Lack of character development or dimension in pre-Season 8 comics?

[tbessie]

Hi all...

The comics forum seems rather dead, but I thought I'd ask, as this appears to be the appropriate place.

I've been reading the whole DarkHorse pre-season-8 (i.e. non-Joss-Whendon-involved) comics (though he has given them his blessing, they say).

Couple things I noticed that nobody seems to mention when I did a Google search:

1. The art is mostly Standard Superhero Style - none of the characters look much different from each other; there's a little differentiation in personality, tho' not much; the character's faces and bodies are almost identical.

2. There is just about zero character development. It's just "buffy and the gang fight monsters - the end". A bit is added to the mythos, though it's not developed much, but mostly it's just monster-fighting with a few teenager-cliche's thrown in.

Perhaps this is why there's so little posting in this topic - has anyone else read all the pre-season-8 comics (eg. I'm reading all the Buffy omnibus volumes now) and I have to say it's rather boring. Nothing of interest. Just typical comic book stuff.

Opinions?

- Tim

 

[Ripper666]

Well I agree with you that the story is not the best comic-story ever but I still like it! And I like the desings/pictures! The colours are great and the faces are ok too! In comparison with other comics I saw others which are much worse! The thing with the bodys I never noticed. May you're right there!
I like the sense of humor in the comics and the colourfull pictures who can show you just a face or big country-sides! Good work for the one who painted, less good work for the ones who made up the story!

 

[tbessie]

Well I agree with you that the story is not the best comic-story ever but I still like it! And I like the desings/pictures! The colours are great and the faces are ok too! In comparison with other comics I saw others which are much worse! The thing with the bodys I never noticed. May you're right there!
I like the sense of humor in the comics and the colourfull pictures who can show you just a face or big country-sides! Good work for the one who painted, less good work for the ones who made up the story!

Hi Ripper666!

I like the Season 8 and 9 comics, as I felt more attention was put into differentiating the character representations (both as drawn and in dialog/personality)... they make them look at lot more like in the show.

Those that came before though, all the characters are "elongated" and sexualized (tight clothes, bigger boobs, bigger muscles, angular faces, more "Character Drawing 101" kind of style.

I suppose given how fast they had to put them out and how they didn't have a lot of lead time on the comics (the producer of the comics even says in Volume 2, I think, how they'd get the next episode's scripts 2 weeks before they happened, so had very little time to know what was coming up). They probably had to work fast and churn out a lot... not a lot of time to work on each character.

I didn't find the dialog that great, though - they just sort of "Buffy-ized" it; I mean, of course, what can I expect if most of the writers were not people who worked on the show... continuity of conversational style would be hard unless they really did a serious analysis when writing the stories.

But I guess I disagree with you - I just don't find them that "worthy" (if one can say that about a comic - boy do I sound like a fanboy ;-) ). I think they could have done better, but maybe only if they had 1) emphasized that this should NOT look like a typical superhero comic style, and 2) that the dialog and character development had to match the quality of that in the shows. They might also have forced all involved to watch all of the shows up to the point they started writing the comics - I think the producer said that nobody had even watched the show when they started (thus why the vampires, when they turn vampy, look nothing like the vamps in the show). That was a bit of a no-no.

I think they were afraid to "break" from the show in any way, and were a little too meek and risk-averse as a result; but at the same time, didn't take enough time to research, watch, and get the sense of the look and feeling of the show. Just my opinion, 'course.

- Tim

 

[Ripper666]

Hello Tim,
I don't think you know but I started with the comics in the Buffyuniverse. I loved them. And I think this is a difficult subject because you can either love the comics or dislike them. I never heard about someone who had a oppinion between. They catched me because I loved the way they are drawned. I can live with the overrated bodys and I could live with a story which I didn't understand at all when I read it first. I am a big comic-pro because they lead me to Buffy season 1! But I see your points. They are not denyable. It's just the matter if you can overlook these points or if you started with season 1 - 7. Because then you are used to attend a certain level of (story) quality which the comics just don't have. But I hope that you at least read through them with a certain level of enjoying because that's the main point and reason of the comics.

Mou.
(Ps: I like your way to write to me with "Hello [name]"🙂)

 

[VisionGirl]

I have read Tales and Omnibus 1. I really liked The Origin and Slayer Interrupted. Other than those, I don't have much of an opinion. But I have to say that even though the hardback Tales is a beautiful coffeetable book, it didn't interest me too much.

 

[EVIL UU]

I like the original run comics, I think that they are about, rough estimate...23 000 times better than the canon ones. They are by no means incredible but at least the artists and the writers knew what they were doing. Can't say the same about season 8/9.

[MENTION=11579]tbessie[/MENTION]

There is just about zero character development. It's just "buffy and the gang fight monsters - the end"

That's the point. Those comics were published when Buffy was still on air, they had to follow the show - they couldn't do anything that would contradict the show's plot lines. As to character development - how far are you? "A Stake to the Heart" for example has some great character moments.

Those that came before though, all the characters are "elongated" and sexualized

The first issues are kind of like that but hey, those were the 90s. Cliff Richards draws proper, realistic bodies. OK, mostly.

the character's faces and bodies are almost identical.

I disagree. I like Richards' art because it's clean and because I can always instantly recognize the characters. In season 8/9 I had some serious problems with that.

A bit is added to the mythos, though it's not developed much

Oh, I don't know. They introduced a Slayer who decided to become a vampire to avoid death, showed how the gang dealt with Buffy's death, introduced time travel in Buffyverse, there was some Giles' back story and so on.

Just typical comic book stuff.

Well, yeah. It is a comic book.

 

[Skytteflickan88]

As been mentioned above, they couldn't do much character development on their own, since they simply weren't allowed to take the show in new directions. They had to create stories that didn't risk messing with the TV show's arcs and going against what the writers were doing with the characters.

That being said, I think recall the characters being drawn in a sexualized way, as you said, and that the characters didn't always seem like themselves. There are big continuity errors(one in Jane Espensons Tales of the slayers story, which is a sad misstake, since she was actually a writer of the show). I talk of some of these misstakes here http://thebuffyverseaddict.blogspot.com/2010/07/little-comic-book-rant.html?zx=4e400b29d2ae12b1

All in all, they're decent comics, but not great.