Hey, there. Wanted to talk a bit about storytelling formats in comics and a bit about those in television.
In my first post, I mentioned P.O.L.E., the Panic Office Lunch Excursion. A frequent topic of discussion at P.O.L.E. is how to save comics*. That may sound a bit presumptuous, but really we just talk about how to make comics the best it can be. And one of the bugaboos I talk about a lot is the manner in which we tell our stories.
First off, I should define what I’m talking about. I’m talking about mainstream super hero comics. You know, the sort of thing Marvel publishes. I may use the word “comics” in this, but I am not talking about indie books, or Vertigo books, or experimental books, or autobio books published by mainstream publishing houses sold to big bookstores. I’m talking about Marvel-type comics.
With that out of the way, the next thing to note is that these comics are meant to go on forever. Sure, there are miniseries and such, but on the whole, ideally, the monthly comics we’re working on right now will never stop coming out. Realistic? Maybe, maybe not. But we’d like to keep making comics forever, and we’d like you to keep reading them forever. This is similar to television, as they will usually try to make a show as long as possible, though I suppose they realize that their show can only go on for so long (soap operas excepted).
So, there are two main approaches to this type of storytelling: serial and episodic. Serial storytelling means the story is constantly moving forward a little bit at a time, each episode furthering the main narrative. In TV terms, we’re talking about "Lost," "Dexter" or "Battlestar Galactica." Episodic storytelling is more of the type where each episode tells it’s own story, something more like "House," "The Mentalist" or "Law & Order"**.
Which one do current Marvel Comics lean more towards? In my opinion, we’re mostly doing serial storytelling. There seems to be a constant drive forward of things changing, one thing leading to the next with a somewhat direct cause and effect. "Avengers Disassembled" to "House of M" to "Decimation" paving the way to "Civil War" resulting in "The Initiative" (and "World War Hulk") which was overtaken by "Secret Invasion" which ended up with "Dark Reign" which leads to***… etc. The plus side of this approach is that a reader who is invested in the story will want to find out what happens next! And next! And next! This is much like "Battlestar Galactica" and its ilk: the desire to know how it all turns out spurs you on. The downside being that some readers will find it offputting to jump into a story that started before they began reading. Who among us started watching "BSG" with season 3?
More episodic storytelling seems to have gone out of fashion in comics today, though it was the foundation of the genre. Each hero had an established status quo, and the stories were not so much about changing that status quo (like on "BSG"), they are about telling stories with the status quo (like on House). And like on House, over time there would be changes to the status quo, but they would be subtle. If you look at old Spider-Man comics, only 3-4 pages or less would be devoted to Peter and Gwen and MJ and such, the main focus of the issue was always on the villain he had to face. The villain story was typically a complete story on its own. The ongoing background sub-plots were the gravy for the repeat readers, but the person who just picked up that one issue wasn’t left scratching their head. I’m not sure if the tastes of readers pulled away from this style, if the increased prominence of creators in the industry shifted how they wanted to tell their stories, or something entirely different happened, but there is a detectable shift.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time it happened. Like many cultural shifts, it seems to have taken an odd course. Just sort of eyeballing my own knowledge of comics history, I would say it traced to Frank Miller’s Batman, through Todd McFarlane’s “arc-based” SPIDER-MAN… but what’s strange about those is that they were an odd hybrid of serial and episodic. Let’s take Adjectiveless SPIDER-MAN. It was told mostly in story-arcs. This meant that any random issue of it you bought was not a complete story on its own, so that is serial storytelling. BUT, each of those arcs was pretty much unrelated to the ones before and after. They each took place within the GENERAL Spider-Man status quo, they did not turn his world upside-down. So, that’s more episodic.
Really, I think the idea there was for the artist to tell a satisfying story over the amount of time they needed, rather than to shift to serial storytelling. It was more a shift to the “TPB” style than it was to an infinite serial, but I think once the idea of an issue of a comic not containing the full story became accepted, it brought us closer to the current mode.
I believe the other piece of the puzzle that combined with that to bring us to serial storytelling was a sort of misremembered nostalgia. If you were a regular reader of those more episodic based comics back in the day, the thing that really sticks with you most of all is often the continuing subplots. After all, Spider-Man fights Electro about a million times over the years, but his years-long girlfriend can only die once. Those ongoing threads gain prominence in your mind… but again, they were usually only a few pages per issue. That 37th fight with Electro**** was what the comic was REALLY about. It’s just that over years of comics, the serialized subplot makes more of an impression.
Anyway, this is just the sort of thing I talk about, when I talk about comics. No conclusion is really made, no solution discovered today. In my opinion, the more episodic model is better suited to the genre, but I know lots of people disagree, and many of the series we do are not done that way. What do you think about it? I’d really like to know. Drop me a note below.
Be seeing you!
- Jordan D. White
* Or “How to Save the Comics World?” Or sometimes “How to Save the World Through Comics?”
** I have never watched Law & Order in first run, I have only ever caught random episodes in rerun on cable… and I never have any trouble hopping onto a episode.
*** You didn’t think I was going to give it away, did you?
**** No, I’m not counting out Electro’s appearances, either. Do it yourself.
less exhaustive ?
Posted by bulgarianyogurt on 2009-01-27 10:20:46
I had send you something about how to save 'the Eternals' or 'the Sentry' actually...
you don't want to talk about this, instead ?
Posted by notapotatoe on 2009-01-27 10:29:15
episodic comics Jordan, that one wordsearch guy here - yeah, I agree that episodic comics, with B-plots running through, are often the best series in the long run - serial stories are great when used effectively (Avengers Forever is a great serialized story, as is New X-Men), but most of the time it seems like a meaningless parade of neverending stories - because you're just going to twist it up next week, the 'morals' and 'lessons' the heroes learn don't really get learned. When was the last time the hero "learned a lesson" in Uncanny X-Men? Or in New Avengers?
While I do enjoy the epic soap opera elements of those books, the books I find myself rereading the most are ones like She-Hulk, Slott's Thing, X-Men: First Class, Loki, Wolverine: First Class, and other single issue stories with a more "done in one" or "done in two" mentality, where after several issues, some thing will come to a boil and be a 'special' issue.
The problem is that if EVERY issue is a special issue, none of them are.
Eric
Posted by stuckinazkaban on 2009-01-27 21:46:28
I think the reason I like the more serialized comics is because it's more like real life. How many times have your problems been solved neatly without any fallout or not had any affect on other parts of your life? To me it feels more natural. I can understand why people wouldn't like it and choose more episodic stories more, but the serialization is what brought me back in to comics during Civil War.
Posted by doncorswhazie on 2009-01-28 02:56:11
never ending stories Jordan, what would you say to the claim that the current style of story telling in comics has led to story arcs not providing a real conclusion? It seems that many of the arcs end when the main threat is defeated and immediately the characters are off to fight someone else, not allowing for any sort of denouement? Is this a necessary evil because of the style of story telling that is pervasive in comics or is it something else?
Posted by pkempson on 2009-01-29 08:25:58
Storytelling formats I would have to say that I prefer the more serialized stories, provided they do not shake up the characters TOO much. The way some series now seem to revolve around continuously bigger events rather than smaller ones that change things subtlely (BND, *cough*) seems to have gotten out of hand. It just hurts my head. In that respect, I would like to see more of the episodic stories come to the fore. As much as I love the story-driven push of the current style, I DON't want to see my favorite characters shaken up every other week! They need breaks from all the insanity on occasion, so they can assimilate what has happened (ie- learn a lesson as you put it.)
Posted by MsMarvelDuckie on 2009-01-30 16:35:10
It always seemed that the size of a story didn't concerned , us, readers.Each formats has his own qualities, serialized stories for more character-development and self-contained stories as transitions, or a jump for a new artist ...
what could make the difference with the clash of Vertigo books by example would be continuing what have been done since ' Civil War' trough ' World War Hulk' and ' Secret Invasion', the catastrophic aspect of life, then we would have comics full of subplots and stories resolved not by a fact of story-arcs, but of by following different investigations who may -or not- find their conclusions :
Some kind of 'less linear' comics, do you think it's possible ?
Posted by notapotatoe on 2009-02-03 13:26:26
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About this blog: Jordan loves reading comics, and he loves thinking about them way too much. Super Hero morality, quirks of continuity, and the daily grind of putting out funnybooks… it’s all fair game.
About the author: Jordan D. White is an assistant editor at Marvel. In his free time, he reads way too many comics. Seriously.
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