This came up in conversation with someone recently, and I need to point out that comics are a
medium and not a
genre. I think you could try and argue that it's a subgenre of illustrated prose, but it'd be an incorrect assessment: the art and text can be doing independent bits of storytelling simultaneously within a comic. In illustrated prose, the illustrations are ornamental at best; they simply reiterate what the reader has already taken in.
Comics are a
medium. I know this from just looking at the shelves and noting all of the adaptations. People "adapt" works from one medium and transpose them to another (usually for sales reasons): the Bible, Shakespeare, some spin on a "classic" bit of literature...whatever. The work is transposed from one medium to another, and in so doing, usually expose the strengths and weaknesses of both.
I'm not a big fan of adaptations (unless they're really beautifully done...like Bill Sienkiewicz's work on
Dune, or Al Williamson's
Return of The Jedi)...and even then, you end up losing some of the
oomph that made it special in the first place in it's original form. My perennial example is
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Movie.
I read the book when I was sixteen. I loved it. It had all the things I wanted: a coming-of-age story, a powerful teenage girl that grew in her responsibility towards her "world", vampires that you kinda felt bad for, a totally evil guy, teacher-student training relationships (such bonds are so
strong!)...I could go on.
I loved that book. I loved how it read. I could see these characters so clearly in my head. How they looked, how they behaved...they were vivid. Real. Awe-inspiring.
And then I went with my buddies, Mike and Ray, to go see the film.
You know how this ends.
It ends with my friends letting me know that it flat-out
sucked. It was a piece of garbage. They hated pretty much every part that I had loved in the book, and I couldn't really blame them. Even
Kristy Swanson! And we loved her back then. Hell, I love her now.
But I defended the movie. I liked it. I liked it for vastly different reasons than the book, of course, and
Paul Reubens didn't hurt either. Like, it was just different; it came out differently than how I'd seen it in my head. The movie bullied me into it's point of view; the book let me live in that world for a little bit.
As a result, I've kinda given up on reading book adaptations of movies...which is a shame. I really do prefer them over the films most times.
I'm just taking the time to point out that people usually try transposing stuff to comics, adapting stuff...and I just want them to realize that they're adapting to a different
medium, not playing within a different genre. It's not prose, and it's not film. It's a different
medium. There's a different language to comics, and it's something that people don't fully consider.
Mind you, when I'm saying all of this, I'm thinking of a personal experience where a client wanted every panel of a comic to be an illustration, where I knew it wasn't necessary. Comics aren't a series of accompanying illustrations: that's already been covered in the first paragraph.
A writer I was talking with recently at SPACE told me that he felt that with prose, the execution was in the descriptions of things. With comics, the execution was mostly in the captions and dialogue. THOSE parts were what carried things through.
I dunno if he's right...I haven't done enough writing in either format to really say. But I think he's got a point, at least.
Anyways...that's today's two cents.
