SPURGEON: So what’s next?
COTTER: No staples. At MoCCA people would come to the table getting books for review, and people would say, “We don’t want staples.” Chris maybe printed up 1500 of this and we just sold out of #1. I hear people say that when there’s a collection they might be interested in it.
It’s pretty striking to hear distaste for the pamphlet format expressed that nakedly, apparently by the sorts of people who write about comics for the world at large.
That kind of thing baffles me. I mean, I don’t buy single issues much at all these days because I’m trying to save some extra money and free up some space for other things, but I don’t dislike them in that sort of way.
I suspect part of my reaction is intensified by the self-consciousness of “staples” as a bit of synecdoche. I have a growing horror of such things (and partly this is a political concern; I think that talking hiply about parts makes it easier to ignore wholes). When I say something like “I liked replacing multiple long boxes with one shelf of trade paperbacks, getting back a bunch of floor space and using part of a bookshelf I already had,” that’s just what I mean. Likewise if I say something like “I sometimes get annoyed at finding that once again I spent five minutes reading and looking at an issue and now have to go get another one, and like to read one thing for a longer stretch.” “Staples” is just stupid.
Agreed. But I realize now that when I said it’s striking to see this opinion expressed this nakedly, it’s really just the use of the word “staples” that made it stick out–coming out and admitting that you’re pinning whether a comic is worth reading on the material it’s bound with. But in my gigs writing about comics for mainstream publications, I have frequently been told to pitch ideas for “graphic novels only–no comic books,” as though that’s a distinction that means anything other than format. (No Eddie Campbell, I!)
On the whole I prefer book-format comics to pamphlets. They’re much easier to store, you get more bang for your buck, they’re easier to carry and read on the go, they hold up to reading better, they look better on display, to the extent that I give a damn about “what it does for the medium” they obviously break down some barriers as evidenced in reverse by the people Cotter had to deal with, etc. etc. etc. I no longer purchase any superhero comics in pamphlet form for those reasons, and avoid it with alternative comics when I can. But sometimes I can’t, and for god’s sake Skyscrapers of the Midwest is one of those exceptions. As are any of the Ignatz books, Big Questions, the pamphlet issue of Or Else, THB, Uptight…ignoring comics like those because of format seems as foolish to me as refusing to read Gilbert Hernandez because Luba has big boobs.
Yeah, exactly.
Serial storytelling is its own creature, for one thing. Watching a story unfold piece by piece, and waiting for the next one, is a really different experience. I get the feeling that some critics have simply lost interest in remembering how to wait, comics-style.
The individual issue also offers some unique opportunities for design. In some ways I think Watchmen had more impact in single issues, with the ticking clock and blood flowing down the back cover each time, and then the next chapter being a new artifact rather than just a page over. Planetary’s brilliant cover presentation is another example. There are plenty more, less stellar but still altogether worthy. Good issue design isn’t like good chapter design in some important ways.
Finally, and I do realize that this is nostalgia rather than much available today, I miss the community side of individual issues with good letter columns.