I was wondering about mediums.. and I guess translation from medium to medium.

By medium I mean written, comics, single image artwork, animations.

I was most specifically thinking about comics and how I have an under appreciation for them. Granted, I haven't read a comic in a while over an extended period of time, but even still.

I find with comics, whether doujinshi, manga, or something more american based, that I either do one of the following:

-read the text and skim the imagery accompanying it
-skim the text and look mostly at the pictures connecting panel to panel.

I was thinking about this, how I find one seems to detract from the other. An image is a frozen moment in time, where as text, when read, transcends that moment and gives a beat or pace to the image along side it. They seem almost conflicting to me.

But perhaps this is more personal opinion, since I'm usually not one to ogle at an image for an extended period of time, nor have I ever really believed in purchasing prints off of people for purely the aesthetic appeal of the image (there may be other reasons, though, like simply liking and wanting to support that artist, or I have a weak moment and succumb to purchasing something based on fandom or something of the like..).

See, this sort of caught my attention when I was thinking about doujinshi, and translating a piece of fanfiction into doujinshi. But I realised that I honestly preferred the original fanfiction to anything I might be able to come up with in sequential panels. I think it's that I find the imagination is more.. creative when reading a good piece of fiction, and attempting to surpass that (with my skill level) in a single frozen-in-time image seemed... stupid, actually. It seemed practically insulting to the piece of fiction in question (this doesn't mean I don't still want to do it.. but that's another thing I guess..).

I'm wondering if that's more of an individual preference thing though. I mean.. Comics are nice, but I find a really good book will occupy my time for longer and bring me out to be more satisifed in the end. But might that be because I place a heavier portion on my imagination as opposed to having everything drawn out for me? If I had less of an imagination, would I prefer comics more? That's not to say those who like comics aren't any less imaginative.

But... it just feels like comics are.. the odd one out.

Written stories exist through their words over an amount of time that you decide on dependent on the time taken to read it, and the time implied within the story (usually more written = longer passage of time?).

Animations are purely time related. Action over a set amount of time. The progression of a story over a 24 miunte time slot on a television network. 2 hours worth of moving imagery, with a set pace of 24 frames per second.

Comics.. however... put a frozen moment without time.. with text that implies time. For some reason, the logic in my brain is telling me this doesn't work as well as it could. With the comics that I read.. find that the minor details, or small little jokes in the corner of the panel are what intrigue me the most alongside the progression of the main story. I guess it's something extra, usually visually, that you can choose to view or not view (at your own discretion) without drastically affecting the flow of the story.

Because there isn't exactly a continual sense of time flow in a comic (in my opinion), you can take advantage of that and pull your readers attention this way and that before they choose to move on to the next panel. If you were to do that in a purely text based format, the time taken to read the original story passage, and then the additional "joke" passage, then all that time would add up in my mind, and I'd find it'd make the story longer, and detract from it's flow.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out the best way to utilise and take advantage of the comic book format, under my current perception of what they are, without having any of the mediums contained in it from detracting from... well, itself.