As much as comics and games have a symbiotic relationship, each borrowing and profiting from the other, I don't know that extends to saying they have interchangeable talents working on them.

What would you have gotten Kurt Schaffenberger to do, drawing in games? His Superman art is, strangely for an action character, suited to depictions of down home folk. It was an era that a modern Lois was referring to when she mock derisively called Clark 'Smallville'.

There again, there will always be work for skilled and versatile artists and Schaffenberger was of the old school who worked where he could find it. Comics loss would have been games's gain if he had been young enough to engage with the fledgling behemoth.

And as for writers, they observe similarity of plots for both media. A protagonist making his/her way through the landscape, encountering obstacles, battling adversaries. The 'story' is not one with an excess of diversions or personal reflection. But then think of Bruce Jones run on Incredible Hulk. Another overt action character here used in introspective psychodramas unsuited to a gaming scenario. 

There's probably even a school of thought that says that the best characters in games are the ones with cool powers or who operate within a challenging and interesting terrain. 

 More the characters of comics than the characters of books.

Posted by berko_wills at 2:21 AM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 21 September 2008 5:57 PM NZT

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Thanks to Johan for rescuing me from a rare case of writer's block. My gaming expertise petered out some time round the era of Galaga and Elevator Action.

It's safe to say that, even at their peak, comics could not compare to the $57 billion video game industry. It's more in the vicinity of $700 million, which is still alright when you consider how many times the death knell has been prematurely rung on the medium but scale.

 That being the case, game creators also stand to make greater profits than comics creators. Though, balanced against that is the fact that a much larger team works on the top line games now. And they spend a longer time in development; there's more money exchanging hands in the chain from developer to final consumer here than in any comparable commercial artform, with the possible exception of motion picture production.  But there's no accounting for taste so let's move on.

Gamewriters and artists are an 'increasingly essential component' to the finished product/artwork but are they work for hire? Well, they have a union.

Games designers and gamers are nonetheless enamored of comic book concepts and, no doubt, comic sales will be fleetingly boosted by each comic-based game that becomes popular. And why wouldn't the people who work on a game project take an interest in their 2-D compatriots.

Common to both media is the fact that yer basic mass produced item (count the print run) at its final stages is wrapped in plastic and put on a shelf. Every so often, regardless of the development costs or time invested, a Gameboy game will end up with the same ugly Texta markdown - on the plastic bag if you're lucky - as the cheaper and less widespread comic book that went off the boil, or was overstocked.

Posted by berko_wills at 3:43 PM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 6 September 2008 5:06 AM NZT

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Games are now the biggest of all entertainment media and, like the other popular media, they use comic book iconography extensively in their layout and interaction.

The two did not start as a natural fit. Parlour games are self-contained and more about the possible and immediate, though you could extract some amusement from trying to get guests to guess that you're Light Lass.

Board games are a different matter. Before the advent of electronic games, these were the closest pattern to a typical comic book story. A card game has its rules and the queen of diamonds is an entity of a most prescribed kind. In either media, you have 'characters' and you can certainly replace chess pieces with characters from Deep Space Nine, but the movements and abilities are not affected by the character you choose.
Though there have been various board and card combinations, board games are not about gambling on an outcome but of pursuing a quest. A game as rudimentary as Snakes & Ladders is along this line. Ultimately they lead to the rise of Role Playing Games, or RPG, and the open-ended adventuring that would be increasingly dominant in console games as the technology developed.

All right.
Platform- What the game is going to work on. Anything that can play games is a possible platform(eg. "So what platforms will Splinter Cell be on?" "It will be on XBOX 360 and PC." So basically anything from PlayStations to PCs to Game Boys.
Platform Game- All games need a platform to process the data, so what is a platform game? Remember Mario? Banjo-Kazooie? Conker's Bad Fur Day? All of them fall in the genre of a platform game due- in the simplest terms possible- to a lot timing jumps between... platforms! So a platform game and a games platform are two completely different things.
Console- The same as platform bar one major difference. A console is something that's primary use is gaming. A PC will never be considered a console. A mobile phone is not a console. Everything else is a console, including handhelds.

No-one takes mobile gaming seriously. The pads are made for calling, the screens are small, and most importantly nobody makes good games for them(where's the market, yuppies who want a distraction while they wait five minutes for the bus?) Handheld gaming on the other hand is as big as gets. The Nintendo DS is by far the most popular console to date, and there are no signs of that changing.

Oh and you'll find RPGs are much, much more common on PC. The most dominant genres on consoles are FPS'(First-Person-Shooter) and Action games at the moment. In the past it was platfromers, and driving games have been popular forever. While there are many RPGs on consoles, I would never say they were dominant in any way. PCs are the birthplace and home to most RPGs and RTS'(Real-Time Strategy).
This has been changing quite fast recently due to the sheer popularity of consoles, which continues to rise dramatically(PCs... not so much).

Holy crap I'll stop there, I could go for days! Not sure what you're going for with this, but any questions you have I'll be happy to answer, I could have gone ten times deeper into most of the things above, but I don't want to kill you with boredom. So far though it's amazingly obvious you don't play games by reading that post.
Oh and 'computer games' is just another term for the medium(usually used by people who know nothing about video games), 'video games' is the common term.

[Johan v. 2008]

Posted by berko_wills at 10:08 AM NZT

Updated: Saturday, 22 November 2008 11:59 PM EADT

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Not to enter gender stereotyping for one moment but toys involve utility and interaction. We don't just want Spidey, we want his webshooter as well. Can those batarangs stick into the wall?

Dolls are different. You dress them up, you prop them in a seat and serve them tea, you tell them stories. They don't have to move out of their boxes but they do like nicer on the dresser.

My son's Darkseid doll stands atop my stereo but most doll owners prefer a figure less stern and prepossessing.

Posted by berko_wills at 3:28 AM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 22 May 2008 11:08 AM NZT

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Comic book afficiandos take an ambivalent approach to toys. There's a need to separate a late adolescent cum adulthood appreciation for the men and women in tights from an earlier childhood love for toys. This is done by giving them a different name and keeping them in their boxes as collector's items.

Calling them toys is okay if the character is a fighter but is a funny animal or buffoon but that's subjective; it depends how seriously you treat Megaton Man vs the Tick

The funny thing about this is that the characters that are most likely candidates for "non-toys" are also the most fun to play with: heroes and villains, their weapons and accessories. Think about it. You each take a figure and pretend to battle each other. That works. Yet they're called action figures and never see action - they're mounted on the mantlepiece or stored away in a trunk.

Posted by berko_wills at 12:52 PM NZT

Updated: Sunday, 11 May 2008 7:26 PM NZT

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Coprophagia and necrophilia are all good and well but comics are ultimately an entertainment medium. One with a broader palate than either activity construes.

A medium with a loyal legion of fans will persist so long as it can hold its demographic. While fandom is an amorphous beast, within it lies the subset: the fan club. While one can talk about being a 'comics fan' in general (or a hentai fan or fan of cartoon robots), fan clubs have a more specific agenda and narrower focus. To whit, you can have a fan club for a series or a character; for a writer or an artist. Members of a fan club get together to discuss the latest developments, and projects, in their favourite series, characters, or creative talents' lives. If you're brave enough to declare your love for Fatty Arbuckle then it's easier to do so in a room full of likeminded people. Though comics may not push the envelope (or soda bottle) in quite the same way, a passion for a less popular figure risks derision in the wider fan community. And that's where fan clubs come into their own. 

Still, and I realise the irony implicit in stating this within a blog devoted to comic books, there is something in the fan club that suggests meetings in a treehouse. But if one can have a Desperate Housewives Fan Club..

Posted by berko_wills at 5:49 PM NZT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 April 2008 4:13 PM NZT

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Underground comics, what's the difference? Sure they're markedly different from the mainstream but what about the profusion of offbeat titles that have been slotted into nebulous definitions like alternative comics?

They share much with adult comics: there's profuse profanity in the Checkered Demon, there's voluminous violence in Trashman, and enormous nudity in Goodman Beaver. Perversity is a given and there's even a comic book called Bizarre Sex.

The thing that sets undergrounds apart though is their subversive text. Sex is not there entirely to titillate; it can also disgust or be shown as a tool for moralistic hypocrites. Violence is there to prove a point. Bad language is used in the service of the proletariat and blasphemy to shake organised religion from its pedestal. There is a political imperative in their parody and a cynical sagacity in their satirical stroke.

Underground comics are independent because of their anti-consumerist cant, and distributed in head shops because of their drug culture references. There are comic books depicting use of:

• cannabis
• cocaine
• speed
• LSD
• heroin
• ice
• ecstasy

Unless they take a 'tut tut' line, they're grouped under the underground.

The thing that characterises the underground most is an unflinching honesty. Even the components of the subculture are open to ruthless interrogation while accepted mores are trampled into the dirt.

Posted by berko_wills at 11:14 PM NZT

Updated: Thursday, 3 April 2008 12:42 AM NZT

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No crude jokes about why they call me 'tripod' but I reckon this is where I get kicked off. You see it's time to survey adult comics.

A ready synopsis is to liken them to mature comics but with the violence, nudity and harsh language ramped up. As much as I'd like to claim that true adult comics are ones that explore complex philosophical issues, I'm afraid 'adult' here means the same as it does in any medium: sex. Diversity is key here as it is any stick book so you will see sodomy, lesbian sex and oral sex.

Though often considered the province of underground comics due to the taboo nature, adult comics also encompass sado-masochism, incest, paedophilia, bestiality, though dealt with in a suitably circumspect manner.

Or whatever tickles your fancy.

Posted by berko_wills at 11:17 PM NZT

Updated: Tuesday, 18 March 2008 12:17 AM NZT

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Inflation hasn't really helped where sales of comic books are concerned. If you want to hook a generation of juveniles so they're still reading them in their forties then you'll have to compete for their pocket money. The ten dollars from raiding the piggy bank is now enough for one new comic and one from the remainder bin. At seventy cents each I could buy ten comics for my seven dollars.

Add in each era's equally enthralling alternative pastimes and it's no wonder the death knell has been sounded prematurely and periodically.

But that doesn't allow for the core fanboys n girls who do their own propagation. I know I've spread the word and left the occasional comic book lying around. If a sample can entrance a new reader then you can expect repeat sales because most series run multi-part stories now. Some series rely on the appeal of the character and the writing and are content to tell single issue stories. The incentive to follow the series is in the more subtle clues to character and background that appear throughout the run.

In the face of cancellation of the book that is top of their Must Have list, the sudden dropping of that beaut indie series they were buying  from their local shop, the sense of loss is no less real for being low on the list of priorities for the rest of the populace. So what do they do?

 Well, some produce fanfic. 'Fan fiction' may lack the graphics and the professional standard of writing of the official comic it's based on, but for those mourning the disappearance of Cyberella, writing their own accounts of her exploits and sharing them with fellow fans carries much satisfaction. Wherever there are characters that make enough of an impression to attract fans, there will be fanfic. As most are just bashing out something on their keyboard, there aren't necessarily stylistic leaps between comics fanfic and fanfic based on stories or characters in books, movies, and television.  

Posted by berko_wills at 11:52 PM EADT

Updated: Thursday, 28 February 2008 1:59 PM EADT

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• an action shot
• a profile
• an artistic representation

The penciller, inker and colourist on the cover often also work on the interior art but there are also cover artists who specialise either because they work in a hyperrealised, and no doubt exhaustive, style like Alex Ross or they do the work that instinctively tells a story both obliquely and concisely a la Tim Bradstreet.

 The lettering might be confined to a sub-title on the cover. There was a style of action comic that once employed word balloons on its covers but the unworded image now dominates.

Anyone who doubts a place for the editor and publisher only has to consider how it is that there are rejected covers.  

Although other covers share many of the same features as the comic book, there can be differences. A book will often have a cover illustration, perhaps even one with the protagonist engaged in some skirmish depicted in the story, but there are also books - for either economic or artistic reasons - that have plain covers. A magazine is more populist and utilitarian and relies on its lurid eyecatching front, though it can favour the aesthetically appealing over the content driven. While its close cousin the journal often goes the other way and has nothing but text on its cover.  The cover of a video or DVD , which is to say the image and lettering that appears on the film poster (for the most part), probably resembles comic book covers more closely still, as it can be a scene from the movie, a generic action shot or profile of the main character(s). No word balloons, I'll grant you. And the record cover is that familiar combo of title and art. Newspapers are all about the headline, but also a photograph and  front page news.

Posted by berko_wills at 12:41 AM EADT

Updated: Wednesday, 20 February 2008 2:20 PM EADT

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