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Connect Polish film-maker Krzysztof Kieslowski and the Marvel superhero Daredevil.

Before you say “Red” and spoil the mood, the answer is The Decalogue. Kieslowski’s 10-volume work influenced Brian Bendis, the current writer of DD, to come up with an a six-volume arc called The Decalogue, which chronicles a year in the life of Daredevil. Why six volumes instead of ten? Because it’s easier to sell six books together as a trade paperback later. This storyline is told from multiple viewpoints, and focusses on the period of time in DD’s life which Bendis had tantalizingly skipped over between issues 50 and 56 ( 51-55 were by David Mack, and the storyline had mostly nothing to do with the ongoing tale, and issue 56 began a year after the events in issue 50)

I have plans to pick up the last 10 issues of the Bendis-Maleev run on Daredevil, already have 26-70, and I have tried my best to stay away from discussions about the storyline of Decalogue – but some random surfing today led me to the covers of issues 71-75, and I just had to share.

images, not too heavy.

The defining quality of American comics is also the most exasperating – the monthly serial format. Not only is the average 32-page comic over-priced ( at prices between 2.50$ and 7$, the exchange rate brings the price of a comic to 110 INR and above. This is one of the reasons why you only find outdated pre-1999 issues in Indian bookstores at low prices), but the way it makes you wait ONE WHOLE MONTH between the story is terrible. I have no idea how people who were reading, say, The Invisibles or Preacher or Transmet when these comics were coming out monthly managed to keep themselves in control between stories. Both these comics ( and countless other good ones) have the juiciest cliffhangers ever, at least during the story arcs.

Is there some kind of a commercial drawback to producing comicbooks in self-contained story-arcs released as “books”, instead of the monthly 22-page thingie? I can think of the following –

• More advertising revenue, because 22 pages of comics includes about 10 pages of ads.
• User feedback remains consistent throughout a monthly comicbook. Though it does not impact the structure of the story, the creator is gratified by the fact that people are reacting to the story, through the now-almost-extinct letter column, and internet Message Boards of today.
• Increased revenue by issuing the same storylines in a variety of formats. The monthly comics, followed by a hardcover release, followed by trade paperbacks.
• Last, but not the least, pandering to the speculator market. That is, the people who buy comics in the hope that they can later be sold for 10 times the cover price, and consequently define good comics as the “hot” ones, and make it a point to buy variant covers of the SAME comicbook for the aforementioned reason.

Let me not be hypocritical – I got into serious comic-collecting because of the speculator thing – it’s always a good feeling imagining that something you buy for 10 rupees can someday be sold for 500 Rs. But hey, I was a kid then, alright? I still insist on buying the original comics in most cases, but that is because of the sheer novelty of reading the story in exactly the same way it was written, following the crests and troughs as they come. But cliff-hangers can get tedious after sometime – almost as if the writer knows that he has to try extra hard to get his audience to react to his story, and therefore is under a compulsion to introduce a shock moment after every 22 pages. And, boy oh boy, it can be a bitch too, like when you are at part 4, the penultimate episode of the storyline and part 5 is nowhere to be found. Of course, digital comics have done away with this for now, but I still cannot wait until a complete series gets over before beginning to read it, can I?

I am quite taken with the idea of Season-based comics, as opposed to the monthly format. Seasonal Comics, much like TV Show seasons, are story arcs that are published as monthly issues for about a year by the same writer/artist combo. And then there is a gap, followed by the next season with either the same or a different team of creators. Was Ultimates the first in this genre? So far, I have read Sleeper seasons 1 and 2, an excellent superheroes-meet-crime-noir saga of a double agent trapped in a criminal organization made up of super-powered bad guys, each with a quirky tale of his own, and motivations much distanced from the usual Rule-the-world mish-mash. I have a strong feeling that people who loved Infernal Affairs would love this series and identify with Agent Carver a lot, it has brilliant moments, strong characterization, and a very engagingly narrated storyline that jumps timelines and gives you the complete picture slowly, leisurely. I would have gone berserk if I had to read it an issue a month, let me tell you. And the ending to season One was clever. Clever without being smug.

Hard Time Season One is another good series that weds superheroes with another genre, in this case – the prison novel. The prime accused in a school shooting incident that goes wrong, a 15-year old boy named Ethan Harrow, is sentenced to a maximum-security prison for fifty years. Steve Gerber, the writer knows just what buttons to push to keep the story from degenerating into either of the two genres it forms part of. Characters like Cindy, the boy who wants to be a girl; a maniacal preacher whose idea of baptism gives me the creeps, the power cliques in the prison – Nazis against the Minority groups; and even Ethan Harrow himself, a socially-maladjusted guy who cannot get along with anybody because of his smart mouth – are etched out beautifully – the subplots that move parallel to the main storyline are in themselves a social commentary – for instance, one of the first people Ethan’s uncanny power saves – hold on, did I forget to mention that? Ethan Harrow has a supernatural force within him, a being that manifests itself only when he is asleep, or unconscious, and he has no conscious control over the being – now this being goes and saves a guy who raped and killed a black girl, from being murdered by one of the only people in the prison who has any sympathy for Ethan. The only person who writes to him in prison, at least initially, is a survivor of the Shooting, a girl who has been remanded to a sanatorium because of the trauma, and she wants to know why he did it. The storyline progresses most unexpectedly, and part of the enthu I have is because there seems to be no clearly etched line on who is good and who is bad in the series. Hurrah for moral ambiguity!