comics rock. talk about them here. now. or just go to the "corn" section and wack off. i'll understand. i'll just sit here and read my spider-man comics.
Zero wrote:This is the where we give extra heapings of praise to writers like Geoff Johns and Judd Winick at DC, and Bendis and Brubaker at Marvel. Multiple titles per month and they are consistently the best stuff being produced at either company. It's because they are COMIC WRITERS first. They take their job seriously.
also robert kirkman:
invincible
the walking dead
irredeemable ant-man (soon to be ended)
ultimate x-men
marvel team-up (ended)
marvel zombies
Just using it as an example. I really wish it weren't being done at all.
Depending on the writer, a script takes anywhere from 1-10 days to do. Coming up with the idea may take longer, but good writers think well ahead, so only the script needs to be done. Pencilling and inking both take roughly a day per page, on average. So the "drawing" part takes anywhere from 5-48 times as long as writing. Plus throw in lettering (with today's technology, probably about 25 pages a day) and coloring (probably 2-3 pages per day). The writer and the letterer have the part of the production of the comic that takes the least amount of time. (Not saying that they're least important, or that it's less work, just that their parts take less time.)
Consider that the average comic is 24 pages. (We'll assume it is, for convenience sake.) The writer takes 1-10 days. Pencilling takes 25 days & inking, 25 days (we'll assume the same artists are doing the cover, which involves little input from the writer). Lettering, 1 day. Coloring, 12 days. Give the editor a day (scattered throughout the process) to go over it all and come up with the solicitation info, and allow the production department a half day to get it off to the printer (by the time it gets to them, it should be more or less ready to go, given the technology). Allow another day and a half for transmitting files and sending pages, throughout the process. Grand total: 57-66 days (though I'm sure a lot of stuff is being done simultaneously at most publishers).
So the writer's part takes anywhere from 1.7% of the time involved to 15.2% of the time. Again, not saying that it's unimportant or easy (I happen to think that, without a story, there's no point in even bothering). But, for even the slowest writer, s/he should be able to finish 4-5 more scripts while the first one is being completed. So there's no excuse (barring legit emergencies) for a writer to be a year behind.
*--For behavior unbecoming anyone, perpetrated in real time over an extended--AH, FUCK IT! MORE MALIBU, BITCHES!!
Zero wrote:Kevin Smith STILL hasn't finished Daredevil/Bullseye. I doubt he ever will. The revelance of the story in continuity is hopelessly incongruous.
DD/Bullseye is dead. Kevin Smith said so. It has been far too long and too much has changed in the Marvel U.
And IIRC, Kevin said if he ever takes on another comic he wants to write the entire thing before it is even announced/solicited.
"As they say in China, 'Arrivederci'!"
*For the creation of the Golden Deuce Award.
anarky wrote:Consider that the average comic is 24 pages. (We'll assume it is, for convenience sake.) The writer takes 1-10 days. Pencilling takes 25 days & inking, 25 days.-
i think that average is a bit high. add the fact that separate artists will work simultaneously. i think a penciler and an inker can do the work in 20 days or less. an artist doing both jobs would usually do rough pencils and tighten it up on the inks, and probably only extend the above amount of time by a day or two. for example, check out ryan ottley's pencils as compared to the inks here:
Grand total: 57-66 days (though I'm sure a lot of stuff is being done simultaneously at most publishers).
a monthly book can't take over two months to create, that just doesn't add up. now if you're just trying to quantify the amount of man hours and the ratio of writing to other jobs within the work of that one book, i can understand that.
Well, obviously, once an artist is done with a page, he hands it off to the inker, letterer, and colorist and doesn't wait until ALL 22 pages are finished. So, theoretically, the book should only take as long as the slowest member of the production team (usually the artist) takes to complete the assignment. Anarky's argument is that this should NEVER be the writer. Any writer who uses this argument is a douche.
NO HANDLEBARS HAN SHOT. FIRST! PERIOD. NO HANDLEBARS MORE COWBELL! NO HANDLEBARS GO FUCK YOURSELF™
I'm not joking, even though these questions might sound like it:
1) Marvel. Honestly, do the "heroes" actually fight crime anymore? The Punisher goes around shooting people, sure, and Spider-Man has Kingpin trying to kill his aunt. But folks like Iron Man and the Fantastic Four, and so on. It looks to me like villains show up rarely, and, when they do, it's normally more a "the protagonist is fighting another guy who is neither more nor less good or evil than himself, but just happens to have a different motive." Hell, they spent most of last year fighting each other over filling out licenses, and it looks like this year they're spending the entire year fighting Hulk and training a bunch of newbies how to fill out their licenses. The most powerful guys are too busy being douchebags who secretly rule the world, and the minor guys are too busy with crap like finding out about their mohawk-wearing sons and driving around hell without actually living up to the "Spirit of Vengeance" moniker.
2) DC. How badly out of touch are they with the characters? Batman runs around commanding an army of robots and fighting cosmic threats, all of Batman's villains have graduated to Gorilla Grodd status (powerful, yet strangely ridiculous), Superman takes a year off, Booster Gold is jumping around trying to fix all the wrongs of the past, and everyone is far more concerned with the space-time continuum than keeping hoodlums from shooting little Johnny's mom and dad. Oh, and Luthor's back in the bright green armor, commanding a new Legion of Doom (or whatever snigtarded name they have) with Joker and Grodd and so forth. Do they think this is a frigging cartoon from 1979 or something? Everything seems to point in that direction. If they're trying to tie in with the cool "new look at the retro Superfriends 'toon" from the last season of Justice League Unlimited, they're a few years behind.
Anyone who's keeping up with them more than I am (read: any of you in this forum), please shed some light on the situation.
*--For behavior unbecoming anyone, perpetrated in real time over an extended--AH, FUCK IT! MORE MALIBU, BITCHES!!
to be honest, i'm actually looking forward to what they're doing with spidey. it looks like everything that civil war did to damage the character is going to be undone, and he's going back to the roots. whether the marriage is still intact when all is said and done is up in the air, but i'm willing to check out what they do before i "fan-boy off"
the rest, i don't know. the new ghost rider series has been interesting, and new/might avengers are entertaining.
fuck if i know what DC is doing.
other than that, robert kirkman is the MAN. everyone should go get the "invincible" and "the walking dead" trades.
1. Hmmm...who's actually fighting crime. Spider-Man is worried about Aunt May and Kingpin, so no luck there. Avengers are busy fighting with each other. So no to that one. Cap's dead, but in the months prior to that, the Red Skull was doing dastardly things and Cap was trying to stop him. Then that whole Civil War thing happened, but I'm gonna give it to Cap on that one. Daredevil IS fighting crime again Hell's Kitchen. A solid yes there. Fantastic Four. Never really much on crime fighting to begin with, but they are currently fighting the Frightful Four. Ghost Rider is trying to take Stan back to hell, so I'm gonna give him that one. Hulk is busy fighting other heroes, so no. Iron Fist WAS fighting Hydra, but now hes in a tournament in another dimension, so was yes, now NO. Iron Man is running SHIELD, so ostensibly he's fighting bad guys along with good guys. Moon Knight, not so much fighting crime as crazily beating the shit out of people. Curretnly I think he's fighting his former sidekick Midnight. Since I'm sure he's directly or indirectly responsible for Midnight being a homicidal nutjob in the need of fighting, I'm going to say No on Moon Knight. Ms Marvel, I have no idea, but since she's an Avenger i think shes probably fighting other Avengers, but i wouldn't rule out the possibility of her beating up some AIM guys recently. That ones a toss up. New Warriors ARE fighting crime, but only doing so to give Tony Stark and his registration goons the proverbial finger. But still, crime fighting is crimefighting, so I'll give it to them. Punisher MAX is killing all kinds of slavers, pedophiles, and corporate scumbags. PWJ Punisher is fighting hate mongers in Texas or someplace, but it was a bad guy, so technically he's a YES. Sub-Mariner is fighting Atlantean terrorists in his limited series, but I'm going to rule that a NO because they are Atlantean and he's Atlentean and he's not doing it to "fight crime" but to not make his sovereignty look like a bunch of assholes. Thunderbolts. That's a tricky one, but I'm going to say NO. Thor. Definitely not, he's just hanging out in Oklahoma. X-Men. Well, they are fighting Acolytes and the a new Brotherhood and stuff, but it's only because they were ambushed in their own home, so thats not so much crimefighting as it is "surviving", so i'm going to go with NO on that one, also. Pretty much, NO, Marvel heroes are not fighting crime.
2. Not up to date on most of the DC guys (I will be after I read my giant ass haul of books I just bought) but Batman is pretty much done with the whole Robot Army thing and back to Gotham crime fighting. I think his rogue's gallery is as stagnant as they always were (you can only defeat Madhatter or Mr Freeze 500 times before they become "non-threatening"), I think Superman has been back for awhile, the new Booster Gold book is pretty good (its only on issue 2), and I hate the Green Luthor Armor also, but being the smartest man on the planet, it's a long time coming that he hasn't tried to organize the world's villains to take on supeer teams like the JLA, JSA, Titans, etc. It won't last because villains are ultimately self serving and untrusting, which is their downfall, but it will make a pretty good six issue story line. The space time continuum will be dealt with in the upcoming misnamed Final Crisis...
NO HANDLEBARS HAN SHOT. FIRST! PERIOD. NO HANDLEBARS MORE COWBELL! NO HANDLEBARS GO FUCK YOURSELF™
Back to the original Post. I have this theory, which I call "The Rubber Band Theory". The Status Quo is a rubber band. When the publisher (Marvel, DC, whomever) announces an "Event" that will "change everything!!!" and hype the shit out of this Event, that's them pulling the rubber band wayyyyy back. Because we all know what happens when you pull a rubber band WAYYYY back, right? But then after you let go of the rubber band, it basically snaps back the way it was. Back to the Status Quo. And the publisher is already on to hyping the next Event and preparing to pull the rubber band back again. Because we all know what happens when you pull the rubber band wayyyyy back, right!
Since X-Men Legacy is getting canned in the Marvel NOW! tsunami, it will end its reign as the current longest uninterrupted numbering at Marvel with 270 issues(I'll overlook the two name changes it endured in its run).
And then I started thinking about what book replaces it. And sadly, I think it's
Astonishing X-Men only on issue 51. Or perhaps Deadpool on issue 56. (Astonishing has been around longer but suffered from delays and bi-monthly shipping thanks to slow ass writers Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis). And I have no doubt they and a good majority of the other Marvel titles are going bye bye. I think they announced the "core" titles first because their the books coming back/getting relaunched first.
Let's look shall we?
Amazing Spidey is racing towards 700, but it doesn't count, because of the 1998 relaunch, and subsequent Legacy numbering in 2005 with 500
Avengers(and all it's spin offs) have been relaunched half a hundred times, and are doing so again.
Captain America is now on his seventh going on eighth ongoing. 5 of those in the last decade. Cap's "Legacy" numbering survives on his Team-Up book, but one look at the sales numbers suggests that won't be around much longer.
Daredevil got canned, restarted, resumed its Legacy numbering, and then canned and restarted again last year.
Fantastic Four also suffers from multiple relaunch/Legacy flipflops and is headed for its (ironically) fourth First Issue.
Ghost Rider is currently MIA on shelves. As are Moon Knight, Dr. Strange, Silver Surfer, and Namor.
Hulk's numbering has been fucked since day one. His first series got canned after six issues. And the clusterfluck of trying to reconcile the Legacy numbering with Hulk, Red Hulk, Incredible Hulks, and Hercules automatically disqualifies it. Plus, the new series isn't even six months out of the gate and it's getting relaunched already.
Iron Man is headed for his sixth relaunch.
Punisher has had TEN ongoings. And more limited series and oneshots than some DC characters have had issues of their own series.
Thor reboots every time someone at Marvel passes gas. And it's "Legacy" book Journey into Mystery has had too many gaps to count.
Thunderbolts got canned with issue 81, then brought back and Legacy numbered at 100, only to get rebranded Dark Avengers with issue 175.
Wolverine has had half a dozen series and only recently resumed its Legacy numbering thanks to some crafty accounting of his multiple ongoings.
X-Factor has a healthy number, but it's a cheat because theres a huge gap between issue 149 and "150". A gap of over a decade. But even discounting the original numbering, the current series is at issue 90, which would put it in the lead.
And Uncanny's end came to an unglorious end last fall, and only lasted a year before getting shut down a second time. All the other X-Men books (Wolverine, Pointless, etc) are barely in their teens and 20s.
So Marvel doesn't have any books now, that have a history prior to House of M or Secret Invasion.
