I just clicked on a random comic which I won't name... and the first page was this in depth description of the main character and went into a whole lot of effort to describe the background of the affore mentioned comics story... and it immediately turned me off what I'm sure is actually not a bad piece of storytelling in itself...
but opening with what essentially looked like a text document with a few thumbnails on it?

It's kinda like having to read a whole bunch of scrolling text at the beginning of a film... I'm here to be entertained, not educated!!!

Comics with too much text always turn me off. If a story can't be told with a good balance of text and images, it should be made as a novel instead.

Hippie Van
Comics with too much text always turn me off. If a story can't be told with a good balance of text and images, it should be made as a novel instead.

Well said.

Ah, the wonderful world of 'excessive exposition'. I can't tell you how many comics I've gone without reading because of the overly-wordy intro that could be explained easily with a few expressive panels...

He probably wanted to jump right into the action and get all the details out of the way, would have been better to jump into the action and slowly reveal the details throughout the story.

Wish we had a rant and vent thread just for things in comics, print or web i have a whole bucket full of writing gimmicks i wish would go away (like how all the new superhero themed comics seem to be the same damn formula; first page: fight is happening, 5th page:battle is won, 14th page: sub-plot revealed, 22nd page: splash page 'cliffhanger')
ugh.

Ryan_Scott
It's kinda like having to read a whole bunch of scrolling text at the beginning of a film... I'm here to be entertained, not educated!!!

Do you like Star Wars? Because if you do, you're a hypocrite.

Skullbie
He probably wanted to jump right into the action and get all the details out of the way, would have been better to jump into the action and slowly reveal the details throughout the story.

Indeed, I agree because this would have allowed for character development and a backstory that could be revealed as time passed. Plus, if someone gives an "outline" for a story it feels like they just want to get the whole idea out there at once, then perhaps redraw it later (which I've seen happen on a few comics.)

Ryan_Scott
t's kinda like having to read a whole bunch of scrolling text at the beginning of a film... I'm here to be entertained, not educated!!!

I dunno Ryan, a lot of the time you can just skip past that stuff anyway. Walls of text cab be extremely annoying, but different authors have different reasons for it.

In my case I always avoided doing it. But since I've got a long, involved story with many, many pages and many new readers would feel intimidated and overwhelmed, so I was encouraged to create in intro- which I did, but not as part of the comic... If you click the "first" button on my comic it'll take you there, but it's clearly an intro page, not a comic page. You can skip right past that to the comic.
I think that's a better way to go... It's like an introduction or a forward in a book: you're not required to read them, but if you do they can offer insight into the story.

I just had a problem with a bit like that... I needed to present excerpts from notes written by one of the characters. The text is only couple of paragraphs long, but if you stuff it on the page there'd be no room for graphics, heh. Rather than explain things, it'd stop the story and scare away the readers.

So instead I wrote it as a 6 page sequence. It's part "notes" (that will be done with a differentfont , possibly a blackletter one) that are heavily illustrated, so there's never more than 150 words on a page (comic book limit is suggested at 200), plus there'll be panels where you have two characters commenting on it as they read. It should work much better than simply stuffing there a large chunk of text and calling it done.

I do have a project that I'm thinking a lot about, which is supposed to be a hybrid of a graphic novel and an illustrated novel (the illustrated parts would be used to cover large amounts of time passing between the main events).

For Star Wars it was a convention of the space opera genre. It was harkening back to Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers which had the scrolling text.

But that's film. If you must have a prologue; show, don't tell

That's a big probelm with fantasy. It just has to have that info-dump prologue. Just jump into the story and let it tell itself. For starting with in the middle of the exciting scene; that's a convention of all fiction. It's the hook. Laurence Block in Telling Lies for Fun and Profit advised switching the first and second chapter.

The conventions of story telling are the same no matter what medium you chose to work in.

Yeah... the Star Wars thing I was being deliberately cheeky and ironic... and it's been used magnificently in a great many parodies since.

But hell... even at the start of star wars, did all that shit NEED to be explained? Why not just open with a big motherfucking spaceship... and close with a HUGE exploding space station... (Because let's be honest, we ALL stop the dvd WELL before that dorky fucking awards ceremony... what the hell George!!!)

bravo1102
That's a big probelm with fantasy. It just has to have that info-dump prologue.

I remember picking up the Sunwell Trilogy (World of Warcraft related)... volume one opens with like... five or ten pages of PURE TEXT... in the beginning there was this, then there was that, then this group did that and then... AAAARGH!

I flipped through that and just moved on to the actual story, heh. I just assumed that if the story is well written, it'll make sense even if you don't get all the references. And if it isn't, there's no point in reading the introduction anyway.

(still have to read v3 to finish off the series, going to borrow it in a couple of weeks).

- - -

Still, for my new script? No infodump, even though it falls under the "fantasy" category to some degree (as it also draws from horror and pulp and adventure). It actually opens in a pretty silent fashion (all you get is that it opens on a cemetery and only couple of pages after you're starting to get the bits of backstory as told through plot, conversations and characters' thoughts).

I'm guilty of this, but I feel it was for a good reason. Readers can skip all that stuff anyway, and it won't matter TOO much.

eh, i dont have a problem with stuff like that...I mean, look at the comic spawn. in the earlier issues, it was LOADED with tons of text.

I dont get turned off by too much words...as long as they are actually helping to move the story along.

Skullbie
Wish we had a rant and vent thread just for things in comics, print or web i have a whole bucket full of writing gimmicks i wish would go away (like how all the new superhero themed comics seem to be the same damn formula; first page: fight is happening, 5th page:battle is won, 14th page: sub-plot revealed, 22nd page: splash page 'cliffhanger')
ugh.

Well, there's another thing I'd better look out for in my own comic, hardy harr.

I myself, like comics with minimal text; I like looking at the art. Walls of text really put me off.

I guess I just feel that whether it's comics or film or literature... If you can't include the history or whatever you want to call it within the story itself... does it really have any business being there?

I mean seriously... who went back and read all those Tolkien books that just explain the geneology and shit? Boooooriiiiiing!

Ryan_Scott
I mean seriously... who went back and read all those Tolkien books that just explain the geneology and shit? Boooooriiiiiing!

I guess you haven't met my sister....

Text doesn't make anything problematic from over here. I don't mind much text all up in my comics.

Ryan_Scott
I mean seriously... who went back and read all those Tolkien books that just explain the geneology and shit? Boooooriiiiiing!

Or folks that actually read the parts of Moby Dick that just talk about whaling? (Aw, crap... that was me.)

"Wall of text"- it depends on how interested I am in the story, I reckon. It can be kind of intimidating, especially if you've gotten into the pace of a comic and then all of a sudden you slam into said wall. But I don't see it as a bad thing in and of itself. I've seen plenty of comics do it well.

That said, I don't think textual exposition is really ever necessary in comics/film/visual media. It might take longer to get the the "real" story, or for all the details to come out, or for your world to get fleshed out. But I'd rather drag it out in comic form than throw it all out there from the start. That's a personal preference, mind ya. I do think it takes skill to keep folks interested in the "intro" phase. I ain't sure I succeed in that completely myself. It's like, 60 some odd pages until some semblance of "plot" or "action" crops up in my comic. :( Me = King of Exposition!

I love reading pages of exposition in comics.

But, well, that's mostly in the context of introductions, authors notes, behind the scenes info, interviews, and stuff like that. I thoroghly enjoy a well written Roy Thomas piece about his stint writing Conan or Mickey Spillane sounding off about writing comics in the 40's. Those are great. I'm actually disappointed when I buy a trade and there's nothing like that in there.

Exposition as part of the story? Um, I'm not that much of a fan. I can understand the thinking behind a brief recap page that somebody puts on the front page of a comic book while it's mid-storyline. I'm not crazy about that, but I can comprehend the thinking behind it. Anything more than that usually doesn't work for me.

I think Cerebus got away with doing this once or twice. (And then belly flopped numerous other times) I actually enjoyed Gil Kane's Blackmark, which had a great deal of exposition in it. I also liked the text heavy issue of Batman that grant Morrison wrote a year or so back.

I can't think of anything else though.

Absolutely no one wants to read page 1 walls of text. In general, a reader will only tolerate a WoT if he already loves the story, or loves your previous works. When I encounter a p.1 WoT, I immediately skip it. I might return to it later, if the comic gripped me.

However, I am a proponent of the cinematic style in comics... so both my DD comics actually turned out to have a sort of text-y first page. But they'are actually my hooks, in the way I've done them.

Uh oh....I think my comic sort of starts with a wall of text!
But its in a big font!

Now I'm feeling paranoid....

harkovast
Uh oh....I think my comic sort of starts with a wall of text!
But its in a big font!

Now I'm feeling paranoid....

bravo1102
That's a big probelm with fantasy. It just has to have that info-dump prologue.

Your comic is as close to the epitome of fantasy as one could possibly get.

@ Harkovast:
I took a look at your first few pages. Yeah, the first 2 pages qualify as WoT. The partial saving grace is that it's told through 1st-person, a character. If it was a 3rd-person historical droning, it would have been a 100% fail.

Freegurt

Ryan_Scott
I mean seriously... who went back and read all those Tolkien books that just explain the geneology and shit? Boooooriiiiiing!

I guess you haven't met my sister....

no but id like to.

harkovast
Uh oh....I think my comic sort of starts with a wall of text!
But its in a big font!

Now I'm feeling paranoid....

Yeah, mine kinda does, too. >_> But it doesn't talk about the comic's plot, the characters, or anything like that; it's more of an intro explaining how it's roughly based on another work. (Does that count? I've had one person tell me I should take it down, but I feel it's kind of necessary for the readers who wouldn't otherwise know that the basic story of Faust isn't my own creation.)

korosu
Yeah, mine kinda does, too. >_> But it doesn't talk about the comic's plot, the characters, or anything like that; it's more of an intro

Yeah, yours doesn't count as WoT. It is just a foreword by the author. Anybody can skip it if he/she wants to.

However, that does bring me to a nitpick on page 1... Usually when you draw a full figure which breaks the panels, the entire figure is drawn. It looks kind of weird to have her cut off at the ankle. Especially since if you add the foot in, it wouldn't be blocking anything.

Hakoshen

harkovast
Uh oh....I think my comic sort of starts with a wall of text!
But its in a big font!

Now I'm feeling paranoid....

bravo1102
That's a big probelm with fantasy. It just has to have that info-dump prologue.

Your comic is as close to the epitome of fantasy as one could possibly get.

You know you're not paranoid if someone really is plotting against you.

And that's after cutting more than one third of all the dialogue. lol! How much exposition is too much? A writer is immersing a reader into a world that is unfamilar, you have to tell them something. I hate some works because there wasn't enough exposition and without it I had no idea what was happening.

Os you skip the explanation and throw the reader into it and the reader is "why is that like that? That's stupid how it works!" When there is a sensible explanation for everything. The world makes sense to the people living in it, but instead there's the naysayers going on about how stupid that is or how that thing doesn't work right etc.