Comic Book Dictionary
Comic Book Dictionary - Hang a Lampshade
- by Brian Cronin
- Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 3:58 PM EST
Steven Padnick let me know about this term, which is not really a comic book term, per se, but more just a literature term that also applies to comic book writing as well as it applies to any other literary medium (Stephen actually used the alternate term, “hang a lantern”).
It refers to the practice in […]
Comic Book Dictionary - 90s Good
- by Brian Cronin
- Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 12:32 PM EST
Commenter Todd Lawrence reminded me of this concept when he was discussing Karl Kesel’s Daredevil run in an entry last week. Lawrence brings up a strong point - during the 1990s, there was a number of good comic books. However, there was also a special subset of comics that were what I am now defining […]
Comic Book Dictionary - Pygmalion Characters
- by Brian Cronin
- Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 10:41 PM EST
Earlier this year, I asked for help naming a particular term, and thanks to poster Kid Kyoto, I have my name for it - Pygmalion Characters.
Pygmalion characters are those characters where, while not a proxy for their author/creator, the writer still goes out of his/her way to make their creation “the best at what they […]
Comic Dictionary - False Epiphany Characters
- by Brian Cronin
- Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 5:19 PM EST
This one is by T.
False Epiphany Characters are characters that writers have become obsessed with writing the ultimate end-all/ be-all story for. Writers are so attracted with writing breakthrough stories for these characters that they regularly negate the previous writer’s breakthrough for the same character and simply hit the reset button. After seeing how […]
Comic Dictionary - Grace Notes
- by Brian Cronin
- Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 5:17 PM EST
Over on the Comics Should Be Good forum, everybody’s pal, T, started up a thread about suggestions for the Comic Dictionary. So I figured I’d post a few of the suggestions that I thought were neat. Today I’ll do one by Omar Karindu (this one) and one by T.
Grace Notes are plot points that exist […]
Comic Book Dictionary Help!
- by Brian Cronin
- Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 3:29 AM EST
Okay, so we are all familiar, more or less, with the term “Mary Sue,” right? It basically refers to self-insertion by the author in a story via a proxy character. However, is it really still a “Mary Sue” if the character is not a proxy for the author, but still, the writer goes out of […]
Comic Book Dictionary - Women in Refrigerators
- by Brian Cronin
- Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 2:25 AM EST
As I mentioned when I started this particular series, the point of these entries is to explain to folks what I mean by certain terms that I use often. If people like my particular terms and definitions, then they are certainly welcome to use them as well, of course. I bring this up because today’s […]
Comic Book Dictionary - Obligatory Continuity
- by Brian Cronin
- Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 8:52 AM EST
I’ve explained nepotistic continuity and paternalistic continuity, now today I will explore obligatory continuity.
Comic Book Dictionary - Gimme Idea
- by Brian Cronin
- Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 2:43 AM EST
A gimme idea is an idea that is so good, a comic would be pretty good just by the existence of the gimme idea.
Comic Book Dictionary - Colorform Cover
- by Brian Cronin
- Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 8:06 PM EST
Someone asked me what I meant by this the other month, and since I use the term so often, I figure it is worth doing as a Comic Dictionary entry.
Quoting Wikipedia’s entry for colorforms, the toy colorforms are “paper-thin, die-cut vinyl sheet images and shapes that could be applied to a slick cardboard background […]
Comic Book Dictionary: Venom Discretion Test
- by Brian Cronin
- Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 4:04 AM EST
In his weekly column, “One Fan’s Opinion,” yesterday, Erik Larsen discussed the idea (which Stan Lee has brought up) that, in the broad sense, readers are the “real editors,” in that they decide, by what they buy, what books are produced. It’s an interesting article, with a whole lot of truth (especially the part about […]
Karaoke Comics
- by Brian Cronin
- Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 8:45 PM EST
After doing a little karaoke recently, it made me think about how the concept could be applied to comics (it is quite strange how many things I think about how they could be applied to comics..hehe), and it occured to that there have been a bunch of books out there that I would consider to […]
Comic Book Dictionary - Idea Repertoire
- by Brian Cronin
- Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 8:43 PM EST
Idea Repertoire describes the stock amount of ideas certain writers continually fall back upon, no matter what type of comic they’re writing.
Comic Book Dictionary - Formatitis
- by Brian Cronin
- Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 12:38 AM EST
Formatitis is when a comic book story suffers from being forced to commit to a specific format.
Notable examples of Formatitis include:
Comic Dictionary - Easy Writing
- by Brian Cronin
- Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 10:13 AM EST
Today’s term is “Easy Writing,” (for the pun value, I wanted to go with Easy Writer, but it just didn’t make as much sense as Easy Writing) which is defined as “When a writer has certain events occur in a comic, not because they make sense, but because the writer needs certain things to happen […]
