Thread 150256422

I really hate Mark Gruenwald's writing. It's like he's unsatisfied unless every page has at least one wall of text dialogue block on it

>>150256422 (OP)
I’ve been reading his Captain America and feel the same way. He writes like an editor—he’s always explaining everything, and he always puts in a thought balloon to explain seeming continuity issues, or why a less powerful character was able to beat a more powerful one, or why Cap is willing to break the law in this instance but not another. The story and characters get lost under the details.

Oddly I don’t have the same problem with Chris Claremont’s endless thought balloons; he’s usually focused on how the characters feel about the situation they’re in, while I feel like Gruenwald is always that guy who wrote a story explaining how much money Avengers can withdraw from an ATM with their membership card.

>>150257400
Comic book writers are weird. But they seem to be uniquely weird.

>>150257400
Chris Claremont piss me off...

>>150257400
>>150259597
Because he often breaks thoughts...

>>150257400
>>150259617
In separate bubbles!

>>150257400
That makes sense, I was trying to figure out why guys like Claremont and Wolfman work for me even though they are very wordy also. I think a character's inner thoughts are just more interesting to me whereas overexplaining just has me drumming my fingers on the table

>>150259597
>>150259617
>>150259648
Lol

>>150260460
Claremont's weird dialogue tics and phrases he overuses always made it harder for me to enjoy his books. He also has his characters over-explain what they're doing at any moment, or the narration over-explain it for them, like he doesn't think the art is adequately showing the reader what's happening, and that's more irritating than someone like Gruenwald taking maybe too much time to explain something the art doesn't show.

>>150256422 (OP)
I remember this being kind of a chore.
>>150257400
>>150260460
I don't like Claremont or Wolfman.

>>150256422 (OP)
>>150257400
>>150257879
>>150260460
There is nothing "wordy" about Mark Gruenwald or Chris Claremont comics.

/co/ just hates to read.

>>150264920
Right.

>>150265047
This was the style at the time.

>>150265059
Yeah. It's shit.

>>150265047
>>150265059
>>150265525
That's an extreme example. And even then it's not THAT wordy. Bendis comics routinely had higher word counts and you fags never complain about that..

It really seems to boil down to /co/ not wanting to read.

>>150266632
You contradicted yourself.

>>150267070
Not an argument

>>150266632
bendis? the writer? he counts words?

>>150267070
No, that is not a contradiction at all.

>>150267191
>Bendis comics routinely had higher word counts and you fags never complain about that..
>It really seems to boil down to /co/ not wanting to read.

>>150266632
People complain about Bendis's text all the time. It was a huge board meme for years.

>>150267475
That's not a contradiction. You're just proving the point about /co/ being illiterate.

>>150267526
They don't really complain about his word counts, just his dialogue.

>>150267736
It's a contradiction because the point was that people complain about Claremont's wordiness because they don't want to read, except Bendis is apparently okay (which is pure bait, since /co/ complains about Bendis endless speech balloons constantly) despite having a higher average word count. Illiteracy is a lack ability, not a lack of want.
You just proved /co/ is illiterate, though.

>>150256422 (OP)
owwwww reading makes my neo vagene hurt owwwwww

>>150256422 (OP)
I remember a Stan Lee quote from the 60s where he said that he liked to push for huge blocks of text because he wanted to give the reader the most bang for their buck. He thought that if a comic didn't take half an hour to read that the reader would feel ripped off.

>>150268035
Some of these wordy comics don't take long to read, they just feel like a slog. I don't understand why /co/ likes to pretend these comics have some kind of masterful prose and that people who complain just hate reading.

>>150268035
It's a fair perspective, and to his credit it helps that he writes very entertaining dialogue with tons of character and personality. Basically the exact opposite of Gruenwald's writing

>>150257400
He learned under Shooter. It's fine, he was still a very good writer.

>>150266632
Zoomers legitimately hate paragraphs because their brains are molded entirely on short form content. Seeing more than two sentences together short circuits them.

>>150268759
Zoomers read and reply with entire essays on Reddit, they read and write fanfics that are millions of words long, and they text entire novels to each other.
They'll read things if they're good or of interest to them.

>>150256422 (OP)
I'll reread this soon.

>>150265047
Idk, I began to love comics when I started to read 60s Marvel, this doesn't looks bad

>>150267928
No, it's not a contradiction. Both of those things are true. Neither of them cancels the other out. You are retarded.

>>150268113
The issue is that they AREN'T "wordy". You fags seem to think that people speaking in more than one sentence at a time is unnatural. That's 100% on you.

>>150269089
sure thing faggot

>>150270129
If people are supposedly fine with Bendis, then they don't not want to read because he's even wordier. Blatant contradiction.

>>150270158
It's more that there are reams of dialogue, monologue, or narration that take up too much room on a given page with superfluous information and unnatural voice. Basically, it's not good writing and there's plenty of it.
Part of it is due to the format; I think there was a mandate at some point to remind readers of what the characters are like and what powers they have and how they're doing in every issue within the story, which is very shitty and intrusive.

I found this comic book to be ahead of its time in many ways. But it's pretty mediocre compared to other classics, I mean, Watchmen. Gruenwald seems to be holding back; I was expecting some kind of gotcha moment. But it's a pretty straightforward superhero story. Its reputation precedes its quality.

>>150266632
Bendis?

>>150270911
I have a few issues and been trying to collect them all before I read it. Honestly surprised this is like a dollar bin comic.

>>150272133
It has aged better than a lot of the crap from its time. But it's not a classic story, it's a really good mainstream superhero story. It's worth collecting over other stories from its time.

>>150257400
Claremont has the same problem just the other side of the coin, he over explains very simple emotions and he repeats himself too much.

>>150268113
Because they don't read books so wordy capeshit to them means high brow because much words. It's funny, cause they don't see how stupid they look when they go "hurr durr too many words? is reading hard??"

>>150272641
Nothing in this thread is "wordy" or has "much words".

You are beyond retarded.

>>150266632
I would read the same amount of words, and then some..if they were spaced out across panels.
It's not a matter of not wanting to read, it's that loading single panels with so many words just feels inorganic and unpleasant to read.
Playing Est vs West here, but people will read hundreds of chapters of manga within a day which will have about the same amount of words as a few comic issues from this era altogether or more. It's just that the experience is much more readable when there's breathing room.

>>150270911
>>150272133
Marvel did a terrible job keeping it in public consciousness. It was considered a fairly notable book from the late 80's through the early90's, but only got a reprint in 96. Marvel never really attempted marketing them besides some reboots, but not the miniseries itself.

Comic books had text in them back then, which is what made them comic BOOKS instead of "funny pages." There was a lot of upwards fighting for respectability. Comic books paced the usual american problems of destruction and public book burnings by "concerned" parents trying to make themselves look good for the weekly Theme Panic. Comic books don't have the same amount of text, therefore story, anymore. They're dumber now and aren't helpful for children's reading levels.

>>150257400
>He writes like an editor—he’s always explaining everything, and he always puts in a thought balloon to explain seeming continuity issues, or why a less powerful character was able to beat a more powerful one,
More fanboy than just editor. That sort of explanation for abilities and how the world worked was also something Ditko would do. There was an interest in the explanations of how this fictional world would work. Exploring the mechanics behind things was a big thing for people back then

>>150273043
They did a bad job publishing it. Didn't the comic have like 4 different artists for the 12 issues? That's a big fuck-up.

>>150273043
At least this got a trade. Foolkiller, which is better, got nothing.

>>150273043
Because it's just not a good comic.

>>150276206
But you're illiterate.

>>150276206
It's better than most of the shit they keep printing.

>>150274994
It’s 80s marvel house style so in theory it’s not too bad a difference
In general I see it as the neutral ideal the Shooter era of Marvel was shooting for.
Issues work as standalone but add up to a whole, art is solid and serviceable, writing is solid. Maybe not the most exciting comic these days, but I can see it standing out as my the time.

>>150257400
This is exactly why he ended up going the Marvel handbooks. He loves explaining shit

>>150277495
Is it his fault you have some rather strange explanations like everybody using extradimensional energy?

>>150277696
True

>>150265047
Claremont is a meme.

>>150277495
Yeah, I’m not a fan of the handbooks. I don’t know how seriously he really intended it to be taken, but it feels like codifying things that were never supposed to be codified and sort of flattening the acceptable range of stories writers could tell about characters.

An example of this WRT my favorite Avenger character, it was around this time that Avengers comics (edited by Gruenwald) became incredibly insistent that the Scarlet Witch was not a real witch and just had mutant probability powers. When she appeared in this era it usually felt like the writer had to try and downplay how delightfully nonsensical her powers are and how confusing it is that she’s both a mutant and a real witch.
More generally it was the Gruenwald run that really downplayed the soap opera aspect of Avengers and played up stuff like the Avengers rules and charter, leadership struggles etc. Roger Stern sort of made it work until Gruenwald took him off the book, but it’s just not something that interests me much. The Masters of Evil arc was the best part of that era because they were a more interesting and fractious team than the Avengers at that point.

>>150279634
She literally learned actual magic in 1970s so it is strange they downplayed that part for some reason.

>>150257400
I think you just have shit taste and hate having to read in a reading medium. Also I'm just going to say Gruenwald is miles more of a team player then Claremont is.

I miss Death Adder...he was cool

>>150273004
European comics prove that YOU'RE the problem.

>>150282705
Really?

>>150282943
You're only proving the point. Those comics are HUGELY successful. If it bothers YOU then the problem is not the word count, it's YOU.

The problem with these threads about how "LE COMICS HAVE LE BAD DIALOGUE AMIRITE MANGABROS XD" is that /co/ always refuses to post any examples of superior dialogue.

>>150283293
Manga is beating the tar out of them.

>>150280804
>Also I'm just going to say Gruenwald is miles more of a team player then Claremont is.

By team player do you mean that he respects other writers' continuity and characterization more? If so, true, but I don't care all that much.

We all have different things we enjoy or don't enjoy reading about and the Gruenwald worldbuilding stuff, where everything has a logical explanation and we know how much money supervillains make, how much staff it takes to run Avengers Mansion, etc., not interesting because a lot of the time I don't feel like the information reveals anything about the characters.

This Claremont page >>150265047 is not what I think of as the best comic book writing, but I feel like most of what Nightcrawler is thinking is specific to the story (the X-Men have to fight to defend Jean but they're not sure she deserves it) or the character (why did Nightcrawler choose not to teleport?), so I can deal with it even if it's basically a novel written over the art.

>>150284586
I don't think Claremont's characterization efforts are all that effective either, certainly not for all the balloons he uses.

>>150284586
What are you talking about? There's plenty of times where Steve Rogers has introspective moments especially during the Scourge arc or how villains like the Serpent Society actually discuss things about themselves like how they mourn then set out to avenge Death Adder, how Cobra fancied Diamondback plus Sidewinder having a fling with Black Mamba or Seth Voelker using his stolen funds for his sick daughter. It feels like you just arbitrarily like one writer over the other which is fine suppose and also I'll always infinitely more respect a Marvel writer who actually cares about how characters are meant to be, actually follows continuity instead of doing their own bullshit that flagrantly contradicts things and who actually care about the setting and the characters he's working with.

>>150283349
It's less "/co/" and more manga-tourists (who usually don't read much manga) and 00s-era fanboys/shills

>>150283682
That's not really true. At least not in the capacity that you think it is.

>>150287269
Considering the words of Moebius, Uderzo, and Boulet, there's some truth to it.

>>150287707
What in the fuck are you even saying now?

>>150285674
>I'll always infinitely more respect a Marvel writer who actually cares about how characters are meant to be, actually follows continuity instead of doing their own bullshit that flagrantly contradicts things and who actually care about the setting and the characters he's working with

This poster is correct whether anyone in this thread wants to admit it or not

>>150279634
That just sounds like your average fan boy given pen. Which is still ahead of the shit tier editorial today.

>>150279634
>I’m not a fan of the handbooks

There absolutely needs to be an established continuity when you're doing these shared universes. Establishing guidelines for writers to follow is necessary.