Why are Superman comic so hard to read?

Why are Superman comic so hard to read?
It seens like every comic book I read requires previous superman knowledge, and the timeline is completly broken, filled with multidimensions, a ton of different superman timelines.

why are you such an autist?

just read it and enjoy it

or don't

>It seens like every comic book I read requires previous knowledge
This literally the Lanterns books for me.

Johns run was extremely hard to follow and I needed to use Google to understand what the heck is going.

You've discovered the main problem with modern day superhero comics. They're too complicated. First issue is all the timeline shit. Nobody except for 400 pound neckbeards give a fuck about Earth 1 vs. Earth 32 Superman or Wolverine. Most people just want a solid plot with a beginning, middle, and end. Second issue is the non-stop reboots that happen. Why get into a comic series when it's going to be erased from the canon after 2 months and rebooted? Third issue is requiring the readers to have such extensive knowledge of other comics. If I want to read just a Superman comic series I shouldn't have to buy 280 other DC comic series and Justice League shit to know exactly what is going on. An occasional crossover is fine, but the comics these days are nothing except for crossovers. There's almost no capeshit that doesn't require doing homework to understand.

Just stop being a characterfag and your problem will be solved.

Because Superman editorial has been shit since three decades. Just read out of continuity or pre crisis Superman for quality Superman stories.

Do you realize that you're contradicting yourself?

You just said that one of the problems is requiring the readers to have such extensive knowledge of other comics. But you said before that that reboots are bad thing.

They do reboots because of people like you who don't like never ending storylines.

Lol I bet you read this on cracked.com or something. Go back to wherever you came from

Your pic related is Morrison's Action Comics, which completely goes against your post

After the Rebirth issues it's basically entirely self-contained

I love when people who don't read comics write big missives about "the problem" with comics like they have any clue what they're talking about.

Well which ones have you TRIED to read?
This. The only failing of the American comics industry is a lack of advertising and distribution.
The stories are more-or-less OK.

it's almost like they're sequential stories that lead into one another.

You want one-offs that have no continuity? Get a bunch of silver age comics, where the stories are made up and the plots don't matter.

No, it doesn't. After the first arc with the origin story and Brainiac and so on, it has that fucked-up arc with Mxyzptlk

>Most people just want a solid plot with a beginning, middle, and end.

A lot of books are entirely based around this and there are plenty of stories that are self contained. There are also others that have all the "timeline shit", but have other aspects to the story that still make it enjoyable. If you don't want to dive into references to other things, don't.

>Second issue is the non-stop reboots that happen.

Hasn't DC only rebooted twice in their entire history? Hardly "non-stop". As far as I know Marvel has never rebooted.

>after 2 months

Even as a blatant exaggeration this smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

>I shouldn't have to buy
>buying comics

Lol

>An occasional crossover is fine, but the comics these days are nothing except for crossovers.

I kinda agree with this one, most crossovers are retarded and unnecessary.

>There's almost no capeshit that doesn't require doing homework to understand.

Nah.

Nothing he said contradicts itself. The comics industry creates a problem and then tries to solve it with something that doesn't help.

Name five arcs in any longrunning comic series from the Big 2 that require at least five other unrelated arcs to be read in order for the plot to be understood.

Arcs aren't even the problem. Something just happens in the comic and you have no idea what is going on all of the sudden. You were supposed to read a barely related comic two years ago that introduces this character or event. You're just left there wondering if the comic is just being vague and is going to explain things to you later or if there's some backstory the writer expects everybody to already know.

you're an autist who has reda comic books his entire life so you don't understand how it feels for a newbie

there's a lot of things that comic nerds take for granted when they read their stories, mostly characters and some previous events too.

Many people who heard of batman don't even know who robin is or what's his origin story, let alone that there's more of them and what happened to each of them and how they are related to certain villains and so on.

I wanted to start reading Batman and Detective comics from the new 52 reboot, and they just threw you in the middle of everything, Batman is already old and experienced and you're just supposed to know most of his villains and shit. It took what, 20/30 issues until they did the origin story arc of batman

This is true, Nu52 wasn't a real reboot for the most part. It was just rearranging factoids about characters for reasons readers didn't like.

>why is superman hard to read?

because you're becoming an adult and realizing there's better shit you could be reading

Like indie comics written by the guys who write cape comics amirite?

>Something just happens in the comic and you have no idea what is going on all of the sudden.

Like what?

>you're an autist who has reda comic books his entire life so you don't understand how it feels for a newbie

I started reading comics seriously like two years ago, I'm a 21 year old college student with not a ton of time on his hands who hasn't even read that much, but not much in comics confuses me. Stop assuming, just because I'm posting on Sup Forums doesn't mean I'm a thirty year old three hundred pound neckbeard who spends every free hour poring over forty year old comic books.

>Many people who heard of batman don't even know who robin is

Nigga everyone and their fucking mom knows who Robin is.

> let alone that there's more of them and what happened to each of them

You're dead on for this, but everyone I talk to who are interested in comics have those basic questions answered in like three minutes, because they have functioning brains and the ability to grasp simple facts quickly.
>So do you like Batman more or Robin?
>Actually there's more than one Robin.
>Really?
>Yeah there's four, well at least four major ones in the main continuity. First one was Dick Grayson, he grew up and became Nightwing. Second one was Jason Todd, he was killed by the Joker, was resurrected, and became an anti-hero called the Red Hood. Third is Tim Drake, who became the Red Robin. Fourth is Damian Wayne, who is Batman's son and is the current Robin.
>Oh okay cool.

I've had that real conversation like four or five times now. That's all you need to grasp anything in modern Batman stories really.

>and they just threw you in the middle of everything, Batman is already old and experienced and you're just supposed to know most of his villains and shit.

Were you ever missing crucial information that made the plot unintelligible? Give an example, because my suspicion is you weren't. Sounds like you're just frustrated that there is a long history to discover.

Forgot to quote the second guy in this post

Like when the White Rabbit shows up and you have no idea if she's some recycled character or something new. The comic already has five years of history that it has spend exactly two issues telling you very little about. Most of those two issues are just reestablishing what is essentially old canon.

It leaves the wrong impression.

>Like when the White Rabbit shows up and you have no idea if she's some recycled character or something new.

Why do you need to know? If you're someone who just reads stuff for a quick and dirty plot, fine. You get what you want. It's not like you ever need to know a comic's history to understand the plot, or you hardly ever do. Most arcs I read are pretty self contained. At worst, the runs are self contained. I can't think of a single run that was only intelligible if you read a previous run.

Again, it seems like you're frustrated because you want to know all the history but you don't want to do the actual work that goes into knowing it. So you complain about being "confused" when really the plot isn't confusing, what you're actually saying is "I can't understand every minute detail of this book and that frustrates me". Well those minute details aren't aimed at you, they're aimed at longtime fans who actually, you know, read fucking comics. If you want to partake in that experience, become one.

>Why do you need to know?

I didn't even read the rest of your post after this.

It's called delivery. Taking care of your reader while they are reading your product. If your reader stops, thinks "oh shit there's something I might be missing" for reasons that you don't actually intend, then you have failed in your delivery.

When this shit pops up because of a near industry wide habit, then it's not even just the writer that has made the mistake.

It is, no matter what, not the reader's fault for thinking the obvious. You need to willfully overcome this question to continue reading. It doesn't matter how minor (and inevitably there will be a situation where it's not minor).

>Sounds like you're just frustrated that there is a long history to discover.

That's the entire point that OP made

> It seens like every comic book I read requires previous superman knowledge, and the timeline is completly broken, filled with multidimensions, a ton of different superman timelines.


Big Two Capeshit doesn't have a coherent chain of events and coherent storytelling. It throws you in the middle of the story and it's like "Oh yeah btw, there's like 4 Robins but they all grew up and shit" and a newbie is like "wait, wat" and then they gloss over it. Wait, who is supergirl? Wait, she was a cripple and now she isn't, what?

And not just that, but it's not addressed in a compact manner across the stories.


Compare with other stuff, like Watchmen or the first part of Invincible, or Hellboy, whatever. It may throw you in the middle of a story, but it takes time to explain character relationships, build up overarching plots, give you origin details for characters at the right time, fit in a coherent format.

Or even better example is Ultimate Spider-man and the ultimate universe before it gone to shit. Or the Marvel netflix shows. They aren't just randomly throwing shit in there, they take time to build up the villains and tell you the origin stories of Luke and Matt and Jessica, and how do they tie with the villains and shit.

Whereas big two comics, they just expect you to be an encyclopedia of trivia about the superhero universes.

>Wait, who is supergirl?
I meant batgirl. Then I found out there were like 3 of them bitches lol

>I didn't even read the rest of your post after this.

Ironically enough, this an example of your problem.

>If your reader stops, thinks "oh shit there's something I might be missing"

This is too vague to be an actual problem. In tons of plots, there are "things the reader misses". A lot of plots start out with in media res, the point of that technique partially being to make the reader curious about the stuff he DOESN'T know. It's not a writer's job to spoonfeed you every little detail about everything so you never get uncomfortable about what you might now know and so you never have to think. It's the writer's job to create an engaging story. To suggest that its the writer's fault to not cater to the whims of the reader rather than the reader's fault for not approaching the work with the right attitude is idiotic. It suggests that Picasso is a bad artist because millions of idiots think the point of visual art is to look realistic. I would actually say that good work does the OPPOSITE of cater to you, rather, it challenges you to step your shit up and climb to its level instead of the reverse.

You said earlier that the issue was that comics are so confusing that they're too difficult to understand. You haven't given a single example of that claim, instead you backtracked to saying that the feeling of not knowing something is "off putting". Who cares what you're off-put by. Can you understand the story or not?

>This is too vague to be an actual problem.

I stopped reading here, too. I don't care what rationalizations you come up with, I already know you aren't going to answer the complaint directly.

Basically he's trying to argue that comic books are 2deep4u rather than a fucking incoherent mess

He's a dumbass

>coherent chain of events and coherent storytelling

Oh?

>and then they gloss over it.

Yeah, because its not particularly important to the plot they are about to relate. You don't need to know anymore than you're told for Morrison's run on Batman for events to make sense, for example. Were Dick's parents killed by Tony Zucco? Does it fucking matter, for Morrion's plot? Is there ever a point where you put the book down and think "man, there is some crucial information that I'm missing in order to even understand this. It would make much more sense if I knew that this dude Tony killed Dick's parents." No, because the plot doesn't require it.

Also, the plot isn't mean to encapsulate an entire character. If you realize that you don't know everything about Batman after reading one comic book, good. That's how you should feel. If you wanna know more, read more. This shit isn't hard. But the story told was got across regardless of your knowledge.

Fuck, I was watching random episodes of BTAS and Justice League when I was a kid and I understood the pathos and plotlines of the story just fine without knowing everything about all the characters.

>Or even better example is Ultimate Spider-man

And if you picked up that at issue 120, you'd probably be equally whiney about shit that doesn't directly relate to the plot. Whereas when I was younger, I snagged USM Volume 6 right off the shelf and enjoyed the story without knowing much else, because everything that was important to the plot was either directly explained to me or was easily understood by inference. Did I need to know all about Norman and Harry? No, this book isn't about them.

>Whereas big two comics, they just expect you to be an encyclopedia of trivia about the superhero universes.

Again, name five-ten example where you were missing something you needed to understand a plot point. If you think five-ten is a ridiculous amount, well you're the one saying this is an industry wide problem.

The hero of the book sees police cars heading somewhere with their sirens running, and follows to find a bank is being robbed by a guy in a walrus suit.

How does it help the story to point out that the robber used to be a cab driver? He's not the focus, he's just there to provide a bit of conflict. The only thing a reader needs to know is he's stronger and tougher than a normal person.

The answer to 'wait who's this guy' is usually 'he doesn't matter'. Yes, he's shown up before, and there are probably 'see issue whatever' editor boxes to point that out - but it's completely irrelevant to what you're currently reading.

Homie if you aren't going to read my posts then that's fine, but why even respond lol

That's not even my argument. It's probably just what you expected me to argue and you just top-down processed what I was saying to conform to your expectations of some snobby patrician dude

Fuck, someone else gets it. Thank you.

>I read enough to see you don't agree with me and then ignore the rest because you're wrong

Fucking Americans these days, seriously.

That's not what anyone is talking about and I've made that clear. When the comic gives the wrong impression, that there is something that might be important and you're just supposed to roll with it if you don't know, and that impression might not even be the case, you just don't know, then there is a problem with the delivery.

I'm responding to let you know when you fucked up. "This is too vague to be an actual problem." Did you actually read what you typed before posting? Straight Sup Forums or Sup Forums post incoming.

Disagreement is obvious, his nonchalant ignoring the point in favor of his own even moreso.

>Did you actually read what you typed before posting?

Hilariously ironic/hypocritical. Either you're a troll, or your logic is really that bad. I really hope its the first one. You can have last word points, I'm pretty done with you.

Ahh, you're one of those sperglords who think storytelling is all about the "plot".

> Yeah, because its not particularly important to the plot they are about to relate. You don't need to know anymore than you're told for Morrison's run on Batman for events to make sense, for example. Were Dick's parents killed by Tony Zucco? Does it fucking matter, for Morrion's plot? Is there ever a point where you put the book down and think "man, there is some crucial information that I'm missing in order to even understand this. It would make much more sense if I knew that this dude Tony killed Dick's parents." No, because the plot doesn't require it.


But "the plot" requires you to know who the fuck is Ra's Al Ghul and Talia and why did Bruce have a kid with him. Or who the fuck the "International Club of Heroes" are, or the manbats. Or all the characters in the final crisis and the previous crisis events. Like who the fuck is darkseid, why is he a big deal? What's this multidimensional crap? Why is batman shooting darkseid a big deal? What the fuck is a bat-mite?

This isn't about spoonfeeding you details about everything. This is about providing context to everything, an overarching coherent arc. This is about comic books not having a bajillion crossovers, and reboots and restarts, and dead characters coming back, and legacy charcters but not really, and all the massive inconsistency.


Compare with A Killing Joke for example. You just need to know about Batman, and about Comissioner Gordon. His daughter gets shot by the Joker, and Batman goes after the Joker and there's a detailed origin story for the Joker and for his motives to be a manic. Excellent self-contained story. It doesn't have villains coming out of nowhere and fighting batman and you're supposed to know who they are, like in Batman Hush for example.


You've been reading so much capeshit you forgot how a good story is supposed to be.

Oh thank god. You might wanna segue over to a dictionary and look up what irony and hypocrisy are since you've got the time now.

>Ahh, you're one of those sperglords who think storytelling is all about the "plot".

I don't hold that view. Seems like another in a long list of assumptions.

>But "the plot" requires you to know who the fuck is Ra's Al Ghul and Talia and why did Bruce have a kid with him.

No it doesn't.

>Or who the fuck the "International Club of Heroes"

Nope. I had no idea who they were when I read the run. Understood it just fine.

>or the manbats.

Just because shit shows up doesn't mean all the juicy details are important to the plot. It's "important to the plot" when the plot cannot be understood without the information. Knowing that Damian is Bruce's son, for example, is important to the plot. Knowing Talia's character is not.

>Like who the fuck is darkseid, why is he a big deal? What's this multidimensional crap? Why is batman shooting darkseid a big deal? What the fuck is a bat-mite?

I knew like none of this shit when I first read the run, I understood the plot and progression of events fine including the emotional resonance. These other things didn't confuse me, they made me curious and I quickly picked up other works to learn about them. But it's not like I all of sudden was like "oh, I never knew how to read Batman and Son until now, now that I've read that story where Talia and Bruce banged, the plot suddenly makes sense!"

>Compare with A Killing Joke for example.

Who's that weird dude with half his face all crazy in his cell at the beginning? Who are all those characters that Batman looks at in that picture? Are they important? Who pumps the Batmobile's tires?

Examples of the same kind unimportant questions that you've asked about Morrison's run.

>You've been reading so much capeshit you forgot how a good story is supposed to be.

Another assumption. I read a lot of shit beyond capeshit, I read a lot of contemporary literature. I'm an English/Physics major, so I read a shitload of short stories and novels. Comics are a hobby.

So, your entire argument is:

1. I don't know shit about what I'm reading it
2. I'm mentally stunted and I enjoy what I'm reading, even if it means nothing to me

Okay, I guess. Good for you.

Doesn't mean the storytelling in DC and Marvel comic books is any less shit. Nothing to do with elitism, read comics from valiant like x-o manowar and harbinger to see the difference. Still superhero comic books, but everything makes sense and is built up in a coherent way. You don't need to read obscure shit from the 90s to get the plot, you just start at issue 1 and you follow the reading order. Nothing is simplified and spoonfed, it just follows basic requirements for quality storytelling.

You're comparing pictures of characters to actual characters in a story that affect the story.

If you're getting the impression you're missing something any time somebody you haven't seen before shows up, that's on you.

Before you even picked up the book, you convinced yourself it would have a lot of references to earlier works, because that's apparently what defines comics to you - tons of backstory.

If a bit of continuity matters, it will be recapped in the current story.

But you prove yourself wrong. You said that hush was confusing because villains show up out of nowhere and it doesnt provide any context to these villains like whats there relationship to batman etc. Yet for hush you dont need to know any of this to understand the comic, all you have to know is that they are villains and they try to kill batman and the fact that you know these characters are villains that means you understood what there purpose was to the overarching story.
Take batman knightfall for example. In the story a prison blows up and all these bad people escape including zsasz. When i read it i didnt know who this guy was but the book provides the context by stating that he is a villain and that is why batman needs to capture him. Furthermore it shows this by having him do bad things like kill people tbus showing why he needs to be put away. Comics are really not that hard to understand and they are mostly written for all ages.

>So, your entire argument is:

>1. I don't know shit about what I'm reading it
>2. I'm mentally stunted and I enjoy what I'm reading, even if it means nothing to me

To share a little secret with you: no that isn't my argument.

>Nothing to do with elitism, read comics from valiant

Jesus Christ.

I picked an example where I explicitly said there's only two issues before the confusion and you still make a bad assumption.

Only one of my examples is a picture. And my entire point is that the basis of whether something should be considered important to the plot or not is whether or not some kind of emotional payoff or logical progression within the story depends on it, instead of anons saying "no this isn't important but this is". Ra's Al Ghul 's character, for example, isn't important to the progression or emotional payoff of Batman and Son.

>Yet for hush you dont need to know any of this to understand the comic, all you have to know is that they are villains and they try to kill batman and the fact that you know these characters are villains that means you understood what there purpose was to the overarching story.

Exactly. This line perfectly describes what I've been trying to say.

>Only one of my examples is a picture.

Your other example is a character who everybody knows is meaningless and no, nobody cares. That's an even weaker point.

>And my entire point is that the basis of whether something should be considered important to the plot or not is whether or not some kind of emotional payoff or logical progression within the story depends on it

And you ignore that when he brings that up. Only you get to decide when that's relevant.

As another example, everything you need to know about the International Club of Heroes that you need to know for the arc in Morrison's run is directly explained to you through flashbacks. You learn how and why they were founded, what their relationship is to Batman, how the Club views Batman as a whole and how individual heroes in the Club view Batman, how the Club views the Justice League, etc.

To this day I don't know what the Club is beyond Morrison's run, and I don't particularly care, and yet still that arc's story was driven home.

>And you ignore that when he brings that up. Only you get to decide when that's relevant.

I'm not the only one who gets to decide, I'm just one of the few who's bothered to explain why something is important or not. The other dude didn't explain why knowing about Darkseid is important or not, he just said it was. If you want to put forward an example of something, then explain why it was important to the plot to know it. That's how discussion is done, in the real world no one rolls over when you say shit and then don't support it.

>I'm not the only one who gets to decide

So far you have been emphatic on that point.

You still have not addressed the White Rabbit, or point about delivery, you've just danced around it while claiming an intellectual high ground about "real arguments".

Because those are good points, are as specific as necessary, and it would be inconvenient to your ego if all that stood.

>overarching coherent arc

To continue what I'm saying is this: if you want to say that comic books don't provide the information needed for a "coherent arc", you need to support that claim by explaining why certain missing pieces of information make the arc incoherent. If the arc is still coherent despite the missing information, then guess what, you're wrong. That's how logic is done, its not by repeatedly saying you're right with no evidence. I've been asking you for evidence of your claim this whole time and so far you've given nothing.

>You still have not addressed the White Rabbit, or point about delivery,

I literally addressed both of those by saying that knowing who the White Rabbit was is not important to your logical progression of events for the plot. Your claim that I haven't addressed them is false, again, you just repeat yourself with no evidence.

What I'm saying is: Explain why the plot is incoherent because you don't know who White Rabbit is.
>point about delivery

I addressed that here:

If you don't think I addressed it adequately, then use your logical skills and explain in which areas I failed and why instead of just repeating shit without going deeper into it.

>nd it would be inconvenient to your ego if all that stood.

nigga this is an anonymous website. When I either get bored of doing this or get proved/disproved in what I'm saying I'll sign off and go back to studying diffy q. I don't give a shit about my ego here because my ego isn't at stake. You probably are repeatedly telling yourself I'm an idiot, and I don't give a shit because you have no idea who I am. That's the whole point of Sup Forums.

Also, all of your "well that's just what YOU say" stuff can be turned right back on you, you're aware of that right? Those are good points? Says who, says you? That's why its important to support what you're saying with logic.

Address my point already or actually follow through on your promise to shut up.

FYI: the "Batmen of Many Nations" was one of those throw-away ideas in a single silver-age comic, much the same way Morrison grabbed "Dr.Hurt" from hokey silver-age concept obscurity and turned him into a real threat, the Batmen club sorta didn't actually exist before this Morrison retcon.

>So far you have been emphatic on that point.

Also, everyone thinks they're right in an argument, what is this even supposed to say? You also think you are correct. I've actually been more open-minded than you on having read your posts, whereas I'm pretty sure you're the dude who didn't read mine and thought for some reason we could still engage in an argument when you had your hands over your ears.

Hint: The reason why I stopped replying to wasn't because I was offended or butthurt. Again, you're a faceless anonymous dude, I don't give a shit about you and I don't give a shit about what you think. What is there to be butthurt about? I stopped responding to you because you were just saying "no u" and I got bored and decided it wasn't worth my time to try to write posts for a person who wouldn't read them.

Nigga I honestly think you're projecting, maybe you give too much of a shit about what random jerk-offs on a website think and you put too much skin in the game when it comes to your ego so you assume that I must do so as well.

For example, right now I'm probably coming off as a tryhard by explaining all this shit, but I can't bring myself to care, because I'm anonymous. However I "seem" to other posters doesn't matter at all, why give a shit about it?

That's actually pretty dope, where was Dr. Hurt mentioned in silver age?

>I literally addressed both of those by saying that knowing who the White Rabbit was is not important to your logical progression of events for the plot

Except that it was, because I had to stop and think if that character existed before. She's got super powers, at the very least it's relevant to know what those are. It's also an arc that crosses over with several characters, which gives the impression that other comics are involved. Again, delivery. There's a time and a place for misinformation or confusion in story telling. It just being incidental is a bad thing, not by design, roughly equivalent to a comic's art being so bad people can't tell what is going on in each panel without staring at it for a minute.

I've never said "incoherent", don't give advice on how to debate if you can't do it right yourself.

>nigga this is an anonymous website

And your ego is still so shaky in this conversation.

btw do people actually call it diffy q now?

I already addressed your points, read my posts. Specifically I re-addressed them here:

Seems a little weird to me to not read posts and then complain about not seeing your points addressed, but to each their own I guess

> or actually follow through on your promise to shut up.

I did "shut up", you're the one who chose to re-engage with me lol. If you don't want to argue it's a simple as not posting, bro. This is a simple game with simple rules.

>because I had to stop and think if that character existed before.

I don't know if you understand what "logical progression of events" means. Did the next thing that happened not make any sense to you because you didn't know who Rabbit was?

>t the very least it's relevant to know what those are

Not important to logical progression of events.

>It's also an arc that crosses over with several characters, which gives the impression that other comics are involved.

Gives the impression to you.

>There's a time and a place for misinformation or confusion in story telling

Homeboy if you're the only one getting confused, maybe ask if you're the problem and not the comic?

>I've never said "incoherent", don't give advice on how to debate if you can't do it right yourself.

Yeah that might be my bad, I made the assumption that you and the other dude had the same argument which was probably a mistake. I apologize for that.

From now on logical progression is on the table for you, because when I said its not important to your logical progression of events for the plot, you responded with:

>Except that it was

For "delivery", seems like a pretty subjective thing that you're experiencing and other anons are not. Idk what to tell you. I don't personally freak out when characters who I don't know pop up in a story, instead I keep reading to see what they do.

>btw do people actually call it diffy q now?

Yeah, at least around my campus they do

I read that post, and it did not address my point.

Like at all, you aren't even talking to me, you're talking to some other guy. I have no idea how that hasn't gotten to you. You might even be under the impression that your overall argument is sufficient to address my point, but it isn't.

Delivery involves technique. Pacing, structure, tone. You keep screaming that, at the end of the arc, the total logical situation has been fleshed out enough that any significant holes should be filled. This has nothing to do with delivery. Delivery involves the story as it is actually happening, bit by bit, in order, to the reader. You will not find a critique of writing that ignores the problems a story has that might be cleared up by the end unless this confusion is by design.

And I don't know what to tell you about the White Rabbit. There were several threads on Sup Forums of pure confusion about who she was, with an immediate response being to ask about other books that might have more on her.

As an example, when Green Arrow popped up in Dark Knight Returns I didn't go "who is this guy, do I need to know something about him, man I don't know if I need to know something this worries me, fuck" instead I was like "who's this guy? let's read and find out" and everything that I needed to know about Green Arrow to understand how he fit into Dark Knight Returns was explained to me by Dark Knight Returns itself. He's an incredibly skilled archer, seems to have lost his arm, he has connections with Bats, oh turns out he was a vigilante too, he's willing to help Bats with his plan, etc.

I didn't need to know, for example, that Green Arrow had a sidekick named Roy Harper who was called Speedy and then later Arsenal. That shit is true and an important part of GA's history but it never factors into whether or not I can understand the comic.

Also, yeah I didn't know who GA was when I first read DKR. It's hilarious I know.

>You might even be under the impression that your overall argument is sufficient to address my point, but it isn't.

That was pretty much impression, I'll read on to see if you explain why it isn't.

>Delivery involves the story as it is actually happening, bit by bit, in order, to the reader. You will not find a critique of writing that ignores the problems a story has that might be cleared up by the end unless this confusion is by design.

Yeah, my point is sometimes this confusion is justified and sometimes it isn't, by the reader. if the reader says:

"All of a sudden I don't even know what is happening! Why did this character make this choice? Doesn't seem consistent!"

Then yeah, something is off. If they say:

"I wonder if I need to know more about this character! Maybe I do! Maybe I wasn't told enough!"

That's you psyching yourself out. I know you didn't see this while typing your post, but look at my post on GA:

For an example of what I'm trying to say. Gotta give the story a chance to cover its bases.

Also, you've told me what delivery INVOLVES. But what IS IT? According to you, that is. Understanding exactly what you mean will help me engage properly with your argument.

>There were several threads on Sup Forums of pure confusion about who she wa

Was it confusion, or curiousity? In any case, the ad populum argument is a bad one and I regret making it.

Also, thanks for reading my post and responding to my argument. I'm willing to hear you out and change my mind if you provide convincing evidence.

I am not going to write a book about what good delivery entails on Sup Forums. That's enough of that.

I'm getting the idea that you haven't actually read the book White Rabbit is in.

>I am not going to write a book about what good delivery entails on Sup Forums. That's enough of that.

I'm not asking for a book, but you haven't even taken a stab at defining it. I need to know what you think it means before I can engage with it. Generally, people use it to mean "how the writer handles something", but that's a little vague and I get the sense that you are meaning something more specific.

>I'm getting the idea that you haven't actually read the book White Rabbit is in.

Definitely have not.

Part of your initial claim, though, was that it's an industry wide problem. My claim is that it's not. I asked for a number of examples because if its industry wide you should have a lot of examples, because otherwise, what are you basing that its industry wide off of?

Then engage with it with what has been presented. I stopped reading a book for a minute because a character being presented was too "meta" and the intended effect was lost.

Her initial reveal was even a full page panel, iirc. In retrospect, this was because she's a half-naked girl and the best way to show that off is with a full page. Batman sometimes goes back to his pulp roots. But instead it looked like the reader was supposed to know her. She didn't have an introduction. You just see her and then one of her superpowers. ...so we're supposed to know her, right? The comic then starts referencing several characters, Bane, Two-face, Joker, Deathstroke, Clayface, others. There's an impression of some kind of gang of bad guys that was setup in some other comic, which is something comics do all the time. The mystery is whether she is aligned with them or not, there's not much laid out as to who she is until the last two pages of the arc.

Point is, she is given just as much introduction as Two-face, even though this was both of their first appearance in Nu52. This would have been a good idea if it wasn't her first appearance period. My only reason to think she wasn't an established character was that I had never heard of her before, which raised more questions as to why they would bother using someone who would have had to have been that obscure.

I shouldn't be thinking of any of this, but it's the only logical thing to do. The writer assumed his introduction was sufficient because in most media it would have been, but not for comics, because comics habitually make references, crossovers, shared universe, etc the norm (at least the big 2 do)

>I shouldn't be thinking of any of this, but it's the only logical thing to do. The writer assumed his introduction was sufficient because in most media it would have been, but not for comics, because comics habitually make references, crossovers, shared universe, etc the norm (at least the big 2 do)

That's kind of a solid argument though. Basically what he's saying is that reader assumption is what upsets them about the story rather than the intrinsic nature of the story.

For example, from those "full page reveals" I usually think "this seems like an important player, lets see what they do next" the story sets up a contract with the reader through the delivery (how I use it) by signaling to them who is important, what to pay attention to, etc. It's the assumption of the reader, not necessarily justified, that they have to know something beforehand rather than just saying "okay, guess this character is important to the plot". It's hard to fault the writer for that especially considering that unneeded explanation that doesn't necessarily make the plot more understandable would bog down some readers. For example. I personally hate it when characters explain what they should already know and when comics are overly "spoon-feedy". That's obviously just one man's opinion on delivery, but my point is that its hard to say delivery is an objective flaw when by definition you can't cater to everyone at once. Things like plot holes, coherence, tone consistency, etc. are much more objective things.

Also, what is White Rabbit in? I've read all of Batman/Detective Comics in the Nu52, did I forget about her?

>There's an impression of some kind of gang of bad guys that was setup in some other comic, which is something comics do all the time.

Yeah I think this is a fair critique. I personally hate all the forced crossover shit that happens in comics. I think if there are links to other books it should serve the story first and serve the other book or the sales secon

She if a creation of Jaina Hudson, who has some kind of physic powers or some shit. She splits off from Jaina to do supervillain stuff while Jaina stays safe at home, no one the wiser.

Crossovers are always shitty. In terms of quality, they are a problem, but are far from confusing. Just stop being a zombie and read whatever you enjoy instead of slaving to a character. One big two comic I'm enjoying is Deathstroke. It has a lot of references to Wolfman's run, but as someone who hasn't read it, I got no problem in understanding it.

Yeah I don't remember any of this. Maybe I skipped a run or something.

Anyway it seems like our debate is winding down so I'm probably gonna leave the thread