Joss Whedon, novelist Jodi Picoult, and rapper Percy Carey talk about writing for the comics in this NPR interview. Included at the link are excerpts from Buffy and Percy Carey's autobiography, Sentences. Confirming my previous note on the subject, Carey's B&W approach--using established manga techniques such as frame-in-frame and dropped backgrounds--is far more inventive and expressive. The four-color, traditionally-drawn, and rather prosaic Buffy version seems mostly to be illustrated text, like manga that are created from anime simply by printing the key frames. The demands of color and the temptations of photorealism are a drag on the "American" style.

Labels: buffy, manga, publishing