Deep Sea Synchronicity
Cidu Bill on Jan 12th 2010
Christian Schumann-Curtis sent me
and this as an example of synchronicity. Honestly, though, I didn’t get much sleep last night and I couldn’t make it through the Subnormality strip — no disrespect intended toward Mr. Rowntree — so I’m just going to take Christian’s word for this one.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Subnormality, Zach Weiner, comic strips, comics, humor, synchronicity | 14 responses so far
Molly J Jan 12th 2010 at 11:33 pm 1
Yeah - it’s my opinion (though possibly ill-informed) that comics with that much dialogue to wade through rarely have a payoff worth the effort.
Morris Keesan Jan 12th 2010 at 11:43 pm 2
That one was definitely not worth the payoff.
And the synchronicity is there, but it’s weak (women in diving suits).
furrykef Jan 13th 2010 at 01:54 am 3
Molly J — not ill-informed at all. Not cramming too much text into your comic is basically Comic Storytelling 101. The text in panel 2 is something like 10 times what ought to be in a single panel, let alone a single word balloon.
Sometimes having a ton of text is OK if the length of the text is meant to be a joke and it isn’t meant to actually be read, but even then it has to be done skillfully or it will just look bad. I think this strip was trying for that sort of effect, but unfortunately it landed in the “just look bad” category.
- Kef
Sili Jan 13th 2010 at 03:35 am 4
Walls of text is par for the course for Viruscomix -just go back to the Christmas one.
I was struck by the coïncidence as well, actually, so I’m pleased to see it turn up here.
Christian Jan 13th 2010 at 03:54 am 5
And this one happened just a few days earlier:
http://www.thebookofbiff.com/2010/01/07/933-marianas/
Nicole Jan 13th 2010 at 07:37 am 6
Bill — that makes two of us … I am running on two hours sleep … should be a looooong work day
Lord-z Jan 13th 2010 at 10:51 am 7
Subnormality often uses these Walls of Text.
We have been used to seeing people in comics speaking in one or two lines at a time, due to the limited space they got, that it throws us when we are given a monologue, even when it is what would in a book only be about a quarter page long. Rowntree are not bound by any size requirement, so he can do whatever the heck he want. And, mostly, he is pretty good at it.
Tim Jan 13th 2010 at 11:08 am 8
When I was in high school, I remember writing long essays for short answer questions in health class. The teacher gave them check marks (for acceptable) without wading hip-deep to realize that I had written things like, “But really, does it matter, cosmically, if I eat six servings of vegetables a day or only five? Will that extra serving of vegetables keep the earth from hurtling into the sun?” He never read all that writing. Your brain just skips over that much.
ty Jan 13th 2010 at 02:04 pm 9
Back when I was in the printing business, it was common knowlege that large blocks of text in all-capitals are more difficult to read than upper and lower case. Something about the uniformity of all-caps vs. the variety of upper and lower. Most comics, of course, are in all-caps.
Secondly, I recall an article in a fanzine from around 1969 in which the author (might have been Marv Wolfman) concluded that the practice of breaking a characters’s monologue into multi-bubble balloons and/or multiple balloons serves the same purpose as breaking coventional text into paragraphs, both in terms of separating ideas, and the practical concern of readability.
The block of text in question may be the equivalent of only a quarter page in a book, but it is not the same visually: in a book, it would not be in all-caps, it would likely be more than one paragraph, and it would have margins, ie, “breathing space.”
Christian Jan 13th 2010 at 02:11 pm 10
Tim: I know this is shameless one-up-manship, but I convinced a friend in high school to write his final paper for our US Government AP class in Vietnamese. He got an A.
James Schend Jan 13th 2010 at 09:53 pm 11
Walls of text is Subnormality’s “thing.” It’s in their header image.
The shame is, their less-texty comics are the best. My personal favorite: http://www.viruscomix.com/page470.html
Some of the comics with walls of text are worth wading through, and some aren’t. The real problem is that there’s no way to tell before you’ve read the walls of text. I do like the Sphinx character, though…
mitch4 Jan 14th 2010 at 09:54 am 12
I hadn’t thought of myself as particularly anti-long-text until I noticed how often I’m skipping Monty or Tank McNamara when they get even medium-wordy.
OTOH I’m no good at all with the no-words comics. I know some people think Lio is the most brilliant thing ever, but I can never follow that one or any other of these “silents” without the effort of explicitly uttering a narration of the action for myself. “Then the boy goes over to the cupboard and is going to open it for a look …” I can’t readily absorb the storyline from visuals alone.
The Bad Seed Jan 14th 2010 at 04:58 pm 13
Yikes, that much text in that kind of lettering - thick, in all caps, with almost no space between the lines - makes my brain lock up before I even get through the first line. I have the same problem with This Modern World, even though I often think it’s great: http://www.salon.com/ent/comics/this_modern_world/2010/01/04/this_modern_world/index.html
Jose Pluma Jan 15th 2010 at 10:28 am 14
I think that part of the point of Subnormality is the exposition. Look at the subtitle of the header.