A typical twenty-page short story would work quite well as a graphic novel. A single graphic novel of maybe 120 pages would condense down into a short story quite nicely.
When 'Watchmen' was published in 1986, the vast majority of comics readers deemed it a watershed in comics history. The 12-part serial comic book was widely acclaimed as a genius subversion of the superhero genre, and it did much to popularize comics to adults.
That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.
It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana.
Comic strip is almost like music on a page that you perform in your mind. It's not just pictures. There's a particular rhythm and structure to it that is unlike anything else. It literally is like music. You hear it in your mind as you read it.
I've always liked the tradition of publishing work serially in the comic-book 'pamphlet' format and then collecting that work in book form, so I've just stuck with it.
I don't do a comic book thinking there is a movie. I just want it to be as good a comic book as it can be.
I think the thinking is, in the comic books, I should pack as much onto a page as possible, because, you know, it's kind of the cheaper format, and you want to give readers as much as you can for their dollar.
The important information you need at the beginning of an issue. Like way they did the old Frank Miller Daredevil issues in the first five pages he always had to state his origins and how he got his powers.
The ancestors of printed comics drew, painted and carved their time-paths from beginning to end, without interruption, ... the infinite canvas.
I never feel there's anything I can't do with comics. There are certain things in comics that you can't do in any other medium: for instance, in Mister Wonderful, Marshall's narration overlaps the events as they're going on. That would be difficult in film; you could blot speech out with a voiceover, but it wouldn't have the same effect. That's always of interest, to see what new things you can do in comics form.
One of the key characteristics of the comic book medium is that it is not brought to life by just one voice.
As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.
The graphic novel form really interests me and I like the freedom that format offers.
The comics medium has some unusual features that do make it very different, in that it's combining a verbal narrative with a visual one that allows for much richer possibilities of transmitting information.
Graphic novels might really speak to one child who's struggling with the other kinds of reading and might help them discover that storytelling is joyful and personal and illuminating. They might find your way in auditorily by listening to audio books in the car instead of playing Game Boys or watching DVDs.
Comics are essentially films with fewer frames per second.
With Groo, I try to do one story every book. Sometimes the stories are better if they go a little longer, and I choose to do it in four issues.
I've always been really impressed with some of the longer graphic novels and thought it would be really amazing if one day I could try something like that.
