Comic Books are No Excuse for Lazy Writing
Although I grew up reading comic books, I wouldn’t today consider myself a comic expert or fanboy. I’ve read a number of the classics -- Watchmen, Batman Year One -- but the dearth of comics on the market, not to mention the complicated mythologies, has always been intimidating to me. I don’t know the current state of the characters in X-Men, and I get most of the biggest comic news, such as a character’s death, from the mainstream media.
That doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t great writers doing exceptional work in the comic and graphic novel mediums. There are some, I would argue, who deserve a place among the greatest modern men and women of letters.
Despite using a simpler written narrative structure, comics (and from this point on I will use the term “comics” to mean comic books and graphic novels) are no excuse for lazy writing. While it’s true that a comic writer isn’t doing all of the heavy narrative lifting -- that burden is also shared by the artists, who are responsible for the depiction of setting -- it is still no excuse for writers to sit back on their haunches. The words of a comic are just as important as the graphic aspect; they are what keep me as a reader coming back for more.
This past summer, I learned that comic company IDW was issuing a new series of comics based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. I had played Magic in my early teens and had fond memories of the comics issued by Armada in the mid-90s. These miniseries covered the backstory of Magic’s fantasy setting, offering up a history of the card game’s internal mythology. Seeing that IDW was publishing a new series awakened something in me -- a desire to both play the game again and to read this latest series of comics.
Looking back now as an adult, it is clear to me that the Armada Magic comics that I had enjoyed in my youth were simply a tie-in product to sell more cards. A lot of comics, it can probably be argued, are an attempt to sell something, be it toys, movies, DVDs or simply a brand. The company IDW makes it trade in this for the most part by publishing movie tie-in comics or comics based around popular television shows. Take, for instance, IDW’s graphic novel Star Trek: Countdown, which expertly bridged the gap between the film Star Trek: Nemesis and the J.J. Abrams reboot. Was this an attempt to get people preemptively excited about a summer blockbuster film? Certainly. But it was also packaged in a well-told story that was enjoyable to read.
The Armada Magic comics were the same way: another method to get people excited about the card game and perhaps sell more products for the game’s parent company. The stories, though, were well-told, and revisiting them 17 years later, the Armada Magic comics are comprised of stories that I think even an adult fantasy-lover would find interesting.
Unfortunately, that is not the case with the IDW Magic titles, and I worry that this is endemic in other comics as well. The current Magic comics use a stream-of-consciousness narrative to advance the story, one that is intertwined with spoken dialog. Often it becomes impossible to tell what’s going on because the reader has to read the internal monologue of the main character, Dack Fayden, and then go back and read the spoken dialog, all while ignoring the artwork. The result is that the reader has to look at each panel three times to follow the story. Not good.
Similarly, I’ve understood from the get-go that the comics exist to sell me something. Here again, the writers could have made the story more palatable. There are entire issues where Dack simply visits different locales in the Magic universe without advancing the plot. Do we really need an entire issue dedicated to sightseeing just so players will understand on which plane of the multiverse some of their cards take place? I think not. Tell a good story and the readers will want more -- regardless of the delivery method. (See: the dearth of Star Wars “expanded universe” products.)
I suppose the IDW Magic comics served their purpose in getting me to play the game again, and ultimately that will make more money for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast than a monthly comic. I’m sorry to say, however, that I won’t be following the adventures of Dack any more, if for no other reason than the fact that his story is ill-told.
That doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t great writers doing exceptional work in the comic and graphic novel mediums. There are some, I would argue, who deserve a place among the greatest modern men and women of letters.
Despite using a simpler written narrative structure, comics (and from this point on I will use the term “comics” to mean comic books and graphic novels) are no excuse for lazy writing. While it’s true that a comic writer isn’t doing all of the heavy narrative lifting -- that burden is also shared by the artists, who are responsible for the depiction of setting -- it is still no excuse for writers to sit back on their haunches. The words of a comic are just as important as the graphic aspect; they are what keep me as a reader coming back for more.
This past summer, I learned that comic company IDW was issuing a new series of comics based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. I had played Magic in my early teens and had fond memories of the comics issued by Armada in the mid-90s. These miniseries covered the backstory of Magic’s fantasy setting, offering up a history of the card game’s internal mythology. Seeing that IDW was publishing a new series awakened something in me -- a desire to both play the game again and to read this latest series of comics.
Looking back now as an adult, it is clear to me that the Armada Magic comics that I had enjoyed in my youth were simply a tie-in product to sell more cards. A lot of comics, it can probably be argued, are an attempt to sell something, be it toys, movies, DVDs or simply a brand. The company IDW makes it trade in this for the most part by publishing movie tie-in comics or comics based around popular television shows. Take, for instance, IDW’s graphic novel Star Trek: Countdown, which expertly bridged the gap between the film Star Trek: Nemesis and the J.J. Abrams reboot. Was this an attempt to get people preemptively excited about a summer blockbuster film? Certainly. But it was also packaged in a well-told story that was enjoyable to read.
The Armada Magic comics were the same way: another method to get people excited about the card game and perhaps sell more products for the game’s parent company. The stories, though, were well-told, and revisiting them 17 years later, the Armada Magic comics are comprised of stories that I think even an adult fantasy-lover would find interesting.
Unfortunately, that is not the case with the IDW Magic titles, and I worry that this is endemic in other comics as well. The current Magic comics use a stream-of-consciousness narrative to advance the story, one that is intertwined with spoken dialog. Often it becomes impossible to tell what’s going on because the reader has to read the internal monologue of the main character, Dack Fayden, and then go back and read the spoken dialog, all while ignoring the artwork. The result is that the reader has to look at each panel three times to follow the story. Not good.
Similarly, I’ve understood from the get-go that the comics exist to sell me something. Here again, the writers could have made the story more palatable. There are entire issues where Dack simply visits different locales in the Magic universe without advancing the plot. Do we really need an entire issue dedicated to sightseeing just so players will understand on which plane of the multiverse some of their cards take place? I think not. Tell a good story and the readers will want more -- regardless of the delivery method. (See: the dearth of Star Wars “expanded universe” products.)
I suppose the IDW Magic comics served their purpose in getting me to play the game again, and ultimately that will make more money for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast than a monthly comic. I’m sorry to say, however, that I won’t be following the adventures of Dack any more, if for no other reason than the fact that his story is ill-told.
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