Tag: Vinnie Colletta

Brainiac On Banjo: Five Comics Tropes I Want Back!

Brainiac On Banjo: Five Comics Tropes I Want Back!

Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails, let’s go backwards when forward fail, and movie stars you thought were alone then now are framed beside your bed — “Everything Old Is New Again,” written by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager

Every commercial storytelling medium that achieves any sort of longevity finds itself inventing recurring themes and concepts, often inadvertently. The kids today call them “tropes” but I’m old enough to remember when they were simply called “do that again so we can pay our bills.”

This is not to suggest comics have abandoned the trope motif. Nothing could be further from the truth — except Donald Trump. If we stopped using all the contemporary comics tropes we’d have nothing but panel borders and staples. But I miss the occasional use of a number of little used or ignored formats and concepts. I’m going to list a mere five; I’d do more if I had a functional attention-span and this wasn’t a holiday weekend.

5. Backgrounds

There was a time when most comics stories had backgrounds, unless they were inked by Vinnie Colletta. You know, stuff going on or simply being there to establish environment or allow for some foreshadowing. Some artists would drop “eyeball kicks” into their backgrounds to lighten the mood. Let us not forget that minimizing or not drawing backgrounds is a great way to pick up deadline time.

Now we have computers that deploy palettes that contain three million more colors than the naked eye can distinguish. We can go apeshit with our computers and the color artists have a lot more range and so it is intuited that the need for filling space with backgrounds isn’t necessary. Well, not to this guy. Let’s cut back on the cutting back on backgrounds. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Five Comics Tropes I Want Back!”

With Further Ado #98: The Comics Prisoner with David Miller

With Further Ado #98: The Comics Prisoner with David Miller

Passion is a funny thing. And being passionate about things often leads to sharing and teaching. Sometimes it forces us to become a guide, or a Sherpa, and then we can learn new things and drag other people with us along the way. That’s kind of what this column is all about, when I think of it.

David Miller is a professional with great success in several fields, including inking for comics.  He started out on things like one series in the Teen Titans family of titles at DC Comics, several books at Defiant Comics and went on from there.  But after even the briefest of conversations with Miller, it is very clear he’s a person who just loves the medium.

He’s also very thoughtful. One of the big “Ah-hah’s” that he recently had was that comics, unlike movies, can be experienced in many different ways. To experience a movie, you really must experience it one way: you sit and watch the film as the creators intended.

But comics are different. When you’re young, you might enjoy following the characters. Then you might graduate to understanding long-running and inter-connected stories. Another way to enjoy this medium is to read a comic because you enjoy one particular artist, or writer…or even an inker or a colorist.  With even more understanding, you might enjoy a comic as part of one particular time period.

That’s where Miller’s clever new YouTube show, The Comics Prisoner, comes in. The premise is simple: he’s stuck inside his favorite comics pages …but is allowed to talk about them with us!  It’s a fascinating way to experience, re-experience, ruminate or learn about comics pages. Continue reading “With Further Ado #98: The Comics Prisoner with David Miller”