Where have the short stories gone? Article by aviewaskewed, 01:10 AM 08th Mar Disclaimer: The following column is entirely the opinions of the author (even at that we aren‘t sure), any similarity to the opinions of any other staff or affiliate of theendlesscrew.com is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all creator comments have been gleaned from other sources and no creators have actually endorsed any aspect of this column. I could probably try paying someone to endorse this column…but nah, they’d probably just take it and run. This week’s column is going to be covering something I forgot to add in last week. So basically, I’m doing a follow up. This week I wanted to talk about something that has really become an increasing lost art in comics, and that is the single issue story. Last week, I talked about what we’ve gotten from the writer-driven era, and I mentioned that we now have a system that for the most part demands that every story be an arc, and that the arc take four to five issues at the least to be told because then the monthly issues can be collected into a trade, and the publisher gets to sell the material twice in a short span of time, but also wind up with something it can sell pretty perpetually, rather then just the existing print run of the original issues. That’s not a bad idea, it makes publishers a lot of money they can theoretically use to promote new product (although they usually don’t, but that’s a completely separate issue that I’m sure we’re going to get into down the road), I mean, DC has made and continues to make a bundle off print run after print run of the collected Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Sandman Library, and to a lesser degree other works they choose to keep in print, but the titles I mentioned are the big three. But what I’m wondering about, and it’s something Stafffighter and I had a rather lengthy conversation about last week on AIM, was that it seems to us (and other people, since I am certainly not the first person to use his little space on the internet to talk about this subject) that writers, or maybe it’s publishers (because in the mainstream, where the publisher runs the writer and artist’s jobs, it’s hard to tell who’s making the final story decision, and where the blame has to be lain when you don’t like something) have forgotten how to tell a good stand alone, single issue story. Anybody remember when you used to be able to grab a comic from the supermarket (and yeah, I’m dating myself a bit, and I’m sure I will one day start harshly bitching about the passing of that) and you could read it from cover to cover and the story was done? Sure, maybe they teased next issue, maybe they didn’t resolve every single thread, but what I mean is that the MAIN story, this event in the lives of the characters was pretty much resolved within 32 pages, and you got the satisfaction of knowing you had read a complete story. It honestly wasn’t that long ago you could do that. Grab the second trade of the new JSA series, and most of the early stories in the book are single issue stories (like Wildcat’s one man fight with The Injustice Society in the JSA building), even some of the more current work in the book has some great single issue stories, sure, they carry some threads down the line, but as I said before, you get resolution to the main conflict that started the issue by the end. One of the best examples of this I can think of (other then the Wildcat issue I just mentioned) is the story that appeared in Daredevil Volume 1. #164 “Expose”. This is the culmination of a subplot that had been running through Daredevil for a couple months in which investigative reporter Ben Urich pieces together Daredevil’s greatest secret: That he is in reality blind lawyer Matthew Murdock. Out of professional curtesy (and to test the information) Ben visits Daredevil in the hospital (he had sustained heavy injuries in the previous issue facing Bullseye), and after making clear that there’s no way Matt can bluff his way out of this one, gets DD to recount his origin. It’s a deftly told recounting of what made Matt Murdock put on red tights and dress like a devil, an is honestly (dare I say it) BETTER then the original telling by Stan Lee, Daredevil’s creator. As Matt finishes, he reminds Ben that his career as Daredevil is effectively over if this story sees print. Ben says he knows that, and he knows what Daredevil means to this town, so, in a moment that defies what his career has been about, he burns his notepad, saying “this one’s for you Matt” (repeating the motif of the story in which a principle character does something that at the time is out of character for themselves by saying “This one’s for you…” followed by the name of the person they’re doing it for). It’s a powerful story, one of the absolute best I’ve ever read, and again, it was told in a single issue. There have been longer mini-series retelling DD’s origin from various perspectives, but for my money, none have managed to capture the power of this one, single, retelling. These kinds of stories do also have a great marketing potential. Honestly, how are you going to get a new reader into a book? I really don’t think you can effectively do it on a “part 2 of 4” or even if they start at “part 1” of an arc. The idea should always be that you want readers of your monthly comics, if you’re business model says “monthly comic book, and then go to trade if the sales are strong enough” fine, that works, it’s been proven it works, but I still believe you need the occasional single issue story that works as a summation of what the titles character or characters (in the case of team, or ensemble books) are all about. THAT is much more effective in getting a new reader, because while people like to yell all the time about how expensive the monthly comic habit is getting (and they’re right, it is getting up there) I think you would hear a lot less people complaining if they knew they could plunk down that 2.50, and get a complete story in one issue every once in awhile between the big arcs. It also works when traded as well if the publisher is willing to do what I’ve seen many DC trades do over the last few years in that they plan the single issue story, or stories, between a couple of big epics, so this allows the reader to pick up a large sized book at a pretty reasonable price, get one sweeping epic, then a quieter story to sort of relax with, then move straight off into the next big epic. It’s a formula that I personally like, and considering the prevalence of books that have used such theories (like JSA and Batman) in bookstores, and other non-direct market (comic store) outlets, I think other readers like it as well. Will this outcry convince publishers to bring back the single issue story? Maybe not, in fact, probably not. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still out there, and it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the past. Have a great week everyone, and feel free to drop me a line about this, or any other topic related to comics, I love discussing the industry. Next week: well, I think we’re going to go ahead and get into what I perceive as a need for comics to push back into supermarkets, and maybe even a plan of how they could. Hope you’ll join me. Back to Rants