage in comics. Let’s see who can stomach up to the bar and do a compelling twenty-two page story with a beginning, middle, and end. If they’re a really a good writer, they can do it in eight pages. There’s a reason you don’t see anthology books anymore; writers don’t want to work that hard and editors don’t know how it’s done. (Not all, but most. save your emails telling me different.)
I don’t believe the steaming pile some people try and offer up as to what today’s readers want and the unlimited storyline that grapevines into eternity. They’ve just been fed the same menu for so long they haven’t had a chance to taste variety. readers of the last decade don’t know how good they could have it with characters connected to comic book characters. Instead, the publishers assume new readers will already know all about the character. That would be like a new customer jumping into season three of ABC’s TV show lost and trying to understand what’s going on. Where’s the pleasure in that? They would literally be lost.
DC & marvel Super-Heroes
The publishers say that these events are what the readers want. I don’t believe that. In the last decade, it’s all they know. It’s all they’ve been force-fed. Older readers barely hang in there because they think if they do, someday this will all be over and comics will return to what they once knew. look at the continuing downward spiral of comic book sales. It’s hard to argue with the numbers.
Behind the scenes, I’ve had a lot of the busiest marvel and DC creators tell me that they are so frustrated with the constant assembly line of events, crossovers, and rewrites because of so lots of uncreative fingers in the pie. Editors have told me that they long for a a lot more streamlined path to getting good comic books out on time.
I’m not talking “old school” here, I’m talking school as in something you can learn from. Stand alone stories can be collected into trade paperbacks just as easily as never ending sagas. I’d really like to see marvel and DC take this assignment. I don’t think it would take readers too long to find out “write” from wrong. At the current $3.99 a pop for comic books, it would be great to really get your money’s worth within twenty-two pages. At those cover prices I would feel a lot better about purchasing a lot more comics understanding that I was going to get stories I could read and not ones that were continued in another book I don’t want to read or an event series that never stops. good marketing is selling good product that’s worth the cover price, not the trail of bread crumbs effect. I want good stories, not crumbs.
Who’s up to the Beauology 101 assignment?
From the ranch of higher learning,
Beau Smith
The flying Fist Ranch
www.flyingfistranch.com