Turn the paige

Comic books have come a long way. But then, they haven’t. The basic structure is still the same. There have been some exceptions, and good ones at that, but your run-of-the-mill mainstream comic adheres to a pretty static format that has existed, oh, since always. This isn’t a bad thing. But there are a few parts of this time-tested layout that really bother me.

For example, the story is usually broken up into various arcs, but it’s difficult if you get behind to tell where an arc begins, and where it ends. There aren’t always clear lines of demarcation. This can be really frustrating, especially if you’ve been away for a while. The simple answer, don’t get behind. But that is just mean in its simplicity. Not unlike the word ‘unacceptable’. I hate that word. Everything is acceptable if you try hard enough.

Also, the concept of real world time has just been all blown to hell. It isn’t even addressed anymore, near as I can tell. The holidays are tossed in whenever they crop up in the real world, but often this is in such an uncomfortable manner, one is reminded of square pegs and…not…square…holes. You know what I mean. I think this happens because comics only come out once a month, but we never see one day out of one month for the characters. That would be boring.

I think they could learn a lot from TV.

I’d like to see a comic that runs 11 issues/ episodes per year, with one month serving as the ‘off-season’. This would allow writers to build their arcs within that frame as they see fit. They could use three issues to cover one day, or three months. However the story dictates it. Each year would be a season. There’s nothing I appreciate more than communication and consistency, so I think you’d need to be really upfront about what you were doing. The month long break would let real world time catch up with comic book time. You could have cliffhanger endings, but then you could use the next year to get time back on track.

I don’t know if this would take care of my gripes. But there really isn’t anything that matches what comics are trying to do story-wise, that only comes out once a month. I appreciate the hard spot they’re in, but I think this might take some of the pressure off and improve the whole process and experience.