Chesapeake Silt said:
I'm done with DC Comics Presents. Seriously... what a squandered idea. Three issues so far, and only one good story. I kept waiting for Azzarello's story to have some kind of punch-line.... but.... NOTHING. Bah. Are comic writers so dominated by 'decompressed' storytelling that they can't write a decent twelve page story? Hey, maybe if they were able to write a sweeping twelve-issue story-arc where nothing happens for ten or eleven issues, they'd be able to fully convey their grand ideas about why the Green Lantern is selling power rings for a dollar.
This post is dead on. Really, I think most comic writers are so used to taking 4 or 6 or 12 issues to tell a story, that they've lost much of their ability to edit and 'tighten' their stories. Some of the stories are stringed out so long, you'd think the line would break.
To go on a tangent for a second, Don Rosa (An American famous in Europe Uncle Scrooge writer/artist) said that he what he tells in his 24 page stories, it would take someone at DC/Marvel 6 issues/150 pages to tell. And if you've read any of Rosa's stories, you'd believe him.
I think the point was driven to me reading an issue of Ultimate Spiderman. It was during the Black Cat storyline, the issue where Elektra and Black Cat first fought. After reading that issue, I felt I was robbed of $2.25.
NOTHING happened in the issue. It was fight, fight, little bit of dialogue, fight, fight, little bit of dialogue, the end. I was like, where did the story go? It was advanced hardly an inch. They could have easily cut that issue out of the arc, incorporate some of its elements to other issues and it wouldn't have been missed. Now I liked the Black Cat storyline overall, but that particular issue was just filler, plain and simple.
