"Opening/Closing Credits" in Comics
This is an idea I've been throwing around.
We do WITCH DOCTOR through Image — which means we have control over what goes in the issue. Letters column, how many pages of ads, which ads, etc — that's all up to us. Usually, we do the common thing of having the inside front cover be a credits page.
My thought it — why not do it the way movies and TV does, and have both an "opening credits" page with the most important people, and a more detailed "closing credits" page at the end listing everybody at the company, the indicia, etc?
The "opening" credits could be a "title sequence," which is something I've only seen a couple times in comics (Hickman's The Red Wing and the Morrison/Quitely New X-Men)
Comments
Don't get me wrong: I respect the creativity that can go into different ways of handling credits: Eisner's "Spirit" drawings, opening sequences in many movies, etc. But they strike me as creativity spent in service to the mundane... turning lemons into lemonade. Movies and TV do opening credits to solve the problem that 1) audiences won't sit thru them at the end, but 2) directors, actors, etc. want audiences to see their names anyway. So we get decompressed establishing shots. production numbers, and/or names flashing on the screen over the acting for the first few minutes. Most of the time it fights for attention with (or just delays) the story. But you don't have to do that with comics. You can put the credits on a non-story page, where readers will see them (unless they really don't care, in which case... they don't care), and the credits don't have to get in the way of the storytelling.
The final issue of Luther does have what I refer to in the script as an after the credits sequence, but it's not a reference to this sort of thing, really.
But i can't do the Eisner thing on everything. Most of the time, I feel like the credits and title are a distraction to the page and would rather have something like a title page instead.
Deadpool or Cable vs Deadpool, I can't remember which, did a funny take in the same way, but also as a recap of the last issue/s rather than opening credits.
Global Frequency had a three panel final page with credits in each of the panels. So as @GregCarter mentioned with Apocalypse Now, they just started and you enjoyed the ride enough that you paid attention to the creators names at the end, where as you might blow by them at the beginning. Works to drag you in when many of the comics I'm reading at present seem to go for exposition and slow build.
I also think one of the early issues of Planetary, the Hong Kong ghost maybe?, did a panel then a gutter with two credits in then a panel etc for the first page. Which I think works well because you aren't interrupting or obscuring the panel, whilst at the same time you have the movie feel of quick cuts interspersed with credits to heighten your attention.
Now, onto the related credits discussion that doesn't directly address your idea, but does address a lot of what was brought up here: Although I don't agree that it's making lemonade out of lemons, I am one of those people who thinks there's way too much though put into how credits/introductions are displayed these days for ongoing/multi-issue comics. If people were better serial storytellers,* they wouldn't need all of the bells and whistles of "previously on" or to do cutesy character introductions. They'd grab the reader right away with the story, be clever enough to catch them up with any ongoing bits in a non-obtrusive way, and leave 'em with a cliffhanger/reason to come back. The credits would be tertiary to anything else, hell, an afterthought.
That's just my two cents.
*This isn't to say everyone not doing this is a "bad" serial storyteller. Just that they're victim of the "writing-for-trade" zeitgeist, either by editorial mandate or keeping up with the Joneses. Just to clarify, in case anyone thinks I'm slagging an entire industry! One of the kindest compliments I ever got from a reviewer was him noting that one could easily jump into any chapter of the "Omega" serial that ran last year in Omega Comics Presents and easily know what's up.