SCI Fi Wire has a nice interview up with Matt Fraction on his writing the Iron Man 2 video game, but what really stood out for me was this quote about why comics have exploded over the past decade.
“It costs a couple grand to publish a comic book, and it could turn into a billion-dollar movie or game property. And comics have an infinite budget. Film and games can’t match comics for what they’re capable of. Still. The comics are a hundred-year-old technology. A hundred-year-old storytelling technology. And I don’t care what James Cameron is doing with Avatar, and I can’t wait to see it, but I guarantee it wouldn’t hold a candle to what Jack Kirby was doing 40 years ago. Computers are getting to stuff Kirby was doing 40 years ago. You know what I mean? They’re almost to where we were 50 years ago. Congrats.”
It’s certainly a sentiment that has been repeated often, but Fraction’s confidence in comics as a medium is palpable, and is something I don’t think gets out enough in the age of movie deals and comics-to-film pipeline operations. What do you think, Rama readers?
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:15 am
I think “effin-A, man.” I’ve heard similar statements from other writers like Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Geoff Johns, and cross-over creators like Joss Whedon and Richard Donner- comics have no budget constraints. Any idea, no matter how extravagant, is possible. It’s nice to have a guy as eloquent and enthusiastic as Matt Fraction to reiterate the idea.
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Yeah, I’m with Matt on this. One of the reasons I love his books is that he plays with the medium in his writing. Grant Morrison has emphasised it too: do stuff that movies and games can’t do.
Frank Miller said that he got into comics to make them more cinematic and stays in them to make them less so. He nailed it.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:57 am
I’ve just finished the first few pages of my own comic, and he’s completely right. I wouldn’t even begin to have the budget to show what I want to show if it were a movie. I’m not a very good artist (comparatively speaking), but anybody with just an ounce of artistic sense can make a comic if they have just a little bit of patience.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Good work, Fraction. Tell it like it is.
August 4th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I totally agree with what he’s saying, but as of late, fraction’s writing seems so cinematic. Maybe its just the current marvel style, but the stories they’re telling here are basically movies. THey aren’t trying to do anything too mind blowing or beyond movies. and to me that’s part of the problem.