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Decompressed Comic: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"And then what happened?"<br />
"Uhhh... about 30 pages of explosions and tidal waves."''|[[Scott Pilgrim]] & Ramona Flowers on ''[[
A trend that flourished in the late 90s and early 00s in the wake of [[Trope Codifier]] ''[[The Authority]]'' written by [[Warren Ellis]] and drawn by Bryan Hitch. Heavily inspired by long-form [[Manga]] series, [[Decompressed Comic|Decompressed Comics]] rely heavily on [[Splash Panel|Splash Panels]], [[Aspect Montage|Aspect Montages]] and minimal dialogue to maximize the visual effect of a story. ''[[The Authority]]'' aimed to mimic the widescreen action of a Hollywood movie by creating images that were as big and as striking as possible.
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This trope is also used by people who want to add a slower, cinematic pace by, for example, using an entire page to show someone walking silently down a corridor in numerous panels, in order to create tension or otherwise express a mood.
When used well, decompression is a useful tool that can not only give artists a chance to stretch their wings but also alter the pace of the issue in order to tell the story more successfully. Of course, like any tool it can be used poorly. Some writers (including, arguably, Ellis himself in later years) used it to pad out thin plots or to blindly mimic then-fashionable trends. Such writers were often accused of [[Writing for
{{examples}}
* ''[[
* ''[[Gunnm]]'' Last Order has the ZOTT arc with whole chapters describing just a few, or even a single punch. Running for at least 80 chapters (7 years in real life so far) the event takes place over a period of ''six days''.
* ''[[Cerebus]]'' did this as long ago as the 1980's, minus the big splash pages. Many, many issues have had no "plot" other conversations. The final volume ''The Last Day" ([[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Blame]]'' lives and breathes this style. The protagonist talks [[The Stoic|so little]] that chapters featuring only him may contain a lot of action but no dialogue at all.
* ''[[Bleach]]'' has shifted into a milder form of this midway through the Hueco Mundo arc, slowing down and adding more details to fights. Most fans disapprove.
* Everything [[Brian Bendis]] does.
** The most annoying example would be [[Marvel]]'s ''[[Secret Invasion]]'', wherein a few hours of comic-book time were stretched out over almost a ''year''... and the ending wasn't worth the wait.
** [[Lampshaded]] in the intro for the second issue of the [[Ultimate Spider
* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' is the cartoon version of this.
* Much of [[Ultimate Marvel]].
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* Lately [[Misfile]] has been including more and more establishing panels. Thankfully it updates five pages a week, but it still gets annoying.
* [[Copper]][http://www.boltcity.com/copper/\] is made of this, though pages are self-contained and some are wordier than most of these.
* [[Osamu Tezuka]] is arguably the [[Trope Maker]] (as with much else in manga). For instance, ''[[Astro Boy (
* ''[[Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force]]'' has been accused of doing this poorly.
* While the whole book isn't a terrible example of this, the revelation of the X-Men's new costumes in ''[[Astonishing X Men]]'' is. In this two-page spread, the actual heroes in their new costumes could have taken up a small amount of one page. Most of the scene is the ''hangar wall'' as the X-Men walk in (the Blackbird's there, but you don't see much of it.) It's not even an ''awesome'' hangar wall that you'd get when the artists get to have their way at the cost of narrative. It's just a wall.
* [[Vattu]] is incredibly decompressed; the first couple of pages are just a baby being tossed over a fire.
* [[Deadpool]] plays this for laughs once, having Deadpool take a leak for one and a half pages. Overlaps with [[Overly Long Gag
* ''[[Superman]]: The Coming of Atlas'' suffers badly from this. Despite being a four-issue story arc, it basically consists of ''one'' long fight scene.
* The Manga version of [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]] does this a few times to emphasise the [[Buffy-Speak|over-the-top-ness]] of the goings-on. For example, one Giga Drill Breaker (the standard [[Finishing Move]] of the series) once took ''11 pages''.
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