How come no one else in the west has tried to create a long-running serialized comic epic like One Piece or Berserk? The closest was Cerebus
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How come no one else in the west has tried to create a long-running serialized comic epic like One Piece or Berserk?
Because nobody wants to replicate the process of a pretentious butthole slowly descending into madness. This is why indieshit is so terrible. They inevitably become like Cerebus, a future serial killer's manifesto.
>Twitter/Reddit tourists don’t know this overwhelmingly exists in western comics but they are too basic b***h to know about them the way they only know about One Piece and Berzerk
Not really, or at least serialized comics telling one continuous story over the course of like 20-30 years is fairly rare in the west
Usagi Yojimbo has been going for about 40 years, and it's solid throughout pretty much the whole thing. Before you say it's not really a singular story, well, pretty much no comic/manga is, if it's that long.
of which the Marthon is in the fricking catalog RIGHTNOW and for the last month and a half.
Tarzan was a series of books but it got a Cinemaphile adaptation and has been adapted to film more than any other book over so I'm going to mention it anyways.
Also Conan the Barbarian
There are plenty of multi-volume comics forming one big story.
funding. One Piece, Berserk, all those major shonens are huge IPs for their publishers and as such they support their creators because they ultimately want them to produce as much content as they can.
There's far less American companies willing to fund creators like that. Closest would be fantagraphics paying the Hernandez bros or Chris Ware, but they wouldn't do epic style stories because Gary Groth is an old frick hipster who hates comics with action or anything aimed at teen boys.
The big two hate the idea of anyone having a long run on a series, especially artists.
Sim benefited from boomer boost bucks where cost of living in general was more affordable in that era too.
>Sim benefited from boomer boost bucks where cost of living in general was more affordable in that era too.
Not just that but the time he published the book and the opportunities he got in comics was also beneficial
>Started in 1977 so he had got benefit from the rise of the direct market and the readership's interest in stuff like Howard the Duck and Conan
>Was still around in the 80s so likely got a boost when the black-and-white comics boom happened; likely made most of his money at this time
>Was established by the time the b&w crash of the 80s and the 90s crash happened and still able to put out a book regularly (while keeping his books in print) which probably helped him even when getting into controversies. Also, likely got paid a lot to do Spawn #10 and other stuff
This. The chance for a single guy to make a hit with no corporate backing and shilling and live off it is long over.
I think arguments could be made for Claremont's X-Men, the first 225 issues of Wally West Flash, and Legion up until the end of 5 Years Later. Though none of them are single creative teams. You need to define what you're asking about better.
>Closest would be fantagraphics paying the Hernandez bros or Chris Ware, but they wouldn't do epic style stories because Gary Groth is an old frick hipster who hates comics with action or anything aimed at teen boys.
Los Bros are telling ongoing stories about the same group of characters though.
They're not really epic/action stories, though.
The Invincible comic could be considered one. It ran for 10+ years and it's was written by the same writer and artists all the way through.
>How come no one else in the west has tried to create a long-running serialized comic epic?
Many factors. Mostly by the simple fact that manga is crazy popular and a money maker while comics are just seen as a pool of cheap stories for studios to purchase or take ideas from for movies and tv shows. Why would you wanna waste more than a decade working on a big epic story just to cancelled half way through because nobody reads comics. Manga is more popular so there are more eyeballs that will invest in crazy long epics like this.
Also if your manga gets an anime that just means your manga sales are going up since it's mostly a vehicle for that. When in western media the movie or tvshow is seen as a replacement of the source material or in the worst case you'll get smartasses trying shitting on the comic for various moronic reasons staining it's reputation.
I genuinely want any and all Invincible fans to be hunted down and shot in the head. Frick off and shut the goddamn hell UP already.
>goes in thread about long running western serials
>somebody talks about one
>grrrRRRR NOT THAT ONE moron!!
kys
homosexual
that should happen to you instead homosexual
I thought they changed artists a few times, with one returning for the last epilogue issue notedly?
There were two artists for the run of the series, with both illustrating the final issue.
I would like to see it happen even though I prefer shorter works, even in manga.
Dave Sim and (to an extent) Todd McFarlane
I study these
Would Hellblazer count?
>already read cerebus
>will never experience kino like it for the first time again
God i cant wait for the dementia to set in
Because it’s incredibly hard to keep something going that long in this publishing environment and if you self publish you’ll go insane
Erik Larsen is still doing Savage Dragon
is Cerebus any good?
Some parts are.
It peaks with High Society/Church & State. Then it vanishes up its own ass and doesn't come out again.
It peaks with Minds.
It's both very good and very bad. You can read until the end of the very good parts and drop it before it becomes very bad. But you won't. You won't be able to drop it. You'll be too addicted from the very good. And you'll force yourself to suffer through the very bad. That's just how it goes.
It's one of the best comics ever made. The only bad parts are Latter Days and the text pieces of Reads.
Even when it's "bad," it's still one of the best executed comics of all time. Starts off as Conan the Barbarian meets Howard the Duck, peaks as Victorian sociopolitical fantasy, hard crashes in to caricature comedy and proto-men's rights/redpill, and then ends with the three stooges and old testament commentary (literally). All the while the art/lettering get better and more experimental with each arc. If you're at all interested in comics as an artistic medium (as opposed to merely escapist fantasy), it's an essential read.
no. i powered through the entire series, and trust me, the only thing i had besides running on fumes was the art
Elfquest exists but you didn't read it
Anyway here's Dave Sim talking about Ed Piskor dying
Cerebus is great but for some reason people always praise the early parts when it's still finding its legs instead of the really good parts where it's completely unique
Cerebus is both good and original, but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.
Where can I buy the volumes of Cerebus?
Nowhere. They're schizophrenic, misogynist drivel and any existing copies should be burned.
homosexual
Women are powerful & brave and you will not divide us Dave Simp
>buy
Dave Sim has renounced the material world, so he doesn't need money.
I don't like reading comics digitally. I want to buy them in book form.
How are you online but have no access to a search engine?
Elfquest?
Why the frick is the board so fast?
Writers don't want to bother. They're too busy sniffing their own buttholes to ever do comics as anything but one shots and short stories.
Artists follow writers.
Erik Larsen has been doing Savage Dragon for years and it's at 200 issues, which is actually pretty goddamn good for comics.
The problem is it's Savage Dragon.
Basically no one wants to commit to it.
short comics are better
Depends on how well it's executed or not. I would wager that you aren't wrong but the majority of comics suffer from being too short.
There's Empowered
I feel like there's a good handful of Western Comics that are long-running, most of Cinemaphile doesn't know about them though because they're too busy reading The Big Two while comparing themselves to shitty Mangas
There is. If we're not going by any strict "one person/team the whole time" thing:
Spawn
100 Bullets (though this was always Azzarello/Risso, it just switched colorists)
Gold Digger (this one is the same guy the whole time, though Jochen Weltjens did the colors early on in the color run before Fred took over)
Ninja High School
Invincible
Usagi Yojimbo (same guy the whole time)
The Walking Dead (artist changed early on, obviously)
Strangers in Paradise (same guy the whole time)
Spawn and Usagi Yojimbo are more episodic, they don't really tell one continuous storyline
Gold Digger has literally beaten out Cerebus on how many issues were written and drawn by the same person.
It takes a special kind of disciplined autist to do that, so most long running US comics change artists and/or writers at one point or another, like Spawn and Ninja High School.
Gold Digger is complete garbo, tho
but booba bro!
Amerisharts have long lost the work ethic required for that
Cerebus kino
I remember over a decade ago evryone on Cinemaphile who'd read Cerebus spoke about it in hallowed terms, now it seems like it's vogue to shit on Sims.
What happened?
I never got around to reading it, I just always heard it was must-read and now it's an avoid-at-all-costs.
I praise the comic AND shit on its author.
That just makes you ungrateful.
cerebus falls off hard the second astoria leaves the story, and Dave Sim absolutely, totally dropped the ball by not fleshing out Cirin as a conservative or right wing villain. "matriarchal feminist" society is conservative.
cerebus is a hermaphrodite/intersex character, but it ends up being incel/MRA/mgtow shit until finally the end is some nightmare for conservatives
if you want to see a perfect example of sim being schizo and/or ridiculous, read the intro/foreward to Puma Blues
Have you tried reading NOT marvel and dc?
The longest running serial comic epic I can think of is a webcomic. Sluggy Freelance. Ongoing with a continual plot-line since 1997, same writer/artist for pretty much the entire run with the exception of some weekend strips and side-arcs and non-canon material.
Starts off as a simple wacky gamer-buddy comic, then throws some weird shit out there for the sake of a plot. But then the weird shit doesn't go away, the status quo doesn't return, and it becomes serious. By 2003, it's full on crazy plot. The talking rabbit? Major character to this day. That nameless character in the nuthouse from a single strip screaming gibberish? Just wait until you find out who he really is! And these are pretty much the only examples I can give without spoiling massive plot points. Thankfully the comic links back to previous strips when referring back to events that happened there or bringing back a character you haven't seen in a while.
And man, is it an epic. In both length and scope. The comic spans the globe, space, time, dimensions, even into the fabric of creation. The cast has hundreds of named and unique characters, ever changing relationships and alliances, and many permanent deaths. A number of plot-lines started 20 years ago just recently had their big mysteries solved, all building to the grand finale. Have you ever read any comic with a 20-year running plot-line that had a satisfying resolution? Sluggy Freelance pulled it off. Three times in a row.
I've always heard the title but had no idea what it actually was about. You made me intrigued though, I'll give it a shot, although it sounds like it's a long project.
Does reading comics make you smart tbh?
Reading does not make you smart.