1: Five pages of the thief struggling with the moral dilemma would have me tossing the comic into the scrap. I think the most I could tolerate would be two pages, because while the scene might be compelling to you, it would most certainly appear stretched out to me as the reader. (The me-the-writer would probably glance over the pages and work out how to condense them into something denser and more satisfying.)
2: I'll need to reread Red Harvest with that in mind. Also, you might want to reread Dickens (for example), or any other classic writer whose novels were originally serialized.
3: I agree that badly written thought balloons and captions are extremely irritating. That doesn't mean you need to dismiss them as an option entirely. Will modern readers hate them? In my opinion, as with everything, it always depends on how it's done. My favorite negative example for captions is Six From Sirius, where the captions essentially describe what you see in the panel.
1. I highly doubt I'd write five pages of a single person engaged in a purely visual moral dilemma, certainly not in something I knew was coming out in 22 page chunks. A lengthy graphic novel format might (*might*) be able to sustain such a thing--I can see something of the sort working in the context of some manga I've read, for instance
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Also on 1: I wouldn't be so quick to declare it would "most certainly appear stretched out"--ALmost certainly, sure, but again, in the right context, with the right artist, it could work.
I don't know if the third person narration was phased out because the fans decried it. It would be interesting to see if someone could trace it. I miss it greatly as the vast majority of storytellers are unable to, well, tell their stories well. They assume we can figure out what their wordless panels mean all the time but in their efforts to be so creatively clever, I believe they lose a lot of the audience.
And as for being restricted or forced into the 22-page senario, shouldn't this be seen as a challenge instead of a hinderance? In any situation, the perception of the person facing the obstacle will first dictate how successful something will be. If it's approached negativly, the result will be undoubtly negative.
That said, I would love to get a couple more pages out of my comic each month. DC's Mystery in Space is longer, albeit with a bigger price tag as well, and reads excellently and looks great (and uses lots of narration). Same with their Tales of the Unexpected. Maybe change is underfoot.
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1: Five pages of the thief struggling with the moral dilemma would have me tossing the comic into the scrap. I think the most I could tolerate would be two pages, because while the scene might be compelling to you, it would most certainly appear stretched out to me as the reader. (The me-the-writer would probably glance over the pages and work out how to condense them into something denser and more satisfying.)
2: I'll need to reread Red Harvest with that in mind. Also, you might want to reread Dickens (for example), or any other classic writer whose novels were originally serialized.
3: I agree that badly written thought balloons and captions are extremely irritating. That doesn't mean you need to dismiss them as an option entirely. Will modern readers hate them? In my opinion, as with everything, it always depends on how it's done. My favorite negative example for captions is Six From Sirius, where the captions essentially describe what you see in the panel.
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J
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And as for being restricted or forced into the 22-page senario, shouldn't this be seen as a challenge instead of a hinderance? In any situation, the perception of the person facing the obstacle will first dictate how successful something will be. If it's approached negativly, the result will be undoubtly negative.
That said, I would love to get a couple more pages out of my comic each month. DC's Mystery in Space is longer, albeit with a bigger price tag as well, and reads excellently and looks great (and uses lots of narration). Same with their Tales of the Unexpected. Maybe change is underfoot.
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