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Mars Will Send No More

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Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: superhero

Movies vs. Comic Books: Who Controls Time?

16 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

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authority, Avengers, Civil War, comic books, film, Mark Millar, movies, narrative structure, planet hulk, superhero, thor ragnarok, time, Warren Ellis, widescreen comics

Now that films based on comic books and superheroes have firmly entered the mainstream of popular culture, characters and storylines we comics readers have enjoyed for years regularly come to life on the big screen for a wider audience than comics ever reached. Long-time readers are often thrilled to see their favorite heroes in live-action movies, but some feel a bit of regret. After all, it can be disheartening to hear people discussing characters as if the movies tell the entire story, when many readers have followed the characters in-depth for years or even decades.

Compressing years of story into a two-hour theater experience means a lot gets left out, as anyone who read the Planet Hulk stories can tell you about the movie Thor: Ragnarok, or anyone who read Marvel’s Civil War comics can tell you about the Captain America movie of the same name. Plus, the big screen and the printed page are two distinctly different mediums, each with its own storytelling conventions, so they deliver distinctly different stories.

Movies usually follow a formulaic narrative structure. From the inciting incident to the hero’s crisis, predicting the next story beat in a movie is pretty easy. Comic books often employ more flexible and unusual structures—a point in their favor in my opinion. This is true despite a trend toward making modern mainstream comic books more cinematic in their approach to storytelling.

Near the turn of the century, Warren Ellis used the term widescreen comics to describe the blockbuster-movie style he was creating in The Authority with artists Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. After 12 issues, writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely came on board and kept up the cinematic approach. Millar, Hitch, and Neary soon combined forces to reinvent the Avengers as The Ultimates—the forerunner of the current film versions of the Avengers. For a more in-depth look at widescreen comics, and how they influenced movies as much as movies influenced them, see Peter Suderman’s article for Vox.

As far as I’m concerned, there hasn’t been a movie yet that equals those first 29 issues of The Authority. But it’s more than just the awesome stories, vicious dialogue, and stunning artwork. What makes the printed page most enjoyable for me can be summed up in two words: time control.

In a film, time passes at a fixed speed determined by the flow of film through a projector, or its digital equivalent these days. Yes, a movie can use slow motion or speed up time, but all of that is determined by the movie itself. Moviegoers have no control of it in a theater. Time passes at a pace determined exclusively by the filmmakers.

With printed pages, the reader controls time. The reader determines how long to spend on a panel or page. Readers can turn back the pages to see something again if they did not absorb it on the first read. The reader can set the book down and walk away, then come back to it and pick up again from any point in the narrative. Movies only provide this convenience if you own or stream a copy at home and can rewind it or freeze the frames.

While I enjoy movies, I tend to enjoy their comic-book source material far more due to time control. An awesome action scene might be over in seconds or minutes on the big screen, but I can linger on it for as long as I like with a printed page. A stunning visual appears on the screen for fleeting moments, then moves on to the next one. It leaves me feeling unsatisfied when I want to spend more time taking in all its detail and beauty. With a comic book, I can pore over the artists’ rendering and take time to appreciate every line and shape, every bit of hard work that went into inking and coloring the picture. Instead of having it all fade away as I leave a theater, I can come back to it again and again with a book.

While many recent comic-book movies do look great, the awesomeness always go by too quickly for me. I never have a chance to fully appreciate it before its gone. And when the theater lights come on, fun time is over unless I want to buy another ticket. The experience is transient and ephemeral compared to a physical book I can keep for years.

None of this should be taken as an argument over which medium is “better”. Enjoy what you enjoy. This is only an attempt to articulate a feeling I’ve had for years but never explained very well to people who expect me to be super excited about recent superhero movies. It isn’t that the movies are bad; they simply lack one of the biggest things that gives me enjoyment with comic books: time control.

 

On a less serious note: a video.

Ant Man by Bob Layton

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

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Ant Man, ant man vs rat, Bob Layton, Iron Man, Marvel Comics, Marvel Comics Presents, Scott Lang, superhero

marvel comics presents 11 bob layton ant man-003

Maybe now that Ant Man has a future on the big screen we will see a resurgence of interest in the character. Henry Pym, Marvel’s original Ant Man, never appealed to us as much as his successor, Scott Lang.

marvel comics presents 11 bob layton ant man-004

We first encountered Lang in the pages of Iron Man produced in the 1980s by writer David Michelinie. In a few issues that still retain some value with collectors, Iron Man gets into a fight with the Hulk, and Ant Man rescues him from certain death. (See Iron Man #131, #132, and #133.)

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In those Iron Man stories, inker Bob Layton provided the finishes over pencils by Jerry Bingham, and would stay on the title to work with John Romita, Jr. and other pencilers. Layton also receives credit for co-plotting those issues with Michelinie, making him the unsung but unifying force responsible for much of that run’s appeal.

marvel comics presents 11 bob layton ant man-006

To get an idea of Bob’s own style with a pencil as well as a pen, read his short Ant Man story shown here. You can see his subtle combination of ink and zip-a-tone finishes, a look he often applied to metal and reflective surfaces. We don’t mind admitting that a large part of our enthusiasm for Iron Man comes from the Bob Layton finished his metal suit. Bob Layton also proves the assertion that great inkers in comics do more than trace; they bring as much skill to the page as the credited pencillers.

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Collector’s Guide: This story from Marvel Comics Presents #11 goes well with Godzilla fighting a giant rat in a sewer.

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marvel comics presents 11 bob layton ant man-011

some assembly required

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

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action figures, superhero

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One summer we visited a friend on the other side of town quite often. As it turned out, we were always hungry, and she never had any food. So, we would walk over to the store, get some grub, and talk for hours. At that store, one of the ‘gumball’ vending machines by the door had Marvel superheroes. They cost a few quarters, and came in that little plastic ball. You assembled the pieces and… Presto! We took quarters on every visit until we got the whole set.

We definitely got our quarters’ worth of entertainment out of them, and then some. The heroes no longer reside at Martian HQ. They accepted a mission to spread joy and rescue the universe. Their quest took them to the farthest interdimensional reaches of California.
Click here to discover how that went.

 
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