Shockwave wrote:I praise it because it's actually going somewhere and has something to say along the way. The characters are the way they are because they are the tools used to convey the concepts of directionlessness that Roberts is writing. And I like the quirkiness too. But I do not feel inspired to write fanfic because of this.
Yeah, it might be crawling a little bit, but where is it written that writers have to warp speed to the point? Does no one have any patience anymore?
I don’t have a problem with building towards a big payoff at the end, that’s great as far as story structure goes. Gurren Lagann wouldn’t have been nearly as amazing if they’d gone into space as soon as they burst out of the ground in the first episode. The point, however, is that while you’re building to the payoff, the climax of whatever it is you’re writing, you still have to hit a decent amount of story beats to make it seem like it’s moving along, like we’re actually getting somewhere. Here, Roberts just seems content to have characters sit around and tell us what quirks they have without doing anything with them. There’ve been some interesting side-trips (the medical emergency arc with Ratchet was a part of this comic I genuinely enjoyed) but everything else just seems to be so padded, with characters’ dialogue extending scenes and exposition well past its welcome in places where more economic writers could get their point across much more efficiently. I’m sure Roberts thinks all these little pointless side-details are really cool, and honestly, they’d be great in a companion sourcebook or something, but when he’s trying to jam them in while telling a story, it just makes the whole thing seem meandering, circuitous, and unfocused. And maybe that’s the ‘point’ of the book, and props for establishing a feel to the story, but he’s overdoing it in a way that does not make for entertaining, engaging writing.
Also, there’s a huge difference between characters telling you that they’re interesting, and actually being interesting. Roberts’s writing tends to pitch for the former.
See, this is why people were pissed at Furman in the late 90's/early 00's. He wanted to tell a story (yeah yeah, it was cosmic gibberwank, so what, wanna fight about it?) but he didn't want to have to get there by the third panel. There is something to be said for build up and eventual pay off. The problem then is that no one was willing to have the patience to let Furman get to the point.
Now, the point he was getting at was a bad story unto itself, but that's completely separate from what I'm talking about. Or maybe it was that people knew the point and just didn't care? I dunno. Bad example I guess.
Honestly, the glacial pacing of Furman’s –ion series was mainly compounded by the fact that he took so goddamn long to get to the payoff that said payoff ended up being rushed into the disastrous 4-issue ‘Revelation’ series because IDW was tired of waiting around for him. As much as I’m complaining about MTMTE’s pacing, I’ll admit that it’s not nearly as ridiculous as the tour Furman took us on for –ion. When other writers are using a contemporary side-issue (Spotlight Ramjet) to directly make fun of how overwrought your plot has become in the main book, it might be time to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing with your story.
Anyway, to ironically make a long story short, my point is that you can have a big payoff waiting a while down the line in a story, but you’ve still got to write interesting stuff between that and keep things moving up til then, not just have characters yakking back and forth about how funny they are.
Dominic wrote:Artists are hard to come by. And, what professional grade artist is going to be in for a project that is unlikely to be looked at by a real editor and even less likely to be published....when I cannot afford to pay them?
Keep in mind, IDW killed the "Mosaic" project, which was the best way to get exposure for this sort of thing. I suspect that "Mosaic" was shut down due to a lack of worthwhile submissions. (There was so much shit that came out of that label that one could argue it was damaging the brand over-all.)
I’ll be honest first of all: I don’t really know how one goes about getting ‘in’ to writing comics, but I do know that people did so before ‘Mosaic’. If you can’t afford to pay an artist, just meet one. Find an artist who you get along with, who you can get into engaging story-creation processes with; someone who wants to make comics if they could just find a writer.
Alternatively, work on just writing scripts yourself and getting them out there, submitting them to whoever will read them. Write some text stories and try to get FunPub to see about running them in the magazine, lord knows they aren’t above accepting stuff written by fans and could use an influx of good content. I’m sure there are plenty of avenues for getting into writing, you’ve just got to seek them out.
Yay! Everybody is a robotard now!
I swear, it is like people are reading from "the big book of cliches". They decided that they have to like something, and that they have to show they like it by having their stupid little in-jokes.....just like everybody else. Everything is quotable and awshum.
And shipping, don’t forget about shipping. Very important in amassing a quality fanbase these days.
Dom
-looking forward to shitting on Furman this week...
I hear he has to pay extra to get that at his usual place.
