Decompression had outlived its time 20 years ago

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

This is a discussion I started about that subject at CBR last year. Stan Lee and his artists invented this format more than a half-century ago, back when comics cost 12 cents, but in today's era of four-dollar funny books, it's just pretentious padding that makes no sense at all.

What do you folks think?

http://community.comicbookresources....on-s-got-to-go

[Space Cop The Dandy Find all posts View Profile Close Space Cop]

If you just mean long story arcs, then you hit on a sore subject with me. I don't mind continuation in comics, but I would rather one-offs were the regular and three or more parters the rare exception for really big stories. This is a pet peeve of mine in television too and the reason I much prefer shows from the 60s (like Star Trek) and 70s (like Charlie's Angels), when you could tune in to any episode in any order and everything was wrapped up in an hour.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

If you just mean long story arcs, then you hit on a sore subject with me. I don't mind continuation in comics, but I would rather one-offs were the regular and three or more parters the rare exception for really big stories. This is a pet peeve of mine in television too and the reason I much prefer shows from the 60s (like Star Trek) and 70s (like Charlie's Angels), when you could tune in to any episode in any order and everything was wrapped up in an hour.

Yes, that's it.

I think the solution is to implement a six panel grid. That would get more story into each issue and would make the pencillers' job easier. At six panels per page, a four-issue story would come to about one hour of air time if the story were adapted for television, which of course is an excellent length.

And the stories could then be told in the three-act structure of television and movies, which I prefer to think of as a four-act structure. One issue of a comic would equal one act. The sample stories in my signature are structured that way, except for the first one, which is the first 15 minutes of a two-hour "pilot episode."

But regardless of exactly how they do it, they need to get more story into each issue. Comics are just too damned expensive to keep padding out the stories any more. And they need to follow the act structure instead of the haphazard storytelling "method" of deconstruction. You just get better stories by doing it that way.

[Trey Strain Guardian of the Universe Find all posts View Profile Close Trey Strain]

BTW, the act structure of movies and television isn't restricting to the writers. It's not mechanical. On the contrary, it's liberating! It makes sense, and it helps them. Under it, the writer just makes certain things happen by the end of each act.