Character vs plot driven stories:Which do you prefer?

[Carabas]

Reducing the number of mutants was the editorial result.

Editorial cause, not result. This was the reason the story was written.

Nobody buying comics at Barnes and Noble (or Borders at the time) cares about that. The bulk of "House of M" was the altered timeline. That was book-ended by the first issue (Wanda proving she is an over-powered lunatic by altering the world) and the last issue (Wanda cleaning up one of her messes and making another one). If the altered timeline stuff reads well (which Bendis tends to), then non-comic fans are not likely to complain.

People interested in the inner workings of the superhero comic industry on the other hand...
Non-comic fans are not going to read a big Marvel event even if you paid them, regardles of how well it reads.

And the plot structure is utterly bizarre. Set up the conflict, ignore the conflict for 6 issues, and then fail to resolve the conflict in any meaningful way in the final issue.
and then to top it off, have a "To be continues in dozens upon dozens of X-books" at the end. Which is a huge part why non-comics readers do not read comics.

I am going to use "Secret Invasion" (which I did read, and recently flipped through). The tag-line was "Who do you trust?", which fit with the high concept paranoia and uncertainty. The uncertainty even spread to readers at the time, because people were flipping out and wondering if Bendis was going to use a skrull-reveal to undo some of the bigger changes at Marvel. (The end result was that Marvel nudged a few b-listers back in to place and brought a d-lister or two back from the dead.)

It was not great comics. There were not big plot twists. The faceoff in the Savage Land was probably the most significant scene, which was Marvel telling people to get over the 80s. (Sadly, most fans missed that.)

But, "Secret Invasion" was readable enough.

I did not find it readable.
The story structure of House Of M was genius compared to the long, boring "okay, we're six issues in, and they're STILL on the stupid fight in the Savage Land? Where is the damn plot?"

Now, I really loved the long build-up to Secret Invasion, because that was something that really played to Bendis's strengths as a writer. But you'll never convince me that Bendis intended to end it like that, or that he intended Spider-Woman to be a Skrull (and that he intended Ronin to be Echo, while we're at it).

[CentralPower]

And the plot structure is utterly bizarre. Set up the conflict, ignore the conflict for 6 issues, and then fail to resolve the conflict in any meaningful way in the final issue.

You are focused on the framing sequence, which was only there to set up for the altered timeline. Here is a better way to summarize "House of M": Scarlett Witch loses her mind (again), and alters reality. Heroes of altered reality manage to undo the mess. The end. Epilogue: Scarlett Witch screws up something else.

Marvel's "toss the mutants" order could have been done any number of ways. It just happened to be tacked in to the end of "House of M" because...why not? To use "Secret Invasion" again, that would be like saying "it took 8 issues to get to the part where Osborn walks in to the boardroom full of bad guys".

"Secret Invasion" did not read like a Silver or Bronze Age comic. That means it was readable. The fight scene in the Savage Land did not have a narration box that read "with a slow hiss, the ship's door opens, and its passengers step out, confronting the gathered Avengers with an enemy that is as familiar as their own reflections.....".

People interested in the inner workings of the superhero comic industry on the other hand...
Non-comic fans are not going to read a big Marvel event even if you paid them, regardless of how well it reads.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am given to understand that the comic industry is doing better selling compilations to non-fans than it is with direct sales.

Most Marvel events are structured in a way that they an be read in pieces. (A casual reader could have read any "Secret Wars" cross-over without bothering with the main "Secret Wars" series.)

[Ianbarreilles]

You are focused on the framing sequence, which was only there to set up for the altered timeline. Here is a better way to summarize "House of M": Scarlett Witch loses her mind (again), and alters reality. Heroes of altered reality manage to undo the mess. The end. Epilogue: Scarlett Witch screws up something else.

Marvel's "toss the mutants" order could have been done any number of ways. It just happened to be tacked in to the end of "House of M" because...why not? To use "Secret Invasion" again, that would be like saying "it took 8 issues to get to the part where Osborn walks in to the boardroom full of bad guys".

"Secret Invasion" did not read like a Silver or Bronze Age comic. That means it was readable. The fight scene in the Savage Land did not have a narration box that read "with a slow hiss, the ship's door opens, and its passengers step out, confronting the gathered Avengers with an enemy that is as familiar as their own reflections.....".




Correct me if I am wrong, but I am given to understand that the comic industry is doing better selling compilations to non-fans than it is with direct sales.

Most Marvel events are structured in a way that they an be read in pieces. (A casual reader could have read any "Secret Wars" cross-over without bothering with the main "Secret Wars" series.)

The biggest tragedy of house of m was it nearly destroyed scarlet witch as a superhero and in a way kinda as well as a character.

[Carabas]

You are focused on the framing sequence, which was only there to set up for the altered timeline. Here is a better way to summarize "House of M": Scarlett Witch loses her mind (again), and alters reality. Heroes of altered reality manage to undo the mess. The end. Epilogue: Scarlett Witch screws up something else.

Yeah, but that's not a story. That's not howone does stories.
That's just having a lot of non-connected random cool stuff until the trade's almost full and then a non-ending.

"Secret Invasion" did not read like a Silver or Bronze Age comic. That means it was readable. The fight scene in the Savage Land did not have a narration box that read "with a slow hiss, the ship's door opens, and its passengers step out, confronting the gathered Avengers with an enemy that is as familiar as their own reflections.....".

I am confused. What are you trying to communicate here? Silver age comics are usually kinda crap, and bronze age is better but not by a lot.
It's "readable". Sure, I'll grant it that. "Readable"... That's about as high praise as "well, Liefeld's characters do somewhat look like humans, if you squint a bit."

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am given to understand that the comic industry is doing better selling compilations to non-fans than it is with direct sales.

There is no real data on that. Diamand just tracks what it sells to which retailer, not who the retailers sell the books to.

Most Marvel events are structured in a way that they an be read in pieces. (A casual reader could have read any "Secret Wars" cross-over without bothering with the main "Secret Wars" series.)

They are not. I have tried, and I'm not a casual reader. Well, I didn't try Secret Wars, I gave up on non-Morrison-penned events after Fear Itself.
But here's the thing about casual readers: they will want to read the entire Secret Wars, not just some random part of it, and they will expect the thing to have a clear beginning and ending, and definitely NOT a "to be continued".

[Ragged Maw]

Character-driven, natch.

[UltimateTy]

Both are good when done well so I don't really have a preference.

[yet another]

Are there any examples of good character driven and plot driven superhero stories for comparison?

(No need to mention bad stories of either kind, they always suck. )

[JKtheMac]

Are there any examples of good character driven and plot driven superhero stories for comparison?

(No need to mention bad stories of either kind, they always suck. )

This was kind of my point. Plot driven = every MU comic ever bar one or two exceptions I cant put my finger on. Character driven, um, maybe The Vision counts, um... no I am out. I am sure somebody can think of something, but nobody has mentioned another one in this thread that really counts. Perhaps Old-Man Logan but I did mention that before. Maybe Alias but I haven't read it, and the TV show was plot driven.

The problem here is most of the internet has no idea what the distinctions are. If you wander off into google you will find loads of well meaning advice that has no clue what it is on about, sometimes from successful writers of character driven story.

I touched on the difference above in a love story.

In a plot driven based love story with a male protagonist, boy meets girl, obstacles arise, boy overcomes obstacles, boy and girl get together.

Character driven would be different. Boy has problems from his past that lead him to believe love is not possible, Boy meets girl and complex feelings emerge leading boy to reframe his past experiences in the light of the new situation, boy learns he can love, boy and girl may or may not get together.

Yes that second one probably happens hundreds of times in X-Men comics, but just because it happens in a story doesn't make it character driven. It may be incidental colour.

Often the tern "Dramatic" is used and that kind of helps because dramatic stories have a "dramatic premise" like "love can redeem" or "love can reframe death" or perhaps "the humanity in wolverine's heart can overcome his beast like nature". That last one shows the problem here. How many Marvel Universe stories actually manage to resolve anything dramatically? Can they afford to?

[L.R Johansson]

Are there any examples of good character driven and plot driven superhero stories for comparison?

(No need to mention bad stories of either kind, they always suck. )

I'll have to think a bit harder for a while to give you some exact superhero-story examples, but I think a very good non-superhero example to use is this one:

Lord of The Rings vs Game of Thrones.


LotR is mainly, gloriously, plot-driven - an amazing, timeless work of art that use the most complex and inspirational deeply poetic and philosophical world-building to tell its story.

GoT is mainly character-driven - it uses a nearly endless amount of characters whom it focuses quite deeply on the inner THIRSTS of those characters, to show how they go through the motions of life, with all of its complexities.

There then, is the simple difference.


Prior to the tv-series, I would have said that LotR EASILY eclipsed GoT in every conceivable way, influence-wise and popularity-wise, when it comes to public impact - following the TV-series, it's no longer as clear, nowadays they're probably neck-to-neck, if not *shudder* a small lead for GoT when it comes to popularity. Once the TV-series ends, I foresee this lead to shrink once again.


Basically, there are two types of genre-fans: the LotR-fans, and the GoT-fans.


An interesting note for me, or perhaps NOT so interesting, once you know a bit about evolutionary theory, and behavioural evolution among pack-animals, is that there seems to be something of a gender-discrepancy when it comes to story-focus preference - as far as I can tell, there are many, many more FEMALE fans of GoT, then there are of LotR - and vice versa.

Marvel's comics were among some of the first to really inject more character-focus and character-building in their superhero-characters, which I suppose is one of the reasons why they eventually kicked DC's butts in the 70's-80's - they actually got a few of those female readers, what with properties like the X-men.

Something similar can be seen in two other properties as well - Star Trek vs Star Wars - Star Trek is, in its classic interpretation, story-driven, while Star Wars is character-driven. For a good long while, this was also a dead race - the two had equal popularity, I would say - recent developments however, have made Star Wars eclipse Star Trek almost exponentially. (abandoning Star Trek's plot-driven story-telling for a more character-driven story-telling method with the reboot may have something to do with this though...)

I would say there are also many more male fans of Star Trek than female fans. Another note to look at is stuff like TV soap-operas, which are mostly geared towards female fans, where the viewer-ship really is primarily female-dominated - the stories there are almost a 100% character-driven.


For a final, extreme comparison, take a look at two movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Taxi Driver.

2001 is almost completely plot-driven, and Taxi Driver is almost completely character-driven.


In 2001, the MONOLITH, an object beyond human understanding drives every event in the movie - in Taxi Driver, every event in the movie is driven by Travis Bickle.


Personally, I prefer 2001 - I feel challenged and inspired by that movie on so, so many levels. Many prefer Taxi Driver though, since it goes deeply into the psyche of a character and his rather intense thoughts. (or maybe I've got it all wrong, and it's the societal commentary which inspires so many people when it comes to taxi driver)


Here then, is the difference between character and plot.

[L.R Johansson]

This was kind of my point. Plot driven = every MU comic ever bar one or two exceptions I cant put my finger on. Character driven, um, maybe The Vision counts, um... no I am out. I am sure somebody can think of something, but nobody has mentioned another one in this thread that really counts. Perhaps Old-Man Logan but I did mention that before. Maybe Alias but I haven't read it, and the TV show was plot driven.

Easy. BUB...! :P



That, or Squirrell Girl's series.

Had it been DC, I would have given you the ultimate example of a character-driven superhero story: every issue of bloody Ambush Bug EVER!

I seriously can't tell you the plot of any of those old Giffen-stories... what the heck is the story?? Nothing. Except a deep look into the psyche of the main character, who is a mad-man with delusional and frightening thoughts - believing himself to live in a made-up comic-book world, where nothing is real, so nothing really matters, hence he can do pretty much anything he feels like.

Even the main characters origin-story is accidental, flimsy and quickly glossed over in that example - in order to quickly get to various character-moments.

[CentralPower]

Ambush Bug does not quite work because the character is a joke, not unlike modern Deadpool. Ambush Bug is a parody aimed at long term fans. (I would not have gotten Ambush Bug before I was in high school, simply because I had not read comics long enough to get the joke. By the time I was in high-school (early to mid 90s), Ambush Bug was accessible. It was not the plot (non-existent) or character (a perpetual straight-man), it was the joke that sold Ambush Bug.

The biggest tragedy of house of m was it nearly destroyed scarlet witch as a superhero and in a way kinda as well as a character.

Byrne set up the idea of Scarlett Witch being a monster in the late 80s. "House of M" broke no new ground on that front.

I am confused. What are you trying to communicate here? Silver age comics are usually kinda crap, and bronze age is better but not by a lot.
It's "readable". Sure, I'll grant it that. "Readable"... That's about as high praise as "well, Liefeld's characters do somewhat look like humans, if you squint a bit."

Readable is what it is. I do not subscribe to Bendis series because I want more than readable. But, every so often, I will buy some Bendis to fill out a haul, or he has done something cool. (Example: I am planning to read "Jessica Jones" #5.) Readable sells though. And, Bendis' writing style undermines stereotypes about comics that Marvel probably wants to see go away.

There is no real data on that. Diamand just tracks what it sells to which retailer, not who the retailers sell the books to.

Does Diamond track sales at normal book stores, or on Amazon?

Well, I didn't try Secret Wars, I gave up on non-Morrison-penned events after Fear Itself.
But here's the thing about casual readers: they will want to read the entire Secret Wars, not just some random part of it, and they will expect the thing to have a clear beginning and ending, and definitely NOT a "to be continued".

I doubt that casual readers are going to care about every single tie-in. They might have picked up "Armor Wars" because it was an Iron Man comic, or "Civil War" because it shared a name with that movie that they saw. But, they would not have tracked down "X-Men '92" unless they cared about X-Men. And, there was no need to. Each series was self-contained. (If somebody had serious OCD, once could make a case for "the Seige" or "Ultimate End" being unavoidably tied to the main "Secret Wars" event. But, that would still be a stretch.)

Marvel's comics were among some of the first to really inject more character-focus and character-building in their superhero-characters, which I suppose is one of the reasons why they eventually kicked DC's butts in the 70's-80's - they actually got a few of those female readers, what with properties like the X-men.

Up until the last 5 years, I have prioritized for DC over Marvel, as they had more idea-based comics. Traditionally (especially for those of us old enough to remember the 90s and earlier), DC was the smarter company. That has turned around of late though. (Ideally, DC and Marvel would both be competitive, and constantly knocking each other out of "highest and best" spot, with credible threats from Image or Dark Horse.)

[JKtheMac]

Easy. BUB...! :P



That, or Squirrell Girl's series.

Had it been DC, I would have given you the ultimate example of a character-driven superhero story: every issue of bloody Ambush Bug EVER!

I seriously can't tell you the plot of any of those old Giffen-stories... what the heck is the story?? Nothing. Except a deep look into the psyche of the main character, who is a mad-man with delusional and frightening thoughts - believing himself to live in a made-up comic-book world, where nothing is real, so nothing really matters, hence he can do pretty much anything he feels like.

Even the main characters origin-story is accidental, flimsy and quickly glossed over in that example - in order to quickly get to various character-moments.

I am absolutely positive that most Wolverine stories are not character driven. In fact he is the poster boy for faux character driven stories, or rather plot driven stories that have deep character studies but never really move towards a resolution. This isn't an attack on Wolvie, this is the default mode now in comics and it works. What you do is use a plot driven structure to shift a character's status-quo from one unresolved position to another. It is serial fiction after-all, you don't want to end the story. Wolverine can never be resolved. This is why I see Old-Man Logan (original) as a kind of character story. It is based upon a few of the ideas from The Unforgiven which is a character driven story that is also a genre story. I would need to reread it to decide if it actually is character driven.

[Vic Vega]

Are there any examples of good character driven and plot driven superhero stories for comparison?

(No need to mention bad stories of either kind, they always suck. )

I kind of want to cite Parker's Spectacular Foes of Spider Man as Character Driven.

Yes, its a caper book but the reason its a caper book is because the main characters are compulsive crooks.

None of those guys could escape their own nature not even the Shocker.

[JKtheMac]

I have been searching around for somebody that writes about this on the net in a way I recognise and I think this does the trick.

It is essentially an exploration of The Wrestler, but the intoducion makes the points well.

It also expresses a warning: "If we start to incorrectly use the term "Character Driven" to describe movies with good characterization, not only does that seem to let films with poor characterization or no characterization (you know the films I'm talking about) off the hook, we also remove *actual* character driven films from consideration - and they may disappear."

[Ianbarreilles]

Ambush Bug does not quite work because the character is a joke, not unlike modern Deadpool. Ambush Bug is a parody aimed at long term fans. (I would not have gotten Ambush Bug before I was in high school, simply because I had not read comics long enough to get the joke. By the time I was in high-school (early to mid 90s), Ambush Bug was accessible. It was not the plot (non-existent) or character (a perpetual straight-man), it was the joke that sold Ambush Bug.




Byrne set up the idea of Scarlett Witch being a monster in the late 80s. "House of M" broke no new ground on that front.




Readable is what it is. I do not subscribe to Bendis series because I want more than readable. But, every so often, I will buy some Bendis to fill out a haul, or he has done something cool. (Example: I am planning to read "Jessica Jones" #5.) Readable sells though. And, Bendis' writing style undermines stereotypes about comics that Marvel probably wants to see go away.




Does Diamond track sales at normal book stores, or on Amazon?




I doubt that casual readers are going to care about every single tie-in. They might have picked up "Armor Wars" because it was an Iron Man comic, or "Civil War" because it shared a name with that movie that they saw. But, they would not have tracked down "X-Men '92" unless they cared about X-Men. And, there was no need to. Each series was self-contained. (If somebody had serious OCD, once could make a case for "the Seige" or "Ultimate End" being unavoidably tied to the main "Secret Wars" event. But, that would still be a stretch.)




Up until the last 5 years, I have prioritized for DC over Marvel, as they had more idea-based comics. Traditionally (especially for those of us old enough to remember the 90s and earlier), DC was the smarter company. That has turned around of late though. (Ideally, DC and Marvel would both be competitive, and constantly knocking each other out of "highest and best" spot, with credible threats from Image or Dark Horse.)

I wouldn't say she was a monster but was justified in her actions you can disagree to that and I'm sure you will it's become popular to hate scarlet witch....but hey that's your opinion.

The way I see it is Wanda wasn't a monster but someone who had enough and was lashing out at the world regardless if it led to the deaths of innocents and I tend to feel she was justified.

I think people who just dismiss Wanda as a monster much like the people who dismiss Carol Danvers as a monster for civil war ii are in my opinion people who just don't try and at least see and examine and realize what led these characters to do what they did it's much more then just that the character is a monster that they're a bad person that they're teetering towards villainous territory.

But hey that's my opinion I suppose I'm kinda in the minority with these opinions.