The only one I can think of is the one in TOP TEN when the squad took out the Seven Sentinels – Alan Moore even managed to write a song to accompany his montage called, “Like A Pistol.”
Have there been any other montages in comics? It doesn’t have to be accompanied by music, maybe just a flipping calendar or series of TV interviews or something. Could you possibly provide a cite, especially if the source is manga?
Thanks!
I’m thinking “This Vicious Cabaret” sequence in V For Vendetta (another Alan Moore comic set to an original song) was a montage, but I haven’t read it in a while.
I need more specifics. If it’s just a composition you’re talking about then there were a million of them back in the early '90’s feeaturing newscasters – Spawn did it a lot, for instance.
–Cliffy
Cliffy. Far enough. Okay, for my purposes if it addresses key plot points and sompresses time, while it mimics either a sports training montage or the rise to respectability montage or something similar – it’s a montage.
If it’s just a big chunck of text covering a lot of plot points and background, no. I’m looking for words and pictures – or maybe even just pictures.
“This Vicious Caberet” may work. Does it compress the time between when Evie finds out that V imprisoned her and shaved her bald and when her hair grew back?
I can think of a lot of what I consider montages that compress relatively small amounts of time, like the series of panels depicting the fight between Grendel and Argent inset within the splash of Grendel lying dead on the rooftop in Devil By the Deed. I’m having a much more difficult time incorporating the “key plot point” aspects. Hmmm … a trickier question than I would have expected.
What about the history of Zatanna sequence in Everyday Magic that is narrated by the talking rabbit? That packs in a lot of key plot points, compresses time, and is told primarily through a series of more or less isolated panels.
Seems to me that this is so common in comics that providing cites is going to be listing books from the Overstreet guide.
No no NO no nooooOOOooo.
SIGH It’s not you guys, I’m not explaining what I want.
Okay.
Remember how in TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE there’s a song about a montage while we see a montage?
Remember how in THE INCREDIBLES there’s this montage of Bob Parr recnnecting with his family and working out to lose weight over a period of weeks after accepting the secret missions from Mirage?
Remember ROCKY’S training montage to “Eye of The Tiger?”
Remember the GHOSTBUSTERS montage of them hitting the big time and becoming national celebrities while Ray Parker’s Ghostbusters played?
Remember how in the first and second volumes of THE ULTIMATES there were these media montages of the various members of the Ultimates visiting talk shows while public opinion rose and fell on their actions?
It’s not that common. I don’t equate fight scenes in superhero comics with montages. Few fight scenes are, unless there’s some major uncertainty in the outcome of the fight and we see the “lots of time has passed” element and it might be the aggregate of a LOT of different fights where we see the hero has clearly become a more effective fighter as time goes on.
It’s not like a panel of an empty ashtray filling up with cigarettes while waiting, because that’s not a significant enough plot point. No one’s getting more despondant with time because they’ve lost someone, or improving their fighting skills, or becoming less famous, or slowly dying. That kind of thing.
One thing I do see is the “fake media cover” montage featuring the debut of a new superhero or superteam. I believe this was done a couple of times back when Millar did THE AUTHORITY.
I repeat… I think this is INCREDIBLY common in comic books.
Okay. Mind sharing what you have in mind?
Gotta agree with the others who say that this is fairly common in comics – compressing the long passage of time using select panels (with accompanying exposition) is a staple of the media.
One example off the top of my head: Jean DeWolff reflecting on her life so far in the first three(?) pages of the “Death of Jean DeWolff” story arc from Peter Parker: The Amazing Spider-Man (available in TPB, now out of print).
In a montage, the passage of time continues to propel the story forward.
What you describe is a flashback.
Flashbacks are common. Montages are fairly rare.
Wanna try again?
…Picky picky. I think you are being ridiculous at this point. A flashback is a story convention. A montage is a visual element of story telling.
A flashback CAN BE told in a montage. A Montage can be used to detail a flashback.
I don’t mind being picky so long as I’m correct. I just hate being “corrected” because I need to be picky.
I’m not interested in flashbacks which I thought was clear by my examples. At least in r**jung’**s case I can excuse the confusion because he’s usually pretty helpful and knowledgable, and once he shared with me his thoughts I can explain why that’s not what I’m looking for. So now he’s free to come back and help out again if he so desires.
Push You Down: You haven’t volunteered one shred of help the three times you posted. If the technique is so common as you claim, cite something relevent besides “Overstreet.”
Yeesh.
Voodoo Lou? Selkie? Thanks. Cliffy, hope you can help.
Fine… An example- GI JOE Vol.2 Devils Due Press Issue 24. GI JOE is tipped off to the locations of Cobra bases and given evidence of Cobra involvment at other locations.
In a MONTAGE (using the actual definition and not your seemingly agenda-based one)the various Joe teams assualt those locations. No dialogue. Just simple text listing the locations.
Listing more examples would require a trip to the local comic shop or my parents garage.
Are you writing a paper on comic book montages and somehow your thesis would be thrown out of whack without your narrow definition of “montage”
Well, I have a very strong idea the kind of thing I’m looking for, and I’m not going to apologize for being “narrow” or “picky.”
There’s a comic book montage techinique I’m grasping to come up with in a comic book script I’m writing and – well, I need to figure out how to move the plot forward over a few months time using pictures and MINIMAL text to convey my meaning, using the kinds of cinematic montage I mentioned. Trouble is, while I’m pretty well versed in the cinematic versions of the technique, like the ones I listed above – they’re all useless because they’re pretty music dependent to carry audience through viewing the images, which will not work at all in a static comic book with a limited page count, and I’m not confident of my own draftsmanship will engage the reader enough to draw them in.
See, what you describe isn’t the kind of montage I need either because it sounds like a “montage” of establishing shots of different bases worldwide – more or less during a coordinated simultaeous attack. Yes?
It’s possible I need to give up trying to do it this way and adapt the montage techniques used to convey information in a typical flashback, but I hate exposition and I’m really, really, really trying not to go that route.
You seem pretty knowledable and who knows? Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot, so I’ll overlook the unveiled snark that I’m somehow cheating or being academically dishonest THIS time and sincerely thank you for your help.
If it helps, I’m thinking of a sequence in the movie version of Dick Tracy (which at least was based on a comic), where it showed a series of time (days? weeks?) passing, juxtaposing chorus girls dancing in a nightclub stage show, gangsters laughing maniacally as they shot tommy guns, cops swarming into warehouses and making arrests, and bad guys dumping out sacks of ill-gotten money, all set to a Broadway showtune-style song. It’s one of the only sequences I remember from the movie, but I’m sure a similar montage effect could work in an actual comic.
I’m also reminded of origin/training sequences that might not come from actual comics, but that I’ve edited together in my head. Peter Parker first practicing with his spider powers: leaping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing sides of skyscrapers, in his room mixing up the web formula, swinging on webs against the Manhattan skyline, and all that. It would imply the passage of time, while at the same time visual cues like Parker wearing different clothes in different panels, transitions between day and night, and different levels of “comfort” with his powers (from awkward to confident) would clarify that the scenes aren’t happening one right after the other.
One reason I think we’re all having a hard time with this is that comics are “sequential art,” best-suited for sequential narratives. That’s why we’re so used to captions that say “Meanwhile…” and all that. Movies seem to be a better medium for playing fast and loose with narrative structure, and a series of otherwise-random shots are much more evidently part of an interconnected montage when accompanied by a song or music of some kind.
Well, naturally I wouldn’t present this as a problem to the finely honed fanboy minds here unless it represented some sort of actual challenge. > smiley icon <
Most of my comics are already packed up, but you do make a couple of points that even my atropied mind can recall. I guess what i need are more examples like the two you just made and maybe come up with some sort of non-cliched visual shorthand that lets the reader subtley know that a montage is taking place. I’m thinking maybe a pastel or sepia toned color scheme, or maybe the photorealistic effect where everything else is a blur while the main object(s) is in focus… I dunno.
If it wasn’t hard to figure out, I wouldn’t talk to the DOPE!
Thanks Lou. BTW, get my e-mail?
Okay… I think I’ve figured it out. Maybe I’m still off here.
The answer is really easy.
Trust yourself.
I think you are looking for an example to use as a template right? Which is understandable. I was writing a script that required a very CSI style autopsy type scene (all flashy and such). I wasn’t sure how to describe it in terms of words and phrasings in the script to convey the images that I wanted. So I bought a CSI script to see how they did it. So again I understand. But was it necessary? Not totally.
Now are you just scripting or are you the artist for this comic as well? I think I got that your were the artist as well.
So let’s say you want to convey 6 months of a character slowly winning the heart of a girl. The same cinematic conventions apply. Music is just used in movies because movies have sounds. You don’t have that option. That doesn’t mean a montage in comics doesn’t work the same exact way. A montage is just a series of vignettes with limited or no dialogue. Each scene is still telling a story.
Each panel needs everything that a scene in a movie needs. Character. Plot. Setting.
Passage of time is told in clothes, hair lengths, seasons.
Let’s give a panel for each month.
Panel One: Guy is across the street from Girl. A Tree in the background has brown leaves. The Guy has his arm raised and is waving. The Girl is giving him a halfassed wave.
You just told a story. You gave a time (Fall). Characters (Guy/Girl). And a story (Guy is much more excited about seeing Girl).
Panel 2: Guy is walking behind the Girl carrying her books. She has an awkward smile on her face. She appreciates it but is a little weirded out. Snow is on the ground.
Panel 3: Guy and Girl are inside a coffee shop in winter clothes. He is bringing her some hot chocolate.
ETC. ETC. (Hey I’m at work)
I think you should already have the tools needed to write/draw what you want to convey in the montage. I think it’s just a matter of trusting yourself to be able to do it.