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shadowkatThere are times, like right this very moment, that I envy toddlers who can sit down and throw a screaming hissy fit when things aren't going their way. During these times, I understand why they do it - they are so overwhelmed with their inability to affect and control their environment - that they might as well just yell at it.
Sigh.
Feel very much like I'm in a holding pattern circling the ground, staring out the window, wondering why the fucking pilot won't land the plane already.
Work is at the moment a continuous exercise in frustration. [Deleted lengthy whine - since I don't want to read it again, and if I don't want to read it - why on earth would you want to?]
Read a few more posts on Buffy - The Long Way Home comic. Including an incredibly interesting one on the ATPO board by a guy named manwitch (I know he's a guy because he said he was and people who've met him, have said so). What's interesting about manwitch's post and the other's I've read - is people keep reviewing this work as if it were an episode of a television series. Comparing it against the tv series. As opposed to being what it is - a derivative work of the series in a completely different medium - ie. a comic. Why is that? Why do we expect a story that is transfered from one medium to another to remain intact and exactly the same as it was in the prior medium? Why do we expect it to be faithful to the original or a continuation of the original? Why do we expect to enjoy it in the same way?
It won't be the same. It can't be the same. It is impossible. Even if the same writer is at the helm, and even if they swear up and down they intend it to be the same.
Why?
Because different mediums require different things from a story. You can take certain liberties in one medium that you can't take in another. The audience of one medium will respond to it differently than they will to another medium.
But more importantly - it cannot be the same because there is no way we can experience it in the same way.
This occurred to me while I was reading manwitch's post - in which he states that he isn't enjoying the comics as much because he misses the music, the sound, the actors voices, and background music setting the mood.
We don't *watch* a novel, poem, or comic book. We *read* it. Think about that for a minute. Think about the difference between reading and watching something. Many pundits think that watching something requires less mental activity and concentration - when you watch you do not interact with the work, you are passive. Sitting there. Letting the images flash in front of you on the screen.
I disagree. I think you do interact with the material. Select the bits you wish to focus on.
Ignore the bits you don't. Analyze metaphors.
It's not that you don't think when you watch tv, so much as for lack of a better word - that you process the information and react to it differently.
When we read something - depending on what it is - we provide the sound effects, music, pictures - we imagine it inside our heads. Instead of Christopher Beck writing a theme song, we write it. Instead of Sarah Michelle Gellar providing vocals - we imagine her saying them. Instead of a costume designer dressing Willow - George JEanty does and we in our heads add the flourishes.
It's not that tv shows don't require people to imagine stuff. They do. But differently.
Usually it is gaps between scenes. Or suspension of disbelief - when we realize that the actors are on a cheesy set. Some people believe that modern television has spoiled the next generation - they don't use their imaginations as much, they expect someone else to provide it all for them. This may or may not be true. Personally, I think television still forces people to think - to follow intricate plots, to decipher metaphors, and to suspend disbelief. Or realize the information being presented is not real.
A book involves more imagination than a tv show does. A comic book? Also involves more imagination. Sure the sky's the limit on what type of stories you want to do, but a comic requires more from the reader than a tv show does - it requires patience - since comic books are written and produced much slower than tv shows, a certain amount of imagination since the art is one-dimensional not three dimensional and a mere representation of how the writer envisions the characters.
When you bring a comic book to life on screen - it is akin to bringing a story-board to life. It changes. It has to. Certain things are lost in the transfer. Certain things are gained. Same is true about books. I remember reading a really interesting review a few years ago with John Irving who wrote The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules - two books that he aided in transfering to the screen. He stated that he deliberately changed aspects of The Cider House Rules when he wrote the film script. He had to. Having adapted other novels to the screen - he'd learned that you cannot take a 300-400 page novel and turn it into a two or three hour movie without having to abridge. But more importantly - there are things that simply work better in a novel than onscreen. Things that seem perfectly natural in a book yet incredibly silly or awkward on film. You don't have to tell the audience what a character is thinking in a film - the actor can convey it for you.
You don't have to describe things. And dialogue? It operates differently. What sounds great onscreen - sounds silly read. There's an old writer's rule - do not write how people really speak. (I know I break this rule all the time and it is killing me in my revisions, because it is tempting to write dialogue the way people really talk...but on the page it is tedious and often not very clear.)
I remember John Le Carre being interviewed about the film adaptation of his book The Constant Gardner - he stated that he preferred it when the film did not follow his book. He enjoyed seeing another interpretation of it, and saw film as another medium entirely. He felt that the problem most adaptations had was they attempted to follow the original work too closely and as a result the audience was more aware of what was lost in the translation. Or even worse, found what had worked brilliantly on the page, but incredibly dull on screen.
Some of the best films diverged from the original work. They did not follow it exactly.
They became a new work of art. Another intepretation. Adding depth and texture to the original one.
[As an aside: An adaptation is not the same as fanfiction, although fanfiction can be a derivitive work and most often is. But, an adaptation is more often than not permitted by the original creator and often the original creator is involved. Fanfiction is a work of art created by a fan of the original work - who is in no way shape or form linked to the original creator of that work or has obtained permission from the creator. They aren't making money out of it. They are playing. And it is possible to have fanfiction in the same medium as the original.]
Here's a list of adaptations:
1. The Godfather
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. Spiderman films
4. Batman films
5. James Bond films
6. Chronicles of NArnia - The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
7. Prisoner of Azkaban - Harry Potter
8. comic book version of Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleStar Galatica
9. Archie brought to screen as a cartoon
10. Over the Hedge - comic strip made into a movie version
None of these adaptations are exactly like the original - all differ in some major way.
They have to.
When I read a comic book - I know going in that it will bring characters back from the dead, do bizarre things, and some of things may not make sense immediately. That it may continue for four issues or fifty or 100. That it will split off into sub-series. The art may or may not be stellar, may be confusing, and often difficult to figure out who is who - the more abstract the artist, the more likely this will be the case. The covers won't match the interior. And the dialogue will often sound off or strange - even if the writer is amazing, because I'm reading a script without actors lending their voices - I have to hear them on my own. I'll also have to read it more than once to make sense out of it - it's a bit like watching a cartoon or movie with subtitles in that way, except unlike a movie - it is one dimensional and you have little boxes.
Comics require a little adjustment on the part of the reader. You have to get used to the art. Used to dialogue in bubbles. It's not like reading a book or watching a tv show. Also there will not be any music, unless you plop in a CD or plug in your ipod/MP3 player and create it.
Comparing a comic book to a television series is akin to comparing an apple muffin to an apple pie. Or eating an apple to eating an orange. One you can eat with the skin, the other requires a bit more work, peeling, juice all over the fingers, and getting rid of seeds.
It boggles my mind when people complain that X-Men is nothing like the comic books or Spiderman didn't follow them or Buffy - The Long Way Home doesn't live up to the series.
Of course they won't. They can't. It is simply not possible.
Sigh.
Feel very much like I'm in a holding pattern circling the ground, staring out the window, wondering why the fucking pilot won't land the plane already.
Work is at the moment a continuous exercise in frustration. [Deleted lengthy whine - since I don't want to read it again, and if I don't want to read it - why on earth would you want to?]
Read a few more posts on Buffy - The Long Way Home comic. Including an incredibly interesting one on the ATPO board by a guy named manwitch (I know he's a guy because he said he was and people who've met him, have said so). What's interesting about manwitch's post and the other's I've read - is people keep reviewing this work as if it were an episode of a television series. Comparing it against the tv series. As opposed to being what it is - a derivative work of the series in a completely different medium - ie. a comic. Why is that? Why do we expect a story that is transfered from one medium to another to remain intact and exactly the same as it was in the prior medium? Why do we expect it to be faithful to the original or a continuation of the original? Why do we expect to enjoy it in the same way?
It won't be the same. It can't be the same. It is impossible. Even if the same writer is at the helm, and even if they swear up and down they intend it to be the same.
Why?
Because different mediums require different things from a story. You can take certain liberties in one medium that you can't take in another. The audience of one medium will respond to it differently than they will to another medium.
But more importantly - it cannot be the same because there is no way we can experience it in the same way.
This occurred to me while I was reading manwitch's post - in which he states that he isn't enjoying the comics as much because he misses the music, the sound, the actors voices, and background music setting the mood.
We don't *watch* a novel, poem, or comic book. We *read* it. Think about that for a minute. Think about the difference between reading and watching something. Many pundits think that watching something requires less mental activity and concentration - when you watch you do not interact with the work, you are passive. Sitting there. Letting the images flash in front of you on the screen.
I disagree. I think you do interact with the material. Select the bits you wish to focus on.
Ignore the bits you don't. Analyze metaphors.
It's not that you don't think when you watch tv, so much as for lack of a better word - that you process the information and react to it differently.
When we read something - depending on what it is - we provide the sound effects, music, pictures - we imagine it inside our heads. Instead of Christopher Beck writing a theme song, we write it. Instead of Sarah Michelle Gellar providing vocals - we imagine her saying them. Instead of a costume designer dressing Willow - George JEanty does and we in our heads add the flourishes.
It's not that tv shows don't require people to imagine stuff. They do. But differently.
Usually it is gaps between scenes. Or suspension of disbelief - when we realize that the actors are on a cheesy set. Some people believe that modern television has spoiled the next generation - they don't use their imaginations as much, they expect someone else to provide it all for them. This may or may not be true. Personally, I think television still forces people to think - to follow intricate plots, to decipher metaphors, and to suspend disbelief. Or realize the information being presented is not real.
A book involves more imagination than a tv show does. A comic book? Also involves more imagination. Sure the sky's the limit on what type of stories you want to do, but a comic requires more from the reader than a tv show does - it requires patience - since comic books are written and produced much slower than tv shows, a certain amount of imagination since the art is one-dimensional not three dimensional and a mere representation of how the writer envisions the characters.
When you bring a comic book to life on screen - it is akin to bringing a story-board to life. It changes. It has to. Certain things are lost in the transfer. Certain things are gained. Same is true about books. I remember reading a really interesting review a few years ago with John Irving who wrote The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules - two books that he aided in transfering to the screen. He stated that he deliberately changed aspects of The Cider House Rules when he wrote the film script. He had to. Having adapted other novels to the screen - he'd learned that you cannot take a 300-400 page novel and turn it into a two or three hour movie without having to abridge. But more importantly - there are things that simply work better in a novel than onscreen. Things that seem perfectly natural in a book yet incredibly silly or awkward on film. You don't have to tell the audience what a character is thinking in a film - the actor can convey it for you.
You don't have to describe things. And dialogue? It operates differently. What sounds great onscreen - sounds silly read. There's an old writer's rule - do not write how people really speak. (I know I break this rule all the time and it is killing me in my revisions, because it is tempting to write dialogue the way people really talk...but on the page it is tedious and often not very clear.)
I remember John Le Carre being interviewed about the film adaptation of his book The Constant Gardner - he stated that he preferred it when the film did not follow his book. He enjoyed seeing another interpretation of it, and saw film as another medium entirely. He felt that the problem most adaptations had was they attempted to follow the original work too closely and as a result the audience was more aware of what was lost in the translation. Or even worse, found what had worked brilliantly on the page, but incredibly dull on screen.
Some of the best films diverged from the original work. They did not follow it exactly.
They became a new work of art. Another intepretation. Adding depth and texture to the original one.
[As an aside: An adaptation is not the same as fanfiction, although fanfiction can be a derivitive work and most often is. But, an adaptation is more often than not permitted by the original creator and often the original creator is involved. Fanfiction is a work of art created by a fan of the original work - who is in no way shape or form linked to the original creator of that work or has obtained permission from the creator. They aren't making money out of it. They are playing. And it is possible to have fanfiction in the same medium as the original.]
Here's a list of adaptations:
1. The Godfather
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. Spiderman films
4. Batman films
5. James Bond films
6. Chronicles of NArnia - The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
7. Prisoner of Azkaban - Harry Potter
8. comic book version of Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleStar Galatica
9. Archie brought to screen as a cartoon
10. Over the Hedge - comic strip made into a movie version
None of these adaptations are exactly like the original - all differ in some major way.
They have to.
When I read a comic book - I know going in that it will bring characters back from the dead, do bizarre things, and some of things may not make sense immediately. That it may continue for four issues or fifty or 100. That it will split off into sub-series. The art may or may not be stellar, may be confusing, and often difficult to figure out who is who - the more abstract the artist, the more likely this will be the case. The covers won't match the interior. And the dialogue will often sound off or strange - even if the writer is amazing, because I'm reading a script without actors lending their voices - I have to hear them on my own. I'll also have to read it more than once to make sense out of it - it's a bit like watching a cartoon or movie with subtitles in that way, except unlike a movie - it is one dimensional and you have little boxes.
Comics require a little adjustment on the part of the reader. You have to get used to the art. Used to dialogue in bubbles. It's not like reading a book or watching a tv show. Also there will not be any music, unless you plop in a CD or plug in your ipod/MP3 player and create it.
Comparing a comic book to a television series is akin to comparing an apple muffin to an apple pie. Or eating an apple to eating an orange. One you can eat with the skin, the other requires a bit more work, peeling, juice all over the fingers, and getting rid of seeds.
It boggles my mind when people complain that X-Men is nothing like the comic books or Spiderman didn't follow them or Buffy - The Long Way Home doesn't live up to the series.
Of course they won't. They can't. It is simply not possible.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 06:05 am (UTC)I suppose because of how I entered the genre, I have certain expectations from my comic books. I expect Watchmen, Sandman, etc.
What I find interesting is reading both the Buffy and the X-men comic, that I feel like Joss is much free-er with X-men in terms of exploring the nature of the medium. Although, I really couldn't explain why I feel that way. Perhaps its just that I haven't spent ten years in the world of X-men, merely at the fringes. So my experience of the world is very different.
I'll have to think about that.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 12:45 pm (UTC)Writing comics and tv series is oddly similar in that they are *story-board* or *screenwriting* and in those fields you are writing for other people's creations. Stan Lee who was the original creator of the X-men probably has written the least number of comics in that series. Most of the writers are work for hires or fans much like Whedon. TV is much the same way. Fans such as Drew Goddard, Jane Espension, Merle (something or other) who wrote for Angel (and was first discovered posting on Bronze Beta as a *fan*), - ended up writing for Buffy - was it fanfic they were writing? No. Why? The original creators and owners of the copyright had a say in it - they couldn't do whatever they damn well pleased - they were hired guns. It was not the same as the ATPO group writing Angel S6. Any more than Bryan Lynch a fan of Angel - who has been *hired* to co-write Angel Season 6 for IDW by Whedon, is the same as the ATPO group writing their fanfic.
If I hired you to write a Buffy comic for Fox, you might get to come up with the story, but you'd have to okay everything by me. So not fanfic.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 01:12 pm (UTC)I'm somewhat the same way - except I judge it on the artwork mainly. I flip through - check out the art. Then try a few sections of it - much the same way I check out a book - first page, middle page, last few pages.
And I have to a degree cut the Buffy comics a break based on who is writing them and pure curiousity to see what he does with the story in a completely different medium. A medium that is the creators original love.
He doesn't get paid that much for writing comics. Comic book writers make maybe an 1/8th of what a television/screenwriter makes - from what I've read. So Whedon isn't really doing it just for the money.
I suppose because of how I entered the genre, I have certain expectations from my comic books. I expect Watchmen, Sandman, etc.
From an action superhero series?
I can see comparing the Spike books to the Buffy books. Or even the X-men and Superman books. But not *graphic* novel series that are well not quite the same.
How to explain? Comparing the Watchman or Sandman to Buffy, X-men comics, or Superman comics is a bit like comparing Buffy to a six hour television miniseries presnted on PBS. It's not so much that one is better than the other as they are written for different reasons. Watchmen and Sandman take themselves a bit more seriously than most comics do and aren't really considered comic books - so much as *graphic novels*.
Of course it may have helped that unlike a lot of comic fans online, I discovered the Watchman and Sandman after I read the X-Men, Spiderman comics in college. They came out about a year after I started reading comics. And I notice right off the bat how they were completely different from what I'd been reading. In the same way that a television mini-series with a A level cast is different than a daytime serial.
What I find interesting is reading both the Buffy and the X-men comic, that I feel like Joss is much free-er with X-men in terms of exploring the nature of the medium. Although, I really couldn't explain why I feel that way. Perhaps its just that I haven't spent ten years in the world of X-men, merely at the fringes. So my experience of the world is very different.
I've felt more or less than same way. And have read pretty much all the X-men comics. I think it's easier for Whedon to write the X-men.
Why? A couple of reasons - he's not transfering it from one medium to another - not attempting an adaptation. It's not his own creations - it is someone elses and those characters have no only been pre-established, but they've also been placed in so many different what-if scenarios and ret-cons that the reader tends to just shrug off inconsistencies. Also it is a superhero comic with a different audience with slightly different expectations.
On top of all that - Whedon has been writing them for a while now and is backed by a really good artist. George Jeanty is not as a good an artist as John Cassidy. Getting a really good artist is key. Bryan Lynch lucked out with Frank Urru for the Spike books. And Whedon lucked out with Cassidy. He's gotten into a groove. Plus he's not changing writers every four issues - he's writing AXM himself. The deadlines are looser. The expecations also looser - since it's more or less a miniseries that takes place outside of the canon of the regular series - it's not canon. The Marvel Civil War and other Marvel books don't really affect it or change anything happening in it. In a way it is a commissioned what-if mini-series .
Buffy is part of the canon or so he says. Has multiple writers. And the expectations are much higher.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 03:04 pm (UTC)Admitedly, you are corret that it's not really a fair comparison because for the first several years I only read Vertigo comicbook titles: Sandman, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, etc., which are aimed at the over 18 set. Or at least that's what the plastic sleeve says. I would however argue that it's not so much like comparing a television series to a PBS mini series, as comparing a television series that airs at 8 pm with one that airs at 10 pm. But this may be semantics of view. After all, how we approach a medium can only be the sum or our experiences with it.
For myself, if I were to file Buffy in my head it would go closer to Hellblazer/Swampy/Books of Magic than it would to Spiderman or Superman. I would love nothing so much if an issue went for the dizzy wonder of Swamp Thing #53 "Garden of Earthly Delights", which while having some of the most purple prose immaginable (so Joss is ahead there) is just... dude, Gotham becomes a garden.
I would defintely agree with your various reasoning as to why he's more comfortable with X-men. I'll be very interested in seeing how the other writers play, since they didn't invent the sandbox.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 05:28 pm (UTC)Good point. It actually started in the issue format for me as well, same with Watchmen. But much like Dickens version of the serial as to say compared to the pulp serials of his time, I think as you state it's a different level or audience. A better comparison may well be comparing a television series on *network* tv such as say Buffy to a tv series on premium cable such as say The Sopranos.
For myself, if I were to file Buffy in my head it would go closer to Hellblazer/Swampy/Books of Magic than it would to Spiderman or Superman. I would love nothing so much if an issue went for the dizzy wonder of Swamp Thing #53 "Garden of Earthly Delights", which while having some of the most purple prose immaginable (so Joss is ahead there) is just... dude, Gotham becomes a garden.
I think this may be what Whedon is aiming for with this series, but Whedon comes from the other world as a writer - the action hero books such as Spiderman and Superman arena. So this is new for him. He's not like Neil Gaiman - who started with comic book writing and who more or less helped created the *literary* comic. (There's a lot of people out there that scoff at comics but will stoop to read Neil Gaiman. I remember reading conversations on ATPO back in the day, when people would *only* admit to reading Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and a couple of magna.)
I do however think that Whedon is trying something new here. *NEW* for the US not for comics - this brand does exist in Japan - which a comic that is geared for a female or largely adolescent female audience. With female characters in which that audience can identify with. I've read a few of the Japanese magnas (although that's not quite the right name - can't remember what it is) - which target female readers. These books have more chatting, lots of humor -usually sexual in nature, lots of sexual situations, and the art is lighter in texture, more romantic and color scheme - the pic of Buffy/Angel/Spike - I'd seen done before in the Japanese teen girl comics - such as Sailor Girl (now a cartoon).
This is new for US audiences. And for Dark Horse.
It's a different category than Neil Gaiman - which I'd define as *literary*comics. House of Spirits, Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and Fables fit this category somewhat. Then there's reality comics or comics that deal with everday life - Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, American Splendor..fit that category. Then underground - which is R.Crumb, and other works. Crumb being the most well-known.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 05:31 pm (UTC)Apologies for errors - reading and responding in a tiny box at work.