joespam
08-18-2007, 07:32 AM
What do folks think of the Bendis Sam and Twitch? I dig it, except for the really-tough-for-me-to read lettering style.
I picked these up monthly when they came out, and have also gotten the more recent trades. Monthly, they suffer a bit for seeming slow in pace for the month break between chapters, but like a lot of Bendis' stuff, the full story comes together brilliantly when read in one go.
So I'm confused when an article blog (and its comments) like this (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/08/tough_images_the_problems_of_g.html) says things like this:
he also worked on Sam and Twitch, a disappointing spin-off from Todd McFarlane's long-running Spawn. Sam and Twitch are two police detectives who live in a New York that is mostly grey, brown, or greyish brown. They sit and chat a lot. They don't get into many fights. It might as well be a radio play. This is the fate that all crime comics should fear.And from the comments:
To speak to the Sam and Twitch thing, though I never read Bendis' work on it, not even Bendis would ever be able to save that. Two very cardboard characters from a fairly silly "universe." Really, the same criticism can be leveled at Alias, it too really threatening to be a radio play sometimes.
However, unlike Sam and Twitch, Jessica was a great character and the style and format of the book was obviously built around Bendis' penchant for long dialogue scenes.And from the author again:
you're right, it might be better to have said 'visually interesting' or 'visually satisfying' as 'visually exciting'. And I knew that might be a contentious point, but I'll stick to it. In Sam & Twitch, for instance, one issue has four full pages of small alternating head-shots during an interrogation - and although the artists that various commenters have mentioned, like Chris Ware and Eddie Campbell, might prefer broody to fast-paced, they'd never be caught dead doing something as lazy as that. This is why Alex Maleev's art on Daredevil was so great - Bendis burdened him with a lot of (admittedly brilliant) long conversations, but there was barely a single panel of boring art.He seems to backpedal a bit by saying his problem is with talking heads, but I'm not clear still on the complaint.
I picked these up monthly when they came out, and have also gotten the more recent trades. Monthly, they suffer a bit for seeming slow in pace for the month break between chapters, but like a lot of Bendis' stuff, the full story comes together brilliantly when read in one go.
So I'm confused when an article blog (and its comments) like this (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/08/tough_images_the_problems_of_g.html) says things like this:
he also worked on Sam and Twitch, a disappointing spin-off from Todd McFarlane's long-running Spawn. Sam and Twitch are two police detectives who live in a New York that is mostly grey, brown, or greyish brown. They sit and chat a lot. They don't get into many fights. It might as well be a radio play. This is the fate that all crime comics should fear.And from the comments:
To speak to the Sam and Twitch thing, though I never read Bendis' work on it, not even Bendis would ever be able to save that. Two very cardboard characters from a fairly silly "universe." Really, the same criticism can be leveled at Alias, it too really threatening to be a radio play sometimes.
However, unlike Sam and Twitch, Jessica was a great character and the style and format of the book was obviously built around Bendis' penchant for long dialogue scenes.And from the author again:
you're right, it might be better to have said 'visually interesting' or 'visually satisfying' as 'visually exciting'. And I knew that might be a contentious point, but I'll stick to it. In Sam & Twitch, for instance, one issue has four full pages of small alternating head-shots during an interrogation - and although the artists that various commenters have mentioned, like Chris Ware and Eddie Campbell, might prefer broody to fast-paced, they'd never be caught dead doing something as lazy as that. This is why Alex Maleev's art on Daredevil was so great - Bendis burdened him with a lot of (admittedly brilliant) long conversations, but there was barely a single panel of boring art.He seems to backpedal a bit by saying his problem is with talking heads, but I'm not clear still on the complaint.