A few days back, I wrote an appreciation-analysis of Moench, Jones, and Madsen's Batman Unseen #1 and #2. The comics racks at my local shop has somewhere around 70 new comics today -- and Batman Unseen #3 is the only cover to have a word balloon. This choice clearly seems to be part of the author's decision to evoke a retro feel, and though a word balloon on a cover shouldn't seem like a risk, given current trends, it almost seems a little subversive; and it's a small reason why this comic stands out to me . . .
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Unseen on Covers
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I need to get "take it from someone who worked at Wizard for three years" copyrighted, but, uh, take it from someone who worked at Wizard for three years: This exact tactic is used with some frequency, with the intention of getting people to say how it's an eye-catching throwback. Which I guess it is, but it's not the subversive move you think it is--for example, the event tie-in comic Green Lantern Corps did it with their "Blackest Night Prologue" issue a few months back.
Sean,
I think you are misreading what i said a little -- I wrote "it almost seems a little subversive" -- to doubley qualify the statement -- I don't really think it's that subversive in any strong sense of the word (hence almost and little), just that, in conjunction with many other choices made by the creator, it, differentiates for me the comic from many of others. It was literally the only comic that I have seen on the racks the past few Wednesdays -- a perhaps longer -- that had this.
And I mention Blackest Night here
http://blogflumer.blogspot.com/2009/11/unseen.html
in my discussion of Batman Unseen to show, in an indirect way, what I like about it.
I think it's a basic point. if the trend is to no word balloons on the cover, if 4 out of every 200 comics have them, then they subvert the trend.
Post a Comment