Alex Groff
Mar 3, 2005, 04:05 pm
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/columns/te_logo.gif" align=left width=115 height=100 border=0 alt="Typographical Errors">by Alex Groff
If there was a *bling bling* of the 1980s comic book world, it was the maxiseries. It was a story so freaking important that it couldn't be told in four puny issues—so earthshattering that it couldn't be an ongoing series or the world would, I don't know, implode or something. We're talking twelve issues stories, where anything can happen and everyone will make a guest appearance at least twice (or more if they have clones or future selves from alternate realities).
When I was younger and more foolish, I bought myself a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths and read through that mammoth volume. I made the same mistake with the Secret Wars, and while there are those who think that a maxiseries should include every superhero in the company universe and a few extras made up for good measure, I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed either way.
But think about the idea of a maxiseries for a minute. Batman: Hush could have been a maxiseries. Loeb was already famous for his maxiseries work with Tim Sale on Batman: Long Halloween, Batman: Haunted Knight and Batman: Dark Victory. The idea is great. I mean, you can tell a lot of story in 12 issues. Twelve issues is the first season of Sleeper. Add one issue and it's the first season of The Ultimates, which was no slouch of a story. In a miniseries, you're in and out in four issues, six if you're lucky. Rucka's Batman: Death and the Maiden was an almost unheard of eight issues— bordering on maxiseries territory.
Some stories just aren't meant to be ongoing series, but they're too much for a miniseries, or even a graphic novel. Let's look at the numbers. Graphic novels normally top out at about 150 pages: most of them are closer to 90-120 pages. It's a rare treat when you get something like Box Office Poison, From Hell or Blankets, all crossing the six-hundred page barrier. (Notice that all three are from the same publisher, Top Shelf Productions.) So, being generous, let's say graphic novels are generally not longer than 180 pages. A regular size maxiseries (twelve 22-page issues, introductions, cover galleries, and all the other extras) is nearing 300 pages, if not more.
Compare Alan Moore's Batman: A Killing Joke to Watchmen and you get a reference as to the gap between graphic novels and maxiseries.
And there are other reasons you would want a maxiseries instead of a graphic novel, beyond size. A maxiseries is designed for a number of plot twists and surprises. At the end of each issue of Watchmen, you were left hanging. Graphic novels like Orbiter, Mr. Punch or Mystery Play are more unified: there is no cliffhanger, and their plot twists are a different breed than comic plot twists. (This is perhaps part of the reason they are generally not as long as maxiseries.) No, maxiseries are their own special creature.
And the potential a maxiseries offers is incredible. First off, you have the space to do something really off the wall if you want. Joe Casey and Ash Wood got together and created Automatic Kafka, which was intended to be twelve issues, and was instead cut down to nine. (Not being an insider, I can only speculate how much of this was caused by sales, and how much cased by creative delays and shipping confusions— but speculation is not important.) Automatic Kafka was, for its poor reception, an impressive feat. They could tell an entire story that would never have been contained in four or six issues, and yet when it was over, they could pack up their bags and go home: no one is ever going to write another Automatic Kafka story. Ever.
The same is true for Grant Morrison's The Filth. Now, I understand that a lot of people bought this book because Morrison was writing New X- Men at the time, and a few brains melted while reading it. For those of you in this situation, my sincerest apologies. But here was a story that was unquestionably too large for a miniseries, but self-contained, and ill-suited for a graphic novel. Why wouldn't it be a graphic novel? Well, to be blunt, it was too weird. Wait wait wait. I loved The Filth, but the reason I loved it is because I read it one chapter at a time. That's my personal rule for trade paperbacks: one chapter a night. Each chapter was like peeling back another layer of weird to reveal even more underneath. Taken in pieces, it was intriguing and awe-inspiring. All at once? The sensory overload would have had me drooling on the floor right now, being spoonfed I-don't-want-to-know-what by all the students I failed last year. (Karma, it seems, is not your friend.)
I keep thinking that P.I. stories would be great for this format: really dark French existential noir, or even Lynch/Murakami-style surreal noir. Because we don't have a lot of good noir books (Gotham Central, Stray Bullets, an occasional miniseries by Brubaker or Ellis, and that's about it on the straightforward noir front). Part of the reason is the format. If you can tell a noir story in four issues, there's not enough going on. But at the same time, the crime will be found out, or the criminals will be caught, or the P.I. will be killed by the sexy lady who hired him in a strange strawberry-scented double cross. Any way you slice it, the story has to end.
And really, it doesn't have to be crime. I just think of crime because I've always wanted to see comics that did things like Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Robbe-Grillet's Repetition, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, Haruka Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. The comics market is full of diversity, but there are still areas that we haven't even begun to explore. Movies and tv shows can't compete with the kind of freedom that comics have— if we explore our potential and open our eyes to what comics can do.
Think, for example, of Andi Watson's Love Fights, his Oni Press maxiseries about superheroes and everyday life. Or Brubaker's Authority: Revolution. And one of my favorite maxiseries, Joe Casey and Leo Manco's Deathlock. What made it so great? Well, I hate Deathlock. I always have, and I probably will in the future. But here was a story I could sink my teeth into: it starts with a bang, it sets up the anti-hero while also setting up the villain, then the villain loses, the anti-hero wins, the bastard bureaucrat really loses, and it's over. A good maxiseries is like a rush of blood to the head: it breathes life into something, takes you for a wild ride and when it's done you're left with your hands on your knees, gasping for air.
You don't need to follow a maxiseries up with anything, and it offers no promises. When Superman died, somewhere deep down inside, we knew he was coming back. I mean, three of the four books are named after him. When Jean Grey died again, we rolled our eyes. She's an integral part of the ongoing series: she's stay dead long enough to sell memorial flowers, and then she'll be back. In a maxiseries, there is none of that promise. At the end of Casey's Deathlock, the lead character retired. At the end of The Filth, Greg Feely's rebellion was over, and everything returned to STATUS:Q. I won't tell you who dies at the end of Collateral, but it wasn't who I was expecting.
What you have in a maxiseries is an incredible amount of space to tell an intricate story, without any of the certainty or unwanted stability that an ongoing series demands. We're seeing more of these now than we have probably ever before, but they have a great deal of storytelling potential that we still have barely even noticed.
And let's take it to the next level, just for fun. Imagine a Prestige maxiseries. Twelve 64-page issues? That's 768 pages of story. Now we're cooking with fire.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Continuing with my webcomics recommendations.... If comics could be visual haikus, they would be www.asofterworld.com. Whether dealing with heartbreak (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_sep19_2003.htm), superheroes (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_jun4_2004.htm), robot boyfriends (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_jul16_2004.htm) or other things that shouldn't be mentioned (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_sep24_2004.htm), Joey and Emily know how to grab their audience. Sometimes you'll laugh, sometimes you'll offer an unexpected "aw" of sympathy, and other times you'll just sit back and smile. I can't say that I've been disappointed by them yet.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.
If there was a *bling bling* of the 1980s comic book world, it was the maxiseries. It was a story so freaking important that it couldn't be told in four puny issues—so earthshattering that it couldn't be an ongoing series or the world would, I don't know, implode or something. We're talking twelve issues stories, where anything can happen and everyone will make a guest appearance at least twice (or more if they have clones or future selves from alternate realities).
When I was younger and more foolish, I bought myself a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths and read through that mammoth volume. I made the same mistake with the Secret Wars, and while there are those who think that a maxiseries should include every superhero in the company universe and a few extras made up for good measure, I have to say that I wasn't terribly impressed either way.
But think about the idea of a maxiseries for a minute. Batman: Hush could have been a maxiseries. Loeb was already famous for his maxiseries work with Tim Sale on Batman: Long Halloween, Batman: Haunted Knight and Batman: Dark Victory. The idea is great. I mean, you can tell a lot of story in 12 issues. Twelve issues is the first season of Sleeper. Add one issue and it's the first season of The Ultimates, which was no slouch of a story. In a miniseries, you're in and out in four issues, six if you're lucky. Rucka's Batman: Death and the Maiden was an almost unheard of eight issues— bordering on maxiseries territory.
Some stories just aren't meant to be ongoing series, but they're too much for a miniseries, or even a graphic novel. Let's look at the numbers. Graphic novels normally top out at about 150 pages: most of them are closer to 90-120 pages. It's a rare treat when you get something like Box Office Poison, From Hell or Blankets, all crossing the six-hundred page barrier. (Notice that all three are from the same publisher, Top Shelf Productions.) So, being generous, let's say graphic novels are generally not longer than 180 pages. A regular size maxiseries (twelve 22-page issues, introductions, cover galleries, and all the other extras) is nearing 300 pages, if not more.
Compare Alan Moore's Batman: A Killing Joke to Watchmen and you get a reference as to the gap between graphic novels and maxiseries.
And there are other reasons you would want a maxiseries instead of a graphic novel, beyond size. A maxiseries is designed for a number of plot twists and surprises. At the end of each issue of Watchmen, you were left hanging. Graphic novels like Orbiter, Mr. Punch or Mystery Play are more unified: there is no cliffhanger, and their plot twists are a different breed than comic plot twists. (This is perhaps part of the reason they are generally not as long as maxiseries.) No, maxiseries are their own special creature.
And the potential a maxiseries offers is incredible. First off, you have the space to do something really off the wall if you want. Joe Casey and Ash Wood got together and created Automatic Kafka, which was intended to be twelve issues, and was instead cut down to nine. (Not being an insider, I can only speculate how much of this was caused by sales, and how much cased by creative delays and shipping confusions— but speculation is not important.) Automatic Kafka was, for its poor reception, an impressive feat. They could tell an entire story that would never have been contained in four or six issues, and yet when it was over, they could pack up their bags and go home: no one is ever going to write another Automatic Kafka story. Ever.
The same is true for Grant Morrison's The Filth. Now, I understand that a lot of people bought this book because Morrison was writing New X- Men at the time, and a few brains melted while reading it. For those of you in this situation, my sincerest apologies. But here was a story that was unquestionably too large for a miniseries, but self-contained, and ill-suited for a graphic novel. Why wouldn't it be a graphic novel? Well, to be blunt, it was too weird. Wait wait wait. I loved The Filth, but the reason I loved it is because I read it one chapter at a time. That's my personal rule for trade paperbacks: one chapter a night. Each chapter was like peeling back another layer of weird to reveal even more underneath. Taken in pieces, it was intriguing and awe-inspiring. All at once? The sensory overload would have had me drooling on the floor right now, being spoonfed I-don't-want-to-know-what by all the students I failed last year. (Karma, it seems, is not your friend.)
I keep thinking that P.I. stories would be great for this format: really dark French existential noir, or even Lynch/Murakami-style surreal noir. Because we don't have a lot of good noir books (Gotham Central, Stray Bullets, an occasional miniseries by Brubaker or Ellis, and that's about it on the straightforward noir front). Part of the reason is the format. If you can tell a noir story in four issues, there's not enough going on. But at the same time, the crime will be found out, or the criminals will be caught, or the P.I. will be killed by the sexy lady who hired him in a strange strawberry-scented double cross. Any way you slice it, the story has to end.
And really, it doesn't have to be crime. I just think of crime because I've always wanted to see comics that did things like Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Robbe-Grillet's Repetition, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, Haruka Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. The comics market is full of diversity, but there are still areas that we haven't even begun to explore. Movies and tv shows can't compete with the kind of freedom that comics have— if we explore our potential and open our eyes to what comics can do.
Think, for example, of Andi Watson's Love Fights, his Oni Press maxiseries about superheroes and everyday life. Or Brubaker's Authority: Revolution. And one of my favorite maxiseries, Joe Casey and Leo Manco's Deathlock. What made it so great? Well, I hate Deathlock. I always have, and I probably will in the future. But here was a story I could sink my teeth into: it starts with a bang, it sets up the anti-hero while also setting up the villain, then the villain loses, the anti-hero wins, the bastard bureaucrat really loses, and it's over. A good maxiseries is like a rush of blood to the head: it breathes life into something, takes you for a wild ride and when it's done you're left with your hands on your knees, gasping for air.
You don't need to follow a maxiseries up with anything, and it offers no promises. When Superman died, somewhere deep down inside, we knew he was coming back. I mean, three of the four books are named after him. When Jean Grey died again, we rolled our eyes. She's an integral part of the ongoing series: she's stay dead long enough to sell memorial flowers, and then she'll be back. In a maxiseries, there is none of that promise. At the end of Casey's Deathlock, the lead character retired. At the end of The Filth, Greg Feely's rebellion was over, and everything returned to STATUS:Q. I won't tell you who dies at the end of Collateral, but it wasn't who I was expecting.
What you have in a maxiseries is an incredible amount of space to tell an intricate story, without any of the certainty or unwanted stability that an ongoing series demands. We're seeing more of these now than we have probably ever before, but they have a great deal of storytelling potential that we still have barely even noticed.
And let's take it to the next level, just for fun. Imagine a Prestige maxiseries. Twelve 64-page issues? That's 768 pages of story. Now we're cooking with fire.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Continuing with my webcomics recommendations.... If comics could be visual haikus, they would be www.asofterworld.com. Whether dealing with heartbreak (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_sep19_2003.htm), superheroes (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_jun4_2004.htm), robot boyfriends (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_jul16_2004.htm) or other things that shouldn't be mentioned (http://www.asofterworld.com/soft_sep24_2004.htm), Joey and Emily know how to grab their audience. Sometimes you'll laugh, sometimes you'll offer an unexpected "aw" of sympathy, and other times you'll just sit back and smile. I can't say that I've been disappointed by them yet.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of ComiX-Fan or its other staff in general.