Good points being made here. IIRC, many of the characters now regarded as classics started with one-shots or brief runs. For example:
Rogue Trooper - One-offs in prog 228, 229, 230 etc.. Stuff like "Nu Paree", "Raiders" & "Glass Zone" wasn't ground-breaking, but it introduced an interesting character & developed him enough to support a longer stretch in "Ascent to Buzzard-Three".
Slaine - Again, starting with "The Time Monster" & "The Beast in the Broch", 1 and 4-parters respectively, the series built on a number of mini-runs before hitting the first 6-parter. The character was built over several months, mixing one-offs with 2- or 3-parters. The stories were short & not as satisfying as epics like The Apocalypse War, but they laid the foundations for more involving sagas further down the line.
Off the top of my head, Nemesis, D.R. & Quinch, ABC Warriors, Strontium Dog, Sinister Dexter & Nikolai Dante all started with bite-size episodes (though Dante had a "grand plan" behind it...)
It's interesting to see that Sin/Dex & Dante are two of the few (only?) thrills over the past few years to return & be both fairly consistent, enjoyable & popular.
There's a lot of recent material that had great potential, but it was stretched too far.
Necronauts - superb art & a good story, but it needed the build-up of half-a-dozen short stories spread over a couple of months to prepare readers for the longer tale that Fraze & Rennie gave us. Supporting characters could have been fleshed out & the world could have been sketched in greater detail - then the death of Houdini might have been less of a full stop & more of a jumping-off point for future tales from that universe.
This isn't denigrating the story that we ended up with, but it's a crying shame to see such potential snuffed out after one story.
Same goes for Shakara. Imagine that story strung out in 1- or 2-part episodes over several months, rather than the chain of seemingly unrelated episodes we've been landed with. I'd bet that the frustration felt by a lot of fans would be replaced with anticipation - "cool - Shakara's back" instead of "hurry the *fuck* up!".
Anyway - I've ranted for long enough ;-)
Rogue Trooper - One-offs in prog 228, 229, 230 etc.. Stuff like "Nu Paree", "Raiders" & "Glass Zone" wasn't ground-breaking, but it introduced an interesting character & developed him enough to support a longer stretch in "Ascent to Buzzard-Three".
Slaine - Again, starting with "The Time Monster" & "The Beast in the Broch", 1 and 4-parters respectively, the series built on a number of mini-runs before hitting the first 6-parter. The character was built over several months, mixing one-offs with 2- or 3-parters. The stories were short & not as satisfying as epics like The Apocalypse War, but they laid the foundations for more involving sagas further down the line.
Off the top of my head, Nemesis, D.R. & Quinch, ABC Warriors, Strontium Dog, Sinister Dexter & Nikolai Dante all started with bite-size episodes (though Dante had a "grand plan" behind it...)
It's interesting to see that Sin/Dex & Dante are two of the few (only?) thrills over the past few years to return & be both fairly consistent, enjoyable & popular.
There's a lot of recent material that had great potential, but it was stretched too far.
Necronauts - superb art & a good story, but it needed the build-up of half-a-dozen short stories spread over a couple of months to prepare readers for the longer tale that Fraze & Rennie gave us. Supporting characters could have been fleshed out & the world could have been sketched in greater detail - then the death of Houdini might have been less of a full stop & more of a jumping-off point for future tales from that universe.
This isn't denigrating the story that we ended up with, but it's a crying shame to see such potential snuffed out after one story.
Same goes for Shakara. Imagine that story strung out in 1- or 2-part episodes over several months, rather than the chain of seemingly unrelated episodes we've been landed with. I'd bet that the frustration felt by a lot of fans would be replaced with anticipation - "cool - Shakara's back" instead of "hurry the *fuck* up!".
Anyway - I've ranted for long enough ;-)