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[Bongo Bill]

We should use "graphic novel" to distinguish between stuff like Watchmen and stuff like Garfield. Spider-Man would be a series of pulp graphic novels distributed serially, by that terminology. A graphic novel is a subset of comics, long-form story told in the comic format; novels, graphic or otherwise, can still be shitty or for children.

[Royal☭]

Let's just call them all "Sequential Art".

[Royal☭]

I still don't understand:  The surgery is going to cost how much?

[Ted Belmont]

Did anyone else see people walk out midway through the movie? At the theater where I saw it, two guys got up and walked out at the Mars scene. I guess they'd hit their limit for blue penis.

Also, while I'm on the subject, I don't remember that much male nudity in the comic, although I may be misremembering. The extended Archie seems kind of like Snyder was throwing a bone(heh heh) to the hetero males in the audience, sort of like, "Ok, I know there's a lot of cock in this movie, here, have some boobies."

[Mongrel]

Or, let's just call them motherfucking comic books and stop dancing around with semantics.

Because that's actually what they do on every other continent for the damned things.

[Brentai]

Manhattan's willy was usually subtly off-panel, after they were satisfied that they had gotten across the point of "HEY EVERYONE DR. MANHATTAN WALKS AROUND WITH HIS WILLY OUT."

[Royal☭]

I remember it being subtly off panel in the first few issues, then after that he was like "He, it's a penis get over it" towards the end.

[Romosome]

It was a bit bigger in the movie than in the comics.  But I think after the first few peeks of it, unless you're the type that literally just can't get over that, it's pretty unremarkable.

Shocked how much of it they managed to cram in.  The added gore and fight time was a bit distracting, but MAN, they nailed everything in the book and made it work.  The setting they managed to drum up and the period portrayal from like, the 50s to the 80s was amazing.

Dr. Manhattan was done right, alien and lonely and downright fascinating.  And Rorschach was perfect both in and out of the mask, god damn.

I just realized they didn't have him dispersing the riot with Nite Owl and Comedian.  Anyone know if that's in the DVD?

[Kazz]

a graphic novel ends.

a comic book goes on and on forever, through an endless series of writers.

I only like stories that are written by people who have a decent idea of how they're going to turn out, and what the story's point is.  so i only like graphic novels.

[Bal]

This is why I tend toward elseworlds and TPBs. Serialized comics tend to be very annoying for me, because no sooner do you get some closure then the next threat begins to be foreshadowed, and someone gets stuffed in a fridge or some shit. Very rarely are those transitions handled well.

[Ted Belmont]

Not all comic books go on forever, there are things like limited series, miniseries, etc. Secret Six springs to mind, although there have been like three of those by now, they've all been written by Gail Simone, and they each tell a separate story with (mostly) the same characters.

[Bal]

Minis are great, but generally the characters in them, if good, end up getting incorporated into the overall narrative. Take The Sentry. Great mini about a character who should never be a part of the Marvel universe, so what do they do? Make him a huge part of the Marvel universe.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

I mostly liked it. They fucked up the ending bad, but the first, oh, two and a half hours were sold gold. Two hours of good movie is the most I can ask for with most movies, so I'm satisfied.

I have a nagging suspicion that it was neither left sufficiently pure to really make the core fanbase happy, nor was it sufficiently mutilated to make it interesting to the general public. When people ask me what I thought of it, I think my short answer will be "It would have been perfect if it had been five hours long."

[jsnlxndrlv]

It's as if Time included it because they liked that on the surface it seemed to be agreeing with them that graphic novels are not real books.

Not exactly.  "Graphic novel" is a term people use to differentiate between things like Watchmen and things like Spider-Man, as if there's some important distinction there, as if one is art and the other is schlock.  Graphic novels are for adults, comics are for kids, or adults with brain damage.

The original distinction between a comic book and a graphic novel, of course, was simply one of format: comics are serialized, include ads, generally run about 24 pages, and are stapled, while graphic novels are bound and of an indeterminate length and format.

Of course, the problem is that by that definition, Watchmen is a goddamn comic book, because it WAS originally printed in serial, 24-page format with ads and staples.

The misappropriation of terminology is unfortunate but inevitable.  Whenever a work from one genre is considered for dual-citizenship in another, the discourse on the high-side of the genre boundary never fails to disregard the discourse on the lower side.  This is particularly true when it's a work from the "para-literary" genres playing emissary among the fields of normative fiction.

As Samuel Delany put it:

I don't believe any notable number of people working within the comics field, for example, think Art Spiegelman's Maus represents any kind of pinnacle or high point in contemporary comics art.  By that, I mean Spiegelman is a talented guy, certainly.  His work is interesting and worthy of being read.  His work on Raw, the comics magazine he did in the eighties, was undoubtedly important and influential. But the idea that, as a comics writer/artist, his work is better or more talented or has done as much to influence and shake up the genre than, among his contemporaries, say, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Harvey Pekar, or the artists they work with, Dave Gibbons, Dave McKean, and Eddie Campbell, not to mention Mobius, the Hernandez brothers, Kyle Baker, or any one of a dozen others, including, in another area of comics, Neal Adams or Frank Miller, is cause not even for argument but for uproarious laughter at the absurdity of the universe.  Nevertheless, outside the boundaries, supported by his Pulitzer Prize, Spiegelman's name is known, while generally these other, far more important names, are not.
   Within science fiction, for forty years, the giants have been Heinlein, Bester, and Sturgeon--not necessarily in that order.  Outside the field, the giants have been assumed to be Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke--which is not to put down Asimov or Clarke, but only to draw attention to the absurdity of the systems of the world.

Bluntly, if you have any interest in comics, don't look for information in the normative precincts: it's not that they're trying to dismiss what comics can accomplish so much that if they actually understood, they wouldn't be in the normative precincts in the first place.

[Kayma]

Saw it. In IMAX. I didn't even know I was jonesing for giant blue dong until it hit me.

I enjoyed the movie very much. I think it hit the notes laid out in the book very well. I thought it was well written, well acted, and very well cast. Rorschach was as great as I could've hoped, monotone voice be damned.

What I DIDN'T care for are the Zack Snyderisms; slow motion punching, excess gore, and that...er, sex scene was a bit much. I just felt awkward. Also, the soundtrack. Good songs, of course, but their inclusion felt a bit forced.

Overall, the best thing I've seen since Avatar.

[Thad]

a graphic novel ends.

a comic book goes on and on forever, through an endless series of writers.

I only like stories that are written by people who have a decent idea of how they're going to turn out, and what the story's point is.  so i only like graphic novels.

See, this is exactly what bothers me.  People make up arbitrary, after-the-fact, nitpicking distinctions to explain why those thar durn comic books are less sophisticated than graphic novels.

Watchmen is a goddamned comic book.  It was published in twelve serialized issues.  Moore calls it a comic, Gibbons calls it a comic, and I don't think either one of them goes around implying it's somehow innately superior to the monthly books it's based on.

[Ted Belmont]

a graphic novel ends.

a comic book goes on and on forever, through an endless series of writers.

I only like stories that are written by people who have a decent idea of how they're going to turn out, and what the story's point is.  so i only like graphic novels.

See, this is exactly what bothers me.  People make up arbitrary, after-the-fact, nitpicking distinctions to explain why those thar durn comic books are less sophisticated than graphic novels.

Watchmen is a goddamned comic book.  It was published in twelve serialized issues.  Moore calls it a comic, Gibbons calls it a comic, and I don't think either one of them goes around implying it's somehow innately superior to the monthly books it's based on.

 

[Brentai]

What's funny is I slipped the term into my original post because I was afraid people would jump me for calling it a "comic book" instead of a "graphic novel".  Then I got jumped for calling a it a "graphic novel" instead of a "comic book."  I forgot that people here were firm-believers in antisemantic-semantics.

So now I'm getting Thad back by putting my punctuation both inside and outside of quotes in the same post.

[Büge]

I don't believe any notable number of people working within the comics field, for example, think Art Spiegelman's Maus represents any kind of pinnacle or high point in contemporary comics art.  By that, I mean Spiegelman is a talented guy, certainly.  His work is interesting and worthy of being read.  His work on Raw, the comics magazine he did in the eighties, was undoubtedly important and influential. But the idea that, as a comics writer/artist, his work is better or more talented or has done as much to influence and shake up the genre than, among his contemporaries, say, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Harvey Pekar, or the artists they work with, Dave Gibbons, Dave McKean, and Eddie Campbell, not to mention Mobius, the Hernandez brothers, Kyle Baker, or any one of a dozen others, including, in another area of comics, Neal Adams or Frank Miller, is cause not even for argument but for uproarious laughter at the absurdity of the universe.  Nevertheless, outside the boundaries, supported by his Pulitzer Prize, Spiegelman's name is known, while generally these other, far more important names, are not.
   Within science fiction, for forty years, the giants have been Heinlein, Bester, and Sturgeon--not necessarily in that order.  Outside the field, the giants have been assumed to be Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke--which is not to put down Asimov or Clarke, but only to draw attention to the absurdity of the systems of the world.

The fact that he never mentions the words "Jack Kirby" in some part of that diatribe makes me want to dig up his grave so I can punch him.

[jsnlxndrlv]

He had to leave someone for the "any one of a dozen others" to refer to.