Writing: Past and Present

[comicscollector]

There are no more two or more pages re-showing what hapened in the previous stories so thats something that i like more in the writing of the comic book stories now.
But comparing the comic books writing from the past to the present is complicated because the writing medium of the comic books never stayed the same thus makes it difficult to compare imo.
Comic books in the 70´s were not as they were in the 60s,comics in the 80´s were not as in the 70´s and so on.

[Mike]

As someone that reads very few new books, but keeps looking for pre-2000s back issues to read, I guess I prefer the writing of the past over the writing of today.

[jackolover]

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?

It’s very subjective, and you have to take into account the changes of style as eras progress.

So, as a stand-alone era, the 1960’s have superior aspects to later writing, because 60’s is compact, and I’d like to see writers who do writing for trade try doing in one book what they do in five. That’s point one.

Then you have modern writing-for-trade which has the advantage of slow pacing, and, including lots of undisclosed facts that done-in-ones don’t. That’s point two.

Then you have the bright writing of the 1960’s as against the dark writing of the 1980’s. The dark writing has advantages, like more association to readers who are relatable to the dark side, and seeing bright super hero stories as less relatable. Of course, the 1960’s also has dark writing examples, in the Things “This man, this Monster”, and Spider-Mans “Master Planner”, but the 80’s sent characters into depressive psychosis at times. That’s point three.

Then you come to the Quesada era, and you have to determine if what he made happen was entertaining, or, it corrupted the comic tradition. Some say we haven’t recovered from the warping of the 616 reality into out-of-character behavior, but there is an argument that tradition had become tired writing and it needed a more realistic approach. This is a very controversial era for comics, and one has to stand back and somehow judge with an eye to compromise, or, panic editorialisation. Did Quesada do the right thing encouraging Civil War 2006 and Secret Wars 2015? Has it destroyed Marvel Comics? You send continuity over a cliff, and where do you go from there?

So, you can see, all eras have their advantages depending on the readers tastes.

[jackolover]

So, continuing on with Quesada, he turned everyone into a Hank Pym. Quesada took the pathetic, pussy, Pym was turned into and did it to all the characters in the MU. (Except the new kids). All the relationships between an admirer and a character have been undermined.

Even Rich Rider Nova. One time Rich was Nova Prime with World Mind and they diluted him down till he was irrelevant, when they could have preserved Nova Prime by giving him a dissociation from the duties of Nova Prime (and let World Mind address issues), so he wouldn’t tire out. Then we’d have a Superman of the Universe, but Marvel blew it.