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There's an article posted today at the io9 blog that might interest those of you playing around with superhero genders:
The 10 strangest sex-swapped versions of superheroes.
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They've missed Camelot 3000
Which featured a transformed Tristan, and a non-transformed Isolde, but it's sweeter than most such fare, as love triumphs over outward shaping.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I'm curious.
What is the attraction of comic book stories? Don't misunderstand me, I have no objection to them and of course people can write what they wish but I grew out of comics with pictures and superheroes when I was about 11/12. At that time (early 1950s) there was a number of comics which were primarily solid print with perhaps one picture as part of the title (for UK readers I'm thinking of Hotspur, Wizard and Champion). I was tight-fisted even then and comics with lots of solid print represented better value for my 2 bob/week pocket money in my opinion. I also felt the pictures interfered with my internal images which seemed much better anyway.
If I see keywords for a story which include comic or superhero I don't even open it. They're obviously popular so what am I missing?
Robi
Life, the Universe and Everything
I assume you don't go to movies or watch television either. :) Seriously, from the viewpoint of a comics creator you appear to have a prejudice against comics due to the popular idea that they are just for kids.
And that's mostly due to one book published in the 1950s that attacked comic books as being a major cause of juvenile delinquency. As if anyone who was taking the time to read anything was likely to be breaking into liquor stores.
It's simply a different medium, that's all. Like movies or television, music, or sculpture, comics are just another kind of art and a kind of storytelling art at that.
The reason you may have stopped reading comics at age 11 is that you didn't have easy access to comics that appealed to you at that age. And most teachers of children have a virulent prejudice against comics which they pass on. It's not until most people get to college these days that they find that graphic storytelling is actually respected and studied by real University types.
Hugs to all,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Actually, I don't. ..
... watch television or go to the cinema very much. I was brought up living behind the family radio and TV business (although it was just radio for a long time - no TV until I was nearly 10) and my early career was as a repair man. Since we married over 40 years ago we haven't owned a TV and we go to the cinema perhaps once every couple of months, if that. I have been watching some stuff on the BBC iPlayer via my PC recently but most of it doesn't appeal.
However it's not so much graphic novels but specifically the superhero stuff that leaves me totally cold. If you think it's down to my school teaching that comics lead to juvenile delinquency (which it didn't) then I should mention my 12 year old reading material included Hank Jansen, Leslie Charteris, Dornford Yates, and E R Burroughs to name a few :) In fact anything I could lay my hands on, even Enid Blyton sometimes LOL. Pictures seem a clumsy way of story telling to me.
Not too sure that the fact that something is studied at University is any great endorsement. There seem to be degrees in some pretty flaky topics these days, at least in the UK. I don't know much about universities though as I wasn't clever enough to make it.
Robi
Why ask?
" If you think it's down to my school teaching that comics lead to juvenile delinquency" I didn't say that. I said that a book in the 1950s taught that and that the prejudice against comics in primary and secondary schools has it's roots in that era. And the prejudice isn't so much taught as assumed.
Superhero stuff is the most profitable part of comics -- in the US. It's almost unknown in Europe except for American imports and is only a minor thing in England and East Asia. Comics stories have the same breadth of genre that other forms of storytelling and narrative have. Superheroes are just for fun, like sitcoms on TV or dance music in clubs. If they aren't fun for you, ignore them.
But most superheroes have their literary and cultural ancestors in tall tales, legends and myths. It's a respectable heritage, in and of itself. The silliness of any one sample is not indicative of the worth of the whole field. You are, in fact, using as your login the name of a thousand year old superhero of the very first and finest water.
But if pointing at university courses doesn't count for anything, there is no way to correct your impression of comics since any other thing I could say would have an equal weight counter -- flatly, you just don't believe comics can be worth anything. Not sure why you even asked.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
A medium which keeps reinventing itself...
The first public records were "comic books," painted or incised meaningful pictures painted on cave walls. They're with us still, and were never far away, from the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians to the illuminated manuscripts of Medieval Europe to the "stained glass" religious stories in every window of every old Church (because most people weren't literate, but could understand the pictures) to the "pulp" fiction of the Twenties and Thirties, replete with "lurid" action pictures, and back again to comic strips and graphic novels.
Almost every book had at least a frontispiece until recent times, and many had a selection of illustrations scattered through the book, meant to illustrate a particularly exciting or crucial scene. Pictures disappeared from most modern books for economic reasons, not because readers demanded more text instead of those "silly" pictures. You're reading letters directly descended from pictures; The letter "A" used to be the picture of a Phoenician ox, although the letter was upside down back then: Ɐ, which makes it easier to see the oxhead (If you can see it at all -- if it's a weird block, don't adjust your picture, just turn your screen upside down). We still carry a dim memory of that ancient ox in the sound the letter makes, long after Phoenicians have ceased to be directly involved in the world.
Television is the near equivalent of cave paintings, but then so is radio, iPhones, iPads, and the mass of multimedia content that deluges us in our modern times. Newspapers are slowly going out of business, so are paper publishers, except people will pay US$75 for a good collection of comics, or more. I paid a lot more for Uncle Scrooge collections penned by Carl Barks, more for Little Lulu collections by Marge.
Once you've purchased a paper book, you have to store it. I have the best part of an entire forty foot ISO Hi-Cube shipping container filled with books, so they're not exactly ready to hand. Electronic books have none of these handicaps, and one can store thousands of them on a single USB thumb drive.
The pendulum is turning again. There are already people who won't buy a paper book, and the "hot topic" in publishing circles is how books can compete with movies, television, and -- yes -- graphics-heavy novels and magazines, long famous for adding glossy illustrations to everyday content.
The marriage of e-books with access to the Web is making multimedia possible for web-based writers; we see it right here in stories with included YouTube links, so you can hear the music the author talks about, or the pictures included in this very note. Times are changing.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style