On this episode of Word Balloon, Matt Fraction willingly debates the story beats of Fear Itself.
All of the tough questions are asked. We talk about the recent trend of the event story epilogues
occurring outside of the actual series. Why kill Thor, when he just had just been resurrected, and
it's likely he'll be back in time for next summer's Avenger's film?
You'll also hear what's coming next in Casanova, Iron Man and Tanarus God Of Thunder, plus an informative preview of The Defenders. Matt expands on what we've seen in the Fear Itself epilogue, and how the Hulk hands this new Defenders line up it's first problem. You'll hear details on the team's line-up, plus Fraction discusses his decision to write this book in a modified Marvel style collaboration with Terry Dobson, as opposed to the usual full script.
For aspiring writers Matt goes in detail about the different discipline of writing 20 page issues
compared to the former 22 page comic. It's more complicated than just cutting 2 pages from each chapter.
Then IFC Film Critic Matt Singer joins me to talk about this years slate of comic book films.
From The Green Hornet, The Marvel films Thor Captain America,X-Men First Class, Green Lantern,
Cowboys and Aliens, to the coming Tin Tin movie, We'll discuss the successes and failures. Plus we
preview next year's slate of movies.
5 comments:
Hearing you bitch about what's wrong with comics today for 40 fuckin minutes doesn't make for good listening.
ah the anonymous slam. boo hoo. nuanced discussion is clearly beyond you. might I suggest you listen to another show?
Asking the question and following up with discussion is one thing. Harping on it and continually bringing it up so you can bitch some more is another.
- James Peter, Toronto Canada, aoshi66@yahoo.ca
"Harping?" someone doesn't like me (sniff) ;p
I'm satisfied that I did ask the questions and followed up with a reasonable give and take discussion.
I was ready several times to move on but Fraction wanted to point out other things that in his mind showed the story either succeeded or that my suggestions to the contrary didn't exist (like the 12 issue maxi series event).
The point of the discussion was to examine the current trends in event story telling.
There IS a difference in how events are being told today, and each event shows the sales numbers going down compared to other events.
Regardless, you didn't like it? I can still sleep fine knowing that, and while your opinion is valid, it's in the extreme minority compared to twitter, and the iFanboy message board feedback.
This to me was a good example of what I'm trying to do with Word Balloon. You don't like it? Then you're listening to the wrong show, so move along.
So I'm just getting to this episode and I found the 1st hour to be fascinating. I heard Fraction on Comic Geek Speak many moons ago promoting Casanova and he seemed like a talented new writer with a lot of big interesting ideas. After reading Casanova, I was thinking he might be on the level of a Grant Morrison, someone who could really shake things up in comics.
What a difference being in the Marvel machine makes. Right off the bat, Fraction is on the defensive and is quick to point out everything from marketing to distribution to editorial. He seems closed minded and and not even able to listen to constructive criticism. I like that John continued to press him on it but I was hoping for him at some point to just say: "Matt, Matt, Matt. Did you tell a good story? Are you happy with the story you told?"
Because lets face it, all this nonsense is going away. No one knows how long it's gonna take, but sequential art is going to go digital, the way of all print. And even further down the road, we're going to realize that putting out 22 pages of a 100-140 page story every 30 days is the equivalent of watching up to the 1st commercial break of our favorite hour long drama month to month. We'll put out full stories when they are ready and we'll dl them onto our Kindle flame or our iPad 7 or whatever is out by then. So then it just boils down to the story which obviously did not go over well due to the defensive nature of the writer.
Ongoing comics need to sell the illusion of change while maintaining a status quo. Event books are to bring about major shake ups which have reverberating effects for months or years to come. Fear Itself had the death of a Captain America and Thor and a major portion of the French population. To have all of these tragic events wiped away with 3 subsequent "point one" issues reveals the illusion to be a fraud and the reader feels insulted. It's completely opposite of the Civil War Aftermath issue which showed the ramifications of Captain America's death. Which BTW was only 4 years ago. Thor's was 7 years ago. Despite what Fraction said, that is way too frequent for the 'death' to have any meaning. They become cheap, unearned. Yes we all know the Asgardian stuff in cyclic, but it can't cycle that fast, people won't believe it.
This is not meant to be mean spirited, or to tear down Fraction. I just want to articulate the points John was asking about. Not all internet criticism is blind hate. Some of us are just trying to explain why we didn't dig that last story and hope that the next one is better.
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