Much like the punk kids raging against classic rock and eventually tumbling into something just as trite and terrible, the aforementioned considerable pushback against the "comics need fights!" way of thinking eventually became something just as irritating and bad as what it was supposed to be providing an alternative to. Referred to as decompression if you're feeling sympathetic, or "writing for the trade" if you're less so, the trend of slowing things down and letting stories play out over multiple issues instead of one, giving more time to dialogue and quiet character moments isn't necessarily all bad. Sometimes it can produce tension or humour by spreading a scene over several panels instead of just one. Sometimes it can provide some breathing space between the action, or a wholesale alternative to action. What it can also do is make you feel totally ripped off because you just spent four bucks on a comic only to read it in twenty seconds and not feel like you've had a complete experience. It depends on how it's used, but sometimes decompression totally screw with pacing and totally screw the reader to boot.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
