I keep coming back to this Warren Ellis post about the state of web comics, digital comics, and why they’re different things for different audiences, and feeling like there’s something I’m missing in it. Not that it’s badly written, because it’s not – It’s Ellis, after all – but it feels incomplete, somehow, and I can’t work out why. File under Food For Thought, definitely (Anyone interested in comics that aren’t just print, which should really be anyone interested in comics as a medium at this point, you should go and read it, if you haven’t already), but this part bears repeating:
Also, it’s a hell of a lot easier to take your time telling a story when you’re not charging people.
And, while there’s a smile in that comment, there’s also a degree of truth. Compressing comics down to twenty pages, nineteen pages, probably eight or ten or twelve pages when people get to producing original material through digital comics services… while it’ll certainly make a nice change for a lot of people, after a decade of spacious and airy commercial comics, I’m compelled to point out that the crushed-in nature of commercial comics in the 1970s was one of the driving forces behind the big changes to the commercial medium that came in the 80s. People were desperate for longer episodes and arcs that allowed them to tell stories more novelistically – and, in large part, they did that by using the then-new process of selling to the direct sales comics store market.
We’re all looking at compression techniques now, because we need them for commercial comics and we’re going to need them for digital comics.
It’s not just digital comics, I’d argue; with both DC and Marvel essentially formalizing “20 pages” as the length of a comic book now in the same way that 22 pages was the formalized length previously, comics in general are going to become more compressed in future.
Also, Ellis is totally right about American Flagg and how essential and overlooked it is.
October 11th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
The reason you feel like you’re missing something is because he doesn’t insist upon one central conclusion as a dominating thesis. He’s just putting some fresh thoughts out there and letting you draw your own conclusions. He’s right about everything: It is harder to get people to invest in long-form storytelling when you’re charging them but I have no problem with digital comics being monetized and I kind of ENJOY the “quick burst” short stories format and want to see it make a comeback. Affordable, widely available digital comics are a great way to do just that.
Ellis mentions FELL as being just a string of “one act plays” and mentions that people want to do more with the medium and, of course, he’s got a point. But I’m glad he’s also acknowledging that amazing stories and artwork can come in compressed packages. Never forget that THE SPIRIT, arguably the greatest comic of all time, came in an episodic 8-page format every Sunday. I would love to see this style return.
October 11th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Just another thought: Ellis states that the promise of the serialized for free web comic is that it can bring people back for no charge on a repeat basis and thus link together a series of chapters into one ongoing narrative. This is great and it has its time and place but the insistence that EVERYTHING be a “novel” is absurd. He points to CEREBUS as a great example of what Dave Sim needed the direct market audience and would now need the serialized for free web comic format to do but not every comic is CEREBUS and when you have an entire creative community deciding that novels are best and everything has to be in novel format, you wind up with stories that should have been begun, developed and ended in the space of a single 20 page comic now lasting SIX ISSUES… “writing for the trade” can be agonizing stuff in terms of pacing and just take a look at some of Bendis’ groan-inducing, long-form stories for proof. Unless you’re doing something that really and truly merits it, decompression is usually overrated. Just my opinion.