Gosh! Raynor's Artfully Profiled His Ideal Comics, or
GRAPHIC
It should be an expected 3 or 4 packets of 20/20 questions on comics. I can't stress enough how preliminary this is: I might decide to write a single packet, and it's ready in a month, or I take a couple months to write a proper 9 or 10 packets. If you are interested in this set, do please comment, so I can see how many packets I should go for. If there's a lot of interest, I also wouldn't mind a collaborator; as much as I love comics, I admit I'm only a relatively mild fan, and I'm sure there are people on the board with far greater comics experience than me. Questions will be 5-6 lines, and could theoretically appear on their own in ACF Regionals packets.
What I do know is, I'm taking an English (!) class on Graphic Novels right now, and it's inspired me to indulge my comics love, but also do so from a slightly more scholarly perspective. It'll be written with academic study in mind, as well as the kind of comics people tend to read nowadays. So without further ado, here's the distribution, with a fuller explanation below it:
- 4.5/4.5 Marvel (main universe focus)
- 4.5/4.5 DC (main universe focus)
- 2/2 other comics (fantasy, science-fiction, non-marvel/non-dc superheroes)
- 1/1 other comics (realistic, semi-realistic)
- 1/1 other comics (comic strips, sunday funnies)
- 1/1 webcomic
- 1/1 manga
- 1/1 other media adaptations
- 3/3 misc/common link (respectively 1/3 superhero, 1/3 tangential subjects, 1/3 common link)
- 1/1 history/technique (historically important artists, writers, works, events; medium, philosophy)
- By "main universe focus," I mean entities well-integrated into the shared Marvel and DC universes. I'm aware these companies own quite a few properties, and also occasionally use characters far better known in their own right, not involving said universes (Sandman being the first example I can think of); this distribution excludes those examples.
- The "fantasy, science-fiction" category includes generally unrealistic scenarios. It tends to be published in a serialized format and be best known for entertainment value.
- The "realistic" category includes things like memoirs. It tends to be published as single graphic novels and be best known for artistic value.
- "Other media adaptations" means things that originally appeared as comics, but have become well-known in their own right as works of art/entertainment (the MCU for example).
- When I say anything's fair game for misc, I mean it.
- I'm completely open to suggestions on the distribution. I feel like I tried very hard to curate a proper selection, that's respectful of comics and cartoons as a medium, but your mileage may vary.
- This might take a really, really long time to happen. Hopefully I don't eat crow and at least something gets written.
- There will probably be a lot of crossover between categories, so that at times it feels like a category is missing; I doubt anyone is counting on category count to enhance their playing performance, so that seems fine.
- There will probably be an American focus, other than the manga category.
- There will probably be some bad questions. Okay, some really bad questions. Sometimes you get your Kraven's Last Hunt, and sometimes you get One More Day.
- When this does get written: I'm not intending for this to be used as anything beside perhaps IRC fodder, but if you would like me to hold off on doing that so you can read it somewhere else, I'm okay with that.