quote:
Originally posted by A Jar of Cardinals:
Do you have any examples to support this, or are you generalizing, because I don't see this at all.
An example out of the Gaiman book or an example out of the SA?

For this post, as to not waste space, I'll assume you mean the latter.

I recently read the 'Even More Secret Origins' reprint that came out a few months ago.

In the first story, the origin of the Robin/Jimmy Olsen team, Robin and Batman appeared out of costume a total of TWO panels, the rest of the story they spent it in the spandex.

In the two panels they appeared out of it, in one was to hear the alarm from the Batcave, while the second it was plot driven. The two were at a baseball game and Dick got scared after hearing a player hit a ball with a bat because he thought someone was shooting at him.

When I say plot driven I mean that the only purpose of the panel was to show that reaction.

In more modern books you tend to see the characters do stuff that isn't necessarily related to the main plot of the story, be it starting out in one place or ending in another during the story.

In more modern comics the characters drive the story, in older ones the story drives the characters. The story determined what the characters could say and what they could do.

That made them two dimensional and uninteresting, that's why when works like Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen eventually appeared they caused such an impression on people, they were the complete opposite.

What did Roschach holding a sign about the incoming apocolypse outside the Comedian's funeral have to do with the main plot of a hero being killed or what Adrian ended up doing?

Nothing, the sign was a character trait because, unlike the SA characters, this character had a personality that didn't depend on the main plot.