The magic of long-form storytelling

Taking years to tell a story

A single, self-contained story can be a beautiful thing. Today I’m going to muse on the other end of the spectrum, though: the long-running, on-going serial. This can take many forms: corporate mega-franchises, television series, multi-book series, comics.

I’ve always been drawn to longer forms of storytelling. I think this comes from my early love of Star Wars as a child. Back in the 80s there were only three films, but they were of unusually consistent quality in terms of production and storytelling. Remember that back then, movie sequels were almost always terrible, and increasingly so. Then they started releasing novels which extended the story and my 10-year old brain exploded.

Back when sequels were always awful

Around the same time I was reading Transformers comics, a lesser-known aspect of that toy marketing exercise that was championed by writer Simon Furman in the UK. Presumably somewhat under the radar of the toy company and parent watchdogs, Furman was writing a hyper-violent, epic war comic that pulled no punches - and which just happened to have transforming robots in it. Again, my 10-year old brain exploded.

It didn’t get better than this in the early 1990s