Shane M. Bailey

I knew I could count on @gailsimone.bsky.social for spreading the love about comics throughout bluesky. Lots of good stuff coming from the "thought about comics" thread today.

Yeah Wizard and Hero don't stand up either though.

Yeah, It seemed like FAN was very open about it in a way that HERO and Wizard wanted, where they actually said the "F" slur for homosexual often.

The "No-Prize" was a good idea, but had bad consequences.

i love 'em to death, but a lot of people think of them too much like screenshots of a film, and not enough about all the exciting ways you can utilize the medium itself to tell the story, which is how you end up with readers thinking making it a film will elevate the material

Comics are the oldest medium of storytelling and need to stop acting like they’re in any way a lesser beast than film, prose, tv, etc.

Say a thought about comics.

Here’s mine.

Both Daredevil and Spider-Man saved my life when I was teetering in my thirties.

They’re a weird labour intensive but satisfying way to express yourself.

A page of panels without any dialogue or text boxes takes longer to read than a page with them.

Yes.

It's comics though, no one gets enough credit for the job they do.

I miss the soap opera-esque
format that the 80s and 90s were littered with when creative teams were just allowed to stay on books for years.

Comics taught us how to deal with Bullies. Especially X-men. Kitty Pride should be taught in school

Lettering is an undervalued art

You can always find something you’ll love. Superheroes, indies, brand new series, Golden Age reprints… there’s something for everyone and no one needs to feel like they don’t belong, because everyone does.

We lost A LOT when hand lettering gave way to fonts. A LOT.

I’ve been reading a lot of 70’s comics recently and third-person omniscient narration needs to be revived. It works and we lost in somewhere along the way in favor of character narration.

Editors are very very important.

The line between "Western" comics and manga doesn't actually exist. It's all sequential art and it's all valid.

Mine:

It’s okay to have a casual interest. Even as a woman.
Or a black person.
You can just like the stuff without having to develop an encyclopedic knowledge in order to fend off gatekeepers.

Another thought. Anyone that has a strict definition on what a story or comic can be or how to make them is wrong.

Comics as an industry needs to relearn the importance of being small. They become giants and forget the things that created their growth, and then lose their way, because they're too big to see the small things clearly.

This is what I mean. Comics can heal!

Thought balloons are great because they do more than just exposition, they provide insight into the character's perspective. They're fun and good

Sometimes, a single, well crafted issue can have as much if not more impact than the best arcs.

And going limp in a fall really can save your life.

Comics took too much from tv and film and not enough from theatre and opera.

A rolled up comic book sticking out of someone’s back pocket is a surer sign of love of comics than a slabbed issue is.

Comics can heal your heart, kid!

Ok, I really really liked X-Men United, I don't like what they are doing with Scott though, but I'm along for the ride. It seems like a really fresh take on the school idea and I hope it sticks around. It also made me really love the new mutants from the Exceptional X-Men more than that series did.

The Loneliness of Elio: Growing Up Queer in the American Military - Reactor Rewrites and studio pressure may have stripped Elio of its personality, but there are still glimpses of truth throughout...

"The story we received is not the one the original writers intended to tell. It’s garbled, like a scratchy transmission on a ham radio, but I still heard it: You’re not alone."

@dodgyboffin.com on Pixar's Elio as a story on community and coming out sanded down by corporate interests:

Promo pictures for TV’s The Avengers taken on the 18th September 1963,featuring Honor Blackman as anthropologist Cathy Gale & Patrick Macnee as secret agent John Steed. As cool as cool can be.