Gregg and I both appreciate the feedback we've gotten on RE: Comics! #1 since it went up last week, and if you still need an introduction, I'll refer you back to Living Wednesday to Wednesday #55. We're gonna tear in to our next discussion, on the decompression of sequential storytelling.
Stephen Mayer: Wikipedia, in all of its infinite user-updated wisdom, defines comic decompression as
such:
Decompression is a stylistic choice in comic book storytelling, characterized by a strong emphasis on visuals or character interaction and usually resulting in slow-moving plots.
They also provide a very specific, very limited example of decompression with a page from Astonishing X-Men #14.
I read comics as a kid in the early 90s, but it's only been in the last five years or so that I've begun reading again, so decompressed stories are pretty much what got me back into reading.
Let's start with specific examples of it, when did it start, who are credited as the proponents of it and who is working at their own pace regardless of the trends. Do you like it or hate it?
Gregg Schigiel: I'm no
comics historian, but if I had to say when decompression really "took
off", I'd point to ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. There was a lot of hoopla at
the time about how what was originally a 16-page story took however
many issues to tell. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples that pre-date USM, but I’m going with that one as a mile marker, if you will (I could be wrong).
I suppose I agree with wikipedia’s definition, with the emphasis on
"slow-moving plots", which I find is the common denominator of
decompressed stories. To that end, I’m gonna seem like I’m being
diplomatic with this, but I can’t say I like it...but I won’t say I
hate it. It’s a “depends on the story†kind of thing.
I don’t want all comedians to be Steven Wright or Demetri Martin, nor
do I want them all to be Bill Cosby or Marc Maron. I like all of them,
whether they’re giving me many quick, one-off jokes or a few longer,
involved personal stories.
In serialized comics I find decompressed stories...frustrating. Partly
for value reasons (I want more to happen for my $2-$4). Partly for the
pacing. When so little happens over the course of on issue...after a
while I think, ugh, I don’t even care any more; this is taking too long.
Meanwhile, in a graphic novel, presented as such (all in one shot),
decompression seems more fitting (that is, depending on the needs of
the story). In those cases it can set a mood, create a pace and tone,
and become a very immersive experience very effectively. BLANKETS, by
Craig Thompson, at nearly 600 pages, could qualify as a decompressed
story. But it’s very fitting for the mood, tone and pace it creates for
that story. To use a more “action†oriented example I would point to
DAISY KUTTER: THE LAST TRAIN, where the cartoonist, Kazu Kibuishi,
really does some lovely quiet, decompressed moments, but also totally
sells the big action set pieces.
So format’s an important consideration. As is content. I personally
like my super-heroes to DO things. I dig that they have superpowers and
costumes and all that. And more often than not I find the decompressed
stuff really takes away the high adventure, kinetic energy that I enjoy
from superhero comics.
There are ways to address and treat little moments without having
things feel like they’re dragging on. Kyle Baker does it in WHY I HATE
TURN. And Brian Vaughan does it beautifully in Y: THE LAST MAN, which
is such a great example of telling a serialized story I don’t even know
where to start. And that’s the sort of thing that could easily have,
would that it were decompressed, taken twice as long. Mark Waid had
some really great moments, really true moments of character interaction
in his BRAVE & THE BOLD run, which were very much not decompressed
stories.
And I think that’s a distinction: serialized v. decompressed. Does that make sense?
"As a kid in the early '90s". Awesome. (says a guy who was still in high school at the time)
SM:Â Bendis is right where I always thought of decompression taking off. Everyone always talks about his "realistic dialogue" as his signature, but I always felt that it was the pacing that really drove his stories home. Matt, a fellow employee here at the store, pointed to the first arc that Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch did on the Authority as another turning point.
I think that the frustration you feel with decompression in modern comics leading to you getting less content per issue is due to a side effect of decompression that we usually call around the store "writing for the trade."
In a book like Ultimate Spider-man you get great character moments and packed Mark Bagley art and in the Authority you get action on a scale that I don't think had really been seen in comics at that point. And with USM you had one of the first books that really developed a following in trade paperbacks, in comic shops and in mainstream bookstores. Which led to more books being collected and reprinted, and now pretty much everything gets the treatment.
Leading to a book like Supergirl now, with an arc like "Who is Superwoman," where you get a simple, poorly structured reveal four issues into the story, not because it's well plotted or worth the wait or highly anticipated, but because when "Who is Superwoman" gets collected in paperback, it HAS to be five or six issues.
I'm glad you brought up Blankets because it's one of my favorite books of all time. I usually pour through all 600-ish pages in one sitting and it seems to flow more like a song to me than a comic. But yeah, now that you mention it, you do get silent, snowy fade-outs that are six pages long. I think a good book to contrast Blankets with is another big honking original graphic novel from Top Shelf, Alex Robinson's Tricked, That one uses a hypertext format to move between characters and can just overwhelm the page with background and exposition. There are more sequentially driven moments, but on the whole, you get a tone of information in 300 pages.
Y the Last Man is another great point. I'm not really sure how to say what I want to about it without spoiling the story. My main thought on it's serialized nature is that very few writers know how to write a very real, very compelling cliffhanger ending anymore, but Vaughan always knew how to pace that book so that it 
ended every 22 pages with you right on the edge of your seat.
My favorite example of what I feel to be non-decompressed storytelling right now seems to be Amazing Spider-man in Brand New Day. With the exception of New Ways to Die and Character Assassination, you've had nothing but stories of 3 or less issues that can introduce a new character, completely lay out their motivations, and have them tangle with Spidey two or three times while running three or four subplots underneath and retaining all of the precious moments.
GS: "Writing
for the trade" I'm aware of, though not a huge fan. It’s fair to
consider a storyline might get collected, but it can disservice the
serialization of the story. It also undercuts an idea, and maybe at
this point an old idea, that every comic book could be someone’s first.
The logic there is that within the 22 (or so) pages the reader should
get everything relevant to understand the story, from actions or even
context within those pages (and the occasional editorial notation). The
real skill is creating something that moves forward without leaving
potential newbies in the dust.
Decompression in serialized books can also get so caught up in minutia
that it becomes too inside. Which is to say, a five page conversation
has value only because you’ve been reading these characters for years,
because nothing in the conversation gives you the history you’re
assumed to know. Brad Meltzer’s work in IDENTITY CRISIS or JUSTICE
LEAGUE OF AMERICA -- setting aside the actual plots of those stories --
that character stuff was by a long-time fan, for long-time fans. If a
casual reader (and there’s a whole other topic as to how that’s an
endangered species) were to pick up one of those issues, I wonder if
they’d enjoy it or if they’d find it impenetrable. If they were looking
for speeders and ring slinging would they be disappointed and/or bored.
Imagine a big summer movie...take this new G.I. JOE movie...and the
whole thing was about G.I. Joe forming. And it was a lot of government
agencies in meetings...cut to a scene of Duke doing something
mundane....Snake Eyes sneaking around somewhere...Scarlet building a
crossbow...whatever. Two hours later, G.I. Joe forms with a crew of six
special agents meeting for the first time. The end. Come back next
summer as this new crew trains together for the first time as a team,
and the beginnings of Cobra! And the next movie after that the Joes and
Cobra face each other for the first time! Who wants to see those
movies? You might get a LOT of character moments, as you call them, but
at what cost?
That's what a lot of these decompressed comics start to feel like. Six
months later...$12 spent...for a fraction of a part of a tapestry.
Comics have an advantage, as many have said, of unlimited budgets
(limited only by imagination and skill) and having no ticking clock
(which is to say they're read at the pace the creators present and the
reader chooses to absorb the content (as opposed to a movie which
continues, with or without you - barring a pause button, of
course))...so why isn't EVERY issue a blockbuster summer movie with a
cliffhanger? And that doesn't mean mindless and full of explosions, but
more a big ol' adventure or at least something where STUFF HAPPENS. So
much can happen in 22 pages, INCLUDING character bits.
To have character moments at the sacrifice of action (and this is maybe
specific to superhero comics, so as to not cast too wide a net) is a
disservice. I mentioned Waid's BRAVE & THE BOLD as an example;
specifically there was an issue with Nightwing and Deadman. In the book
there's an exchange between Nightwing and Deadman that's rich with
history and personality and character, yet it's in the midst of a HUGE
fight scene. So visually you're seeing super-coolness...and you're
reading this moment where Nightwing realizes that Deadman, as a former
circus performer, knew his parents...
Decompressed, that sequence might have played out as a 5 page fight
scene followed by a four page conversation between Nightwing and
Deadman where they talk about the circus and Nightwing's parents and
ZZZZZZ I'm asleep (okay, maybe that's extreme, but you know what I'm
saying).
So before this becomes a treatise against decompression, I remind you
that this is with respect to serialized, monthly comic books. Though I
wonder, if ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN from the outset was released as say, two
130 page volumes a year, how that might have gone over. Hypothetically,
of course.
SM: Identity Crisis is an interesting topic for decompression and trade waiting because that book's cover dress was directed right at the mass market, or casual, reader, with Brad Meltzer's name just as large as the title itself and almost non-existent cover art. Again, maybe more for a "casual reader" discussion, but quite a contradiction between, as you said, the minutia Meltzer was able to geek out on and the audience DC felt they should be marketing towards.
Robert Kirkman needs to read your paragraph about "every comic being someone's first." As much as I enjoy Invincible and Walking Dead, he spends so much time going over what's happened to everyone, sometimes since the very first story arc, that it seems to take a year to move things along a bit in Invincible and Walking Dead needs these huge leaps to get to the next point.
I think that Buffy season 8 is a good parallel to what you were saying about a G.I. Joe movie possibly translating into a six or eight issue comic. Someone the other day, a little exacerbated, asked how many issues Buffy Season 8 would end up being. The perspective I gave her was that even though the series has already been running for over 2 years and had 25 issues, each story arc has really only amounted to about 1 episode of the TV show. So 4 full episodes out of 20 something issues. In contrast, Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos are packing stuff into their Buffy: Tales of the Vampires next month, wrapping everything they have to say up in one issue.
Another good Mark Waid written character moment in a full on, bombastic two issue story arc was Amazing #579. Whilst saving a subway train full of innocents, using his webbing to pull everyone up a utility shaft, a joke is played out over several pages, beneath the action, the end of which has Spidey keeping it together covered completely in rats.
Bringing it all together seems to be Dan Slott in Amazing #590-591. He moved the supporting cast forward two months with a ton of inside jokes, fought two barbaric wars, and pushed forward the relationship between Spidey and the FF and Spider-man secret identity post BND. Great stuff.
GS: Sure, I'll give props to Mark and Dan for their work on AMAZING. I've read a few arcs here and there and have enjoyed them well enough.
Who knows who DC was marketing IDENTITY CRISIS for. I read it and liked it for what it was. I didn't expect it to launch a series of crises and spin the DCU out the way it seems to have, but for a singular story, I enjoyed it. But the thing I remember and enjoyed most: the heroes v. Deathstroke, because that was awesome. The idea of showcasing Brad Meltzer's name on the cover of the collection has everything to do with his status as a best-selling novelist. Same thing with Jodi Piccoult's WONDER WOMAN run. An argument could be made in both those cases that the author might actually outshine the properties to those authors' fan bases.
I can't speak to INVINCIBLE or WALKING DEAD as I'm not well read enough, but it seems he's recognizing the "every comic might be someone's first". I'd be inclined to err in that direction than to go too sparse or bare, which is what I think happens in decompressed stories. Wolverine hasn't explained to readers that he's the best there is at what he does in a really long time, you know? But there's a lot about Wolverine that's not quite what it once was.
To the Buffy thing: As an episode of Buffy was 44 minutes without commercials, what if 44 pages told said story? Let's call that compressed. Following that, 22 episodes (a season) would take 44 issues...968
pages...just under 4 years. So at 25 issues you could say they could, theoretically, be over halfway there. At the decompressed rate of 6 issues per episode (based on your breakdown), we're looking at 132 issues...2904 pages...that'd take 11 years. How's that for a scientific definition of decompression!?
(But wow, when you see it mathematically it really does a number on you, right?)
So as I apparently continue to point out my issues with decompression in serialized comics, can you, as someone who says decompressed storytelling got you back into comics, explain the appeal?
It's an interesting dichotomy that such slow-drip narrative style has taken hold in such an otherwise instantaneous and "on demand" media landscape.
SM: What I really enjoyed about Ultimate Spider-man was that unlike the comics that I read a lot as a kid, lots of X-Men, lots of old Claremont stuff, the words never competed with the art on the page. There was no "Ironically, the astonishing leap alone lends doubt to Kurt Wagner's humanity and his hideous howling, like that of a baying beast, denies it completely" [from Giant Size X-Men #1] type exposition for what you can easily see just by looking at the panels. I didn't know comics could do that, but I guess I was just there at
the start of something kind of new.
I think we pretty well dissected things so far. I'll let you have the last word on this.
GS: An argument can be made for or against Claremont's verbose narrative or Bendis' copious dialogue. Same for the stylized, in-your-face art of Jack Kirby vis-a-vis the very realistic, richly rendered work of Alex Ross.
There are things an image can do and there are things a word can do. It's the fusion of the two that makes comics, the medium, so distinct.
How folks merge the two...whether it's this discussion and surely others we'll have, comes down in a lot of ways to individual taste. But I still wonder, the plot being equal, better for BUFFY: SEASON EIGHT to take four
years or 11?
ALL of that said, I want to point out the irony that for decompression discussion I've tried to fit as much information as possible in as concise a way I could, and not get overly detailed or go off-track (because believe you me, I could probably have gone on and on....)
Stephen, readers, I hope you enjoyed a most decompressed Memorial Day weekend.
Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon in addition to creating his own characters and books. He's currently working on a top-secret Marvel project with Jacob Chabot in the New York area. Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com.
Stephen Mayer makes his mama proud slinging comics and still needs his dad's help with fixing the car.Â
