Writing: Past and Present

[boltmonster]

For those of you born in a decade that you are familiar with:

What makes present-day writing of comic books different/better than what has come before?

[Raye]

Well, a lot of this varies more from writer to writer than decade to decade, no one writer will encompass all the hallmarks of any particular time period, some were ahead of their time in the olden days, some writers now are throwbacks to an earlier era... but... as someone who began reading in the late 90's, and has gone back and read some earlier stuff:

- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening
- themes tend to be a bit more layered and subtle
- less black and white take on morality, many more anti-heroes and anti-villains roaming around and less certainty on what is right or wrong
- more decompressed storytelling, usually (but not always) with more intricate plots to match. Really, this is the key thing, because it is those extra pages that allow for the more natural dialogue etc. because now we can spend time seeing these things happen rather than have them explained to us. Sometimes it is abused to pad out a story when not warranted, sure, but in general, it was a positive move.
- on that note you tend to see more in depth character studies, because there is more time to devote to that sort of thing due to the decompression
- less thought balloons, though these are coming back in vogue lately. but generally, they switched from thought balloons to internal captions, more of a stylistic change, since the purpose behind them is about the same a lot of the time
- more intricate art, coloring and lettering as printing and coloring/lettering processes improved

That's what comes to me off the top of my head. Some of these are neutral, some I prefer over the old stuff. Mostly I prefer the modern stuff in general, but there are some that are modern, but have elements more associated with older comics, like Squirrel Girl, that I enjoy.

[boltmonster]

I did a comparison of if issue one of Contest of Champions was written today, how many issues would it take to tell that first issue.

My math concluded that it would be two and a half to three issues long.

The first page would be drawn out to 16 pages.

[Alan2099]

You don't really see too many one-shot stories anymore or villains that just robs banks. Everything needs to be part of a more epic scale. I miss the simpler easier stuff sometimes.

Sure stories may be more in dept or have more character development, but they also take you half a year to get the same amount of story that you used to get in one or two issues.

[DragonsChi]

- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening

.....I'm sorry but were you being serious






There are so many cases of "Word Ballon Abuse" and excessive dialogue in stories now that it is anything but natural.

[Raye]

I said right in my post that i was talking generally, and that there were exceptions. Just because it doesn't apply to every single modern comic doesn't mean that the general trend isn't to use more natural sounding dialogue. As in an effort is made to make them sound like actual people instead of exposition dispensers. Also, wordy doesn't automatically mean unnatural. People do ramble in real life.

[charliehustle415]

For me the biggest difference is long term story telling now compared to then.

I've been doing my annual re-read of Bendis' New Avengers and he even makes a meta contextual comment about the one and done adventures the Avengers used to always do. In Disassembled Hawkeye goes off on Cap and Tony about how they jump from one problem to the next without seeing things through to the end.

This to me screamed to me a new edict where there is a long term plan for a writer, Bendis even references this line later when Echo joins the fray after fighting the Hand in Japan and and Cap sends Echo on a mission to figure out what they are up to while the Avengers go and deal with another situation.

This is even more evident with Bendis' former protoge Hickman, who uses a multi-year plan to tell his story. You can lookup the map he made for his Fantastic Four run or his Avengers run, nevertheless, long form story telling has been the biggest boon for superhero comic books.

[Username taken]

Well, a lot of this varies more from writer to writer than decade to decade, no one writer will encompass all the hallmarks of any particular time period, some were ahead of their time in the olden days, some writers now are throwbacks to an earlier era... but... as someone who began reading in the late 90's, and has gone back and read some earlier stuff:

- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening
- themes tend to be a bit more layered and subtle
- less black and white take on morality, many more anti-heroes and anti-villains roaming around and less certainty on what is right or wrong
- more decompressed storytelling, usually (but not always) with more intricate plots to match. Really, this is the key thing, because it is those extra pages that allow for the more natural dialogue etc. because now we can spend time seeing these things happen rather than have them explained to us. Sometimes it is abused to pad out a story when not warranted, sure, but in general, it was a positive move.
- on that note you tend to see more in depth character studies, because there is more time to devote to that sort of thing due to the decompression
- less thought balloons, though these are coming back in vogue lately. but generally, they switched from thought balloons to internal captions, more of a stylistic change, since the purpose behind them is about the same a lot of the time
- more intricate art, coloring and lettering as printing and coloring/lettering processes improved

That's what comes to me off the top of my head. Some of these are neutral, some I prefer over the old stuff. Mostly I prefer the modern stuff in general, but there are some that are modern, but have elements more associated with older comics, like Squirrel Girl, that I enjoy.

I generally agree with this.

I find that a lot of comics I read and enjoyed as a child i just can't enjoy any more.

Like Busiek, I loved his Avengers when it was releasing but now i find it unnecessarily wordy.

[Daniel22]

Well, a lot of this varies more from writer to writer than decade to decade, no one writer will encompass all the hallmarks of any particular time period, some were ahead of their time in the olden days, some writers now are throwbacks to an earlier era... but... as someone who began reading in the late 90's, and has gone back and read some earlier stuff:

- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening
- themes tend to be a bit more layered and subtle
- less black and white take on morality, many more anti-heroes and anti-villains roaming around and less certainty on what is right or wrong
- more decompressed storytelling, usually (but not always) with more intricate plots to match. Really, this is the key thing, because it is those extra pages that allow for the more natural dialogue etc. because now we can spend time seeing these things happen rather than have them explained to us. Sometimes it is abused to pad out a story when not warranted, sure, but in general, it was a positive move.
- on that note you tend to see more in depth character studies, because there is more time to devote to that sort of thing due to the decompression
- less thought balloons, though these are coming back in vogue lately. but generally, they switched from thought balloons to internal captions, more of a stylistic change, since the purpose behind them is about the same a lot of the time
- more intricate art, coloring and lettering as printing and coloring/lettering processes improved

That's what comes to me off the top of my head. Some of these are neutral, some I prefer over the old stuff. Mostly I prefer the modern stuff in general, but there are some that are modern, but have elements more associated with older comics, like Squirrel Girl, that I enjoy.

I was going to write my thoughts but you summed them up very well. A couple additions/expansions..

The writers give the readers more credit that they can figure some things out on their own. There's way less "By drawing my fist back like so, and then swinging it forth towards Stilt-Man, I should be able to hit his legs, thereby..." and more of just punching Stilt-Man's legs.

Characters have been developed to the point where we can expect very different, specific reactions to the same event depending on the character. In the past, you could swap out, say, Daredevil for Spider-Man in a random issue and not have to change much, sometimes (not always, obviously). We expect a lot more depth and nuance now than the past and there aren't nearly as many issues that would work for several different characters with minimal changes.

There is a much broader range of writing styles. There has always been some outliers, but generally speaking a large portion of the writers had a similar tone and style. Now we have North who is nothing like Cates who couldn't be more different than Montclaire who shares very little with Ewing who will never be mistaken for Ahmed. This is one of the biggest strengths of modern Marvel over the past imo.

There's way more meat on the bones as far as subtext and overarching themes and commentary. You would be hard pressed to make any kind of real literary dissection for most of the comics of the past. For Marvel, I think that is true up until the mid 90's at least. Today, you can choose to read things like Aaron's Odinson arc, or King's Vision, or Strain's Generation X or Coates' Captain America just as straight up comics, or you can have real in depth conversations on the themes and ideas presented.

[CentralPower]

Yeah, i find a lot of old comics a bit of slog to get through. While i can recognize what they contributed to where we are now, and can see that they were important to the history and good for their time, I just prefer the modern decompressed style.

"Good for their time" only carries so far.

Michelinie's "Iron Man" run was ~10 years ahead of its time, which was impressible. But, that still makes it dated by ~25 years. And, when the standards of that time were low, being "good for its time" is less impressive.

This is one of the biggest strengths of modern Marvel over the past imo.

It is not just Marvel. But, yes.

There's way more meat on the bones as far as subtext and overarching themes and commentary. You would be hard pressed to make any kind of real literary dissection for most of the comics of the past. For Marvel, I think that is true up until the mid 90's at least.

Old comics had ideas and themes. But, there was no dissection needed. Readers were beaten over the head with the moral of the story. X-books spent pages virtue signalling about civil rights (which was nonsense, as the X-Men do not work as an oppressed group), Spider-Man about struggling young adults, Captain America was polemical navel-gazing.

[Daniel22]

"Good for their time" only carries so far.

Michelinie's "Iron Man" run was ~10 years ahead of its time, which was impressible. But, that still makes it dated by ~25 years. And, when the standards of that time were low, being "good for its time" is less impressive.




It is not just Marvel. But, yes.




Old comics had ideas and themes. But, there was no dissection needed. Readers were beaten over the head with the moral of the story. X-books spent pages virtue signalling about civil rights (which was nonsense, as the X-Men do not work as an oppressed group), Spider-Man about struggling young adults, Captain America was polemical navel-gazing.

For sure, it's all comics. I just kept it to Marvel because we're in the Marvel neighborhood. I think Marvel demonstrates a much wider range of writing styles than DC, even though there is a lot of crossing over between the companies. DC is getting better lately though imo.

Older comics had ideas and themes, but they were much broader and didn't change much from arc to arc. They had more of a main idea or hook and stuck with it. Captain America would either be "America Good!" or "America Good? Maybe no but actually yes in the end". There's no comparison between that and what we're getting with Coates or got with Spencer on Cap. Now we're more likely to get a finer, more specialized kind of theme. And we have comics that not only have a main theme or source of commentary, but several, and might explore a couple different themes over multiple arcs.

[RBerman]

The writers give the readers more credit that they can figure some things out on their own. There's way less "By drawing my fist back like so, and then swinging it forth towards Stilt-Man, I should be able to hit his legs, thereby..." and more of just punching Stilt-Man's legs.

True. This is partly because the average readership is older (like, 40 years older) than it used to be, and partly because they've all been reading comics that whole time. They aren't new readers for whom "Use your Adamantium claws, Wolverine!" is a necessary piece of exposition.

Characters have been developed to the point where we can expect very different, specific reactions to the same event depending on the character. In the past, you could swap out, say, Daredevil for Spider-Man in a random issue and not have to change much, sometimes (not always, obviously). We expect a lot more depth and nuance now than the past and there aren't nearly as many issues that would work for several different characters with minimal changes.

True. In Silver Age DC, you could put the same dialogue in the mouth of Hawkman, Flash, or Green Lantern because none of them had actual personalities. Marvel changed all that, so that Spider-Man, Thor, and Hulk would react differently to the same circumstance.

[phantom1592]

W
- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening
- themes tend to be a bit more layered and subtle
- less black and white take on morality, many more anti-heroes and anti-villains roaming around and less certainty on what is right or wrong
- more decompressed storytelling, usually (but not always) with more intricate plots to match. Really, this is the key thing, because it is those extra pages that allow for the more natural dialogue etc. because now we can spend time seeing these things happen rather than have them explained to us. Sometimes it is abused to pad out a story when not warranted, sure, but in general, it was a positive move.
- on that note you tend to see more in depth character studies, because there is more time to devote to that sort of thing due to the decompression
- less thought balloons, though these are coming back in vogue lately. but generally, they switched from thought balloons to internal captions, more of a stylistic change, since the purpose behind them is about the same a lot of the time
- more intricate art, coloring and lettering as printing and coloring/lettering processes improved.

I would agree that a lot of these are changes... but I disagree that any of these are 'better'. I truly believe the exposition and thought balloons were necessary to good comic writing and the decompression I think is going to be one day traced to the fall of comic books. There are way too many people 'trade-waiting' because the monthly books are pretty BORING now days. You can't read a book and enjoy it... you need all 6-8 issues to make a coherent read.

Most of all the reason I like the older books better... there didn't seem to be any writers going around having to explain what you just read. No youtube videos, no dissections of their profound essays, No explaintions… because the books read just fine as they were.

[Raye]

While taste is subjective, and i'm not going to say you're wrong for liking older stuff, I mean, i still vastly prefer the newer style. I don't find books boring month to month, I love speculating about what will come next, and you can do a lot more of that with decompressed stories. Decompression can be used poorly, and if a writer can't keep your attention month to month, that's a sign they may not be using decompression well, but when done well, decompression actually increases my interest month to month a lot of the time. I've never had to have a writer explain to me what had just happened, I find them perfectly readable as is. Sure there are sometimes stories with a slow reveal where everything comes together at the end and you go 'oh, so that's why this and this happened the way they did' but i mean, that was clearly the intent from the start, to have the reader initially a bit confused and questioning things until the reveal. And there are some stories where the point is to pose questions rather than answer them, to make the reader think about something for themselves. But that's about the extent of it.

I really don't believe, except maybe in the case of stories intended for children as their primary audience, that writers should be playing to the lowest common denominator and assuming people will be too slow to get something without it being explained in exacting and redundant detail. If someone is too dense to get it, or lack the patience to see a story play out before getting up in arms about an early story beat, oh well.

[phantom1592]

While taste is subjective, and i'm not going to say you're wrong for liking older stuff, I mean, i still vastly prefer the newer style. I don't find books boring month to month, I love speculating about what will come next, and you can do a lot more of that with decompressed stories. Decompression can be used poorly, and if a writer can't keep your attention month to month, that's a sign they may not be using decompression well, but when done well, decompression actually increases my interest month to month a lot of the time. I've never had to have a writer explain to me what had just happened, I find them perfectly readable as is. Sure there are sometimes stories with a slow reveal where everything comes together at the end and you go 'oh, so that's why this and this happened the way they did' but i mean, that was clearly the intent from the start, to have the reader initially a bit confused and questioning things until the reveal. And there are some stories where the point is to pose questions rather than answer them, to make the reader think about something for themselves. But that's about the extent of it.

I really don't believe, except maybe in the case of stories intended for children as their primary audience, that writers should be playing to the lowest common denominator and assuming people will be too slow to get something without it being explained in exacting and redundant detail. If someone is too dense to get it, or lack the patience to see a story play out before getting up in arms about an early story beat, oh well.

Check out any threads involving Grant Morrison and especially Final Crisis and you'll see most people complaining that it sucks and a bunch of other people complaing that those people just don't 'get it'.

I've read a lot of Bendis' books where you can burn through an entire issue and the characters never even left the dinner table and almost NOTHING happens at all. I used to HATE him on Daredevil. There was a 4-6 part story involving Ben Urich investigating Leapfrog's kid... that was TERRIBLE. It could have and should have been told in about 1-2 issues but was stretched out for months of 2 characters interacting... and only one of them actually speaking. Even the 'Next issue' blurb was the same for at least 3 months... Heck, Daredevil himself only showed up in a kids crayon pictures till the last issue and didn't really do anything. I remember a few times during that run I ended up buying the same issue twice... because the covers were all the same and the interior I couldn't tell if i'd read it or not... That's just Ugghhh...

Yeah, I much prefer the old days. where stories progressed, were easy to understand and sold a LOT of issues... not just to a specific subset of the audience... but for Everyone of all ages. I see the declining sales and the younger audience being alienated and forgotten... and honestly I would be surprised if monthly comics survive another 10 years.