Amongst the posts I read every week at the Comic Book Resources site ( http://www.comicbookresources.com/ ) is Greg Hatcher's weekly column.
This week's installment made me stop and think.
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2014/01/25/splashy-saturday/
With all the other negative aspects of current comic books that have been discussed of late in this forum (like: https://captaincomics.ning.com/forum/topics/does-anyone-at-dc-know-what-they-re-doing ), are splash pages truly becoming a(nother) thing of the past?
DC's certainly aren't like they were, and Hatcher pretty much summed up the current state of Marvel's in his article.
Archie Comics has rarely used anything more than a splash panel, and with most independents running all their credits on the inside front cover, a true splash page in one of their issues is a surprise.
Thoughts?
Replies
I agree that the opening splash page seems to be a thing of the past. I'd never really noticed how common they were, so that was interesting. But single and double interior splash pages are still pretty common, even in the non-superhero titles I usually read. I've also noticed lots of variations in the placement of the credits. Most of the comics I read tend to place them 3 - 4 pages in, with saving them for the end being the next choice. It's become pretty rare for them to appear on the first page.
In his article, Greg Hatcher seems to be saying that when comics were only on the newsstands the splash page functioned as a second cover. If the cover image didn't convince you to buy it then the splash page would seal the deal. I do remember taking books from the spinner rack or shelf and looking at both the cover and the splash page. I think one of the reasons it's not important today is that most comics are preordered and the interior pages aren't seen anyway. Also, the eye is toward reprint collections. If you are in the middle of a multi-issue story a splash page and/or a recap breaks up the narrative when reprinted. I liked what Marvel was doing (are they still?) printing a recap on the inside front cover. It can easily be dumped when the stories are reprinted. This, of course, sacrifices prime advertising space.
In prose stories, I think the following is a good example. Stephen King's The Green Mile was originally published as six separate mini-books. I waited until it was collected into a single book. I had a little trouble with the fact that the six segments that made up the entire book each had recaps of the story. These were wasting my time and taking me out of the story.
I have noticed that the splash page concept has become fairly common in action shows on TV. They will start out with an exciting and/or perilous scene. The next scene will start out with "12 hours earlier", and go into the less exciting scenes that lead up to the "splash page."
Some years ago, I bought a couple of the DC how to books on comics (on inking and on colouring/lettering--both based on who wrote them), but I only flipped through the one on writing in the store. That was written by Denny O'Neil--who I think is a good instinctual writer, but I question his understanding of comics and how they work. I remember reading a passage in there where he said that the splash page was a second cover and once comics were no longer anthologies, there was no need for splash pages because the cover did that job. I found that to be a lot of BS--and it's one of the reasons I didn't buy the book.
The splash page is also not primarily for listing the credits--given that many early comics didn't have credits, but they had splash pages.It just worked out that, once comics did list credits, the splash provided the most space for them.
One thing I think the classic splash did was it operated as a performance piece--especially once they were in fact splash pages (early comics had splash panels that could take up half or two thirds of the page).
In my way of thinking (which is not the norm for modern comics), the story is primary. Everything has to serve the story. So panels and captions serve the story and they don't take up any more room than they need to to accomplish that end. The exception to this rule, in classic comics, is the opening splash page. There the artist can go to town and wow us with his talent and the writer can compose a brilliant piece of prose that might go on for several sentences or even paragraphs.
You don't have long captions on covers. These days, you don't even have captions at all on covers a lot of the time. But even in the old days, captions tended to be brief and to the point on the covers. On the splash page, some writers composed beautiful works of prose. In the rest of the comic, luxurious prose is not usually needed or desirable. But at the beginning of a story, a writer could lure you into the tale with great writing. And since many comic book writers were very good with the English language, this was the one place where they were permitted to fully impress you with what they learned at university.
And because the artist and the writer had that outlet for their talent--they could get it all out of their system on the first page and then focus their talents on the utilitarian purpose of storty telling for the remainder of the story.
Another common use of the splash page, in classic comics, was as an en media res device. It presents a situation that is compelling. We then have to work back through the story to get to that place in the narrative [this is a device that many classic writers have employed--everyone from Homer to Emily Bronte].
I'd argue that while the cover can do that sometimes, it doesn't really work that way. The cover is divorced from the story. It's its own thing. It can be an advertisement, but advertisements are allowed to be very fanciful and unconnected with whatever it is they are promoting. The cover isn't a discrete part of the story, but the splash page is. In fact, writers often didn't have control what appeared on the cover (and still don't), but the writer was involved in creating the splash page and it functions as his springboard for the rest of the story.
Another casualty of "writing for the trade" is the meaningful cover. The norm today seems to be to have one of the heroes simply posing on the cover. I think it was a lot more interesting when the cover represented something in the actual story.