Wednesday, November 14, 2012

How context changes

Still another week until I get Batman #14 in the mail. I did recently get the RHATO trade. I don't get trades for everything but sometimes it's easier to go through issues in a tpb then track down the floppies. Anyway, the first thing I noticed was how they changed the reading order. Lobdell isn't always the most linear writer in this title, sometimes he explains things much later. He did this in the first arc by putting in a prequel to the events of #1 in between the last issues of the arc. This was the story of how Jason and Kori met.

According to the writer the idea was make new readers interested in these characters and keep them guessing for a little while. Then over time introduce more of their backstories, how they met, etc. So Kori was more distant, Jason was meaner, and Roy seemed more funny than haunted in the first issue. Over time we learned that Kori was more of a mentor and friend to Jason, one he didn't seem willing to get too close to romantically. Now that story appears first. I wonder if this would read weird to one picking it up for the first time or if they'd think it was an improvement.

No comments:

Post a Comment