Hello, dear reader, and welcome to a discussion of time in comics. This is a continuation of my previous post. For those who missed the last post I’ll reiterate some of my beginning points. This blog is an article discussing the virtues of statically and dynamically aging characters. An example of a statically aging character would be Jason in the comic strip Foxtrot by Bill Amend. Jason is always 10 years old, regardless of his printed date, and is able to exist in the same year as the reader. A dynamically aging character example would be Bean from The Bean webcomic by Travis Hanson. This post will now focus on the business aspects.
The way these characters travel through time, perceive it, and interact with it in their stories can heavily affect your readership. Characters who never really change or grow physically are easy to recognize, they can maintain your audience for years to come, and save artists a lot of drawing and redesign time. It is a significant boon to your marketing, helps your brand recognition over the comic’s lifetime, and cuts down the production schedule per comic. Newspaper comics, daily comics, and even some adventure stories (like Asterix and Obelix) thrive on this continuity of design. Ageless characters are simply more consistent than dynamic ones.
Dynamically aging characters allow an artist to show off their skills in a variety of ways. Styles can change, characters can grow up, and stories can involve deeper character studies. Business benefits include a greater variety of merchandising for the different versions of main characters, multiple volumes of a growing story can be printed, and new fans can be reached if the story matures.
Honestly, I think mixing static and dynamic time has the best results. What I mean by that is comics which can return to their origins and the spirit of their franchises, after going through dynamic changes in a story arc, seem to have the best sales. Superheroes. Enough said. How many origin stories have we seen played out, not only in book form, for Spider-Man? The owners continue Spider-Man’s brand by rebooting it at a new origin point until the franchise becomes stale. Then they can reset. People get their same lovable character and get to see new twists in his tale.
I did a bit of research and found a few links to the top selling comic franchises and comic books. I don’t know if this first link includes global sales, but it does include mostly super hero comics as the best selling individual comic books (https://www.zapkapowcomics.com/top-10-best-selling-comic-books). The best selling franchises for comics include superheroes in the majority according to the following link http://ppcorn.com/us/2016/04/16/the-top-9-best-selling-comic-books-of-all-time/.
If I had to choose one time paradigm over the other, it would be static due to the easy recognition of your property. When you see Snoopy on a billboard he’s instantly recognizable. It’s hard to beat that instant recognition. Wearing your underwear on the outside also works towards the same purpose.
Which time paradigm do you prefer? Do you have a business based reason for your preference? Let me know what you think about the business of comics, feel free to comment below on your experiences, and follow my Facebook page or Twitter account to receive a notification when the next blog is posted. Have a good day, dear reader!
The way these characters travel through time, perceive it, and interact with it in their stories can heavily affect your readership. Characters who never really change or grow physically are easy to recognize, they can maintain your audience for years to come, and save artists a lot of drawing and redesign time. It is a significant boon to your marketing, helps your brand recognition over the comic’s lifetime, and cuts down the production schedule per comic. Newspaper comics, daily comics, and even some adventure stories (like Asterix and Obelix) thrive on this continuity of design. Ageless characters are simply more consistent than dynamic ones.
Dynamically aging characters allow an artist to show off their skills in a variety of ways. Styles can change, characters can grow up, and stories can involve deeper character studies. Business benefits include a greater variety of merchandising for the different versions of main characters, multiple volumes of a growing story can be printed, and new fans can be reached if the story matures.
Honestly, I think mixing static and dynamic time has the best results. What I mean by that is comics which can return to their origins and the spirit of their franchises, after going through dynamic changes in a story arc, seem to have the best sales. Superheroes. Enough said. How many origin stories have we seen played out, not only in book form, for Spider-Man? The owners continue Spider-Man’s brand by rebooting it at a new origin point until the franchise becomes stale. Then they can reset. People get their same lovable character and get to see new twists in his tale.
I did a bit of research and found a few links to the top selling comic franchises and comic books. I don’t know if this first link includes global sales, but it does include mostly super hero comics as the best selling individual comic books (https://www.zapkapowcomics.com/top-10-best-selling-comic-books). The best selling franchises for comics include superheroes in the majority according to the following link http://ppcorn.com/us/2016/04/16/the-top-9-best-selling-comic-books-of-all-time/.
If I had to choose one time paradigm over the other, it would be static due to the easy recognition of your property. When you see Snoopy on a billboard he’s instantly recognizable. It’s hard to beat that instant recognition. Wearing your underwear on the outside also works towards the same purpose.
Which time paradigm do you prefer? Do you have a business based reason for your preference? Let me know what you think about the business of comics, feel free to comment below on your experiences, and follow my Facebook page or Twitter account to receive a notification when the next blog is posted. Have a good day, dear reader!