{"id":620,"date":"2015-11-20T23:30:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-21T04:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=620"},"modified":"2015-11-20T23:22:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T04:22:18","slug":"whatever-happened-to-exposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"Whatever Happened to Exposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose that this week\u2019s column can be easily interpreted as the rantings of an older reader wishing, nostalgically, for the good old days while simultaneously contemplating how to tell the youngsters of the neighborhood to get off my lawn.\u00a0 But that is just a chance I\u2019ll have to take.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, I long for the days when exposition was a lot clearer.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean that it has to be pedantic or employ a captain obvious character.\u00a0 But even in the good ole days where the art was high caliber and the visual layout very well done, sometime a few words was worth a hundred pictures.<\/p>\n

For example, take this action shot from the Spider-Man newspaper column.<\/p>\n

\"Spider-Man<\/a><\/p>\n

It would not be at all clear what Spider-Man was trying to do without the thought bubbles that shared his inner narrative with the audience.<\/p>\n

I appreciate that thought bubbles are considered old school now but is the story really enhanced by eliminating them?\u00a0 Also, I reject the contention that thought captions are actually new school as well.\u00a0 Consider the following two panels from Marvel Chillers<\/em> #6 (1976)<\/p>\n

\"Tigra<\/a><\/p>\n

These captions with a narration voice over are used consistently by Tony Isabella and John Byrne throughout the entire issue.\u00a0 Not one thought bubble to be found.\u00a0 While visually less jarring and cluttered \u2013 the captions being filled with color as opposed to bright white like the thought bubbles \u2013 the exposition is not significantly enhanced.\u00a0 Compared to the Spider-Man two-panel excerpt above, the Marvel Chillers<\/em> piece contains essentially the same amount of inner dialog.\u00a0 Of course, the captions allow Byrne to zoom-in on the action but both sets are visually appealing and one might argue that which is used is a matter of taste.\u00a0 Has anyone mixed thought bubbles and captions?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the answer, in both cases the writer had enough space to keep the reader comfortably current with the action.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that is not consistent with the current trends in comics.\u00a0 Too often, a minimalist approach is taken to the exposition which leaves me scratching my head as to how to interpret what I am seeing.<\/p>\n

Consider the fairly recent attempts to knit together multiversal stories at Marvel. Certainly everyone is familiar with The Secret Wars<\/em> event running through Marvel, but the original foray into that realm seems to have been the 12-issue run on The Defenders<\/em> by Matt Fraction, Jamie McKelvie, and Mike Norton.\u00a0 I know that the Defenders had been cut loose from their mooring lines and cast adrift into the multiverse and I know that the experience is supposed to be disorienting to them.\u00a0 But it need not be disorienting to the reader.\u00a0 In issue #10, the reader is dropped into a scene of utter devastation<\/p>\n

\"Death<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and left to fend for himself. Sure the art is striking and some bits of exposition are given later but it really ends up being too little to really shed light on what\u2019s happening. \u00a0Okay, real life is like that but so what?\u00a0 I don\u2019t read comics to get real life \u2013 no one does.\u00a0 This problem is amplified by the Jonathan Hickman run on The Avengers<\/em> and The New Avengers<\/em> which culminated with The Secret Wars<\/em> event that recently ended.\u00a0 I challenge anyone (even Hickman) to really make heads or tails of what Hickman was trying to say \u2013 to really make it make sense. \u00a0Builders, and Beyonders, and Black Swans, and Molecule Men, oh my! \u00a0To paraphrase Chesterton, the writer is under a contract to explain the events to the reader.\u00a0 The reader takes delight not in the mystery but in the explanation that makes it clear.<\/p>\n

Couple minimalist story with bad art and the situation gets even worse.\u00a0 The art on Roche Limit was so minimalist that I often had a hard time telling one character from another.<\/p>\n

\"Bekkah_(missing_sister)\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All of them had distinguishing characteristics so that when viewed side-by-side they were distinguishable but none were memorable enough to jump off the page and stick in my thought until the next issue came out. \u00a0Could it have hurt the writer to remind me that this simple line drawing above represents Sonya’s sister Bekkah. There’s plenty of space in the speech balloon to both add that information and improve the exposition with dialog more like ‘Have you ever seen this girl? \u00a0Never? \u00a0Didn’t she ever stay here or visit? \u00a0Her name’s Bekkah… she’s my sister.’ \u00a0Five extra words but a world’s worth of difference. \u00a0Without it I am stuck having to\u00a0reread the series each time a new issue is added to the fold.<\/p>\n

I miss the days when master artists made each character distinct.<\/p>\n

\"Spider-Man<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, even in reasonably well-crafted books like The Sixth Gun<\/em>, there are still scenes like<\/p>\n

\"Guess<\/a><\/p>\n

where I wonder if I am reading a comic or playing the old children\u2019s game Guess Who<\/em> (does your cowboy have hair? \u00a0Does he have a hat?\u00a0 Mustache of full beard?\u00a0 Don\u2019t tell me \u2013 they have the same nose!).<\/p>\n

So if any creators actually stumble on this post, please do your readers a favor, do your sales figures a favor, and do yourself a favor, work on the exposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose that this week\u2019s column can be easily interpreted as the rantings of an older reader wishing, nostalgically, for the good old days while simultaneously contemplating how to tell… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}