Sensible Erection | Insane Batman Story

Saturday, 18 June 2011

quote [ With the recent release of Batman: Odyssey #6, we are now exactly halfway into the yearlong tale that we feel comfortable claiming, without hyperbole, is the most insane comic book we have ever read. ]

And you thought Christian Bale was crazy. I don't really read comic books these days, but I might if they were all like this.

I wonder what the conversation in the editorial bullpen was like... assuming there even was one. Wow.

[humour] [by hellboy@10:41pmGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

rezties said @ 11:05pm GMT on 18th Jun
Most comics are like this these days. I read 'The Ultimate' comics, and all of them are filled with hyperbole and bad writing so much that the concept that there is a standard of decency is offensive.

jackbnimbler said @ 12:38am GMT on 19th Jun
There is a pretty big difference between bad writing/hyperbole and what seems to be going on in this comic. Drugs seem to have been definately involved in the writing process, more drugs then normal I mean. That and what would seem to be absolutely no real communication between the artist and the writer.

DefianceFalcon said @ 12:59am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:3 Insightful]
Which is a hell of a feat, considering that both the artist and the writer are Neal Adams.

Garr123 said @ 2:01am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Informative]
Drugs are a hell of a drug.

tickaz said @ 1:26am GMT on 19th Jun
Who are either the same person, or two different people who coincidentally have the name Neal Adams.

theolypse said @ 11:21pm GMT on 18th Jun [Score:2]
I really want Snowfox's take on this.

snowfox said @ 4:56am GMT on 19th Jun
There has been a lot of restructuring at DC. I hear more is to come, but this time for the top positions. We could expect to see replacements from Burbank.

As for Batman -- if I didn't write it, it's shit.

theolypse said @ 5:53am GMT on 19th Jun
<3

snowfox said @ 3:37pm GMT on 19th Jun
And now I am back to no longer commenting on SE because I don't want certain SEers anywhere near me or anything I am doing.

I hope someday to make a return, but until then, people I like know where to find me.

Todomanna said @ 4:00pm GMT on 19th Jun
Paranoia senses... tingling... must not ask... must not assume I am one of those people...

argblebaalbeads

afrasr said @ 8:33pm GMT on 19th Jun
Its ok, I watch you nightly... from the bushes out front your house

eskimonoise said @ 8:51pm GMT on 19th Jun
Actually she's out most nights, that's me you've been watching :)

ComposerNate said @ 9:03pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Funny]
You ever watch snowfox from the bushes... on weed?

blacksun said @ 11:15pm GMT on 19th Jun
Just make a sock account?

zsander said @ 11:28pm GMT on 18th Jun
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlatWhat

wickerjoe said @ 11:58pm GMT on 18th Jun
Waiting for the trade.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 12:10am GMT on 19th Jun
So this tops Frank Miller's Goddamn Batman then?

arrowhen said @ 12:11am GMT on 19th Jun
WHAT THE SHIT?

Ankylosaur said @ 12:33am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Underrated]

skoob666 said @ 2:34pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Insightful]
We need a +1 Brutal.

RuneLancer said @ 12:01am GMT on 21st Jun
Metal, blood, guns, and insane little girls. Love it.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 12:58am GMT on 19th Jun
I.. wait, what?

f00m@nB@r said @ 1:08am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:2]

azazel said @ 3:04am GMT on 19th Jun
First porn, now playgrounds? (It's apparently in Sweden)

Seraph said @ 5:06am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:2 Underrated]
I honestly miss the days when playground equipment was "dangerous". At least it was fun.

arrowhen said @ 5:53am GMT on 19th Jun
It needs Slip n' Slides leading in from all directions and a lawn dart target on top.

Ankylosaur said @ 6:02am GMT on 19th Jun
Don't forget the Bags O' Glass.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 8:52pm GMT on 19th Jun
Actually, if that had water coming from it and there was a tarp/wide area slip'n'slide all around it, it would be pretty danged awesome.

sacrelicious said @ 1:08am GMT on 19th Jun
so is DC doing this just to get alot of attention (any press is good press as long as they get your name right...) or have they finally caught up to 90's era Marvel?

walkingtaco said @ 1:31am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:3 Funny]
By 90's era Marvel, you mean something like This?

bathoz said @ 9:37am GMT on 19th Jun
DC just gave Liefeld a book. It looks... horrible.

Supreme_Coconut said @ 8:54pm GMT on 19th Jun
Oddly enough, they almost look proportionately appropriate. It's like he went out and learned how to draw!
Side note: Dove is a girl now? I only know them from an episode of JLU but they were brothers then.

tickaz said @ 1:04pm GMT on 19th Jun
Thankyou sir. I am finding myself very entertained by the article you have suggested.

Chop-Logik said @ 1:45am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:5 Insightful]

Nyan Cat has a custom loading bar. Because it is God.

f00m@nB@r said @ 1:55am GMT on 19th Jun
You begin with your plot, which you have written terribly, you breakdown your story into pages so you don't have too much story in too little pages, or too little story in too many pages. --Neal Adams

Volcaos said @ 2:03am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:5 WTF]
Neal Adams is insane, and has been for a while. A visit to his "science" website might be enlightening:

here

CapnSilver said @ 2:13am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 WTF]
I'd known he was nuts, but holy crap he's a subduction denialist. I didn't even know there was such a thing!

Ankylosaur said @ 2:40am GMT on 19th Jun
It'll cost you $41 to learn the truth that the Geologic Orthodoxy doesn't want you to hear!

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 3:20pm GMT on 19th Jun
42

cache22 said @ 4:28pm GMT on 19th Jun
That's with tax.

Omegaphobic said @ 3:58am GMT on 19th Jun
Holy Christ, he is batshit insane.

JOECAM said @ 2:32am GMT on 19th Jun

Menchi said @ 2:32am GMT on 19th Jun
Sheds new light on the phrase, "Batshit crazy"...

AshikKerib said @ 2:38am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:3 Underrated]
Cool, that looks interesting. I'll check it out. Unfortunately I can't read the article when it's in the form of insufferable banter. :(

Ankylosaur said @ 3:26am GMT on 19th Jun

Ankylosaur said @ 3:37am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:2 Underrated]

htabdoolb said @ 7:29am GMT on 19th Jun
When you see it..

(pencil trick)

tickaz said @ 3:01pm GMT on 19th Jun
Well obviously it's a staple.

Ankylosaur said @ 3:44pm GMT on 19th Jun
I think you mean, Bat-Staple...

na na na na na na na na na na na na BAT-STAPLE!

RuneLancer said @ 12:04am GMT on 21st Jun
I see your common-sense explanation and raise one prophetic staple gifted with the power to see into the future trying to communicate with us.

CapnSilver said @ 4:56am GMT on 19th Jun
I still think it's not as insane as Alan Moore's WILDCATS

MindNinja said @ 4:56am GMT on 19th Jun
How the HELL did this get published?

schmutz said @ 9:48am GMT on 19th Jun
Besides the horrible writing, it's also a prime example of American (superhero) comics gone bad, visually. I like comics better where art and writing are balanced and complement each other.

Yoshiro Tasumi made an interesting point about american comics in "A Drifitng Life" (I can't scan the page without ruining my copy, so I'll put a transcript instead.):

"American ccomics for example, have long streams of dialogue in panels that are full of action. That means the action is paused while you read the long dialogue. Panels full of action would be better served by short dialogue to keep the reader moving along.
Action-filled panels could be drawn with extremely simplified backgrounds to shorten the time it takes to read them. Readers should be able to look at close-ups of characters' faces and quickly read their psychological state.

A panel with a large image and lots of details is read from corner to corner. The image thus stands still for the duration of time it takes to be read. The time it takes to read a panel can be calculated according to the relative size of the image and amount of dialogue in it.

This is the "synchronization of panel and time.""

ahPook said @ 12:37pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Insightful]
Also, american comics have women who are not being raped by tentacles. What is the point of that?

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 3:26pm GMT on 19th Jun
I.e. American Comics would be better if they were more like Japanese Comics.

valen85 said @ 4:42pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:-5 Troll]
Ie: Both Japanese comics and Western comics are for children and you fucktards should just take it the fuck easy about them

happiest_sadist said @ 5:36am GMT on 20th Jun
Big Fucking Shock:

MMA is not for grownups either.

valen85 said @ 1:21am GMT on 21st Jun
Yeah I grew out of it days ago.

strangeffect said @ 1:25am GMT on 21st Jun
your mother grew out of it days ago

GordonGuano said @ 6:24pm GMT on 19th Jun
Don't forget Sturgeon's Law. 90% of Japanese comics suck ass as well.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 1:55am GMT on 20th Jun
Oh, I'm not saying that's how it should be, that's how I interpreted his critique.

snowfox said @ 3:33pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:2 Informative]
"A panel with a large image and lots of details is read from corner to corner. The image thus stands still for the duration of time it takes to be read. The time it takes to read a panel can be calculated according to the relative size of the image and amount of dialogue in it."

Bullshit. I found out many readers in the US don't even read all the dialog in a 22-page comic (yeah, I am still shitting bricks over it). No matter what you put on it, you're lucky to get a minute a page out of your readers. I tend to call for the addition of important background details intended to fuck over lazy readers.

As for details in fights, sometimes you want a still moment in a fight, or you want the character to look as beautiful and graceful as possible by framing them nicely. Some writers have a lot of dialog during fights, some don't -- the reason you see it during an action sequence is that we don't want pages of characters just standing around and shooting the shit. A comic full of talking heads is likely to enrage the American readership.

From an American perspective, plain backgrounds, lots of head-shots, standardized page layouts, pages of just talking... those things are cheap, lazy, and boring.

The reason the formats are so different probably has to do with how we sell it/why you buy it. Mangas are still basically a throwaway reading material, while American comics are supposed to be collectible. In a market with a high volume of stories where people consume a lot of product and then toss it out, the entertaining storyline becomes central. Mangas are produced rather quickly and you often see a writer who is also an artist (as a result, you could also generally forgive the creator for not being very good at one or the other). In a market where sales are low, prices are high, and the primary value of the product is more collectability than entertainment, you'll see all the money go into the pencilling while the writers gets paid very little. Instead of being one-man works, a team of people work on the book (at least 6 people directly) plus all the office staff.

TL;DR version

A manga is like an independent film: low budget, occasionally brilliant. An American comic is like a crazy blockbuster: often too dumbed down to be any good, but hey look at that explosion!

Many will tell you differently, but remember: There is no one right way to do comics. You have to look at your message and audience, and find the right balance for that situation.

hellboy said @ 12:20am GMT on 20th Jun
From an American perspective, plain backgrounds, lots of head-shots, standardized page layouts, pages of just talking... those things are cheap, lazy, and boring.

You mean like this?

And "collectability" is a scam. Vintage comic books are worth a lot of money because people treated them as disposable, so the few that remain in good condition are rare. Ever since the speculation bubble of the early 90s people have been told to think of comics as investments, and as a result there are thousands of mint-condition Mylar-bagged "collector's item" variant-cover issue #1's out there. Collectability is only possible with scarcity.

happiest_sadist said @ 5:35am GMT on 20th Jun
Nope, not like that. That is something entirely different from "plain backgrounds, lots of head-shots, standardized page layouts, pages of just talking". In fact it is two (facing) pages, zero head-shots, and very little talking.

Yes, "collectibility" has always been a scam. Yet both the major US comic publishers have pushed it for at least 40 years, and lots of gullible kids fall for it. Some even profit.

hellboy said @ 6:09am GMT on 20th Jun
Bullshit. Watchmen is full of head-shots, is famous for its use of the 9-panel grid, has lots of talking and very few fight scenes for a comic book about superheroes (the climax consists almost entirely of a conversation with very little physical action), and in fact uses plain backgrounds very effectively at a number of points in the story.

snowfox said @ 4:36am GMT on 21st Jun
Since when is a book written by an Englishman representative of American comics?

Volcaos said @ 5:10am GMT on 21st Jun [Score:1 Underrated]
I think when most people talk of american comics they are referring themselves to Marvel/DC, which Watchmen certainly is, even if it helped lead to the creation of Vertigo in DC Comics. Or is Batman not American comics because Grant Morrisson wrote some stories, and he will be writing Superman in Action Comics come the reboot in September, does that mean that he will now be fighting for "truth, justice and the scottish way"?

Watchmen, together with Maus and Dark Knight Returns are actually three books which came out at around the same time (1986), which very much helped shape what are modern "american" comics. Of course all of this is solved simply by calling one medium comics and another manga. As a way of distinguishing "american" and "japanese" style sequential art.

hellboy said @ 4:16am GMT on 22nd Jun
When it has an American publisher, a predominantly American audience, and is hugely successful from the "American perspective". The only thing that's really "cheap, lazy, and boring" is bad writing.

Volcaos said @ 4:24pm GMT on 19th Jun
Although I am not a big Marvel fan I'd like to point out last month's Wolverine #9 as the complete opposite of all you've said here, pratically no dialogue, lots of action and the supremely difficult to achieve successfuly exciting car-chase in comic format.

Mad March Harris said @ 10:38am GMT on 19th Jun
I don't have very much experience with American comics but from what I do know there's not a whole lot of mainstream stuff to interest me. The two graphic novels I would say are excellent examples of the media are "Vagabond" by Takehiko Inoue and "Eden: It's an Endless World!" by Hiroki Endo. Both use the ideas of not pausing the action to spray out exposition and rely on the visuals to convey even subtle things. Instead of having half a page where Matahachi soliloquys about his feelings on drifting away from Musashi there will be a panel where Matahachi is mad and wants to yell at him, then he'll catch himself and show obvious embarassment, and then as he's walking away Musashi will catch a glimpse of him and in a two page spread the only word will be "Matahachi...?". And Inoue time and again does this instead of having ridiculous nonsense like a narrative bubble that introduces a speech bubble.

bathoz said @ 11:03am GMT on 19th Jun [Score:1 Insightful]
This is not a good (or even average to bad) exampl of American style comics. It is incredibly awful. Like: never seen as bad published.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 5:03pm GMT on 19th Jun
Hah, Shawn Elliott just mentioned Vagabond on his twitter. I've been reading that one since around 2001 and never seen anyone mention it before. Or at least, and this one's more likely, I don't remember anyone mentioning it before.

astropig7 said @ 12:43pm GMT on 19th Jun
I might have missed something in the article, but I thought one of Batman’s cardinal rules was “no guns”.

azazel said @ 1:17pm GMT on 19th Jun
Since the banter is so horrible, I'll just say that Frank Miller's batman is also somewhat insane, and the write-up of his exploits are far more amusing to read than these two persons what think they're funny. I'll dig out a link later, on my phone at the moment.

pel said @ 4:26pm GMT on 19th Jun
I'm beginning to think DC can't write their way out of a paper bag.

pel said @ 4:28pm GMT on 19th Jun
Wait, did I say "beginning"? How silly of me, it's been obvious for years.

cache22 said @ 4:34pm GMT on 19th Jun
So that's how I get out of this damn paper bag!

valen85 said @ 4:45pm GMT on 19th Jun
Wtf is this?

Heavy Metal's version of Batman?

hanz said @ 6:39pm GMT on 19th Jun [Score:5 Funny]

eggboy said @ 9:15am GMT on 20th Jun
Excellent thumb.

KingPellinore said @ 2:25pm GMT on 20th Jun
Was I the only one who saw the first picture and wondered, "When did they start modeling Bruce Wayne off of Eli Roth?"

SnakeGhost said @ 11:10pm GMT on 20th Jun