A Pro Speaks: Boom Studios

Check out this awesome interview with the men behind Boom.

Since its inception, Boom has appealed to comic aficionados with its several-issue miniseries. This year, Boom is focusing on longer plots, offering story arcs that can be serialized, then bound together as graphic novels and sold in major retail chains such as Barnes & Noble.

"Look at this," Richie said, pointing at the spine of a 20-something-page comic book. "This disappears into a shelf." At about half an inch thick, sometimes more, graphic novels demand greater attention.

This is something I've been thinking of myself. See, I've been studying manga's success in America, and it seems that a good portion of that success is due to the fact that manga's digest volumes provide a lot more story at a good price point.

I'm also questioning comic books standard serialized format. Sometimes it works, a full story is told that is a piece of a larger story and compels the reader to wait a month to buy the next issue. Sometimes it doesn't work, only a part of a story is told, and it really feels like it. With Manga, it almost doesn't matter. Manga comes out weekly, so the period of excitement is considerably less.

I think the American comics industry has quite a bit to learn from the Japanese. I might expand on my thoughts later.

Musing: Comics and Manga

This will be short.

Manga is really popular in America. American Comic Books, they don't have a fun name, are a smallish niche market which ironically harbor some of the most iconic figures in America.

Why aren't Comic Books as popular as Manga? Well, there are two very good blog posts discussing the reasons with much more knowledge and insight that I currently have into the situation.

noflyingnotights

So please, comics industry folks? Get it into your heads that manga works more because of the stories than anything else.

And a very long post from Halifax_slasher on Facebook:

The reasons for this change are due for their own essay (tentatively titled "What Went Wrong"), but for now let us note that while there was a time when a single issue of a comic would have Spider-man meet a foe, get defeated by the foe, mope around, become inspired, track down the foe, fight him again, defeat him, and then wrap up a subplot involving Aunt May--in other words, when an issue would contain a complete dramatic arc--nowadays Frank Miller can write entire issues in which Batman never leaves the car.

I'll write a long-winded post about the styles of early comic books vs. modern comic books and writing for the trade vs. writing a done-in-one another time.