So I just gotta moan, moan, bloody moan.
There may be some swearing involved.
* * *
How can I fucking tell what fucking issues I’ve fucking got if there are so many fucking variants to keep fucking track of?
Variant covers are ideologically dubious already, but at least it’s only really morons who snap them up, convinced their pieces of paper will be worth loads more in years to come because it’s got a different Ed Benes cover. Last year’s variants are already worth fuck all, although there is the chance they could one day be worth money. In a hundred years or so.
Most of the time, their scarcity makes it easy to ignore them. But some companies regularly put out a massive amount of variant covers every month, and it can be easy to lose track.
When my local comic store lost its records for its regular customers, I somehow missed two issues of The Boys. But working out exactly which two proved problematic, especially when they were in the back issue bins and all bagged up. Some of the covers looked familiar, but some of them were brand new, and with an overwhelming tendnacuy towards portrait shots rather than storytelling covers, I was fucking lost. It took me ages to figure out which ones I needed.
One issue! One cover! Or I might as well not fucking bother.
* * *
And the artistic habit of having comic panels spread across both pages, without any indication that they're supposed to be read that way? That can fuck off too.
The double page spread is a perfectly legitmate way to tell a story, so long as it's
made clear what's going on. Unfortunately, everybody isn't J H Williams III, and spreading the action across two pages is fucking ridiculous when you're dealing with a dialogue scene, especially when there are no panels stretching across the page gap.
It shouldn't be a goddamn mystery.
Marvel have been fucking terrible at doing this lately, and it's getting really annoying. After pages and pages of simple reading flow, they fuck with that logic for no good storytelling reason. It also leads to the annoying habit of more blank filler pages padding out a book, needed to ensure the whole thing is readable.
(I still remember the utter confusion of a climactic portion of the first Death mini-series by Gaiman and Bachalo, where somebody fucked up and a double page spread was separated by a turning page. It took me years to work that one out.)
* * *
It would be really nice if the comics journalism sites quit doing that thing where they parrot a company line about individual comics selling out. It's no big deal and means nothing when I can still see issues sitting on any shelf. Maybe they should have printed more of the fuckers in the first place.
* * *
Whoever designs covers and writes solicitations for the big companies: What the fuck are you doing? Are you even trying to sell these books?
* * *
Dear global media: Can you please stop using the phrase 'honour killings' when the fuckwits who carry out these awful murders are anything but honourable? Love, Bob.
P.S. I know that hasn’t got anything to do with comics, but it just really fucks me off.
* * *
That’s so much better.
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1 comment:
I was listening to a Radio 4 show a couple of years ago where-in various experts attested to the fact that most so-called honor killings don't fit into the category at all.
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