In the DVD for Unbreakable, which I think is a fantastic little film fwiw - beautifully slow-paced, nicely low-key ending, well-balanced form (the DVD reveals several deleted action scenes, spare flesh stripped away), and M. Night Shyamalan is clearly a director set on creating a real sense of place for his movies, an imagined city based on real city, as with Woody's NYC or Lynch's LA, he's creating his own private Philadelphia on film, wonderfully sombre muted colours, old (for America) vernacular architecture, industrial detritus etc.)
Anyway. As I was saying.
In the DVD for Unbreakable, you get an extra disk of the usual stuff, but this includes a short documentary called Comic Books and Super Heroes, which is pretty good all things considered: features many luminaries, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, who is clearly a real fan.
There are two angles of interest for regulars here: a) how a sense of the city informed the form of comics, and b) closure, and information delivery.
Trina Robbins notes of the first generation of comic book writers, that "majority of them grew up in New York - in slums, or working class neighbourhoods, and they grew up in apartment buildings - not in single family dwellings in the suburbs - and saw much more of life." Hence the deep understanding the city in comic books, and, as with the Victorian novel, plot devices based around the density and coincidence of city living. (Michael Chabon adds that the superhero myth could in some way be seen as a reflection on promise that is made to the immigrant, that of leaving behind your reality and literally improving yourself.)
There's lots of talk with Will Eisner, and his groundbreaking strip, The Spirit, the first of such comics. And it doesn't mention it, but his series of New York stories (The Building, The Neighbourhood, The Big City etc.) deal specifically with that milieu of the urban working class in the rapidly-changing early 20thC.
Eisner talks about his invention of panels, which determined much of the vocabulary, as he puts it "punctuation". Also, an initially cranky Frank Miller says "I'm mad about the idea of closure - how much the eye can do with how little information ... that's the entire science of comic books."
[That science/closure is something I think UI designers must start dealing with.]
This is Scott McCloud territory of course, and you gain more reading Understanding Comics, but do check this it out if you get the chance.
