Three dollars for ten minutes of entertainment works out to, um, roughly thirty cents a minute? (I'll leave the exact number to all you "mathologists" out there.)

Cheaper than a phone sex line? Yes. But still not much bang for your (three) bucks.

If you're a re-reader, you'll get a little more value for your money, but it's still diminishing returns. You can never get that "new comic experience" again. You can never get those first ten minutes back.

And believe me, I've tried.

So what are we creators to do? Just say, "Ten minutes is all we've got," and roll over?

In fact, it's the reason that I haven't--wait, no, I'm thinking of the "One Minute" problem.

Why is the "Ten Minute" problem bad, again?

Oh, right. It keeps people out of comics, and it makes it harder for us to keep people in.

If you can't make a comic that's better than just those ten minutes, then really you might as well give up and go home. (If you're at home, you should go... I don't know... further home.)

For the rest of us--the manly men (and women) of comics--it's time to go to work...

(Or, if you're at work, to go further to work.)

Solutions to the "Ten Minute" problem:

First off, you could make the stories denser. Add text. Add details to images. Slow the reader down. Stretch the ten minutes.

Second off, you could encourage the re-reading. Make the storylines more complicated. Reveal information a piece at a time, so that readers want to go back and reevaluate what they read before. Call it the "Sixth Sense Effect." The second time (or the third or the fourth time) that you read a page, you read it in a completely new way. This gets you a second ten minutes and maybe a third, fourth, fifth, etc.

These are things you could do to increase the amount of time a reader spends with the comic. But there's another way to tackle this problem. Another way to increase the value of your comic beyond those first ten minutes:

Give the reader something to take away.

(For those keeping track at home, yes, this is the "third off" option.)

This could be as simple as writing a quotable line of dialogue. We quote TV and movies all the time, but how often does comic dialogue make that kind of impression on us? And I'm not talking a "What are you, retarded? I'm the God-damned Batman?" sort of impression.

(If you're one of the five people who doesn't recognize the quote, please read All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #2. Or, on second thought, don't.)

Or it could be more than just one line of dialogue. It could be an entire moment that says something true about us or about the world we live in. I think back to the last issue of James Robinson's Starman, and the profound joy and sadness that overtakes Jack Knight as he leaves Opal City.

(C'mon, people! This ain't no art column!)

Bottom line: If we can create these kinds of moments, be they through our writing or through our art (but mostly, for purposes of this column, through our writing), then we're doing a good job.

Or, to look at it another way, these kinds of moments are the inevitable end result of doing that good job.

But that's just one kind of "take away." There are other sorts of "take away"'s that require...

(Cue trumpets.)

Before, we talked about aesthetic take away's: Memorable moments. Moments you can think back to and say, "That was neat-o!" Now, that's kind of a lame thing to think, but as long as you're just thinking it, no one will be the wiser!

BUT there are other things that you can make your readers think that are (1) less lame and (2) more interesting.

You can make a reader ask questions, and--if you're really on your game--you can make them try to answer those questions for themselves.

In the past I've talked about joke logic: writing is all about set-ups and pay-offs. We can also describe writing in terms of "mystery logic": questions raised and answered.

A simple mystery might be based around the question "Who is the traitor in Avengers Disassembled?" or "Why did Scarlet Witch betray the Avengers?"

A more complicated mystery might ask, "Why is there evil in the world?"

Some mysteries might have clear cut answers. (For example, "Because you were a bad child, and you made God sad.") Other mysteries are not so easy to explain. (One attempt might be, "Because four decades of Marvel writers had written themselves into a hole.")

The thing that all mysteries have in common is that you can debate possible solutions. (At least until you read the author's solution in print. Or online at Lying in the Gutters.) So people meet up with their friends or they go online, and they debate.

And suddenly ten minutes of entertainment leads to hours and hours of an entirely different kind of entertainment.

Reading comics is a solitary act and largely passive, but discussing comics is an interactive, communal activity. Yes, it can be meandering and purposeless. ("That was neat-o! What did you think was neat-o?") BUT if there is a specific purpose--if there is a mystery to be solved--then the whole discussion takes on an element of game play.

Who can solve the writer's puzzle? Who can solve that puzzle first? And, sadly, who can poke holes in the writer's eventual solution? There are clear goals. There are bragging rights to be had. And a good time is had by all.

A lot of times, we think about internet chatter in terms of hype. If you're a writer, you want everyone talking about your work because (1) you have a huge ego and (2) you want people to spread the word about your awesome comic. But the truth is that sometimes, chatter is an end in and of itself. The chatter is take away. (Many chatters, to review, are then take away's.) The chatter is value.

Now, only a weirdo would go onto a message board and say, "This discussion of Infinite Crisis is neat-o!" BUT for some people the discussion might actually be more enjoyable than the comic itself.

Ideally, it's a win-win situation: A reader spends ten minutes reading Infinite Crisis #1, and then she spends six hours online trying to figure out what's going on, and that's fun too. Then #2 comes out, and she spends ten minutes reading it, and she enjoys it even more than #1, because she spent six hours discussing and debating all the mysteries involved. She has definite ideas about the characters and the stories, and as each of these ideas is challenged, she gets to see who among her virtual friends was right, and who was wrong. Then, after she reads #2, she goes online, and she discusses all of that and all of the new mysteries, and the cycle starts again.

Creators dislike spoilers, but in a world in which (um, six hours versus ten minutes?) thirty-six thirty-sevenths of a comic's entertainment value (take that, mathologists!) comes from online debate and speculation, how can you blame a fan for caring less about ruining that last thirty-seventh of entertainment?

In the new world order, writers must write to the six hours as well as the ten minutes. Just remember that if the readers don't like the ten minutes, YOU are going to hate the six hours.

Honestly, I haven't understood a single word I've said since I invoked Vocabulatorical Fiat.

In an ideal world, the editor of this column would be beating Drew Melbourne right about now. Unfortunately, Drew Melbourne is the editor of this column, the results of which you can see plainly above. Drew either needs medication to focus himself, or he needs you to visit DrewMelbourne.com and buy all of his comics when they come out. ArchEnemies #1 is still six months away (publisher TBA), but Drew is still going to mention it at the end of every column, because--at this precise moment--that's the only thing bolstering his always fragile self-esteem. He likes puppies.