What I look for in comics

It occurs to me that I don't really define what I'm looking for in a comic. Hopefully that shines through in the aspects I appreciate of a comic in my reviews and in my longer posts breaking down things like X-Force and, eventually, other books. Let me give a quick rundown on what makes a winning comic to me.

Character
Character means a great deal to me. Why are we here, specifically here in Marvel, if not for these characters? It's what set them apart from DC in the early days and it's what keeps us reading them still. Does each character have to be a knockout for a book to succeed? No. But you should care about what happens to them. You should want them to matter. They should be likable in some way or another and hopefully relatable, or you should at least be able to see why they're not. They should, in essence, be human in some way, even if they're robots or aliens. That's the gist. And to me, character is the most important aspect of a good comic. I'll forgive a bad plot if there's good characters or character development, but it's much harder to win me with a good plot and bad characters.

Plot
THAT SAID, plot is always going to be important. It's important both in that it's what drives the story forward and in that it needs to actually drive a story forward. That's repetitive. Here's what I mean. A story constantly progresses. Even if it's in the background, if it's something like Gillen's run on Journey into Mystery where the overall story progressed bit by bit in the background of what appeared to be the main arc, the plot needs to never come to a standstill because that's just good storytelling. On the other side of it, comics are a business. You're trying to sell books and you do it by making an engaging story that requires you to buy more than one book in a series. I get that. HOWEVER, it is brutally apparent when a story in five parts or so could have easily been told in two parts without losing anything. If it's just stuffed with filler. That hurts the comic buyer and the industry as a whole, in the long run. I've seen plenty of books that should be pretty good but that jade me because I recognize halfway through, or even in hindsight, that a story could be broken down into two issues, with the other issues of the arc serving just as recap or "MEANWHILE, OVER HERE, THE SAME THING HAPPENED!" kind of stuff. Comics themselves are relatively cheap, but when you're buying an entire series or multiple books a week, it's easy to toss aside an otherwise good book for stretching plots like that.

Good writing
This comes as no surprise. Obviously I want to read a book with good writing. It does tie back into character, though. I consider good writing in comics to largely be dependent on the writer's perception of a character. As I stated in my X-Force reviews and my Iron Man 5 review, I like seeing new writers on books. I'm sad, sometimes, to see an old writer go, but I like to delve into another aspect of a character. Of course, sometimes a writer will spin a character in a way I don't agree with or really can't envision, given the character's other traits/history, but by and large Marvel hires good writers who understand a character's motivation. If a character acts out what I see their range to be, I tend to quit on a book. I'm not the end-all-be-all judge of what Marvel characters are capable of doing (until this blog really takes off, anyway), and I am pretty accepting of new traits, but I do know a bit of most characters' histories and I empower myself to make the call as far as I know a character. Again, the worst that will likely happen is that I'll complain about it on here and maybe stop buying the book. Not a huge scope of punishment (yet) but it does weigh.

Good art
I'm probably a bad comic reader, in truth, at least for fans of art. I am pretty accepting of most of the art I see. That either means I'm a bad art reviewer or that Marvel hires good artists. I prefer the latter (though the former is still almost certainly true; that wasn't really an "either/or" situation, it's really more a "both/and"). The art will very rarely get me to not read a book. It has to be really distracting or outlandish in a way that doesn't fit the tone to throw me off. Good art, though, will enhance a book. Good art can save bad writing to an extent. As a writing major, though, I am prone to weighing writing more heavily in a book, so I do apologize to art fans out there. Look, I still like it all, okay?


There are other factors, sure, but these are the basic things I look for in a book when I review it. Obviously each book is different and deserves different considerations, but this is a pretty good baseline for what I'm noticing in each offering. Hopefully this lends some insight into why I didn't like the book you did, or why I loved the book you hated. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe we're just born to be enemies?