I have certainly made fun of the Justice Society's Golden Age adventures; they have many features one can deride! But that is not at all my purpose today.
Here we have the first page (not counting the splash page) of a randomly chosen Golden Age JSA story (All-Star Comics #57, 1951, "The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives").
On this page, we are introduced to four famous detectives (model on fictional detectives from real-world crime novels) as the arrive in Civic City for a convention where they will meet up with their pals, the JSA, who, will present them with a mock mystery to solve (something they have also done at previous meetings) and Wonder Woman prepares them by blindfolding them as the mock crime is about to be acted out on stage in front of the audience.
That's just the first page. From which we can already deduce that they will be unraveling this mystery; they will, we can assume, EACH contribute some deductions to the process, so that all appeared learned and able. We can also deduce that at some point after that, the detectives themselves will vanishing, result in a mystery that the JSA will have to solve. As usual, they will probably each make a unique contribution to searching for the missing detectives.
If we DO take a look at the splash page,
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| "Is this the end?" Well, it sure doesn't look like the start of much. |
5 comments:
I'll go. Since I literally posted about this yesterday. This is a stellar example of pure, unnecessary padding (aka "decompression" or "writing for the trade," if you prefer). There's no reason to devote a full page to this. At all. And as an aside, it's clear this benefits the artist, who gets to copy/paste the same panel four times with only minor changes, allowing that person to quickly get back to whatever activity is more important than actually drawing a comic. Jeff Lemire's done some good work, but this shouldn't have been approved by the editor. Whenever I see a comic with this kind of repetitive construction (the worst I've ever seen is the Freedom Fighters book from a few years back) I start looking to see what, if any, changes were made from panel to panel. Because somebody's getting paid to do work they aren't doing.
Wait, I got it: Lemire wants us, the readers, to viscerally feel what it's like to be Jesse Quick, living in a world where everything proceeds at a maddeningly slow pace. The "Is this the end?" at the beginning is how Jesse feels at the beginning of every day as she anticipates yet another year (from her perspective) of dealing with slow-witted simpletons.
- HJF1
Bryan L- Every panel except the last one could have been jettisoned; the "... so" implies that Hourman has been waiting to broach some topic, we don't need to also see the waiting. What else could the space on this page be used for? Well, introduce characters to the reader. Or recap events that have led up to this moment. Or, you know, actually advance the plot.
I am no great shakes as a writer, and such fanfiction as I have written will never be hailed as an artistic triumph. But I at least try to respect the reader and not make them slog through my prose. Here's an opening paragraph of a story I wrote; it's a little clumsy but at least it doesn't waste the reader's time:
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“I’ve got a plan,” Batman whispered to the Flash. He always did, in the short time since the Justice League’s founding. Aquaman and Green Lantern had already been taken down by Dr. Ivo’s defense system, and it was already starting to adapt to the Flash’s speed. “I’ve got an explosive batarang; you should still be able to vibrate through the shields and deliver it manually. Setting the timer for … one second.” The Flash didn’t waste an instant, grabbing the batarang and placing it by hand. A massive explosion followed, and the defense systems fell dark and silent.
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A lot happens there: it catches the reader up to the moment; one can make some inferences about the threat; it's dealt with so the story can move to the next thing. Either the reader will like what I wrote and will want to see what happens next, or they won't like it and at least I'm not wasting more of their time than I have to. Everybody wins.
- HJF1
"living in a world where everything proceeds at a maddeningly slow pace" I realize you were being sarcastic. BUT this technique was. used once by The Madman Tom Peyer in his brilliant JSA vs. JLA story ( "2,000"), in which he thrusts us in 1947 by taking an entire PAGE to show someone dialing a phone. This was INGENIOUS as a completely communicated, with no word, just exactly how different the period was, with a completely different tempo. I think I actually CLAPPED.
Oh the days when you RESENTED that the other person had multiple 9's or 0's in their phone number.
- HJF1
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