I just read Becky Cloonan’s Wolves, and loved it. It very succinctly and beautifully manages to convey a powerful story. It does more in twenty pages than stories many times that length, which made me think — is brevity becoming a lost art in comic-books? Just like bigger is not always better, longer certainly is also not always better.
Let’s consider Marvel’s current policy of double-shipping titles. For some time they have been pushing more than twelve issues of a particular title in a year, and they are starting to do this on more and more titles. One of the unfortunate side-effects is that the art suffers. David Brothers did a great piece on this, which unfortunately earned the ire of a certain Marvel editor.
However, it also dilutes the narrative. All stories eventually boil down to the same elements. For example, conflict builds to a climax and is then resolved, leaving everything else to nuance. Scott Pilgrim is a story about love, life, growth, and self-discovery. It’s a story that we’ve heard a million different times from a million different places, but what makes it unique is how it speaks to a generation raised by TVs and video games. It taps into our worldview, and more effectively speaks to our hearts and minds. That’s how nuance makes a story good. Read More
