The struggle in terms of the strange

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

15 Comments

  1. Sean Dillon
    March 4, 2015 @ 3:56 pm

    I tradewait Saga and I can safely say that yes, it does read better that way.

    Reply

  2. BerserkRL
    March 4, 2015 @ 4:07 pm

    I'm done with comics that don't make the slightest concession to the fact that I read 30+ comics a month

    By contrast, I hate recap pages and feel cheated when issues have them. If I don't remember what happened, I'd rather look up the previous issue than lose a whole page out of every issue.

    Reply

  3. Elizabeth Sandifer
    March 4, 2015 @ 4:12 pm

    To be clear, I think recap pages should not come at the expense of story pages. But looking at Avengers #42 (which has a recap page and a cast page in addition to its title page) and comparing to X-Men #25 and Angela #4, it doesn't look like the recap pages do that – all three books are twenty story pages. Avengers seems to have sacrificed two pages of house ads instead.

    Reply

  4. BerserkRL
    March 4, 2015 @ 6:28 pm

    Don't take the wind out of my angry sails!

    Reply

  5. Alan
    March 4, 2015 @ 8:42 pm

    Somewhat amusingly, literally the third comic book I ever bought was Uncanny X-Men #138 ("Elegy," the first issue after "Fate of the Phoenix"), in which the entire issue was a recap of literally everything that had happened since UXM #1. I was always strangely grateful that I was afforded such a clear understanding of the series' history right at the start, which is perhaps why I was always a bigger fan of X-Men than Avengers and Fantastic Four.

    Reply

  6. Kieron
    March 4, 2015 @ 10:53 pm

    Text pages almost never come at expense of story pages. It'll have to be a full concept issue to do that, and last one I can think of which did that was the courtroom issue of Alias (And even that had art and wasn't text pages).

    I will admit it grates when you give more content and people get angry that they've got less. I've had WicDiv reviews this month not notice we actually did a 40 page issue and said there was less stuff in it. I glare pretty hard.

    I'm very much in the re-cap column, for all the reasons Phil says. I've had creators say that on Indie books, no-one complains about them if they remove them, and no-one ever says anything about them. Even if that's true, I don't believe it doesn't have an effect. I read a lot of comics, and fuck five months – I may not remember what's going on in your book from last month. GIVE ME A PROMPT.

    Reply

  7. Tom
    March 4, 2015 @ 11:07 pm

    Hickman's "Previously in Avengers…" TV-style collage recap must be quite a bit more work but I have to say it's really been worth it – definitely gets you in the zone for what's coming up.

    Reply

  8. Tom
    March 4, 2015 @ 11:14 pm

    Tula Lotay's art on Supreme Blue Rose deserves particular mention, I think – her figurework is perfect for the story, and the technique of having different layers in the art (and all those dreamy lines and squiggles) give the impression of different realities overlapping and intruding on one another was absolutely perfect, and given how many trippy multiple-realities stories we've had since the 1990s it's amazing nobody's tried similar before. I had no familiarity with her art before S:BR and I can't wait to see more of it.

    Reply

  9. Kieron
    March 4, 2015 @ 11:32 pm

    Jon's a master at this kind of thing. I keep on meaning to ask him what the process is on doing them.

    Reply

  10. Abigail Brady
    March 5, 2015 @ 1:59 am

    I wonder if some people might have a reluctance to highlight what bits of the preceding story are important. It's like, on telly recaps, you will often see a flashback to an appearance of a guest star and then know they're going to turn up. Summarising a story is a way of saying which bits really mattered, and from an authorial hand that could give things away?

    Reply

  11. phuzz
    March 5, 2015 @ 4:09 am

    I fully agree with you. I picked up the first one just on the strength of her art, and Warren Ellis' name (as Philip says, at worst he's ok, never bad).
    That said, I only have a small idea of what was going on, and full re-read might help.

    Reply

  12. Kieron
    March 5, 2015 @ 4:36 am

    Abigail: I actually think it's just because they're lazy.

    Reply

  13. ferret
    March 6, 2015 @ 1:46 am

    to add a smidge to Abigail's point, it also reveals when there has been excessive padding. Watching repeats of Red Dwarf 8's "Back In The Red" three-parter, the recap in part Two reveals a lot of padding in part One. This then made me view parts Two and Three more critically than I otherwise would have, and concluded the whole affair was probably purposefully padded out and could have been a tighter, funnier two-parter.

    Reply

  14. encyclops
    March 10, 2015 @ 2:06 pm

    Agreed. I tried to do otherwise and quickly realized my mistake. But good lord does it read wonderfully in trade.

    Reply

  15. encyclops
    March 10, 2015 @ 2:14 pm

    I rarely find that text-only recaps are much help in reminding me what happened; seeing the last two pages of the previous issue would do the trick much more effectively, but of course no one wants that, including me.

    The main thing I do with recaps is (try to) make sure I'm not missing an issue from the last one I bought. Because I'm a walk-in-walk-out-with-a-stack buyer rather than doing subs, and because of all the fucking alternate cover art that goes on, I need help remembering which issue of each series I'm on when I actually have a chance to go to the shop.

    Reply

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