Sorry, bro. Your story is getting disjointed and lurchy. You need to slow it down and learn how to pace. I’m loving it, but I don’t think many people can follow it as it’s progressing so far…
Can’t say you’re wrong. It’s my first comic and I am learning all the time, though I am more influenced by film and novel pacing than comic book pacing. For my money, too little happens in the course of an average comic book, and I like things a little denser.
But I do hear you and as a matter of fact, feeling something of what you mention, I expanded page 7 into pages 7-10 over the last week or so. That said, the story is built on several different threads, only some of which is germane at any given point. Keep me posted, though, as we progress. I’ll keep trying to do better.
I for one am having no trouble at all following you, Mr. Latham. Rival, I think you underestimate the average reader. If by disjointed and lurchy, you mean that the story focus switches in the middle of a page, then you are correct. Although I’m pretty sure that this happens regularly in all forms of storytelling, be it movie, novel, or graphic novel. I think that your observation only arises from the fact that here we can only view the story a page at a time. I think that, at worst, you could say that Mr. Latham centers on the ‘comic’ in ‘web comic’, rather than the ‘web’. In traditional paper format, I think the ‘lurch’ you perceive here vanishes.
I find the pace and narrative to be very enjoyable. Part of the appeal is the challenge of figuring out what’s happening (do I really understand what’s going on?) That’s part of the mystery, especially when something is revealed later on. Glad you’re back, I am really enjoying this story!
For whatever it’s worth, I’m with Blind Idiot God. I love disjointed narratives and off-beat pacing, because it puts some of the responsibility on me. You’re not just telling me the story, you’re giving me the pieces to a puzzle and I get the fun of putting them together.
I agree with BIG, more than once a week would be dandy, although the quality is always so high, I wouldn’t want that to be compromised.
One thing to consider, Rival, is that this is page 2 of the new chapter. If you look back at previous chapters, when they get going, they usually have one narrative for a few pages before switching over. The rapid switching is typically a device for introducing or ending chapters. This is a convention used in movies/TV shows that have more than one prominent character, such as season finales/premieres of Lost. So I disagree that it’s something that readers won’t be able to wrap their heads around.
As usual, Larry, keep up the great work, and I look forward to the next episode.
You have a true talent for the grotesque sir, and the feelings you try to convey in panels and characters and colors come across loud and clear every time – something I am continually impressed by!
I like to think I am at least of moderate intelligence, and it took me about a week to get last week’s page. Progression: (reads it first time) “I don’t get it. Oh well, sometimes I am just confused by this plot stuff because we don’t have all the answers yet.” (Thursday) “Huh. Maybe tomorrow’s page will make it make sense.” (Friday) “OHHH I SHOULD READ THE PANELS WITH TEXT OF ONE COLOR AS CONTINUOUS DIALOG THERE WE GO.” I quite like this page. Although I agree it might be a bit fast to have three/four scenes of stuff in two pages, the top half of this page would be less interesting on its own, so I’m fine with it. Totally understandable etc, too. And creepy as hell! Love the foul prostitute’s dialog.
I’m learning a lot from all this discussion, without feeling the need to justify what I’ve done. It’s great to get feedback, positive or negative. Sometimes, when one is in the middle of things, one loses perespective.
It’s interesting that these two pages have stirred up so many comments. I considered the top half of pg. 2 to be a continuation, more or less of the first page, as pa references the pig that is seen on pg. 1. But ma and pa haven’t been in the strip since way back in issue 1, so people might have forgotten them, which would add to confusion. Same might be true of Milo and HIS pa, though they’ve appeared more recently.
And the second half of pg. 2 is a direct continuation of the Win-Jackey-Malone thread established last issue. I did consider spreading this out some more, but decided that there really wasn’t any more information needed. But I still wonder and may do something about it one of these days.
Can’t wait to see what happens over the next two weeks as the story…well, you’ll see.
I too would love to see faster updates, but real quality takes time. I cannot decide which panel is creepier, the snaggle tooth hostess or Miss “Purty as a raindrop” Both gals are revolting, and yet they have such happy expressions! And the dialog in the first 4 panels is excellent. The storyline switches are confusing, which forces me to reread some of the panels to get it straight. And the more I reread, the more details I see, the more impressed I am with the artwork. Please, take your time.
I don’t mind the abrupt switches, even in mid-plate. but I do think this comic is starting to try to keep too many balls in the air. With something that updates only once a week that just isn’t possible; serialization does bring with it some constraints: readers are apt to forget much between updates and there is a need to simplify as a result, unfortunate as this may be. It’s just the medium.
Let me hasten to say that I think this is a great comic, though, with terrific atmosphere.
I realized early on that this would be one of those stories that can’t really be fully appreciated in serial fashion, so right now I’m not overly concerned about following the story. I’m mostly just enjoying it for the visuals at this point, because I know that when the story reaches its conclusion I’m going to be re-reading it “from cover to cover” anyway.
I also hasten to add that I wouldn’t want to change a thing. I see the complexity as being a plus, and I’m looking forward to puzzling out all the intricacies and subtleties when I do re-read it. Not to mention that switching gears and streamlining the storytelling style at this point would probably be quite jarring to the mood and feeling that’s been so carefully built up.
I think this comic makes entirely too damn much sense. Where’s the non-Eudclidean plotlines? The eldritch horrors that are impossible to comprehend the mere existence of, let alone draw in any concrete way?
But no, we have a fairly straightforward set of plots, characters who have generally clear motivations, and a distinct lack of things to drive Arabs mad.
This comic ought to be so gonzo it makes Hunter S. Thompson look like Dick and Jane.
Now THERE’s an interesting perspective. I don’t think even the best of HPL’s stories –take your pick– could be said to out-gonzo HST. But it might be fun to write a Lovecraftian story in the Thompson style. I have some other thoughts on this, but they’d take up too much space in the comments, so I’ll post them on the LIM Facebook page.
Lovecraft wasn’t gonzo only because gonzo hadn’t been invented when he was writing. Some of his works–Pickman’s Model, Rats in the Walls, and just about all of the Dreamlands Tales–are really *out there*. Not just in an unspeakable cosmic evil sense, but in a “critical readership/wtf is this guy smoking” sense.
We may just have different definitions- of gonzo, but I don’t find the stories you mentioned quite as out there as you seem to. The Dreamlands stories in particular build off Dunsany, so they seem more conventional to me. HPL compares Pickman’s work to Sidney Sime, so there’s a real world reference for that, though Sime’s work wasn’t as grotesque as Pickman’s is described. Having been to Boston’s North End a number of times, the Pickman story doesn’t seem so out there until you get to the very end, with the surprise payoff. Up until that time, the story relies mainly on mood. Rats in the Walls is right out of the gothic tradition, though definitely with Lovecraft’s own special fears anchoring it.And neither of them strike me as particularly cosmic. For me, that comes in later with CoC, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness and so on.
While the imagery Lovecraft used was often quite fantastic, his storytelling style was really rather prosaic and predictable. The majority of his stories follow the same basic pattern: An HPL-surrogate main character/narrator has an initial encounter or contact with something mysterious. This is followed by a long, drawn-out exposition on the background or history of the phenomenon in question–usually in the form of a discovered document, the reminiscences of a secondary character, or research or some kind. Everything culminates in a final encounter demonstrating just how strange and horrible the universe really is.
This pattern worked pretty well for building up tension and general “creepiness”, but it certainly wasn’t particularly non-linear or “gonzo”.
I need to log a vote against “going gonzo” in the presentation here. The subject matter certainly can and should be wild and bizarre, but to make that work I think the presentation needs enough time/space for the reader to get drawn into it. Flipping back and forth between threads in the plot without giving the reader enough to reconnect with each thread is going to be counterproductive, I fear.
The single-page visit to a thread might work in some comics where there’s not much complexity to the story, but there’s clearly enough complexity to what’s going on here that I think a less short-attention-span-theater approach is much more effective, especially when it’s a week between episodes. For example, I’m going to have to go back to the archives to remember who the black-haired gent with the square jaw is.
Hmm. I sure never thought I was going gonzo. In fact I was criticized earlier for NOT going gonzo. Right now I am moving at the exact pace I’ve always planned to move, neither speeding up or slowing down. I’m not arguing that it’s the best way to do things, it’s just the way I am doing things. And keep in mind that although this is taking a long time to play out one page at a time, the story actually occurs over only a week or so of ‘real ‘time. I hope you’ll bear with me on this.
As for the threads of the story, I’ve said before that I don’t like doing recaps; that’s why I leave all the pages up. And even if I did do recaps, I couldn’t do them for every page. I think of this as a comic book that you only get to read one page at a time of, not a successor to weekly newspaper serials like Dick Tracy (for which I have the greatest respect and awe.) I like densely interwoven plots, and it assures the reader of enjoying the book even more on the second go ’round, kind of like watching reruns of the first couple of seasons of Lost.
I certainly find the “over” plot easy enough to follow – Win comes to Providence to see HPL. Miss Mercy is trying to find HPL because she wants to blame the missing pages of the ms. on him. Father Jacky is trying to find HPL for something to do with something esoteric and mysterious. It’s the “under” plot – the various strings and wires that run beneath the surface – that sometimes seem to be tangled and confusing if one isn’t paying close enough attention, or has forgotten certain key elements of the story. As you say, Larry, the old pages are left up and can be referred to easily enough – some web comic story tellers, rather than recapping, will put in a link to the specific pages where key plot elements have been revealed previously, or ask their readers to do so (thereby getting their readers who have a need to organize things such as that further involved in the story), which helps those who, like me, have poor memories, to keep track of some of those more hidden threads. Just a thought – you can take it or leave it as you wish
@Badger – that is Thomas Malone, a friend of HPL who is convinced that Win is HPL. Malone is the one with the creepy looking hag of a wife and weirdly bulbous baby – they are here at the “Candel Shoppe” to get Tom Jr. back from those who have abducted him, supposedly.
Speaking of – I love the pun here – candle shop, getting your wicks dipped – that’s just terrific! LOL Of course, the proprietress that opens the door – *shudders* Ugh. That would be enough to send me running screaming into the night … But I’m sure she has a GREAT personality …
April 9th, 2010 at 2:40 am
Sorry, bro. Your story is getting disjointed and lurchy. You need to slow it down and learn how to pace. I’m loving it, but I don’t think many people can follow it as it’s progressing so far…
April 9th, 2010 at 6:41 am
Can’t say you’re wrong. It’s my first comic and I am learning all the time, though I am more influenced by film and novel pacing than comic book pacing. For my money, too little happens in the course of an average comic book, and I like things a little denser.
But I do hear you and as a matter of fact, feeling something of what you mention, I expanded page 7 into pages 7-10 over the last week or so. That said, the story is built on several different threads, only some of which is germane at any given point. Keep me posted, though, as we progress. I’ll keep trying to do better.
April 9th, 2010 at 7:29 am
I for one am having no trouble at all following you, Mr. Latham. Rival, I think you underestimate the average reader. If by disjointed and lurchy, you mean that the story focus switches in the middle of a page, then you are correct. Although I’m pretty sure that this happens regularly in all forms of storytelling, be it movie, novel, or graphic novel. I think that your observation only arises from the fact that here we can only view the story a page at a time. I think that, at worst, you could say that Mr. Latham centers on the ‘comic’ in ‘web comic’, rather than the ‘web’. In traditional paper format, I think the ‘lurch’ you perceive here vanishes.
April 9th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Bonus points for “I swan” … haven’t heard that expression in many years.
)
April 9th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I find the pace and narrative to be very enjoyable. Part of the appeal is the challenge of figuring out what’s happening (do I really understand what’s going on?) That’s part of the mystery, especially when something is revealed later on. Glad you’re back, I am really enjoying this story!
April 9th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
My only complaint is that I wish you could publish more than once per week!
April 10th, 2010 at 1:18 am
For whatever it’s worth, I’m with Blind Idiot God. I love disjointed narratives and off-beat pacing, because it puts some of the responsibility on me. You’re not just telling me the story, you’re giving me the pieces to a puzzle and I get the fun of putting them together.
April 10th, 2010 at 9:45 am
I agree with BIG, more than once a week would be dandy, although the quality is always so high, I wouldn’t want that to be compromised.
One thing to consider, Rival, is that this is page 2 of the new chapter. If you look back at previous chapters, when they get going, they usually have one narrative for a few pages before switching over. The rapid switching is typically a device for introducing or ending chapters. This is a convention used in movies/TV shows that have more than one prominent character, such as season finales/premieres of Lost. So I disagree that it’s something that readers won’t be able to wrap their heads around.
As usual, Larry, keep up the great work, and I look forward to the next episode.
April 10th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
You have a true talent for the grotesque sir, and the feelings you try to convey in panels and characters and colors come across loud and clear every time – something I am continually impressed by!
Kudos!
April 11th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Pacing is fine, and it’s getting even creepier.
Creepier than Lovecraft himself.
April 11th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Ewwwwww…that gal is rancid! O_o
April 11th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I like to think I am at least of moderate intelligence, and it took me about a week to get last week’s page. Progression: (reads it first time) “I don’t get it. Oh well, sometimes I am just confused by this plot stuff because we don’t have all the answers yet.” (Thursday) “Huh. Maybe tomorrow’s page will make it make sense.” (Friday) “OHHH I SHOULD READ THE PANELS WITH TEXT OF ONE COLOR AS CONTINUOUS DIALOG THERE WE GO.” I quite like this page. Although I agree it might be a bit fast to have three/four scenes of stuff in two pages, the top half of this page would be less interesting on its own, so I’m fine with it. Totally understandable etc, too. And creepy as hell! Love the foul prostitute’s dialog.
April 11th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I’m learning a lot from all this discussion, without feeling the need to justify what I’ve done. It’s great to get feedback, positive or negative. Sometimes, when one is in the middle of things, one loses perespective.
It’s interesting that these two pages have stirred up so many comments. I considered the top half of pg. 2 to be a continuation, more or less of the first page, as pa references the pig that is seen on pg. 1. But ma and pa haven’t been in the strip since way back in issue 1, so people might have forgotten them, which would add to confusion. Same might be true of Milo and HIS pa, though they’ve appeared more recently.
And the second half of pg. 2 is a direct continuation of the Win-Jackey-Malone thread established last issue. I did consider spreading this out some more, but decided that there really wasn’t any more information needed. But I still wonder and may do something about it one of these days.
Can’t wait to see what happens over the next two weeks as the story…well, you’ll see.
April 11th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
I too would love to see faster updates, but real quality takes time. I cannot decide which panel is creepier, the snaggle tooth hostess or Miss “Purty as a raindrop” Both gals are revolting, and yet they have such happy expressions! And the dialog in the first 4 panels is excellent. The storyline switches are confusing, which forces me to reread some of the panels to get it straight. And the more I reread, the more details I see, the more impressed I am with the artwork. Please, take your time.
April 12th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
I don’t mind the abrupt switches, even in mid-plate. but I do think this comic is starting to try to keep too many balls in the air. With something that updates only once a week that just isn’t possible; serialization does bring with it some constraints: readers are apt to forget much between updates and there is a need to simplify as a result, unfortunate as this may be. It’s just the medium.
Let me hasten to say that I think this is a great comic, though, with terrific atmosphere.
April 13th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I realized early on that this would be one of those stories that can’t really be fully appreciated in serial fashion, so right now I’m not overly concerned about following the story. I’m mostly just enjoying it for the visuals at this point, because I know that when the story reaches its conclusion I’m going to be re-reading it “from cover to cover” anyway.
I also hasten to add that I wouldn’t want to change a thing. I see the complexity as being a plus, and I’m looking forward to puzzling out all the intricacies and subtleties when I do re-read it. Not to mention that switching gears and streamlining the storytelling style at this point would probably be quite jarring to the mood and feeling that’s been so carefully built up.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:49 am
I think this comic makes entirely too damn much sense. Where’s the non-Eudclidean plotlines? The eldritch horrors that are impossible to comprehend the mere existence of, let alone draw in any concrete way?
But no, we have a fairly straightforward set of plots, characters who have generally clear motivations, and a distinct lack of things to drive Arabs mad.
This comic ought to be so gonzo it makes Hunter S. Thompson look like Dick and Jane.
April 15th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Now THERE’s an interesting perspective. I don’t think even the best of HPL’s stories –take your pick– could be said to out-gonzo HST. But it might be fun to write a Lovecraftian story in the Thompson style. I have some other thoughts on this, but they’d take up too much space in the comments, so I’ll post them on the LIM Facebook page.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Lovecraft wasn’t gonzo only because gonzo hadn’t been invented when he was writing. Some of his works–Pickman’s Model, Rats in the Walls, and just about all of the Dreamlands Tales–are really *out there*. Not just in an unspeakable cosmic evil sense, but in a “critical readership/wtf is this guy smoking” sense.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
We may just have different definitions- of gonzo, but I don’t find the stories you mentioned quite as out there as you seem to. The Dreamlands stories in particular build off Dunsany, so they seem more conventional to me. HPL compares Pickman’s work to Sidney Sime, so there’s a real world reference for that, though Sime’s work wasn’t as grotesque as Pickman’s is described. Having been to Boston’s North End a number of times, the Pickman story doesn’t seem so out there until you get to the very end, with the surprise payoff. Up until that time, the story relies mainly on mood. Rats in the Walls is right out of the gothic tradition, though definitely with Lovecraft’s own special fears anchoring it.And neither of them strike me as particularly cosmic. For me, that comes in later with CoC, The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness and so on.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
While the imagery Lovecraft used was often quite fantastic, his storytelling style was really rather prosaic and predictable. The majority of his stories follow the same basic pattern: An HPL-surrogate main character/narrator has an initial encounter or contact with something mysterious. This is followed by a long, drawn-out exposition on the background or history of the phenomenon in question–usually in the form of a discovered document, the reminiscences of a secondary character, or research or some kind. Everything culminates in a final encounter demonstrating just how strange and horrible the universe really is.
This pattern worked pretty well for building up tension and general “creepiness”, but it certainly wasn’t particularly non-linear or “gonzo”.
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:46 am
I need to log a vote against “going gonzo” in the presentation here. The subject matter certainly can and should be wild and bizarre, but to make that work I think the presentation needs enough time/space for the reader to get drawn into it. Flipping back and forth between threads in the plot without giving the reader enough to reconnect with each thread is going to be counterproductive, I fear.
The single-page visit to a thread might work in some comics where there’s not much complexity to the story, but there’s clearly enough complexity to what’s going on here that I think a less short-attention-span-theater approach is much more effective, especially when it’s a week between episodes. For example, I’m going to have to go back to the archives to remember who the black-haired gent with the square jaw is.
April 22nd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hmm. I sure never thought I was going gonzo. In fact I was criticized earlier for NOT going gonzo. Right now I am moving at the exact pace I’ve always planned to move, neither speeding up or slowing down. I’m not arguing that it’s the best way to do things, it’s just the way I am doing things. And keep in mind that although this is taking a long time to play out one page at a time, the story actually occurs over only a week or so of ‘real ‘time. I hope you’ll bear with me on this.
As for the threads of the story, I’ve said before that I don’t like doing recaps; that’s why I leave all the pages up. And even if I did do recaps, I couldn’t do them for every page. I think of this as a comic book that you only get to read one page at a time of, not a successor to weekly newspaper serials like Dick Tracy (for which I have the greatest respect and awe.) I like densely interwoven plots, and it assures the reader of enjoying the book even more on the second go ’round, kind of like watching reruns of the first couple of seasons of Lost.
April 30th, 2010 at 7:39 am
I certainly find the “over” plot easy enough to follow – Win comes to Providence to see HPL. Miss Mercy is trying to find HPL because she wants to blame the missing pages of the ms. on him. Father Jacky is trying to find HPL for something to do with something esoteric and mysterious. It’s the “under” plot – the various strings and wires that run beneath the surface – that sometimes seem to be tangled and confusing if one isn’t paying close enough attention, or has forgotten certain key elements of the story. As you say, Larry, the old pages are left up and can be referred to easily enough – some web comic story tellers, rather than recapping, will put in a link to the specific pages where key plot elements have been revealed previously, or ask their readers to do so (thereby getting their readers who have a need to organize things such as that further involved in the story), which helps those who, like me, have poor memories, to keep track of some of those more hidden threads. Just a thought – you can take it or leave it as you wish
@Badger – that is Thomas Malone, a friend of HPL who is convinced that Win is HPL. Malone is the one with the creepy looking hag of a wife and weirdly bulbous baby – they are here at the “Candel Shoppe” to get Tom Jr. back from those who have abducted him, supposedly.
Speaking of – I love the pun here – candle shop, getting your wicks dipped – that’s just terrific! LOL Of course, the proprietress that opens the door – *shudders* Ugh. That would be enough to send me running screaming into the night … But I’m sure she has a GREAT personality …
April 30th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Probably a great cook and makes her own clothes too!:-)