Hi Helen
Post by Helen Evans*suddenly feeling like I'm sitting in a room where everyone else is
speaking a different language*
I'm still not much of a comic fan as I will always prefer the depth
that novels give us - but I find, now reading the MB strips after all
these years, that after having read the MB novels so many times, my
brain can do a certain amount of "filling in", with the strips. But I
think that if I hadn't read the novels, I would not appreciate the
strips.
I don't know - a lot of folks got into the novels after reading the strips
(it would be an interesting experiment to survey this group to see who read
what first). I've always found the MB strips to be quite in-depth and
complex for their genre -- all kudos to POD for that.
Post by Helen EvansI'm confused, then, about what the exact definition of a comic book
is, versus a collection.
Can someone explain to the unititiated?
(and I won't wade into the whole graphic novel thing as it seems I
don't need to, for MB)
Easiest way to describe it is to switch the analogy to TV series and DVDs.
A comic book is like a single episode of a TV series that may or may not be
viewed as a standalone; it might occasionally have mutli-part stories or
ongoing story arcs, but generally you can jump in at any point.
A collection is like a DVD box set released later of an entire season and/or
a collection of related episodes (such as has been done with themed DVD
releases for Star Trek and Doctor Who). But the episodes themselves could be
unrelated to each other except for characters, or there may be internal
arcs. The Titan reprints of MB fall into this category, as do many recent
"graphic novel" releases by DC and Marvel which are nothing more than
collections of storylines.
A graphic novel is like TV series that tells an ongoing story, and viewers
generally cannot get the same understanding of the story from watching a
single episode. It may be released in individual episodes at first, and then
collected in a box set, or it could be published directly as a box set (the
TV industry hasn't done this yet in America or Britain as far as I know, but
I know of Japanese and Chinese TV series that have indeed been released in
"full novel" form to DVD).
And example is Watchmen, which was published in 12 monthly issues, and then
reissued in a single-volume book, which is the one everyone knows. On the
other hand, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning Holocaust graphic novel, Maus
(another example of a graphic novel that really shows what the genre is
capable of) was only ever published as single-volume book, never in
installments.
So, shows that would count as comic books include things like CSI, Law and
Order, NCIS, and Doctor Who to a degree (though the current series comes
closer to graphic novel territory). You can jump in and "read" individual
issues/episodes, or you can read/watch a collection of the episodes, and get
pretty much the same amount of information out of them.
Shows that are graphic novels include things like Heroes, 24, Lost, Twin
Peaks, the new version of Battlestar Galactica ... These are shows that for
the most part one needs to read as a whole novel, rather than as individual
chapters/issues. You can certainly watch single episodes and enjoy them, and
some shows like Heroes and Lost have produced "jumping on" episodes. But
generally the preferred format for watching these shows tends to be as a
complete set (sort of like reading a single daily MB strip and trying to
figure out the complete storyline from that).
There's no distinction being made in terms of quality between "comic book"
TV and "graphic novel" TV. I personally consider the current incarnation of
Doctor Who to be the best English-language television production of the last
5 years. It all depends on how the writers handle the format. That goes for
comics/graphic novels too. As we've seen discussed already, there are some
works considered classics and some works that are not, in both formats.
Also, another important distinction between comic books and graphic novels:
graphic novels generally have a pre-arranged endpoint or exit strategy.
Watchmen was only ever conceived to run 12 issues or 1 book. Compare to
Action Comics which will soon pass its 850th issue. Lost is scheduled to end
in about a year. Heroes is not intended to run for 10 seasons. Babylon 5,
another example of graphic novel television, was conceived for something
like 5 seasons. BSG had an endpoint planned too. Law and Order, on the other
hand, can run as long as it has viewers - there is no exit strategy for that
series at all. The most extreme case of an exit strategy was Dave Sim's
Cerebus, which was conceived to run for 300 issues, and it did, though it
took him 30 years to do it.
Cheers!
Alex
