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I would think the primary appeal in mainstream, monthly, superhero comic books is plot, since I feel that's what that specific genre and medium does best. I've only read a few arcs of TRANSMET, but the slower pacing didn't bother me as much there because it was a series about ideas, politics, and concepts which needed some room to breathe, not adventure stories about saving the world from an alien menace and looking cool in spandex while doing so.
It also had Derec Aucoin's extremely detailed visuals, which contributed so much information in themselves that you didn't really need dialogue or much of a plot to keep you interested. Ditto for Cassaday and early Planetary, I found. There was enough excitement just looking around the worlds the artists had constructed and getting to know the visual looks and moods of the characters. And in both cases Ellis seemed to cooperate with this by throwing a ton of random facts about the worlds at you--not particularly relevant to the overall plot, but helping to build the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, in my case this only carried me partway through Transmet; eventually I just got too familiar with the look of it and needed something to actually happen, while at the same time the writing narrowed in focus from world-description to characterization without actually saying much of anything new about the characters. IMO, anyway. I read to the end, but quit collecting it. With Planetary, I'm still hanging on...but I'll probably give up if it doesn't end around #25 as originally planned. |
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