Catch more from Tawny Platis on YouTube
“This was not the right chair for my wood deck.”
Free Comic Book Day: Space Pirate Captain Harlock
Ablaze Publishing (2021)
STORY: Leiji Matsumoto & Jérôme Alquié
ARTIST: Jérôme Alquié
LETTERER: Dezi Sienty
EDITOR: Kevin Ketner
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NOTE: cursing by the hosts and stupidity by the article writer
Catch more from Comics By Perch on YouTube
I totally called All-Star Superman‘s replacement and I was kidding when I did. The radio drama episode it adapts had more historic significance than the adaptation, which I do want to read someday, ever will due to when it came out and the work that went into convincing the company to release it.
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Previously in our “trek” through the sales pitch for the original Star Trek series we saw the concept and met the crew, nothing the changes between what was initially planned and what finally made it to television. In this installment we look at what goes into making a science fiction drama in the 1960s.
When I looked at the sales pitch for the original ThunderCats, they were focuses on the story because it was a cartoon. Everything was going to be drawn. For a live-action series you have to let the money people know how much money is going into pre-production and the actual production, the spending money before hopefully making money. I image the pitch for the animated series don’t have to worry about set pieces and what they cost. The writer’s guides didn’t have to worry about that, either. The writers had to have some idea what the recurring locations looked like, but they weren’t building the sets. We did get a layout of the Enterprise-D bridge in the writer’s guide for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
So we’re about to see in the next few pages just what was planned and considered necessary to build the sets, props, and costumes for this show. I’m not expecting price tags, just a sample of what they’re hoping to get out of it. The end results were limited by their budget and the available effects of the day (the transporter was used because it was cheaper than using the shuttlecraft everytime, which was late the first time they needed it, thus creating the transporter in the first place–don’t expect to see it in the pitch or guide), but we can look at what they wanted versus what they got.
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I’d bother making a joke, but I just can’t get interested in any of this.
Knuckles The Echidna #27
Archie Comics Publications (August, 1999)
WRITER: Ken Penders
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
“The First Date” part 2: “Who Wrote The Book Of Love Anyway?”
PENCILER: Chris Allan
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
Mighty The Armadillo: “Those Were The Days”
ARTISTS: Manny Galan & Andrew Pepoy
COLORIST: Barry Grossman
BW Media Spotlight 
How Trade Writing Has Ruined The Graphic Novel
As I grew up with comics there were numerous ways to get your fix. Of course there were the comic strips, and many toys and other products might give you a free mini-comic, but the two big ones were the monthly or bimonthly periodical, often called the “floppies”, and the graphic novel, a bigger story too small to be a regular comic that would take longer to read, like a novel. The periodicals would give you a monthly (or bimonthly but I’m not writing that every time) adventure with a main plot and a running subplot, like a TV series. You’d also have the extra sized annual, one-shot, or other special. These were still quick reads and easy to bring with you. It’s now the comic book got away from the newspapers and became a format on its own.
The graphic novel was a special thing. While some were collections of longer story arcs or collecting the works of a particularly famous creator, the majority were original stories. This is where the big events happened, or a story that could focus on a character than didn’t have enough of a fan following for their own series but still had enough fans or a writer had a story they wanted to tell with that character. There were also the occasional gimmicks like alternate universes, a comic done all on computer (both Batman and Iron Man had one of these), or something along those lines. Graphic novels are not special anymore.
In a time where stories are written for the trade, it might as well be a graphic novel. Few people are writing for periodicals anymore, as I’ve lamented many times and will again. However, I’ve been thinking about how trade writing and so many trade collections coming out has basically ruined what the graphic novel was for. The nature of the graphic novel has been damaged thanks to the trade collections, and even indie publishers are guilty of this.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on October 17, 2024 in Comic Spotlight and tagged commentary, Graphic novel, graphic novels, original graphic novel, trade collection.
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