Comments on: DC vs. Marvel

By: michael.re.nj

michael.re.nj — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:06:42 +0000

I wasn’t going to go into it, but I definitely agree on the gimmicky pointlessness of motion comics. And on a marginally related note, did anybody catch how Superman doesn’t have a Russian accent in the beginning of the Red Son motion comic, but picks one up somewhere along the line? They’re not even trying to make these things good.

By: Merin

Merin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:54:18 +0000

Besides I, for one, think motion comics are a big rip-off. Digital comics are one thing, and using the computer and the internet to improve the comic reading experience are good goals, but motion comics are a gimmick.
Crossgen tried to “enhance” digital comics by adding sound effects and voices. That’s called really poor animation, folks. If you are going to animate something, go full-bore and animate it well. Otherwise comics are visual, not auditory, media.
Motion comics are the animation quality of the really old Marvel cartoons (when Captain America throws his mighty shield) – and they are even released on DVDs. Films, you know video shown on the big screen, are called MOVIES, or MOTION PICTURES, because they are moving pictures. Motion Comics are, really, animated pictures – hence animation.
Lameness.
Scott Kurtz of PVP linked awhile back to this guy displaying what he thought could be done with the web and the digital medium for comics to enhance them. Basically it allowed some cool tricks with pacing and reveal – how comic creators typically use the space between panels (the gutter) and the end of the page / top of the next page for suspense / reveals (cliffhangers) can be morphed with a sort-of slide-show approach, where instead of turning pages with a traditional comic the reader online clicks the next button, and doing so allows so many options, like adding the next word balloon to an already revealed panel for dramatic effect, or adding the next panel to the page, or adding an element to a panel that wasn’t there previous, as well as just turning to the next “page.” This, to me, is staying within the boundaries of what is a comic book without trying to do cheap-ass animation.

By: michael.re.nj

michael.re.nj — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:14:25 +0000

See, this kind of stuff just leaves me more anxious. While it’s exciting to see experimentation with publication mediums in both traditional and digital ways, great comics are ultimately about one thing: great story-telling. It seems to me that over the last few years that central concern is being lost, especially where the big two are concerned, in a mire of distractions ranging from new technologies to profit driven gimmicks. I want to hear less from the big two about technology and distribution strategies, and more about how they are planning to renew focus and the quality and cohesiveness of their story-telling.