So I don't mean to offend with this question...

So I don't mean to offend with this question, i'm just looking for an analysis on comic book writing from people who read a lot of comic books.

So a lot (not all of course, but a lot) of comic books have a very specific type of writing that basically screams comic booky writing. You see this all the time in cape comics. It feels kind of like cheap writing where there are some really neat concepts without a lot of depth.

The thing is while I recognize this type of writing, I can't exactly put my finger on what this type of writing consists of, and how something like Watchmen doesn't have it while Flashpoint does. Do you guys know what i'm talking about? What exactly makes this type of writing so cheap?

It it convenience?

I'm not exactly sure how you mean. Decompression? Oversimplification of complex matters? Contrivance due to plot? Genericism of dialogue, characters, philosophies due to a writer's lack of worldliness?

You'd have to give a general example of something you've come across. You don't need to explain every detail, but if you can get across a particular feeling or concern with a particular thing that happened or didn't we can get somewhere.

>watchmen

You like Watchmen because you were told to. That's literally it.

See: It's like thinking The Beatles are the best band or Citizen Kane is the best movie. You're a rube.

Well the thing is that i've read enough comics that when I see writing in other places like that I refer to them as "comic booky". I can't really put it into words, that's the point of why I made this thread. I just hoped that others could understand what i'm talking about as well.

It's similar to how a lot of anime have their own unique style of crappy and cheap writing. I guess an example would be how a lot of things are conceptually cool but are only written about because they're conceptually cool and so they're poorly executed (the amazon vs atlantian war in Flashpoint)

I read Watchmen without much exposure to comic books, that may be it. Regardless it has nothing to do with the prestige it has

I don't care about The Beatles or Citizen Kane. I think heralding classics as amazing just due to impact or them being classics is stupid.

You can like all those things without thinking they're literally the best.

Inner character narration

Just check it, it's in amost all of them,

>only written about because they're conceptually cool and so they're poorly executed (the amazon vs atlantian war in Flashpoint)
I think I sort of get you, ideas that are engineered because they're disposably cool, fan fodder if you will. Things like Sinestro and the JL becoming White Lanterns and then not, several villains acquiring Rainbow Lantern rings, that sort of shallow, hollow nonsense that's the equivalent of colored frosting on a bland cake?

I can see what you mean then, there's often some element injected for its toyetic appeal or potential of rubbing a particular audience the right way for a quick buck or grab at attention. I'd say that sort of thing is more gimmicky than anything but yes it very much is found a lot and is part of certain comic book writing styles since Style over Substance can become the default means of selling an idea due to the writer being an ascended fanboy, laziness or business practice like injecting Wolverine into everything.

I guess it could be from lack of necessity to describe the situation, because you have artists that do that. Hell, you have artists that almost "write" the story. Just look at Hellboy, everything you need to know is in the art.
Yeah, but inner narration is a tool in literature too. Depends on yadi yadi yada.

I really can't tell what you mean, OP, but that must be because I've been reading the Dune series lately, and that's as "comicbooky" as it gets when it comes to literature.

>how something like Watchmen doesn't have it while Flashpoint does
That's pretty simple to distinguish.
Watchmen was his own thing, with his own characters so Moore was free to do what he wanted.
Flashpoint on the other hand was an event with (more or less) already defined characters (even if they were from a different present) that had to return to something similar to a status quo.
More than usual cape events tie everyone together and doesn't allow that much of a strech from a story point of view (it will always end up with "massive hero army fights bad guy/s).

If you want the short answer its mostly marvel/dc who have a certain kind of readers and try to appeal to them. The thing is they dominate the market in such a way that leads people unfamiliar with the medium into thinking that's the standards of the medium.

See that's the thing, I don't think that excuse works with Flashpoint.

Flashpoint exists in a different timeline and as such it doesn't have that weight. Even if you argue that it did have to return to something similar to the status quo the war between Aqua Man and Wonder Woman existed as its own thing and it's extremely "comic booky"

Oh I know this, I'm a big fan of indie or non cape comics. I finished A Court of Owls and while I enjoyed it even it had a shit ton of comic booky elements.

What I want is for someone to point out how exactly the writing tries to appeal to its readers and what that kind of writing is. This guy here did an excellent job at elaborating part of what bothers me with comic books, the style over substance approach

>"comic booky"
You complaing that a comic book is "comic booky"?

Okay, you jaded sybarics, why don't you tell us what comics meet your lofty standards?

By "comic booky" I mean it has elements of the cheap style of writing that's common in comic books that I was talking about earlier (OP here).

I guess it's a really crappy word to use, it's just how I label it in my mind.

He was using a colloquialism. Sup Forums voices a similar dissatisfaction whenever throwaway crossover events rear their head and get in the way of individual stories. Though usually then it's composed from expletives rather than expressions.
Either way, from what I've seen over the years, familiarity with what to come to expect does not make it any less frustrating.

I think you're complaining just about the tropes of cape genre? It's common in most genre novels as well.

The thing is that I haven't even read that many cape comics. I've tried to but they can never keep my interest.

I think you're right, but I just don't want to put down an entire style of comics. I have a friend who basically insists that I have only been exposed to bad cape comics.

That being said, if the tropes are so heavily done how do you even enjoy cape comics? And beyond that the point of this thread was that I wanted to see what these tropes are exactly. I didn't want to be biased against cape comics out of some sort of hipster elitism

The difference is the quality of writing. Marvel/dc writers are not required to have any. They just need to have profits even if it means making cap a hydra agent or something. shit writing basically. Not hard for a decent writer like Moore to pass for Shakespeare compared to that.

I think it also has a lot to do with the sheer volume of the big 2.
As in, at this point, you kind of have to come up with absurd/hackneyed ideas to keep interest, when there's already literal thousands of issues that are entertaining enough that you'd pretty much never need to buy a new comic, you want to bring at least something new. The problem then is that those ideas are hackneyed, so they don't stick (either the writer himself realizes they're shit or the next guy does) and end up looking even more hackneyed because of that.
Although I guess it's no better when they stick.

I'd say it also comes from the (now sorta defunct) episodic format of cape comics, where each issue needed to have something new and potentially great to grab readers. Now you don't exactly have this, since decompression means you don't have a full story in one issue, but they kept the same reasoning for runs and especially events.

At this point you might aswell pretend that this is all just fanfiction, because most of those stories should have ended a while back.

>I finished A Court of Owls and while I enjoyed it
Wait, how is that possible? It's not even bad enough to be entertaining. It's just boring and mediocre.
>inb4 contrarian

Ah ok ok. I get what you mean.
Recently in the storytime of Nova the issue n.28 interrupted the storyline to host a tie in of a cosmic event called "black vortex" It didn't make sense and wasn't tie to anything before but it happend. That's also a reason why Vision is good. Even if it has some reference to the current ongoing world in the marvel universe, it's pretty much it's own thing.

There are a few gems in cape comics, and a few where the tropes are overplayed for comedic effect, or deconstruction and reconstruction of those tropes, but most people just read them as entertainment. It's just like watching an action flick, cartoons or pro wrestling.

This sounds about right. I've been reading a lot of Valiant lately and it has a completely different feel from Big 2 stuff because the plot developments and twists feel natural and believable. Marvel and DC exhausted the believable plots that would naturally arise from their core characters years ago and now have to resort to contrivances.

It's possible that the thing you're complaining about might not actually be a thing at all. People tend to build up strangely complex ideas in their mind about how certain things are, and their thought patterns eventually start drifting back to those preconceived assumptions when they see enough of the "signs".

This especially tends to happen to things that people hate, because they feel some satisfaction from hating them in as many ways as possible, but also want to belittle them and have a "detached" attitude, which results in paying little attention to the individual things they're judging. In this way, people can end up thinking of all of those things as examples of just one specific concept, when the concept they mean is in fact a cluster of largely unrelated concepts held together only by association.

Literally pleb: the opinion

It may surprise you the extent to which you're actually responding to cartooning as well as the writing. A comic like Watchmen uses a 9 panel grid and that effects the way you obtain information, the 21st you read it.

Meanwhile, storytelling standards in big two comics have been poor for a few decades. There's really never a grid anymore and panel size varies wildly with little rhyme or reason.

The decompression is what really gets me. Most writers aren't even talented enough to utilize it effectively or enjoyably and it usually winds up feeling like a fucking drag.

I can't tell you how much it sucks to walk in the comic shop, fork over 3.99 each for a handful of comics, read them all in the span of one sitting, and find out that nothing really happened in any of them. So I usually trade-wait, which leads to a whole 'nother set of problems with the industry and how they count sales. It's all really fucked.

Yeah, older comics frequently have a goofy, over-the-top approach to their writing but dammit you can generally pick up any issue and enjoy it somewhat without being totally lost, confused, or bored. 22 pages apparently isn't enough for the knuckleheads writing comics today.

>The decompression is what really gets me. Most writers aren't even talented enough to utilize it effectively or enjoyably and it usually winds up feeling like a fucking drag.
That's a good way to put it, there's nothing inherently wrong with decompression, when it's done for the purpose of storytelling (or even better imo, decompressing action) it can be great, but as is it's mostly used to pad the length of stories that could have been told in a couple of issues. So it's a lot of empty Bendis-like dialogues that don't move anything forward (and are a great spot for copy-pasting panels), and it feels like an episode in the middle of a season of a dramatic TV show, where you already know where they are going but they keep shoving in semi-related sideplots to get to 13 episodes.

I really don't buy a lot of comics, and when I do it's usually (much) older stuff, so I don't really have the voice of a consumer here, just a reader, but yeah comics are a pricey hobby given the little entertainement return on investment.