Should comics go on forever?

On long-running comics series and the type of work they facilitate

For most of its existence, one of comics’ distinct strengths has been the telling of long-running, serialized stories. Radio serials, soap operas and professional wrestling all scratched similar itches, but – in light of comics’ other strengths, both formal and situational – the medium maintained a tight hold on people committed to sustained narratives with strict continuity.

Of course, that all changed in the current millennium, with the explosive success of complex, interconnected universes across multiple mediums. The question then becomes: With the current prevalence of long-running genre series, are sustained comics narratives still worth pursuing?

At their best, long-running, serialized narratives provide readers with a complexity not possible in shorter, more contained stories. Though it’s sometimes used as a dirty word, this is because of continuity, along with the implicit agreement that all of the stories, as well as their resulting impacts on one another, “count.”

Like comics, film and television have embraced long-running narratives, utilizing previous stories as both foundation and fuel. But while the shocking soap opera return of a forgotten character and the careful layering of themes over the course of years are effective ways to create depth and density, they aren’t the entirety of what makes long-running comics so powerful.

What makes long-running comics so compelling is the fact that they change. More than other mediums, long-running comics are in a constant state of evolution. This can be exhibited in numerous ways:

• Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four discovering its voice over time

• Cerebus careening between genres, tones, styles and focal points

• Dragon Ball’s numerous incarnations’ recursive explorations of themes, patterns and archetypes

• Savage Dragon‘s characters aging in real time

• A work-for-hire book changing along with its creative teams

Regardless of the specific ways in which a long-running comic evolves, the mere act of changing creates an opportunity to layer in additional complexity. The best long-running narratives offer up, through their evolution, an additional metanarrative, informed by and also informing the story itself.

But of course, just changing isn’t sufficient to make a story compelling. In order for a long-running narrative’s evolution to be meaningful, there must be a distinct artistic voice present. This is as true for Dave Sim’s stylistic shifts in Cerebus as it is for your favorite superhero book creator hand-off.

However, long-running books by a consistent creative team – and especially a sole creator – have some unique strengths of their own. Creative teams on sustained narratives are freed to delve deep, becoming more idiosyncratic and, perhaps counterintuitively, more relatable in their specificity.

Unfortunately, long-running comics series – especially those with consistent creative teams – are increasingly a thing of the past. Putting aside the numerous and complex reasons for this, the challenge becomes discovering shortcuts to creating the complexity exhibited by the best long-running series.

I’ve always built out and developed larger worlds for my work; No One Left to Fight begins years after its heroes’ greatest battle has already been won! On Jed and my new project, we ratcheted up our worldbuilding efforts even further, with exhausting and exhaustive research and design work. Through the shadows of a broader world, rich specificity and pre-existing archetypes, readers will discover the book’s complexity for themselves without having to read dozens of issues first.

Thanks, as always, for reading, subscribing, liking, commenting and sharing; it’s always rewarding to know that one of these hit home for someone.

NEXT WEEK: Why is comics the most childish of mediums?

Aubrey