Jinn

I've NEVER understood this phenomena. What's the deal with comics? And Anime?

I mean I'm a SUPER geek and I still don't understand it. I used to want to learn Klingon so I could talk to my Star Trek friends. I collected Magic The Gathering and Star Wars collectable cards. I collected Pogs and have been playing video games ever since I had hands.. that gives me some serious geek points. My "crew" and I hung out in front of the LIBRARY. I used to read encylopedias for fun and I entered every Science Fair there was in middle and high school. I'm a COMPUTER SCIENCE major. I'm a geek.

But what the hell is it with some geeks and COMICS? They're fuckin' drawings. Of superheroes and dumb shit like that. Or Anime? There's all these otaku nerds who love everything japanese, including poorly dubbed anime that doesn't make any fucking sense.

So those of you who like comics -- what is so damn cool about them? They're not full motion, they're not fancy computer graphics, they're not good acting, half of them are in a different language...?

What am I missing?

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highthief

Imagination?

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fresnelly

I haven't collected in years, so I'll leave the greater defence to the true aficianados.

Here's my two bits:

While Movies, TV, and computer Games offer the fantasy of real time kinetic action (Who as a kid hasn't acted out a scenerio in cinematic slow-mo?), comics offer the same drama through freeze frame.

You've never seen a photograph that told a story? Comic frames are as dynamic as photographs and have the added compositional tool of page layout.

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xepherys

Oh snap!

JinnKai, it's a matter of taste. I don't like typical comics (your DC and Marvel stuff) nor most anime. However, I religiously read Penny-Arcade and used to read MegaTokyo (I need to start reading it again). Both of them I just happened to like. I like the personalities the artists gave the main characters. I can relate to them to some degree. Actually, they may be why I stopped reading MT, I stopped being able to relate as much, though I still think it's a beautiful manga. So, maybe you've just never given the right one a chance? Or, maybe they just aren't for you. There are geek things I don't get either, like WarHammer or M:TG. *shrug* Different strokes, my geekish friend, for different 0110011001101111011011000110101101110011, know what I mean?

Jinn

If you're shooting for ascii encoding, you lost a lil 011 01110011

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stevie667

I never got comics or anime either, and i've got an imagination that won't shut the hell up.

I can do humerous comic strips ok, but not the full fledged thing.

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Reese

Not every geek is going to like everything considered geeky. I'm a geek and I don't really like computer games based on the D&D ruleset. The pen and paper games were better but I never got into it. Probably because I had few friends that knew WTF D&D was.

For me, Comics are all about the artwork. When I was younger I'd trace every page of my comics. I probably didn't read half of them.

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Val_1

Well, if you like to read fiction, chances are there is a comic out there that you would enjoy. It's just a different form of telling stories. Have you ever read a novel? Good, well, you may have noticed that in the novel there are passages that describe the action. With comics, instead of the action being desribed verbally, it's shown visually. I'm not specifically a comic collector, I just like good fiction. Some of them are comics, some are novels, some are movies. My favorite comic would be the Sandman series by Neil Gaimen, which I would consider to be great writing no matter what format it would have been written in.

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ratbastid

I'm not really into comic books, but I love graphic novels.

Go read Watchmen or Maus or Y: The Last Man and try to tell me that isn't literature. Part of what I love is that it's the intersection of art and literature. Brilliant stuff.

Siege

Some of us happen to speak different languages.

If you like to read, there are probably comic books that will probably interest you.

If you like to watch movies/tv/series, there's probably an anime that will interest you.

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snowy

I love graphic novels and manga because they have STORIES, and I love stories. Better yet--stories with pictures! ratbastid makes a good recommendation with Maus. Graphic novels, especially, are gaining popularity in academic study, which I think is fantastic. I introduced the English class I'm teaching to both graphic novels and manga--one, because I wanted them to see how a high-quality story can match with great art, and two, because I love ninjas.

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KnifeMissile

I'm not really into graphic novels, I prefer Tankobon.

I'm just kidding. In fact, I'm making fun of your distinction between "comic books" and "graphic novels." Indeed, Watchmen was a comic book series before it was compiled into a graphic novel...


Unfortunately for me, Val_1 pretty much said what I was going to say on the subject.

However, let me just say that I love a good story. I don't particularly like reading but some of the world's best stories are novels, so I have read some novels. Similarly, some of the world's best stories are anime or manga, so I have watched some anime and manga. Indeed, your characterization of comic books being about "superheroes and dumb shit like that" indicates either flamebait or you know little about comics.

In particular, you might be surprised by the quality of stories told in manga. Because it forms more than 30% of the Japanese print industry, there's a very wide variety of manga stories ranging across all genres...


Finally:
If you like ninjas, have you read Naruto?

...oh, wait. I saw your post in the preview so I couldn't see your avatar.
I guess that's why you say you like ninjas? Well then... What about pirates? I prefer One Piece over Naruto, myself...

Destrox

We all have different tastes, I happen to love reading spy type novels and enjoy a lot of comics. The comics started back when I was younger and just stuck around, I've always loved the Superhero comics. They just feed off my inner child and make it so happy.

And by the way JinnKai, you're attitude screams negativity. I mean you ask a opinion about this, but bashed it at the same time. You'd be much more sucessful asking and receiving responses in a more polite tone.

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Siege

Says the guy with the (awesome) naruto avatar

A side note for Jinnkai: Encyclopedias happen to be text and picture based. And yet you claimed to have read them for fun.

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"Your name's Geek? Do you know the origin of the term? A geek is someone who bites the heads off chickens at a circus. I would never let you suck my dick with a name like Geek"

--Kevin Smith

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KnifeMissile

Thanks! Actually, I don't know if you remember, but my previous avatar was a cute animation of Roronoa Zoro. Unfortunately, my only copy of that image was the one on this forum so, when the avatars were wiped, mine went with it. So, I had to find another one. After a fruitless search, I made this one out of an image of a cosplayer wearing Sharingan contact lenses. It would be cool if you could make them spin like that in real life!

You might want to clarify your posts in the future. It looks like you're referring to me but the context suggests you're referring to the orginal poster, JinnKai...

Rodney

Gave up on superhero comics many years ago, but still hugely enjoy comic art of certain types.

When done well, the art makes a mood that reinforces the story... which was designed with the art in mind. Think of it as a writen story with an extra dimension of metaphor, brought by the art. A bit like a play... only still. Animated solely by your mind. (Drags on a cigarette and straightens his skinny black tie.)

Here's work by one of my favorite artists -- not necessarily yours, of course.

http://www.katchor.com/weeklystrips.html

Ustwo

I've always felt the opposite about comics.

Books you need an imagination for. Comics draw it out for you

I never really 'got' comic books either, I felt they were 'reading light' when I was of comic book age. Course when I was about 9 my favorite book was Animal Farm, a not because it had animals in it

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oberon

Maus is an excellent graphic novel. I have probably read it at least a few dozen times (and occasionally spot/understand things I missed before). However, I find the value in the story more so than the art. Not that Art Spiegelman isn't an excellent artist, just that his story, in my opinion, would have been just as effective in an entirely textual book. But he did it that way because he liked/wanted to. And I read it because I'm one of those guys who likes dramatic stories, especially true ones related to World War II, and not because it was a graphic novel.

In general, I do not enjoy comics unless they're satiric. Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, &c are the only ones I actually own in some form. Some people I know are into DC/Marvel comics, others are into anime. So what? Who cares? To each their own, I say.

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Toaster126

I thought graphic novel was the euphemism used for comic when people are trying to be less geeky. Apparently I'm wrong... what's the difference then?

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Lady Sage

Reading of most any kind, to me, is a way to escape into a place where there is no worry.... to unwind after a long day at the office... or just for grins and giggles.
For others its like movies... entertainment value.

Ustwo

I'm not sure about that, I think what gave Maus the impact it had was the graphical nature. Another book about the Nazi's were bastards to my Jewish family would be just that, one more to the pile.

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Cynthetiq

I don't understand collected cards, thought it was boring. I tried with Star Wars cards. I didn't get it then nor do I get it now, from baseball cards to Garbage Pail kids. Pogs even eluded me more.

I collected comics for some time. I have a decent collection of old and new, well now they are all old.

I've tried to enjoy anime for years. I used to like that stuff too... I used to love it as a kid, when it was still hard to find, hard to get good copies, etc.

But now I find myself bored with it. I'm tired with the same stories and similar artwork. However, I do enjoy a few anime masters and will always watch them for their ability to make beautiful pictures come to life.

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shalafi

Graphic novel is kind of a loosely defined term in the comics industry. It is usually several issues of a title released together in one paperback edition which makes it easier for someone starting to read a title several years into its run to catch up on the backstory. It can also be a longer format stand-alone story that was never released as a monthly title. They are also sometimes called trade paperbacks now.

Here is wikipedias definition.

linky

highthief

Not at all, IMO - comics require a significant suspension of disbelief, beyond what most genres of fiction, other than sci-fi and fantasy, require and much is left unsaid and requires a degree of interpretation. Just because something combines two forms of storytelling (art and story) does not detract from the imagination required to appreciate it.

The advancement in the medium over that last generation has been astounding, really, in terms of the complexity of the story telling - not across the board, of course. You can still pick up a basic superhero beats up supervillain book but even within the superhero genre things have grown up. Then stuff like Maus, Watchmen, Sandman, Dark Knight Returns takes it a step beyond and into the realm of truly intelligent fiction.

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Glory's Sun

I actually agree with <i>Ustwo</i>. Comics don't leave anything to the imagination.. well not unless you get off on cartoon chicks. I've never seen the fascination with comic books, star wars, star trek, D&D, or anything of the sort. You pick up a book and your mind has to play the scenario out using it's imaginative senses. You pick up a comic and you don't even have to think..

:shrug: I guess I'm about as far from a geek as you can get.

Ustwo

I only read sci-fi with some of the better fantasy here and there so that was my personal vantage point for making my statement. What I see in comics is a less complex story, much like a movie butchers a novel to fit it in a 100 minute time frame, a comic can't hope to convey the same depth as a good novel.

I try to imagine a book like Dune in comic form, and it would take an entire bookshelf to tell the same story.

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Eweser

I like Calvin & Hobbes, Get Fuzzy, etc, but I couldn't ever really get into, say Superman, Spiderman, etc.

Some of the manga, anime, etc is extraordinary artwork, but I can't get into those stories either. Maybe I just haven't found the right one(s). :shrug:

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Kittie Rose

What a silly thing to say. Comics are just as viable an art form as written books, movies, and television. It's the combination of word and image. It's very pretentious to say that an entire form of expression is immature or invalid. Yet you'll get snotty nosed mid to late 20 year olds saying it all the time in an effort to make themselves feel like they've actually grown up.

It is DOMINATED by Superhero comics certainly, but just because they feature Superheroes doesn't mean those comics are childish or bad - certainly not. Most of them use Superheroes as a vessel for other things, the most famous of these being X-men.

I mean, why would you want to sit around reading a bunch of words all day? Or looking at some pictures in an art gallery?

There are plenty of comics that aren't superhero based. Try most of Alan Moore's works, Neil Gaiman and Joe Linsner. Those three have written some Philosphical masterpieces the likes of which have never been seen in written works.

snowy

Welcome to TFP. Just a heads-up: this is something we try to avoid saying at all costs. Whether you realize it or not, you are insulting a person when you say this. Personal insults of this kind are not tolerated, even if you do not specify who you are addressing. Respectful language in posts goes a lot further than insults.

Thanks, and again, welcome to the community.

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Kittie Rose

Graphic Novels are usually just collections of closed arc comic books. There are plenty of ongoing comic books with fantastic storylines; the Ultimates is a good one.

Zeraph

I think your problem in understanding why some may like comics comes from your categorization of interest groups. Specifically in associating the stereotypical interest group of "geeks" or "nerds" all into the same category which is a fallacy. Interests are just what they are, there is not some mystical connection between liking computers and liking comics. Some people like comics just the same as others may like sports.

oberon

Perhaps that's more due to the novelty of the medium than the medium itself?

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Gilda

"Comic(s)" is defined in various ways, but usually something like this one from Maruice Horn: "A narrative form containing text and pictures arranged in sequential order (usually chronological)".

A comic book is any bound set of comics. Originally they were reprints of newspaper comic strips that gradually morphed into the form we know today. The most common form is that of the ongoing series, with some now closing in on 70 years of continuous publication, most notably Action and Detective.

For the first couple of decades comic books were anthologies containing several six to eight page stories with a variety of characters. Stories grew longer and longer over time while page counts dropped, until in the 50's and 60's one story per issue was the norm. Modern mainstream comics typically tell their stories over a period of several issues, and method called "decompression".

A trade paperback is just a publishing format, a large format paperback book, 7" x 10", usually collecting three to twelve issues of an ongoing series, the run of a limited series, a series of stories related to a theme, or a complete original work.

Graphic novel was a term first coined by Will Eisner, one of the giants of the industry, to describe his original work A Contract With God, which was followed up by two more similar stories about the residents of a tenement in New York City.

A true graphic novel should be a complete narrative contained in a single volume. A Contract With God, Maus, and Blankets all qualify.

The complete run of a limited series is difficult to classify. Watchmen was conceived as a 12 issue limited series meant to be a complete arc. V for Vendetta was originally an ongoing series that morphed into a limited series that was collected in a single volume. I'd have no problem calling these graphic novels, given that they have a definite narrative structure that parallels the traditional novel.

A collected run from an ongoing series shouldn't be called a graphic novel in my opinion, but a collection. An anthology is just that.

The appeal of comics for me is that it is a unique blend of literature and visual art. Maus has been mentioned before. It's a personal narrative of Art Speigleman's father's experiences during the WW2. What makes it work in a way that makes it different from a traditional novel is the visual metaphor: the Jews are mice and the Germans cats. Speigleman carries this over into other groups, the Russians are pigs, and Americans are dogs, but that's really just an extension of the cat and mouse metaphor that drives much of the narrative. It's something that simply would not work in a traditional novel.

Do they limit imagination? When poorly done, they can, sure, but the same is true of any medium. Comics, particularly those depicting action, show still frames. The reader's mind has to fill in the spaces in between. Once your mind is trained in how this works, and it does take bit of training for it to be natural, this occurs without effort, subconsciously, but the bulk of what is happening is still happening in the reader's mind, not expicitly depicted on the page.

Mainstream superhero comics are just one subset of comics. There are newspaper comics (I happen to love reprints of old adventure strips like Modesty Blaise and James Bond) manga, humor, horror, war, romance, science fiction, drama, superhero fantasy, high fantasy, gangsters, etc. You name a genre, there's a comic to fit the bill.

It's easy to look at comic nerds and dismiss the medium based on on the superhero fanboy stereotype, and believe me there are more than a few who fit that stereotype. Sure there are people who can spend days debating in great detail whether Batgirl or Captain America would win in a fight when it should be patently obvious to even a casual fan that Batgirl not only embarrasses and humiliates Cap in a fight, she takes his shield, steals his lunch, and doesn't even have to break a sweat to do so. But of course those idiot Captain America fanboys refuse to see reason even after you've pointed out all of the relevant evidence a dozen times and refuted all their feeble attempts at justifying their fanwankery, no they just refuse to listen to reason. Mantis or Iron Fist would be a good match, but Cap gets his ass handed to him. Wait, what was my point here?

Oh, yeah, it's easy to look at the stereotype that gets played up by the media and miss that there is a rich, varied array of subjects and methods of presentation and storytelling techniques.

The comic is the medium, the package the story is wrapped in. There's something for almost everyone.

Even with the traditional superhero stuff, there can be more than meets the eye. Young readers can and do respond to the simle plots, colorful costumes and adolescent power fantasies (settng aside that most superhero comics today are written for adults), but there is more there to draw you in. The comics that gain the biggest readerships all have a powerful metaphor, a guiding theme to them that appeals on a basic level. Spider-Man is about responsibility. When he's written well, there's a cosntant tension between his personal life and his "professional" life as Spider-Man, both of which are constantly in need of his time and attention. The X-Men are outcasts who initially served as a metaphor for the historical treatment of Jews, which is hardly surprising given that it was written and drawn by a couple of Jewish men. It later morphed into a metphor for sexual awakening, and the same metaphor that worked earlier became more universal, something that worked for gays (the X-Men have a huge gay following, and superhero comics attract a somewhat higher proportion of gays than the general public in part, I theorize, because one of the core conventions is hiding your true self from society), or for any other quality that might make a teen feel like he/she doesn't belong. Batman's life was changed and given focus by a childhood tragedy. The Fantastic Four is a family that runs around having adventures together, and has a group of wonderful individual metaphors in three of the characters that appeal to different readers for different reasons.

The good ones, when well-written, have something else going on underneath the silly costumes and codenames and impossibly good looking well built people hitting each other that hooks into some of the basic drives and needs and self-image of the fans who hook into them.

It's cool if it isn't your thing. I don't get watching sports or collecting sports cards.

Anime, likewise, is just a format, specifically Japanese animation. The word itself is just a shortened form of the phonetic pronunciation of the Japanese form of the word. The Japanese borrowed the English word, and it was borrowed back and shortened.

There is, as with comics, a variety of subject matters. It isn't all fantasy and giant robots and action. Name a genre, and there's likely an anime to go with it. One of the best war movies ever made, Grave of the Fireflies, is anime. Perfect Blue is a nice psychological thriller. There are spy movies and superheroes and space cowboys and race car drivers with cool cars and examinations of the nature of human consiousness. It's not all big eyed girls in sailor costumes, space cowboys, transsexual martial arts soap operas, and collectible card battles.*

I can't stand poorly dubbed anime either. I much prefer a sub, but a good dub of a good movie can be a cool exerience.

If it's not your thing, that's cool, but there is a depth there that you'll never see.

Gilda

*The anime geeks know what each of those refers to without having to think about it, and can name three different examples of the last one.

Toaster126

Wow. Thanks.

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nukeu666

otakus abhor dubbed anime

watching stuff on tv makes it passive entertainment...watch whatever they are showing
comics and manga is upto you to interepret as already said above

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snowy

Heh, the kids I teach think I'm cool because I made a reference to Cowboy Bebop the other day.

I REALLY hate the dub done on Naruto. Kakashi doesn't sound at all like Kakashi. Kakashi is supposed to sound bored to me, and the guy doing his voice doesn't capture that at all. I much prefer the subs over the dubbed episodes. Ugh.

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Siege

Agreed.

That's not to say that I hate all dubbed anime. There are some that don't completely make me want to stop watching. But usually by the time any company licenses it and shows it on a station that I can watch, i've already seen the whole series.

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Gilda

The weird thing is that Anime isn't produced the same way as traditional American animation. In American animation, the voices are recorded first and the animation is done to match, with some emphasis being placed on matching mouth movements to speech.

This isn't a convention that's important in most anime, and it isn't unusual for voices to be added in later, even in the Japanese versions. In some cases, the scripts are written to match the depicted actiions, much as in the Marvel method for making comics in the US.

The problem is that most of the time, the dubbed version is written and dubbed in Japan by ESL people. This almost always makes for poor translation--the best translations in any media, books, comics, movies, are almost always written by a native speaker of the target language. He/she can be a second language speaker of the original, or in rare instances native bilinqual, but really you need to be a native to get the nuances and idioms, the art of the language, right.

Gilda

Ustwo

Dont' feel too special, I had a patient think I was cool the other day for the same reason and if kids think I'm cool then something is wrong . I liked Cowboy Bebop. She didn't care for my opinion of 'Full Metal Alchemist' though.

Shes a girl moving from goth to woman, and its a cute transformation. One day its dragon necklaces and black nails and the next day its a pink shirt (with a dragon necklace). She seems to revert to goth, and then back to young lady, moving to the young woman.

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Stiltzkin

xepherys got it exactly right, Jin.

01100110 = 102 = f
01101111 = 111 = o
01101100 = 108 = l
01101011 = 107 = k
01110011 = 115 = s

I have no idea what you were trying to say...
01101110 = 110 = n
011 = ?

I'm a fairly hardcore anime fan, but I admit that finding good anime is hard. I've tried watching Rozen Maiden, Ergo Proxy, Steamboy, and a few others that have disappointed me because they seem to go nowhere, or just have a weak plot. I just love the style of some animes, such as Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, and Outlaw Star, and I keep watching more anime in hopes of finding more good animes. One anime that I was very pleasanty surprised with is Planetes. I think even you would like it, Jin, if you took the time to shut up, so to speak, and watch it.

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