Excellent excellent comics article

[zuludelta]

You do realize you are very nearly describing movies as the ideal format and medium for telling 'comic-book' stories.

They are visual, well-oriented to capturing action, the plots work best when they aren't over-complicated, a trilogy is considered a long story arc, and people (except fanboys) tend to be more forgiving when a movie doesn't exactly fit the context of the ones which went before.  Plus they are a heck of a lot more profitable than printing comic books, as long as they do well at the box office.

Television would be an even better medium, but the SFX budget would be horrendous and after awhile they'd suffer from the same inertia drain that affects the comics publishers.

I can see where you're drawing the analogy between film and the self-contained comic story... although I think what I'm describing doesn't just apply to film, but to most any modern episodic entertainment medium. The on-going no-end-in-sight type of serial format just doesn't lend itself to the types of stories that many readers (and viewers) favour these days. The switch to collected editions of episodic entertainment isn't just limited to comics, it's a phenomena that's growing in the TV viewing population as well.

Anecdotally at least, I can tell you that most of the people I know don't watch episodic TV at the times that they are shown, but instead TiVo/PVR consecutive episodes and watch two or three of them in one sitting or they don't even bother and just wait for the inevitable seasonal DVD collection: They get to skip all the ads, jump forwards and backwards through the length of the season, and get all sorts of extras like director commentary and whatnot.

I don't know if it's some sort of popular culture zeitgeist in effect, but it seems to me that many of today's writers, both in monthly comics and episodic TV, are finding it difficult to tell the stories they want to tell within the 22-page pamphlet format or the 22 to 45 minute TV block (when was the last time you saw a good standalone mid-season episode of 24 or Battlestar Galactica or Heroes or Lost, one that didn't require detailed knowledge of the past episodes to satisfactorily make sense of what's currently happening?).

I'm overstating things a little with this whole format business, but I really believe that switching up the formats might ameliorate at least some of the problems comics readers are complaining about these days. Let me say, however, that there's nothing inherently "wrong" with the monthly 22-page pamphlet, but the format does impose many artificial, non-creative limitations on the teams working on the books. It seems to me that both Marvel and DC are currently committed to the long-format story arc that spans anywhere from 88 to 234 illustrated pages, with perhaps the odd standalone inventory issue here and there. Nothing inherently wrong with that either. Many of the problems arise when that story-arc is chopped up into 22 page monthly installments simply for the sake of creating the appropriately-sized individual issues ... the pacing becomes distorted, some installments might seem uneventful and stretched out while the installments containing the climax and dénouement might seem too dense and cluttered and most significantly, there is no sense of a complete narrative within each installment. Compound that with story-arcs feeding into each other and things can get very messy in short order.

[Peerless1]

I hadn't really taken the time to think on it yet, but I believe you all have done some excellent thinking for me. 

Sometimes, with the right minds involved, the most creative aspect of any entertainment medium is the discussion it provokes.  Although I admit that is not common either.

Good points raised by all.  Now I must retire to ponder.