One Man Bland
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2017
Precisely, which is why it's a terrible idea to go in treating it as such because, while fanfic is free and therefore can get away with a lot more shorthand, comics require at least a little bit of a monetary investment in order to follow properly. As general rule of thumb, comic writers generally try and keep the first issue or two as straightforward as possible with idea being that every new #1 could potentially be someone's first #1, and it's important that a newcomer get sold on the characters by themselves before you try to sell them on looking into buying more comics. It's especially important when it comes to a relatively small series like Runaways where major plot points and events featuring them have happened since their series was first cancelled with shit like the Dark Wolverine series starring Wolverine's edgelord son or the Secret Wars tie-in.
What Rainbow, and the rest of Marvel for that matter, don't seem to get is that someone jumping right into new series that immediately starts off with a bunch of major plot points from the previous series is going to be immediately turned off by being told "oh you have buy these 10 other books to get this one" compared to a fanfic where there's less concern about attracting a readership because there's no monetary risk if no one reads about your shitty self-insert getting double teamed by Iron Man and Captain America.
(also thanks dude that's a lot more legible)
To be fair that was a thing from the original Runaways series - the purple haired chick in the background had the power to telepathically control dinosaurs (or rather that specific dinosaur) a la Aquaman-style talk to fish powers - so that's always been part of it. Though it does highlight another thing about what's happened with Runaways in that the original idea behind its inception was to bring in a new audience by having a comic that wasn't bogged down by the continuity bullshit of the rest of Marvel and that you could pick up a Runaways volume and not have to know anything about the Marvel universe or any current events in order to be invested; they were even sold in manga-style bound books in order to attract people getting into the anime/manga boom at the time. But it seems like that's been thrown out the window in favor of cramming them into the big events and reboots because Marvel just can't help themselves.
And to get slightly back on topic, I was looking back at the nu-Runaways page @damian put up and it hit me how many of these writers like Rainbow Rowell, Gabby Rivera, Chelsea Cain, etc. who were plucked from the young adult novels community just don't get how comics as a medium work at all. So many of them resort to "WORDS WORDS WORDS" and over-explaining shit that should be obvious from the images that it pretty much undercuts any emotion we're supposed to get from it. For reference sake, here's the same scene from Runaways with the narration removed:
) pro-CG extremist, that will go over very well.
