This is a blog aimed specifically at comic book pros and publishers. But I think it'd be helpful for up and coming comic book makers to pay attention too...
I’ve been trying to warn the comic book industry, for about nine months now, that a crash is on the way if they don’t get their asses in gear and do as much as they can to capitalize on the current popularity of comic book properties…before that ends. And I did what I could to get it to understand that that end may very well be right around the corner. Are you listening yet?
I hope so, because in as much as my own book has more readers that don't GAF about any other comic book, than ones that do...stores can't stay open ONLY selling Arsenic Lullaby comics.
Before you start in with theories about Cage and Iron Fist moving to the Disney network, you can just stop. Because wherever they end up, it isn’t going to change this trend of the pop culture just not giving as much of a damn.
Below are some charts of the amount of chatter about the shows, on social media…
even Daredevil took a big hit, and seasons 2 and 3 were REALLY good, arguably better than season 1 (arguably)
(full story on the drop in interest from The Business Insider )
I talked about the looming problem facing the comic book industry (here http://arseniclullabies.com/wordpress/?p=16163 )… that being the inevitable drop in billions of dollars of free exposure from Hollywood, once Hollywood move on.
I talked about what kind of comic books pros are needed to help avoid the crash (here http://arseniclullabies.com/wordpress/?p=16560 ).
Now let’s talk about the kinds of comic books that need to start being made ( made again) in order to prevent a huge crash in the comic book industry
Its about the content, stupid. You wanna tell the 100,000th story about Spider-Man fighting Doc Ock, the 50,000 story about the zombie apocalypse, make Iron Man a woman, make Captain America Gay, or make a book about Donald Trump for good or bad, or plug whatever agenda you want into some old character, or (and here’s a wild idea) just make an imaginative and entertaining story no one has seen the likes of yet…you are ALL doomed to failure…IF YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW TO TELL A F*CKING STORY IN COMIC BOOK FROM.
If the medium of comics books is going to continue to survive, among all the other mediums of entertainment and storytelling and ways of delivering a story to an audience that exist now and among the ones that will be invented. EVERYONE who earns a living through them needs to understand one fundamental thing…
what about a comic book is unique and advantageous over every other medium.
I’m not talking about the nostalgia of picking one up off the rack or the feel of the pages in your hand, or the smell, or any of that mumbo jumbo that younger and future generations do not have the same connection to. I am talking about the way the human brain works and the fact that everyone’s brain works at a different speed on different subjects and instances. Everyone’s brain absorbs refines and inputs information at a different rate and order.
The way in which a comic book allows a reader to absorb the information is superior to other mediums when you allow for the fact that not everyone’s brain processes information the same way.
A book leaves every detail except the bare skeleton of what is happening and what is being said to the imagination of the reader. It gives full reign to the audience. A movie, a TV show, leaves almost nothing to the imagination of the viewer. It gives full reign to the storyteller.
A comic book gives full reign to the storyteller except for one aspect….possibly the most important aspect there is. TIMING. The amount of time that the information is processed is completely up the to subconscious of the reader. It give us a surreal means of processing a story that cannot be matched. Two people can watch the same movie…and one can miss important aspects, while the other is bored of the slow methodical pacing. In no other medium can two different people be given the same information but be free to process it at different speeds, be given a set of scenes and have that set of scenes all remain in front of their eyes at the same time until their brain has decided it knows what it needs to know.
A comic book page can start with a panel of a man leaving a room while two other people are talking , and have four or five or seven scenes happen afterwords with the author having no need to fear that the scene with the man leaving the room will be forgotten or miss-remembered or missed completely when, during the final panel it is revealed that someone has planted a bomb. No movie could hope that the man leaving, or anything about him, would be remembered ten minutes later…unless him leaving was shown in such a heavy handed way as to tip the hand of the story that the man leaving was important. No book could convey that information and have it stick without tipping it’s hand.
Or it can dedicate an entire page to one split second of time, showing many things that happened in that instance all at once…no movie, or book can deliver that much information without losing momentum. Neither can show that much information about one single moment without feeling like the moment was stretched out or slowed down.
A book hands so much over to the readers imagination that it is nigh impossible to have any confidence that the story you mean to tell is the one in the readers mind. A movie gives no room for imagination and delivers all of the information at the same speed for every single person and at the same speed for all of the information…despite the fact that everyone absorbs information differently and different kinds of information at different speeds. A scene with fast paced dialogue, a scene with physical action, a scene with romantic chemistry is delivered ALL in life like pacing ALL the same to every man woman and child who views it. Only a comic book present a series of scenes, dialogue, and visual clues, in a way that every person can absorb it in the way that his or her subconscious sees fit to do so.
THAT is the advantage that comic books have over every other form of story telling.
And THAT is what every person working in the industry needs to remember, use to their advantage, and celebrate expert use of.
…and UNDERSTAND it’s advantages. All the images visible at once…that gives you an advantage, believe it or not, over a movie of tv show in ACTION scenes. You take a car chase or a fight in a movie, there is a lot of movement, a lot of action in the people and objects…but the camera is limited in what it can do without disorienting and confusing the viewer. There’ a thing called the “180 degrees rule”, the long and short of it is you can’t swing that camera around to much from shot to shot without the viewer getting put off. A comic book, by and large, is not subject to that because the reader is not going to get confused because all the shots are right next to each other for reference by the subconscious. You can go from overhead view to ground level to a close up of an object to a normal shot with no fear of the reader being confused ( given you do it right).
images used for review purposes
Look at ALL the crap going on in that page above…if that was a movie the viewers wouldn’t know which way was up and no single scene would have the impact they have on that page. and each and every reader is focusing on the scene that appeals to them the most, and giving it the most time.
A comic book page can present an audience with many multiple scenes all working together to make the story and all working together visually.
Five or six story boards with the dialogue put into word balloons is NOT a comic book page.
Uninspired, boring as F8ck, lazy and clueless as to how to use the medium and it’s advantages to give impact.
THIS….IS a comic book page
THIS is NOT a comic book page.
That is a half assed, LAZY, PATHETIC, cut and paste attempt at movie story boards ( and by the way the joke is plagiarized)
THIS IS A COMIC BOOK PAGE
AND THIS
AND THIS
AND THIS, THIS IS SOMETHING THAT CAN’T BE DONE IN ANY OTHER MEDIUM
THIS IS SOMETHING THAT CAN ENTERTAIN PEOPLE AND EARN THEIR MONEY FOR MANY DECADES TO COME
THIS IS A COMIC BOOK PAGE!
Awh…what’s a matter? Can’t compete with Windsor McCay? Why the f*ck not? You have all the knowledge of sequential story telling that he had, and everything that was figured out after him at your disposal…
LEARN IT. and if you are a comic book professional or hope to be one DO…IT.
You ever stop to think that MAYBE…just PART of the reason you’re selling less comic books than they used to is because THEY ARE NOT ANYWHERE NEAR AS GOOD?…hmmmm…maybe?
You think MAYBE that if people were seeing and sharing pages of the quality…of the ability to capture the imagination the likes of which USED to be made…the industry might be getting more traction?
Make good comic book pages, promote good comic book pages. “Spider man did this” or “Super man did that” will soon not interest nearly the number of people that it does now. But simply showing them THIS
WILL CAPTURE THEIR IMAGINATIONS.
…and the medium and everyone working in it will prosper.
I’m going to repeat -Make comic book pages, promote comic book pages. And emphasis on “promote”…
If you are a pro, instead of just posting a page you did, throw in some insight about the planning. Why you did what. Educate people as to the amount of thought that goes into it. Let them know what is special about it. …you DID put thought into it, right?
If you are a reviewer, people are ASSUMING you have some insight beyond what they have. Prove to them you do. You’re reviewing a book with a story of illustrated pages, surely you can give some thought as to why those pages worked or didn’t. You want this medium to last, even grow..right?
Maybe you yourself have no insight, never gave this any thought until now. Start figuring it out, start learning, dissect the pages of the old greats and analyze why they are so good.
There’s plenty of books on this, some good some bad.
Here’s a link to a blog I did, with some tips…I am NOT a teacher, and it’s probably riddled with spelling errors, but it might get you started until you find something better.
http://www.arseniclullabies.com/misctechniques3.html
I’ll be in Michigan in a few weeks, come say hello,
www.grcomiccon.com
the tags list on Steemit is generated by code...which puts tags up there based on ONLY popularity of use. You will notice that #comics does not exist there...yet. So I ASK THAT YOU USE #comics ON EVERY COMMENT YOU LEAVE ON MY BLOGS
this is an amazing post
this is. an amazing #comics book post.
Seriously, comicking is an art, not just of putting words in a bubble on some different panels with some figures thrown on them. It is an art in that it considered how much space there was, and how to tell the flow from panel to panel, and how to show what in which, and so on and so forth
There are things that CAN ONLY be done as as a #comic book form
..........
GAH
I hope people won't take comicking for granted and run the comics format to the ground with its recent superhero surge of popularity
#comics is an artform
thank you doug. you are amazing <3
Thanks. doing #comics right take a lot of skill and ingenuity. But the medium gives you a lot of tools you don't have anywhere else. People better start learning how to use them because the billions of dollars of free advertising for #comics isn't going to be around forever. Of course there is also the hope that NEW people come in and just take the jobs away from old lazy hacks.
Epic!
Such a compelling medium.
I have been doing dog training instruction via graphic novel format. Only disc dog freestyle up until now, but I'm looking to expand to simple dog training for greater demographic reach.
I think the medium is amazing for instruction.
Each of those pages communicates at least 10 pages of text. I am able to put people in the game. It is an insane level of message throughput for instructional purposes. I pair the lessons with the video I screen cap and story board from.
I'd love to do it in proper comic fashion, I've got a wonderful steampunk narrative, but it's hard to find an artist and risk taking publisher/printer.
Thanks for the share and the thoughtful words. I agree that good art is key for comics and the industry.
Instruction might be another area that could do some amazing stuff for the industry.
peace~
That's some good work! You did some pretty tricky visual stuff there, Kudos! It's a shame so many "pros" haven't figured out as much as you have. Like we both said, there is so much you can do in #comics that you can't do anywhere else. btw, Finding an artist and printer is something I could probably help with
Thanks. I didn't do much of it but selecting the photos and laying out some narrative. I used Halftone2, the iPhone comic app - all the technical wizardry credit belongs to JuicyBits software.
Teaching and story telling are quite similar. There is a narrative to the performance and learning of all games, especially cooperative interspecies team games. Know the characters and their motivation, some key plot points, and it's a done deal. As a teacher and dog trainer / handler, I know that stuff cold.
Like most passion plays, the story writes itself.
I'm super interested in some networking.
Here's an invite to my discord: https://discord.gg/Urfjxh - and you can hit me up over there, or at our contact page: http://pvybe.com/contact/
Nice work!!
Wholeheartedly agree with you.
You are forgetting however that thanks to our public school system and the advent of mobile devices and computer games... I think kids these days either can't read or don't even think of it as an option.
Which pretty much leaves the adults pursuing it out of nostalgia.
I never had allowance growing up or family members buying me comic books, so I never got any exposure to them.
But I devoured the funny sections of newspapers anytime I could get ahold of them.
So for me: that's my nostalgia.
I think digital platforms are here to stay and for cartoonists (and comic artists) to be successful, they need to start looking for a way to marry their craft to digital media.
I think I have finally reached the point where buying a paper book is less appealing than having one on my phone in my pocket at all times to be read when I have the time.
I even have started looking for digital kids books to read to my son when we are stuck waiting somewhere.
But a cartoon work on a digital device needs an entire new approach to layout and readability.
Our screens are mostly small and the layout needs to be less busy in order for the reader to be able to follow the content without our eyeballs popping out of our skulls.
As far as your graphs of attention spans for entertainment: I think that also will only get worse.
People just don't want to get invested in new content anymore it seems, and are looking for bite-sized entertainment or the next flashy thing.
I run my cartoon-off contest cause I have a deep appreciation for the unique ability the cartoon has to communicate how no other medium does, and it makes me happy seeing these artists get rewarded. Maybe most of all because as an artist myself I've experienced plenty how hard it is to get those precious moments of feeling as if your craft has been witnessed and appreciated.
The digital platforms are a strange marriage. I can't say I have seen it done correctly, for all the reasons you listed. Hopefully there are young punks out there figuring it out. I think contests like yours, helping encourage them is a great thing. #comics
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 22 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 5 SBD worth and should receive 113 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigThanks!!
I'm no expert on comics, but I can see what you mean about them being unique. There's some great examples in this post.
Make #comics great again!
Indeed...and everyone who is a #comics pro should be understanding this, explaining this, and moving the medium forward! Lazy sh*tbags
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
well, thank you!
What you said is all true, and I also believe there needs to be a better way to introduce people about long series comic books. The famous superheroes comics are hard to recommend because there's so much history already going on and obviously that's daunting for people who just want to dip their toes in the water. Not really sure how to solve that issue though ^^.
#comics
The lack of a gateway drug into #comics is an issue...of should I say the lack of people knowing there are books out there besides super hero #comics. Me personally, I recommend Arsenic Lullaby (heh heh), Squee, Hellboy, stuff that appeals to horror fans or humor fans. Those are books that are usually less ...intimidating ( for lack of a better word) because the stories are shorter and you dont need to know 50 years worth of BS to jump in and start reading