The Pros and Cons of different forms of media

There are many different forms of media around that can tell stories (books, comics, movies, TV, etc etc). Each of them have their own particular strengths and faults. Just to try and appear deap, and because it's what I want to write about today, I'm going to try and classify the strengths and weaknesses of each in terms of storytelling.

MOVIES

Pros:

• Collaborative effort, can be improved immensely by good actors, directors and behind the scenes staff.
• Self contained story, easy for anyone to sit down, watch and enjoy.
• Higher budget then TV series compressed into singular event, resulting in vastly improved effects.

Cons:

• Quite short, has to fit whole story (introduction to world, introduction to characters, complications, conclusion) within short window of a few hours, at most.
• A single faulty member has the potential to completely destroy audiences suspension of disbelief. A bad director means it makes no sense, and a bad actor just ruins the experience entirely.
• Constrained by a reasonably narrow definition of what a 'good' movie is. Most scripts have to follow the predefined three-act structure to be considered any good.

TELEVISION

Pros:

• Extended exposure to the characters. The episodes each tell an individual story, but the presence of continuous characters across the series gives the audience a chance to grow fond of them.
• Only requires a singular introduction. Once the characters are known, that's all that's needed, and you can use following episodes to make them grow.
• The (hopefully) large number of episodes in the season allows you to make any character growth more gradual then it has to be in movies, making it more realistic
• Similar collaborative effort to movies.

Cons:

• Limited budgets stretched out over the whole season means that it's very difficult to do TV shows that require great deals of special effects
• Usually have to continue on until they jump the shark, forced to keep making episodes by their producers who don't want to give up the cash cow. This ruins the memories of them for fans, some times.
• Simlar potential for single weak point to make it less entertaining, like movies.

Comics

Pros:

• Once characters are established, they're firmly established and can be brought back any time, without having to worry about actors or any other issue. Most comic book characters are already FIRMLY established.
• Budget rarely limits story potential through limited special effects, since it's not that much harder to draw a giant Cthulu attacking Spiderman and Captain America then it is to draw Spiderman talking.
• Continuous nature means that as long as someone is willing to write it, someone is willing to draw it, and someone is willing to publish it, comic books can continue on indefinately.

Cons:

• "No one ever dies except Uncle Ben and Buckey" is no long accurate, since Buckey came back. Because comics are so often written by different writers, who change constantly, there are so many occasions where one writer killed a character, only for another to bring the character back, that no one takes comic book death seriously anymore. This heavily limits dramatic potential.
• Heavily male orientated. Alot of the time, if a female comic book character is made, being a woman is part of her 'gimmick'. Alot of the time the female characters are secondary characters in comics about male characters, which leaves them vulnerable to be heavily tormented to show how 'badarse' the villain of the hour is. Women in Refrigerators syndrome.
• Go on too long. Once a character is popular, comic book publishers don't want to give him up, resulting in characters that've been going CONSTANTLY since as far back as the 50s. Try reading all of Batman or Spiderman's history on their wikipedia page, and tell me it's not a convoluted, contradictory piece of crap. SOMEONE PUT BATMAN AND SPIDERMAN OUT OF THEIR MISERY!

Novels? Well I feel I've written enough for now. Maybe at a later date I'll finish with Novels.

For now, tah tah.