Originally Posted by
Jim Kelly
You think so? I've heard this before, but I don't find it to be true. I remember one of the early Captain Marvel stories had this problem--but I think it restated things textually, too, like a character said something and a caption would say the same thing. This redundancy seems to be most evident in early comics, because they were still figuring out the medium [and thus that's interesting to me, because I'm intrigued by how comic books developed their motifs].
But really, I find most classic comics state a part of the narrative in lieu of panels depicting it. And it would be hard for artists to show in picture form the full narrative of the story. Even with a two page spread to work with, it would be difficult for a modern artist to show in detail exactly what is happening and the meaning behind it.
Another reason why the scripter would explain what is happening in the story, rather than trust the artist to show it, was because often writers didn't know which artist was going to draw the story. They had to indicate clearly what was happening in the story for the reader to follow, because chances were that the artist assigned would fail to get that across in the pictures.
It seems to me that classic stories had a lot more moving parts--there was a lot more going on in the plot--so the writer had to explain all of that. It would waste time for the artist to even attempt that--although I like comics with diagrams in them. Modern writers have to strip out a lot of the complexity from their stories, so they can be told visually.
I think comic books have become too precious about the artwork. Part of the art of the comic book was its functionality. The pictures and text function to tell a story--that's how they are artistic. That the panel is a pretty piece of art that can stand on its own should be a secondary consideration. Each panel is supposed to connect with the next--so a beautiful two page spread might look nice but it's not serving the art of what I think is comic book story telling. The artist has to be selfless enough to accept that a bunch of captions and balloons are going to be in the panels and so must design the panel to accommodate that function.
Walt Simonson did a nice issue of ORION totally in picture form. But the problem for me was it didn't stick in my head. Classic comics are more sticky. I can retaiin what happens in them because I'm a wordy person. I linger on pages that have words on them and I take more in. I find that a good use of text and pictures can give a comic book the proper pacing. When the story teller wants the reader to slow down and think about what's happening, it's best to have more words on the page. When the action needs to speed up, then it's best to leave out words.
Finally, since I grew up reading classic comics, a lot of the captions go by for me very quick. I'm not going to linger on a "Meanwhile . . ." caption. These captions serve as a way to bridge between two scenes, so the readers knows we're now in a different part of the story. I barely notice those transitions. Half the time, you don't even need to read them.