04-28-2013, 10:26 AM
Scorp, you're right there is no separating the two things...writing and art are what make up the medium, which is exactly why I don't think one necessarily trumps the other. I mean look at Moebius's Arzach: almost no story, no dialogue, but the art design was so amazing that it became a classic and influenced the entire industry.
It's basically a continuum that you plonk your work in. Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' has a great way of thinking about the continuum. I really enjoyed it and it made me think differently about the possibilities of the medium.
Yes I completely agree that story is what keeps people interested and invested and coming back for more, but the art is what viscerally attracts you and draws you in, in the first instance. It is the combination of beauty and psychology, of insight and representation which is what I love about the medium. The possibilities for unique expression and storytelling are huge compared to other mediums. I don't believe it gets experimented with and tapped into as much as it could be. As with all commercially driven enterprise things can become formulaic and derivative quite quickly.
There just seems to be so much mostly badly drawn or "nicely drawn enough" anime-influenced style to a lot of web comics, and it kinda turns me off the story (perhaps unjustifiably). I love manga. The Japanese stuff. The best examples of black and white art in the genre that I've seen come from Manga. The stories and ideas (especially in the sci fi realm) tend to be pretty rad in manga compared to most things I've seen in western comics. The French seem to have avoided this though, they definitely have their own unique thing going there.
I don't spend a lot of time reading webcomics so I'm not speaking from any real experience but from what I've seen it seems that every other pre-teen who has artistic tendencies is writing a manga or anime influenced webcomic/graphic novel. The "genre" seems heavily overrepresented by fairly immature ideas and amateurish artwork which is not something I have really wanted to sift through to find the gems. Also by it's very nature of having to get a page out every week the art is generally what has to suffer, and this means there are very few webcomics that are actually very appealing from the art side of the continuum. Most of the good webcomics I've got into occasionally tend to have their own very unique art style which are mostly very very simple to fit the schedule. I haven't come across an anime themed one that I liked,yet.
I guess personally at the moment I am leaning more towards the experimental side of things than the "write a series, get it published/serialized" kinda approach myself. Not saying that's a bad thing by any means, but not what gets me excited right now. I'm more interested in the (relatively) quick exploration of both style and story. I like the idea of dipping into lots of different worlds, than being forced into one world for a huge period of time. It's the balance between staying fresh and stagnation that I think about on that front. I like intense amounts of focus, and then once I've explored the interesting themes and got what I wanted from it, moving on to something new. In a way I don't care about the reader at all...I'm telling the story to myself really: a very selfish way of looking at it...haha. As long as I enjoy it while I'm creating it, if it becomes a cool thing that people enjoy afterwards, well then, that's a huge bonus! :D
In terms of recommending an example of a great black and white only artwork combined with some really great story arcs and characters, I'd have to say 'Cerebus' is still a leading example. It was the first TPB I read and it still stands out for me from what I've read; Before Dave Sims got perhaps a bit too into spouting his own (arguably mysogynistic) political ideologies anyway. A must read if you have the chance. The manga ones I used to read ages ago, so I can't remember the names of most of them, but yeah it's always the Japanese ones that ring true for me...the others seem like poor copies that don't really have anything to add.
Interesting to talk about this stuff.
It's basically a continuum that you plonk your work in. Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics' has a great way of thinking about the continuum. I really enjoyed it and it made me think differently about the possibilities of the medium.
Yes I completely agree that story is what keeps people interested and invested and coming back for more, but the art is what viscerally attracts you and draws you in, in the first instance. It is the combination of beauty and psychology, of insight and representation which is what I love about the medium. The possibilities for unique expression and storytelling are huge compared to other mediums. I don't believe it gets experimented with and tapped into as much as it could be. As with all commercially driven enterprise things can become formulaic and derivative quite quickly.
There just seems to be so much mostly badly drawn or "nicely drawn enough" anime-influenced style to a lot of web comics, and it kinda turns me off the story (perhaps unjustifiably). I love manga. The Japanese stuff. The best examples of black and white art in the genre that I've seen come from Manga. The stories and ideas (especially in the sci fi realm) tend to be pretty rad in manga compared to most things I've seen in western comics. The French seem to have avoided this though, they definitely have their own unique thing going there.
I don't spend a lot of time reading webcomics so I'm not speaking from any real experience but from what I've seen it seems that every other pre-teen who has artistic tendencies is writing a manga or anime influenced webcomic/graphic novel. The "genre" seems heavily overrepresented by fairly immature ideas and amateurish artwork which is not something I have really wanted to sift through to find the gems. Also by it's very nature of having to get a page out every week the art is generally what has to suffer, and this means there are very few webcomics that are actually very appealing from the art side of the continuum. Most of the good webcomics I've got into occasionally tend to have their own very unique art style which are mostly very very simple to fit the schedule. I haven't come across an anime themed one that I liked,yet.
I guess personally at the moment I am leaning more towards the experimental side of things than the "write a series, get it published/serialized" kinda approach myself. Not saying that's a bad thing by any means, but not what gets me excited right now. I'm more interested in the (relatively) quick exploration of both style and story. I like the idea of dipping into lots of different worlds, than being forced into one world for a huge period of time. It's the balance between staying fresh and stagnation that I think about on that front. I like intense amounts of focus, and then once I've explored the interesting themes and got what I wanted from it, moving on to something new. In a way I don't care about the reader at all...I'm telling the story to myself really: a very selfish way of looking at it...haha. As long as I enjoy it while I'm creating it, if it becomes a cool thing that people enjoy afterwards, well then, that's a huge bonus! :D
In terms of recommending an example of a great black and white only artwork combined with some really great story arcs and characters, I'd have to say 'Cerebus' is still a leading example. It was the first TPB I read and it still stands out for me from what I've read; Before Dave Sims got perhaps a bit too into spouting his own (arguably mysogynistic) political ideologies anyway. A must read if you have the chance. The manga ones I used to read ages ago, so I can't remember the names of most of them, but yeah it's always the Japanese ones that ring true for me...the others seem like poor copies that don't really have anything to add.
Interesting to talk about this stuff.