This week’s column is a departure from the ordinary thread on comics creation that had been the focus for the last few months and, instead, deals with that once-a-year happening of attending the Baltimore Comic Con.

Last weekend, I headed north to the Baltimore Comic-Con with three friends to check out the lay of the land.  Despite the fact that the usual state of the average Maryland driver sits somewhere between distracted and negligent, the trip on the highways and byways of the Free State was accomplished without incident or even a close call.  Parking was also fairly easily settled at the lot just behind the Days Inn.  A short walk later found our party just outside the Convention Center.

Surprisingly, there really wasn’t anything in the way of lines and it was only a matter of few minutes before we received our wrist bands and were heading in.  The majority of the action at Comic Con happens in the lower level of the convention center where the vendors, comic creators, and independent artists, creators, and associated personnel have their tables set up.  The upper levels are setup for panels.

In the course of wandering through the crowd that showed up I came away with a variety of impressions; most good, a few bad.

First off, the overall state of the con had a real family feel.  The number of small children present was amazing to me after the usual state of affairs at Anime conventions, where the target demographic is more focused on the slice of our population from older high-school students, to college-age attendees, and the proverbial young adults.  It was a common sight to see parents and children cosplaying together and that was also stood in sharp contrast with the usual Anime program.   There were several Raven cosplayers who were in their earlier teens at about the time many kids get shy these girls felt that they could express themselves.  In addition, there was a kid’s area in the lower level where the attendees could do some arts and crafts led by a comics creator.  I didn’t really see much of this but I sat in on Andy Runton’s drawing lesson and it was nice to see his interaction with the kids and his encouragement and coaching about drawing.

Another really nice observation was that the quality of the cosplay was quite splendid.  I didn’t take many photos but there was a nice couple who came dressed as Hawkeye and Black Widow

They were really friendly and chatted with my wife and me for a while about how they assembled their costumes, where they found their props, and how long it took for them to get it all together.  The repurposing of common household items that ‘Hawkeye’ did to make his quiver was impressive.

Equally impressive was the fellow who came dressed as the Man of Steel version of Superman.

It was uncanny how well he ‘nailed it’ in costume, look, and overall how he carried himself.  He was also very friendly.

In the vendor’s area, there were the typical wheely-toting fanboys carrying their latest prized-find in large suitcases from setup to setup.  Despite the lack of social graces, generally they were well-behaved and tried to avoid running you over with their rolling treasure chests.  The vendors were engaging and quite a few went out of the way to find or search for things.  So overall, a real plus there.

The most unusual table was manned by a guy who works full time at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia.  His table, which boasted screen snaps from his 3-dimensional renderings of some of NASA’s most experimental aircraft, was actually devoted to his doctoral research.  I’m not sure what degree he was pursuing but it clearly was in one of the psychology-related fields based on the questionnaire that he asked con-goers to fill out.  The subject of the questions was the responder’s attitude to the mental state of Bruce Wayne versus Batman.  Is Batman the dominant role and Bruce Wayne a mask?  Is it the other way around? Is Bruce crazy?  Things like that.

This guy wasn’t the only NASA presence at the convention.  Numerous people had NASA paraphernalia on – NASA tee-shirts, NASA pins, etc.  I wonder if the agency knows its reach?

Only one thing rubbed me the wrong way the whole day.  Unfortunately, it came at the end of the con and there really wasn’t enough time to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.  My wife and I intended to go to the last panel of the day and, being a bit tired, decided to stop in at the end of the panel prior to it and grab a seat.  This was a mistake.  A group of creators, mostly from DC comics I believe, were indulging a raunch-fest.  The program clearly said the panel was 16+ so that fact that there was adult material wasn’t so disturbing.  Rather it was the mean way that most of the panelists interacted with each other and with the audience.  It was akin to watching Don Rickles in his old Las Vegas shtick without any of the cleverness and charm – just the vulgarities.  I wasn’t so much offended and embarrassed.  Not for myself but for the creative guys who formed the panel.  These guys hold dream jobs, getting paid to create art in a fashion that makes them admired by others and only bitterness seemed to come forth.  True each line had a laugh surrounding it but still there seemed to be no graciousness from most of them (the one panelist who tried to be gracious was roundly mocked…sigh).

Overall, it was a good experience but I should have stayed in the kid’s area surrounded by people who still see the charm and wonder of the medium and stayed away from the older ones who hang onto the edginess of teenage rebellion and corresponding shock value that just never quits.

This week’s column completes a two-part study of the work Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David.

David defines the plot as having two aspects.  The first is the development of the hero as an individual.  The second is the events that serve as a vehicle for that development.  This later piece is called the plot.

According to David, the plot doesn’t necessarily require choice from the character.  For this he cites the movie The Terminator which forces Sarah Connor to grow up.  I find this somewhat hard to swallow, as Connor always had the choice to just lay down and die rather than stiffen and fight back.  I interpret that he is trying to say that whether the character is predestined to be subjected to a set of events or that the character’s choices shape those events is not important. What is central is that the character evolves inside as the events evolve outside and that it is this internal evolution that readers find compelling.

On plot pacing, David suggests that all scenes be trimmed down to the essential information.  To this end, he advises, like O’Neal, to start and end on the action, whether that action is physical (i.e. a slug fest) or mental (i.e. a test of wills) or emotional (i.e. a fight between husband and wife).

Like Moore, David also advocates for connectors (as he puts it) between scenes have a thematic overlap, like using the same words, albeit in different contexts, to end one scene and begin the subsequent one.  Another feature that David advocates in common with Moore, is to end a scene at the end of a page where possible.

At its most basic level, the story structure that David recommends is one that is a combination of ups and downs (roller coaster) superimposed on an overall rising action to the climax with a small release at the end for the denouement.

To this end, he offers the three-act structure is a good model.  Unfortunately, he defines the essential pieces of the three-act structure using the movie the Karate Kid, which makes it a bit difficult to understand the theory as a whole (unless you know the movie exceedingly well or are willing to watch and rewatch as you read his books).  As near as I can render it, David defines these essential pieces as:

• First act used to introduce the setting and cast
• First-act turning point where the essential problem is introduced
• Second act used to define the stakes of the problem and intensify the tension
• Second-act turning point where some complication arise or where the hero gets some insight into what lays before him
• Third act where the problem resolution crystalizes into a simple choice
• Climax where the here chooses and the problem is resolved one way or another

As a textbook example of the three-act visual storytelling, David proffers issue #51 of the Fantastic Four.  Since it was a standalone issue, it was easy enough to dissect, and David includes many of the pages from that issue to illustrate the main points.  I’ll try to summarize them verbally and visually, although it should be noted that I draw the line between the second act turning point and the third act differently than David.

Act 1 establishes the situation. We start with the Thing standing in the rain and feeling sorry for himself.  He eventually meets a mysterious man who invites him in out of the rain and who, through some heavily drugged coffee manages to get the Thing to fall asleep.

As we near the end of Act 1, the turning point is reached where we now see that the mysterious man (called the Changling) is going to steal the Thing’s powers in order to exact revenge on the Reed Richards

Act 2 deals with the consequences of this switch. Being able to pass himself off as the Thing, the Changling infiltrates the Fantastic Four and suspense builds as his plans for revenge go unnoticed by everyone but a now all-to-human Ben Grimm.

Act 2’s turning point comes, when the Changling finds himself able to affect his revenge simply by inaction. Reed Richards, having invaded sub-space, approaches a region where all the negative matter, including him, is being annihilated with positive matter.  Reed will be destroyed if the Changling doesn’t reel him back in with the tether, one end of which is attached to Reed’s suit and the other is in the Changling’s hands.

Act 3 plays out when Reed’s tether breaks and the Changling and a horrified Sue watch as Reed plummets towards certain doom (that is actually an oxymoron in comics but never mind that now). The Changling has s single choice to make.  Do nothing and reap his reward as Reed dies or make an effort to save the man he has hated for years.  Here the thought balloons scripted by Stan Lee show the Changling’s internal conflict.

The Climax comes when the Changling decides to save Reed’s life at the expense of his own.

The clean-up and denouement of the story re-establishes the status quo until the next issue where it is disrupted all over again.

As a side note, it is interesting that David mocks the standard plot construction put forward by Jim Shooter (although he doesn’t cite him by name) that the poem Little Miss Muffet was a perfect form of storytelling as it has all the needed elements:

• The set-up or the establishment of the status quo (“Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey)
• The action motion (“Along came a spider and sat down beside her”)
• The reaction and resolution (“And frightened Miss Muffet away”)

David also discusses at some length the idea of having intersecting story lines that rise and fall independently when they are not overlapping each other.  I found this discussion a bit hard to understand in practical terms but I suppose that it comes with practice.

Finally, David has a detailed section on the mechanics of the script writing.  Here he is also not markedly different from the earlier works examined.  He cites the two conventional approaches: Marvel Style and Full Script.  However, his coverage of these two approaches is far more detailed than either O’Neal’s or Moore’s work.  In addition, he offers a comparison and contrast between the two methods using his Spy Boy comic.

Marvel Style

Full Script

Finally, and a bit surprisingly, David discusses the stylings and placement of word balloons.  Most of what he says here is not found in any other work and it was refreshing to see this point dealt with in such detail.  Once again, he provides practical examples explaining the how-tos including this presentation from The Incredible Hulk #424.

Overall, I’ve found David’s book to be the best of its kind so far reviewed.  It is a good read, fun and easy to get through and filled with information unavailable in either scope or detail in any of the other works I’ve reviewed so far.

Starting with this installment, I’ll be reviewing and summarizing Peter David’s contribution to the canon of comic book story writing entitled Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels.

Peter David got his start in writing comics quite a bit later than most, beginning his career in the Marvel sales department before getting his break in writing some brief pieces for The Spectacular Spider-Man book.  His real break came when Marvel assigned him to take over the writing reins on The Incredible Hulk, which had been a lack-luster title for decades (perhaps not always in sales but most always in content).

David creatively re-imagined the whole incident that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk as a manifestation of a multiple personality disorder stemming from childhood abuse, thus turning Bruce Banner into a comic book version of Sybil.  This approach not only revitalized The Incredible Hulk but it established Peter David as a writer of note and opened doors for him to write in other venues as well.

His strengths are focusing on characters and the small details that make them seem real and believable.  Not surprisingly, the first half of his work on comics writing is focused on character and theme.  The second half deals with the more mechanical aspects of story structure, plot, and scripting.  I’ll be looking at the first half in this post, followed by part 2 next week.

It is fairly easy to summarize David’s point of view on the comics writer by simply looking at what he has to say on page 15

David sees a lot of similarity between movies and comics since the writer must think visually when crafting both.  He claims that the storytelling arcs and techniques he’ll cover in this work are applicable to both.  This claim may be true but I doubt the overlap is as broad as David asserts.  As discussed in earlier columns on Alan Moore, the comic affords the reader with the same ‘choose your own pacing’ and ‘wait, let me review that’ features that written prose does and I think that makes a great deal of difference.  Nonetheless, there’s no denying the strong visual component that both mediums demand of their writers.

In terms of characters, David believes that what readers want are characters to whom they can relate; characters that will cause them to make a personal investment of time and emotion.  In his own words, a writer’s story stands or falls on his characters.  However, he recognizes that the reader will often force an unrealistic consistency on a character – a kind of consistency that they themselves can’t live up to since they are human.  He also recognizes that there are times when, either by design or inadvertently, the writer has the character acting contrary to established norms.  During those times, the writer must keep the reader ‘in the loop’, as it were, and provide some mechanism to clue the reader that the creative team hasn’t lost its collective mind, even if that mechanism is as obvious as having the offending character acknowledge, “I just don’t know what’s come over me.”

Peter David also feels that a story is not real or meaningful unless the conflict is real and balanced.  No straw man arguments – all sides need to be meaningfully represented (even if not endorsed).  I suppose a reasonable way of interpreting his thoughts is that everyone has reasons for what they do and the better stories present the motivations found on all sides.  He summarizes this approach with the maxim: ‘Make Everybody Mad’.

One way that he presents for getting every side heard is to craft a villain who stands in opposition to the hero’s perspective and then to give a credible reason for that villain to hold that view.  This approach often leads to the villain not really being a villain but rather a character in opposition to the hero.  So, conflict between two heroes is a viable plot point and common occurrence.

Another ingredient for realism is to express the small things in a character’s life openly.  The examples he cites are the Hulk’s love of baked beans and the Martian Manhunter’s fascination for Oreo cookies.

These humanizing details are one of my favorite facets of David’s work and easily his greatest strength.  One of the best examples of this type of craft came while he was at the helm of X-Factor. In issue #87, he found a way to make Quicksilver truly memorable as a character.  Up to that point, the Marvel speedster had always been either whiny and unsympathetic or sinister and unsympathetic.  In one fell swoop, David managed to reinterpret Quicksilver’s entire past in one easy to understand scene

I recall this very scene as vividly today as when it hit the streets in 1993.  In my opinion, it is the textbook example of what can really be accomplished in the comics medium; a method of storytelling that could only be done in a comic.

The other key component of the first half of his book is David’s universal analysis of stories and their relation, through conflict, to theme. At the most basic level, he views all stories as being able to be described in terms of what he calls three fundamental conflicts:

• Man against man
• Man against self
• Man against nature.

Since all drama is conflict, he views these three archetypal forms as the building blocks for drama.  And the purpose of the drama is to flesh out a theme.  The conflict illuminates the theme.  Here, David provides a concise anecdote to describe his terminology.

How the writer actually reveals the theme is a delicate endeavor.  And even what could be thought of as a clearly elucidated theme is always subject to the final interpretation of the reader.  Nonetheless, the writer has to have a well-defined theme, so that, even if others disagree about the interpretation, they still agree about the general notion.  For example, if the theme is about ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ then the drama should focus on showing the conflict between a duty-bound hero and his long-suffering wife who complains that the extra time he spends on his job should be spent with her.

Specific techniques that David advocates for managing conflict include:

• Tapping into family matters – father & son, mother & daughter, etc.
• Keeping the conflict small – small equals real
• Allow the characters to gaze in disbelief at the outlandish things happening to them – maintains reader buy-in
• Outfitting a hero with a personal weakness to accentuate his struggle with himself
• Try to generate a mix-and-match, six-sentence precis as a prelude to a full story.

Of course, there are lots of fine points that I’ve omitted and some very interesting exercises that are worth examination.  But on the whole, the first half of David’s book is fairly structured with him emphasizing and re-emphasizing the same points about character, conflict, and theme discussed above.

Next week, I’ll finish my review of his book by covering the more technique-focused second half of the book on plot and scripting.

This is the final installment of the review of Denny O’Neil’s ‘The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics’, covering Part Two dealing with his techniques and advice for handling longer forms.

One of the shortcomings of ‘The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics’ is that O’Neil dumps a great deal of information into Part One on the single issue that is more logically housed with the longer form techniques. Much of the information that rightly belongs in Part Two deals with characterization, world building, and the techniques needed to fill and to manage page counts that are much larger than the standard 22 pages of glory found in a single issue.

His point-of-view on this can be roughly summarized to say that if the writer can handle the single issue well, he will have the skills and disciplines needed for tackling larger works.  While I understand and appreciate this sentiment, it seems likely that O’Neil has developed this perspective from his experiences writing single issues for a pre-existing universe (Marvel and DC) and with pre-existing characters and series.

It is doubtful that a single comic covering an unknown world and sporting characters that are completely unfamiliar to the reader can meet the ‘Heavy-Duty Single Issue’ structure he advocates while simultaneously allowing the writer the space needed to build drama, interweave subplots (what would a subplot do in a single one-off issue anyway) and explore each character.

Had I been the editor, I would have structured Part Two on the longer form to cover building drama and building product, but alas I can only propose this structure after the fact.  So in that spirit, let me review O’Neil’s advice in these two categories.

Building Drama

As mentioned last week, O’Neil is always conscious that he has a readership that he must attend to; a customer base whose desires and needs he must always be meeting.  It is from this perspective that he tackles the concept of drama.

He basically defines drama as the conflict over the McGuffin, a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock that means the thing over which the protagonist and antagonist are fighting or the device which triggers the plot.  As discussed last week, O’Neil is all about rising action.  Any effort that distracts from the main thrust associated with the McGuffin is wasted because it actually blunts the ‘emotional arms race’ he is trying to cause.  Because of this focus on rising action, he favors the idea of suspense over surprise.  Suspense clues the reader in to what is going on and allows the reader to anticipate what comes next for as much of the story as is possible, even if the characters within the story are ignorant.

For the long form, the tensions associated with the McGuffin play out over a larger page count and longer time frame.  So it is natural to really take the time to explore the characters in the story in a way that the short form simple can’t accommodate.  Doing so not only makes the reactions to the McGuffin more real, since they have a foundation, but it also prolongs the suspense thus improving the climax.

So exactly how should the writer explore his characters? The central questions that need to asked and, at least partially, answered for this discovery are:

• what does each character desire and wants does each have
• what does each love or cherish
• what does each of them fear
• what motivates them

These questions apply equally well to all characters in the story, even if they are not answered so thoroughly with the minor ones as for the major ones and, perhaps, most importantly, answers to these questions are vital for understanding the villains rather than the heroes.  O’Neil’s ideas on character are that their actions speak louder than their words.  So I suspect that he would recommend that a writer address each of these questions with an interaction (verbal, physical, cosmic, etc.) rather than with captions or dialog.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t explicitly state his preferred method of tackling the inner state of the character.

But he does link characterization with subplots and states the subplots are good ways to introduce additional facets of the character’s lives.  Being the consummate business man, O’Neil sees subplots as also serving additional the duty in the long form of setting up and sustaining prolonged readership but cautions that their use must be done with an eye towards the maxim that each comic book is somebodies first.

Building Product

Once the general idea of how to build the drama in the long form is decided upon the next point to work on is how big will the long form be?  O’Neil distinguishes between 5 different types of long form work:

• Miniseries – between 2 & 6 issues with a definite story
• Graphic Novels – single publication with a much longer page count
• Maxiseries – usually 12 issues serving a grand or epic story line; crossover event
• Ongoing Series – standard uninterrupted series
• Megaseries – something like a crossover event but engineered on a bigger scale

Each of these has its own strengths and pitfalls and the interested reader is directed to read the details for himself.  Roughly speaking, O’Neil believes that they all can be tackled with the 3-Act structure he discussed in the single issue context.  For larger works (except the graphic novel) each issue should have a 3-Act structure, a set of issue should then interlock to have a larger 3-Act structure, and so on up the line.

The graphic novel is more fluid in that the story starts and ends in one book so the burden of carrying a reader forward, to coaxing the reader into buying the next issue, isn’t there.  Nonetheless, I suspect that O’Neil would be inclined to say that working from the 3-Act structure for a graphic novel would be fine too.

Subplots are also important in the maxi-, ongoing, and megaseries, as they allow for smaller pieces to be introduced, grow, and mature.  Of course, subplots have been the staple of all serialized fiction for decades so much of what O’Neil has to say on these points should be obvious to all but the most inattentive watchers of ongoing TV shows or readers of serialized fiction.  He does make a useful distinction between story arcs and what he calls the Levitz Paradigm.

Story Arcs, by his definition, are complete stories that cover multiple issues but which are connected to the ones before and after by only tenuous threads.  There are definite jumping on and off points and a collection of multiple issues can stand on their own as a graphic novel after the initial run.

In contrast to Story Arcs, the Levitz Paradigm works with multiple overlapping story lines that grow from cold, to cool, to simmer, to boiling over.  As one moves up the heat scale another is placed on the open spot and so on.  With this technique, there really isn’t a jumping on or jumping off point.  So if the readership can be hooked it will tend to persist.  An example of the Levitz Paradigm for ‘Legion’ is shown below.

One last note is worth discussing about the long form – continuity.  Whether it is the demographics that are reading comics, the internet’s ability to serve up fast answers, or some other factor or factors, it is clear that audiences in all media desire continuity.  O’Neil recognizes this trend and categorizes the types of continuity into three kinds which he labels ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ but which, for convenience, I’ll call, puddle, pond, and ocean.

The puddle type of continuity covers the basic notions that characters should not change names, or hair color, or other simple traits (without reason) during the course of a story.  It is the simplest and smallest type of continuity and one which the writer should be maintaining.  The pond continuity is a bit bigger and covers all the critical back story events of a character that may not be in play in the story being told but which must not be contravened.  This type of continuity is important, although the writer may not be solely responsible for maintaining this one.  The ocean continuity is the vast universal continuity that covers the shared universe that all DC characters inhabit.  O’Neil doesn’t have much in the way of constructive advice for this last type of continuity and, frankly, who can blame him.  Tangles in this kind of continuity have driven Marvel and DC to numerous reboots of their universes.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I wouldn’t claim that the reader will get well-structured advice with a pedagogical touch from O’Neil’s book.  There isn’t much in the way of a how-to or a best-practices.  Rather, his book is like picking the mind of self-taught veteran for all those pro-tips that you usually get only one at a time when working side-by-side with an expert.  It is from this point-of-view that the O’Neil’s work is best consumed.

This week’s column turns its attention to ‘The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics’ by Dennis O’Neil.

Denny O’Neil is perhaps best known for his Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories from 1980s.  These tales brought a new level of maturity and social relevance to comics as they continued to struggle to regain the ground lost during the retreat in the 1950s.  They also made Denny O’Neil a bit of a household name, at least in comics circles.

O’Neil is a somewhat old-school in his approach and his descriptions and, frankly, it is actually quite nice.  He has a customer focus that I like.  He seems always to be oriented towards selling a story to his readers, not because he is a crass peddler of so-so melodrama that he has no investment in but rather because he seems to really care about telling stories.  To wit, he opens the book with a very nice sentiment about stories:

That said, he does tend to wander a bit and key observations are sometimes located far from related points.  In addition, the overall composition of the book is a bit disorganized, which is a bit ironic, as will be discussed below.

For O’Neil, a story is a structure narrative that should resonate on at least one of three fronts; a story should have an emotional effect, demonstrate some important point, or explore a character (hopefully all three).

Having established that his goal is to help the reader tell a story that hits one of those points, the rest of the work is devoted to how might the would-be writer accomplish such a task.  The book is divided into two parts.  The first and largest part concentrates on delivering the story within the confines of a single issue.  A point that only becomes apparent near the end of part one (last paragraph actually) when he finally says that everything up to this point deals with writing a single, self-contained issue.  The second part deals with mini-series, graphic novels, maxi-series and crossovers, and ongoing, interlocking series.  Some of the most interesting tidbits are found in this part but for now I’ll be reviewing and summarizing Part One this week.  Next column will cover Part Two.

Stylistically, Part One is crafted more like having a dinner conversation with an old friend who you haven’t seen for a long time.  The narrative flows back and forth between interesting anecdotes and the exposition of general principles.  Overall, it is reasonable to say that O’Neil covers three main areas:  Story Structure, Techniques, and Practical Advice.

Story Structure

In Part One, O’Neil provides a quick-and-dirty list of story structure – or at least he thinks he does.  Actually, the list seems to be made up of only two entries: One-Damn-Thing-After-Another and O’Neil’s Heavy-Duty Single-Issue Structure.

The One-Damn-Thing-After-Another is listed more as homage to the early works where the action came fast and furious.  The plot, defined as the time ordering of events, was central at the expense of story and so the writer is encouraged not to use it except perhaps in rare and controlled circumstances.

The rest of this chapter is spent on the Heavy-Duty Single-Issue Structure.  What O’Neil defines as the essential attributes for this structure can be succinctly summarized.  The structure consists of 3 acts.

Act 1 opens with a hook, possesses an inciting incident, and establishes the situation and conflict over the McGuffin (what the hero and villain are fighting over).  The hook should be an action scene, pose a question, or present some type of danger.  It should never be used solely as an establishing shot and never be wasted on an inanimate object.

Act 2 develops the current situation by laying in complications which take the plot in a different direction.  It should also have major visual action.

Act 3 contains the events leading to the climax and includes another dose of major visual action.  It should close with a denouement that returns the old status quo or establishes a new one.

Techniques

One of the many travelers’ tales that O’Neil treats the reader to is a discussion about just how Stan Lee handled the large work load he had in the Marvel early day.  As the story goes, Lee would often simply confer with his experienced artist partners, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, discuss with them the bones of the plot, and then trust them to deliver on the pacing and art against which Lee would write the narration and dialog.

This approach forms what O’Neil calls the Plot-First approach to story structure.  Since few of us are either Lee or Kirby or Ditko, O’Neil suggests that the approach be started with a plot typed up in a few paragraphs and sent to the artist who then returns about 125 panels for the writer to add the written word.  He lists three advantages that the Plot-First approach affords:

• Writer can fix omissions in the after the fact
• Writer can be inspired by the art
• Writer can be lazy/efficient

In the first point, O’Neil is explicitly recognizing that the comics art form is still a business with a customer base that expects product out on a regular schedule.  Mistakes happen and he is acknowledging an advantage that makes meeting a deadline easier since the writer can adapt the story to the art rather than the artist having to go back and fix the panels.  Likewise, the third point is also deadline-oriented, allowing for the possibility that the writer may be engaged in other and equally important activities.  Only point two is devoid of any sense of managing deadlines and is solely focused on the quality of the product itself.

In contrast to the Plot-First approach, O’Neil offers the Script First approach.  Here the comics writer is far more akin to the writer of a movie or television script.  Each ‘shot’ is detailed along with the basic flow and tempo.

He also lists three advantages of this method:

• Writer in full command of the story
• Writer can change the story quickly since rendering isn’t started
• Writer is in charge of his deadlines

O’Neil clearly regards this approach as the one that put the writer closer to his art or craft.  Nonetheless, he never lose sight of the practical considerations that enable the writer to efficiently work with his artist (point two) and his career (point three).  He does suggest that a writer who employs the Full Script technique try to sketch the layout before submitting the final form.  He cites Archie Goodwin and the success he had following such a practice.

Practical Advice

Perhaps the greatest strength of this work is the tidbit of practical advice that O’Neil peppers throughout the discussion.  There is structure for when they appear or how they connect. Instead they seem to occur when some piece of the structured presentation triggers them and they form the anecdotes mentioned above.

As a result, there isn’t really any point in building a grand narrative to house them and so I’ll simply list the ones that captured my attention.

• Don’t underestimate the importance of the splash page for setting the mood, establishing the story, and easing the reader into the story. O’Neil is against the modern practice of pushing the splash page to later pages.
• Captions are to be avoid when dialog balloons will suffice. O’Neil cites one editor who believes that many readers even skip the captions and he further cites the notion that nothing grabs a reader’s attention as much as ‘listening’ to what a character has to say.
• Know the end before you write.
• Start scenes at some point of interest (skip the mundane). Nobody want to see the characters get up and brush their teeth (unless, I suppose, an assassination attempt occurs just at the moment they start to gargle).
• Generate rising action by ratcheting up the tempo.
• Distinguish between surprise and suspense. Used here, the two terms are antonyms with suspense being preferred since surprise only shocks the reader for a few panels (before the understand) whereas suspense builds over long periods of time as they know generally what is going to happen but not how.
• Never write a panel or scene that doesn’t contribute to the plot.
• The hero must be agent of the story’s resolution – he must act and be involved (even if he is the anti-hero)

On piece of advice is worth particular attention.  O’Neil stresses that the exposition be clear.  Writer’s must go out of their way to ensure that the reader is following.  For example, the writer must make flashbacks visually delineated from the normal flow.  The reason for this emphasis is best understood in O’Neil’s own words

Ironically, things are not always clear in his exposition in this work.  For example, the layout between pages 22-23 obscures the connection between the textual and visual ordering of the mechanical steps of page construction (i.e., script, pencils, inker, letterer).  The text calls each out in the traditional order but the visuals aren’t labeled.  Elsewhere, what appears to be a visual example of the Full Script technique is juxtaposed with text talking about Plot-First.

Nonetheless, Denny O’Neil’s take on single issue story construction is a fun and valuable read. Next week, we’ll see what he has to say about larger-scoped works.

After the rather heavy analysis of Alan Moore over the last three weeks, I thought I would take a look at a lighter presentation to the approach to comic book creation found in the back of the 2005 Free Comic Book Day offering from Marvel Comics.

Tucked in the back of the issue, after a story involving Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Chameleon, is a short 8-page crash-course in the mechanics of creating comic books by John Barber.

Using the short story that preceded it as a guide, Barber’s treatment focuses essentially on one page, discussing how the page is transformed from script to finished product through a number of steps.  In a nutshell, these are:

• Creation of a plot/script
• Generation of rough thumbnail sketches showing panel configuration and action layout
• Detailed penciling based on the thumbnails
• Inking of the penciled page
• Coloring of the inked page
• Lettering and captioning

For the most part, the creation of the plot/script is not covered.  No details are given about how the creator gets started, what points should be covered in the writing, how to pace the panels, or any other details.

Barber simply provides the bare-bones description of what a plot/script is and, despite its brevity, this description is actually quite revealing of his point-of-view on the creative process and the writer’s role.  Specifically, he says that the script is the writer’s way of describing each and every panel via the panel description, which provides a verbal summary of the image the reader will see, and the dialog, which contains what each character will say (and I suppose what captions, if any, will be used to provide exposition).

As way of an example, the following page of script is offered to describe a particularly action-packed page in the story.

Barber characterizes the panel description as the writer’s method for telling the artist “who’s doing what (and sometimes why!).” This terse and seemingly innocent sentence suggests that Barber is endorsing a method that is very much like what Gaiman presented in his ‘behind the scenes’ look at the creation of Sandman.  The emphasis is on the writer calling the shots in the story-telling and it is from his mind that the visuals come.  The artist’s job is to render the scene for the writer, according to the writer’s conception, with small visual changes either due to aesthetic or to technical details, but with little input on the overall storytelling structure.

Admittedly, this is a lot to read into a few sentences, but given that this ‘how-to’ was part of the Marvel Free Comic Book Day offering in 2005, a showcase for Marvel creativity, and that the refined tastes of the modern young reader are more visual now than ever before, I think that it speaks volumes.

Further evidence of a writer-centric approach can be found in narrative that accompanies the four figures presented in the later pages showing how the writer’s description transitioned from thumbnail sketches (a), to pencils (b), to an inked page (c), and finally to colors and letters (d).

According to the text, the thumbnails are produced by the artist and then sent to the editor (in this particular case, Barber) for confirmation that the rendering is following the writer’s plan and leaves ample space for dialog and captions.  After the editor gives his approval, the artist produces pencils that mostly match the thumbnails, although a side-by-side comparison of panels 1 and 3, show that the artist has changed the composition from the original conception. However, the artist doesn’t deviate, even in this case, from the panel description originally proposed by the writer.

Consider panel 1 that has changed most from the original thumbnail.  In both compositions, the basic idea is preserved as can be seen by comparing the final panel version directly with the panel description provided by the writer.

Barber does touch upon a more collaborative component to this work when he discusses panel 1 during the inking step.  He says that the action is pretty complex and that to make it clear “we put our heads together to figure out how to make the panel work.”  The result of this collaborative group-think was to omit certain details of Spider-Man’s costume as being obscured by the mid-section of Mr. Fantastic as he begins to turn visible.  Again, this input on the story-telling is confined to technical details of the visuals but doesn’t touch the story or plot itself.

What’s most remarkable about this presentation is the implication that the artist’s job is to render the writer’s concept – not to embellish or change it.  I am sure that embellishment does happen but when and under what circumstances it occurs is not touched upon.   I must admit that I found this ‘21^st-century’ Marvel way surprising after many of the traveler’s tales I have heard at various conventions and Marvel’s own press about the central role of the artist in the storytelling.  Perhaps the most well-known example that Marvel has presented about the impact of the artist on the story is famous page 12 from X-Men #57 where Neal Adams as the Beast falling from the roof of a skyscraper.

They had sold this as a basic component of the Marvel Way in the 1970s through the 1990s and the pinnacle of this approach was reached by the style-over-substance, artist-centric nonsense of the mid to late 90s that resulted in the mass exodus of ‘talent’ from Marvel to Image.

I suppose that if Barber’s brief exposition is to be held up as the Marvel standard then the pendulum has swung the other way and maybe that’s all for the best.  After all, as the early Image comics proved, there’s only some much eye candy a reader wants before they crave a more filling helping of solid stories.

In this final installment of the exploration of Alan Moore’s work, I’m going to show examples from his early run on the Swamp Thing.  Although Moore has done a great deal of work that is critically acclaimed (V for Vendetta, Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc.) he really made his mark with Swamp Thing, which remains his best work.

It is also the work most germane at the time he wrote his treatise on comic book creation that was covered in the last two posts, and most of his techniques are visible in his tenure on that book.

The material below is from his first two years on Swamp Thing, which span issues #20 – #43.  My sources are the collected trade paperback reprints, some of which are almost as old as the run itself. I find that Moore’s stories are best enjoyed without the interruption of advertisements and other various distractions (letter pages, inside covers, etc.), since his stories are predominantly about mood and atmosphere.

Moore’s central ideas from his Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics were: to focus on a story concept; build a structure that matched; worry about transitions; worry about pacing and flow; and put in plot and dialog last.  These five main points will be covered in turn below.

Story Concept

The first point that Moore raised was the idea of having a relevant story to tell.  By relevant, he means one that has some meaning to the reader – a fascinating idea, a socially important tale, and so on.

For Swamp Thing, Moore chooses as his basic idea the concept that the Swamp Thing is actually a hybrid between man and plant, having the physical and essential properties of a plant but with the memory, consciousness, and intelligence of a man.  With this basic idea at their core, the subsequent tales all fall into the perspective of man’s interaction with the plant world.

To flesh out this idea, Moore has to connect the scientist, Alec Holland, whose coincident death with the Swamp Thing’s creation leads all to think the two are the same entity, with the plant-thing-that-thinks-itself-a-man that he was creating.  Here Moore drew on the existing ‘science’ of cannibal planarian worms (as explained in issue #21 by the Floronic Man)

to establish how even the Swamp Thing could believe that it was Alec Holland.  Published in the early 1960s, this science was largely discredited even though the sensation it created lingers to today.  Whether Moore was impressed by this story and reworked Swamp Thing around it or whether he wanted a plant-human and found the science convenient is unknown to probably all but him.

What is clear is that this simple idea forms the core of almost everything that he writes afterward.  By making the Swamp Thing truly a plant, Moore can draw a huge number of new ideas all from a single premise.  The Swamp Thing is now a plant elemental who speaks for the entire plant kingdom and, in some sense, for the earth itself.

One of the more fruitful lines of concepts is the reoccurring notion of eating a vegetable substance produced by the Swamp Thing

and the Floronic Man’s consumption of these tubers allows him to have some access in the awareness that the Swamp Thing possesses as an avatar of that portion of nature known as ‘The Green’.

This in turn drives the Floronic Man mad so that he orchestrates the subsequent, horrific events that fill the plots of issues #22-24.

Later on, the idea of consuming a portion of the Swamp Thing plays out in many different ways.  Two of them are particularly notable as they comprise reoccurring ideas.

In issue #34 the Swamp Thing wishes to have a ‘sexual communion’ with his love interest Abigail Cable but being composed of plant matter, he lacks the necessary anatomy.  As an alternative, he produces a fruit that when consumed takes Abigail on a psychedelic trip through his awareness.  The lovers join on a spiritual level and their version of marriage and union is established.

In issue #37, the Swamp Thing begins to learn that his consciousness exists independently of the plant matter that forms his physical shape.  As a result, if his body is consumed by fire or damaged by toxins, he can abandon it and regrow a new one.  This then leads to his ability to transport himself, almost instantaneously, anywhere in the world.  This handy trait not only allows him to respond to emergencies world-wide, but it also opens the door for subsequent explorations of consciousness and soul.

Story Structure

Moore spoke of several story structures, but the one that he seems to favor is the idea he calls elliptical, where the events at the beginning of the tale match, in some fashion, those at the end.

The image below is a reproduction of the first page of Issue #21, which starts with “It’s raining in Washington tonight.” and shows the Floronic Man reflecting on the events of the day through a finely paned window.

The image below is the last page of the same issue showing the same structure verbally and visually as the opening page. Note the subtle changes in the appearance of the Floronic Man’s reflection in the panes and the bookend placement of the “It’s raining in Washington tonight.” to close the issue.

Another structure Moore suggested is the gimmick where a central piece is used to build the rest of the story around it. In Issue #35, the reoccurring motif of the newspaper articles form the backbone in both the visual imagery and the background information needed to convey the impact toxic waste has on the environment.

Transitions

In his book, Moore spends a lot of time discussing transitions. His concern, seemingly above all else, is that a bad transition will break the spell under which he has placed the reader.  As a result, much of his work shows an attention to this point.

His approach is to think about storytelling in units of a whole page with the transitions linking the pages together.  The most common linkage is verbal, where the same word is repeated between the last panel on one page and the first panel on the subsequent page.  Often the word is used in different context or with a different shade of meaning, thus mimicking the way the brain connects disparate notions of a word together to create humor or double entendre.

The following image is a transition between pages 21 and 22 in #Issue 25.

Note the use of the word “blood”, first as a last name, second as the substance, to link two different threads together.

Verbal transitions also provide larger linkages.  The following example comes from pages 11 and 12 of Issue #26.  The first two panels come from page 11 and are in the relative orientation on the page; the first one being on the top left, the second being on the bottom right.  The word “believe” links the change in mental state of Abigail as she ponders what a young man has told her.  The word “believe” also links her realization to her subsequent discussion with her husband Matt (note Matt is soon after done away with to make room for the Abigail-Swamp Thing romance).

Transitions can also be used to provide linkage between larger entities.  This is the well-known ‘cliff-hanger’ end to comics where a scene at the end of one issue is essentially the same as opens the subsequent one.  That said, the transition between issues #30 and #31 with the Swamp Thing holding Abigail’s body is particularly well done.

Structure and transition meet in Issue #30, where the gimmick is also the transition.  In this issue, a denizen of hell has escaped and returned to plague the living.  Whenever this “returned man” smiles or chuckles or whatever, somewhere in the world someone commits evil and madness.  The clause “the returned man smiles…” and the following “… and…” provide transitions and structure for the majority of that issue.

Finally, one of my personal favorites is the almost humorous juxtaposition of the word “lines” in the transition between pages 16 and 17 of Issue #41

Pacing and Flow

Since Moore is writing a horror/suspense story in Swamp Thing, setting atmosphere and mood is essential.  This is done predominantly by slowing the pace of the stories down and focusing on the sensations or psychological implications of the events.  Often, a deliberate pacing is achieved by interleaving stories about ‘the inside’ and ‘the outside’.  The inside shows the internal mental state of the character, often in confusion or madness, and its inclusion allows for a slow build-up in tension without ‘filler’.

It also allows for more bizarre scenes with a dark humor that adds to the creepiness rather than detracts from it the way conventional comedy would.  An example from Issue #22 is the internal madness the Swamp Thing endures after he discovers that he has been living a lie by thinking he was a human transformed into a monster.

Note the word play of “planarian” and “plain Aryan” and the reoccurring theme of eating.

Sometimes, Moore and company do need some filler to round out the page count.  Even in these cases, they manage to use it to good effect as in the very bizarre and horrific accident that ends the life of an insurance salesman when he is impaled by a sword fish.  This sub-story fills 3-4 pages of Issue #25 and offers again some black comedy that serves to heighten the horror.  It also provides a very nice transition (pages 14 & 15)

Plot

As discussed last week, Moore claims that the plot is often the least important piece.  But is that claim really true in practice rather than just in theory?  I believe the answer to be yes.  As a horror/suspense writer Moore’s predominant interest is in setting mood.  As a result, what happens is not nearly as important to him as how the characters feel about it.

As a very clear example, consider the content of Issue #28, entitled “The Burial!”.  The whole issue is devoted to the Swamp Thing coming to peace with the fact that he is not Alec Holland.  The plot of the entire issue can be summarized in one sentence:  Swamp Thing digs a grave for Alec Holland, finds Holland’s remains, puts them to rest in the ground, and comes to peace with his existence.

Moore chooses the elliptical story structure here, starting with an empty grave

and ending with burial mound and the resulting peace.

The above 4 panels constitute a small fraction of the 135 panels found in the issue.  The remainder of the space is spent on finding Hollands remains both physical and psychological and how the Swamp Thing reacts to this.

Many of the other issues fare similarly and it is reasonable to regard Moore as being more in line with Poe or Lovecraft in his approach to storytelling.  His focus is almost always on the characters and not on the events surrounding them.

Conclusion

Having toured Alan Moore’s work for the past 3 weeks, what to make of it?  I think there is no denying that Moore is talented and that he is a consummate professional in his craft.

He clearly has mastered some basic, compelling approaches to sequential art and uses them to great effect, with frequent innovative variations on these techniques.  However, I can’t escape the feeling that there is a sort of glamour, in the traditional fairy sense, about his work; that style exceeds substance and that impressions and feelings dominate events.  In real life, events matter, results are important, and talk is cheap.  While I admire his work, I judge that much of his storytelling is more like a dream.  Once the sleeper awakens the particulars fade but the feelings remain.

Last week’s column reviewed the first half of the book Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics covering the general thought process of the writer, the type of structures the creator might think about using, and the pacing of the events in the structure. This week will finish the review by discussing world building and plot and dialog.

As discussed earlier, since Moore’s work deals with the planning and writing components, he doesn’t dwell at all on specific visuals (perspective, color, etc.).  The book, which is 47 pages in length, has 22 panels, each isolated from the others in both location and in content.  Clearly this is not a tome on drawing, nor does it concern itself with the visual composition.  Its focus is on story-telling plain and simple.

World Building – Locale and Character

Under the broad heading of world building, Moore lumps both the development of the characters and the construction of the inanimate locales in which they live. For him, the back stories of the environment in which the characters live are on the same ground as the back story for each character.  The locales history is important to building a believable and consistent world, even if the bulk of it is invisible to the reader. To quote

This approach, which I rather like, shows roots in the gothic literature that has come before wherein the location of the events narrated is often a character in its own right.  Consider that the first ‘entity’ that the reader encounters in Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is the melancholy house of the same name and that much of the text is devoted to discussing the bleak and depressing nature of the setting and the feelings that it provokes.  The house and the ‘gray tarn’ that surrounds it are just as important (or perhaps more) as the human characters of the story – the narrator and the two Usher siblings.

Moore also advocates for a complete understanding, on the part of the writer, or the rules of the world that is being constructed.  This is the concept of verisimilitude, where the fabric of the world being discussed is complete and self-consistent.  Characters react in a well understood way to the rules of the particular environment in which they find themselves, just as we would react consistent (although not necessarily rationally) to the rules of ours. Moore states

But he also cautions the creator in being too explicit in the exposition of this world.  If the verisimilitude is the skeleton, Moore would advocate that none of the hard bones be obvious.  All of them should be wrapped in soft flesh that hides the structure underneath.  He cites the work of Howard Chaykin in American Flagg, where the reader is exposed to the political realities and popular attitudes though bits of advertising and media coverage of the events in that world.

Once the locales are built, the next piece is characterization.  Moore calls this piece highly problematical.

He analyzes the evolution of character in the comics medium from its inception until the time of his writing.  The earliest approach involved portraying a character in a ‘one-dimensional’ fashion – the character is good or bad; a hero or a villain.  Although Moore doesn’t mention it, this type of portrayal means that the vast number of characters in the world, which were neither good nor bad, per se, were actually part of the scenery.  They were the organic piece of the locale that the creator provided – the good natured cop on the beat who offered a piece of advice at the right time.

As time progressed, Moore claims that characterization became more developed and he cites Stan Lee as the person most responsible.  He says

Despite this evolution, Moore believes progress since that point has been minimal. He blames this lack of progress on the industry reliance on the 15-word skeleton.  If a character can’t be summarized in 15 words then it is no good.  He throws out the example of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick as an ‘insane amputee with a grudge against a whale’ but notes that Melville spent more than 15 words delving into Ahab’s psychology.

Moore advocates that the writer should start by looking at real world people.  Perhaps this was good advice back in the nineties when this piece was first written but in the intervening years real life has rapidly accelerated its imitation of art and I am not quite sure that people today allow themselves to be complex.

He also recommends a ‘method-acting’ approach to writing characters.  He claims that he imagines himself as the character and then tries to understand how he would react in a given situation.  The particular example he includes involves his use of the character Etrigan the Demon in Swamp Thing.  As  a denizen of hell (or what passes for it), Moore imagines Etrigan as having a densely built body, needed to survive the rigors of such a place, and so he frames the pacing of the demon’s movement appropriately.

He finishes with a personal conclusion that almost everybody has a practically infinite number of facets to their personality but that each of us chooses to focus only one a few at a time.  He urges creators to tap into the well spring and to become adventurous in their characterizations.

Plot and Dialog

The final ingredient is the plot and the accompanying dialog.  Despite Moore claiming that

his chapter on plot and script is by far the largest in his book.  He begins by criticizing the ‘disproportionate amount of effort … expended on coming up with madly elaborate plots involving dozens of characters’ he does end up conceding that there are some stories where the plot is the central idea. He cites murder mysteries as the primary genre where this idea holds.

Only after this long introduction does he actually define what he means by plot.  Roughly speaking, if the world is the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ then the plot is the ‘when’ – the time sequence of events that get the world from its initial state to its final state; along the way telling the story that needs to be told.  (Note that the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ seem to be a complex interplay between the world and the time).

For Moore, the creator has an idea he wishes to communicate and the plot underlines and reveals this idea in an interesting way.

Since the plot must fit within a given page length constraint, the plotting mechanism is inextricably linked with the discussions of pacing, rhythm, and flow that he covered earlier. He also emphasizes that the plot can always be done in an ‘interesting way’ simply by the style in which the plot follows.  He asserts that a good writer can make even a mundane topic interesting with the correctly constructed sentences.  This is, of course, a habit that the British school of thought believes and practices on a regular basis even outside the domain of comics.  Consider Douglas Adams opening sentence in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Concerning dialog, Moore’s fundamental advice is to speak the dialog out loud.  This litmus test will determine if the dialog is natural enough to be digested by the reader.  In his assessment, the majority of comics dialog fails this test.

Finally Moore discusses the visual look-and-feel.  For him, the visual narrative is simply what goes into the pictures but that it is vital that the writer think visually and try to take advantage of all the possible ways to convey the point.  He further urges that the writer try to create rough thumb nail sketches of the pages before writing the story.

Next week will be the final installment on Alan Moore in which various stories from his successful run on Swamp Thing are presented and a comparison between his practice and his theoretical structure, as presented over these last two columns, is made.

This week, I start my review of the approach to creating comics authored by Alan Moore.  An earlier column touched upon Moore’s approach as viewed through the lens of Neil Gaiman, who claims to have learned his technique directly from Moore.

For those who don’t know, Alan Moore is credited with a fresh approach to comics in the mid-eighties with his tenure on Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and various other titles.  Shortly after his success, Moore authored the book entitled Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics.  The edition that I reviewed was a reprint of the original work with an added Afterword section that was published by Avatar Press in 2006.

As a writer, Alan Moore’s approach to story construction is obviously text-based.  That said, it was remarkable how little he dwells on the imagery of the comic in his text.  He chooses to confine the majority of his discussion to the thinking process associated with the creating comics.  He explicitly avoids saying how he does it

Rather he discusses how to think about the craft of comics writing.  The main point here is that a story should be useful in some way – it should be relevant to the reader.  He feels that changing printing techniques, adding new characters or new computer graphics won’t make a difference unless the fundamental assumptions of the artform are challenged.  And he identifies comics writing as the greater area of focus because it is the very start of the process; the bones on which the flesh of the story is hung.

Story Structure

Moore urges the reader to understand the structure of the work that he is creating; even if the creator is deviating from it, it is important to know that he is.  He identifies four types of story structure, most of which he used in his run on the Swamp Thing (note some of the terminology is mine):

• Elliptical structure – the elements of the beginning of the story mirror those at the end
• Middle-Outwards – the story starts in the middle and the background is filled in a way that interleaves the pieces with the current story line
• POV – the same narrative of the story is told by more than one character and only by sifting through the various pieces can the reader determine the facts
• Gimmick – a central piece, like a poem, is used around which the rest of the structure is placed

Once the basic notion of the structure is chosen, Moore then identifies areas of story composition.  In this category he includes

• Transitions – movement between one scene and another
• Pacing – the intellectual speed at which that the reader moves through the story
• Rhythm – the balance between active and passive panels*
• Smoothness of flow – overall package of the above*

* Note that these definitions are my own based on my reading of Moore’s intent.

Transitions

Moore labels transitions as one of the trickiest and intriguing elements of the whole story process.  The aim of the transition is to move the reader’s attention from one element to another without disturbing his immersion in the story.  Moore’s idea is that the reader voluntarily subjects himself to a kind of hypnosis when reading the comic and the last thing that the creator wants to do is to disturb this with an awkward change in focus.  Several concepts are proffered as ‘tricks’ to make the transitions better.  These include:

• the use of overlapping or coincidental dialog,
• writing in basic units of a page,
• and a repeat of images or concepts (e.g., an idea or a color) between scenes.

Moore does emphasize that the transition need not be smooth if what the creator is aiming for is a jarring change of attention.  But again, this is one of these ‘it’s okay to break the rule if you know you are doing it moments’.

Pacing

The idea here is to meter out the duration that it will take a reader to complete their passage through an entire page.  Moore doesn’t have a lot to say on this front.  He does cite a standard of 35 words per panel, a figure that I had never encountered prior to reading this piece.  According to him, an average reader spends 7 to 8 seconds on such a panel.  Moore believes that by dwelling on these sorts of concepts, the creator can exercise some control over the duration that the reader spends on each page.  To quote Moore

This assertion seems highly questionable based on earlier comments made about the differences between literary works (e.g. novels, short stories, etc.) and film.  Moore makes a  particular point about the strengths afforded the written work – particularly that the individual reader can set his own pace; moving forward and even backward as he see fit.

What I believe that Moore actually means is that the creator can set the minimum time that the reader must spend on each page by tailoring the amount of written versus rendered information.

Rhythm & Smoothness of Flow

If Moore says precious little about pacing then he says even less about rhythm and smoothness of flow.  Specifically, he never mentions them by name again.  Getting beyond that point, one can infer possible meanings for him listing them in the first place.  The starting point for guessing what he had in mind comes from his insistence that the story is a kind of hypnosis that the reader voluntarily enters.  The immediate interpretation is that rhythm is the balance and metering of active versus passive panels. An active panel is one predominantly communicating movement whereas a passive panel communicates location, or thought, or dialog.  As far as I know, this terminology is peculiar to me.

This inference is bolstered by Moore’s discussion about the elegance of the fight sequences of Frank Miller, where the active panels are completely devoid of dialog.  The action is allowed to happen as in real life without being cluttered by a lot of words.

The smoothness of flow is then judged as the complete package where active and passive panels are knitted together with the pacing and transitions working seamlessly to keep the reader engaged.

Next week, I finish up my summary of the theoretical study of Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics, where I will cover world building and plot and script.

This week, I’ve decided to look at a current comic that has published a piece from their team on ‘the making of the magic’ as well.  I am speaking about the ongoing series from Image called The Wicked + The Divine.

Like the last two entries, the source of this column is the additional material included in a reprint volume.  In this case, the publication is the trade paperback collection of issues #6-11 entitled The Wicked + The Divine Volume 2: Fandemonium.

The creative team is comprised of Kieron Gillen, who is the author, and Jamie McKelvie and Matt Wilson, who are listed as illustrators.  In the additional material showing how Gillen, McKelvie, and Wilson put together an issue, there are frequent, good-natured jibes at Gillen who is always referred to as Keiron (e.g. this is why we don’t let Kieron draw).

The premise of The Wicked + The Divine revolves around an event called the Recurrence that starts every 90 years and persists for about 2 years.  During the Recurrence, 12 gods or goddesses from the world’s collective mythology suddenly intrude into the lives of ordinary people.  One minute, the person in question might be Joe the next minute he is Hermes, or Vishnu, or…  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for how the 12 are selected but this may be a future plot point.

Becoming a god offers a host of advantages.  Not only is one able to wield magic but one becomes an immediate media darling and is worshipped by thousands upon thousands of followers/fans.  The downside is that one has 2 years to live (perhaps less – it isn’t clear if all the gods ‘go away’ at the same time).  The lesson here I suppose is that the candle that burns brightest burns half as long.

Anyway, being a modern comic, much of the material in the ‘making of’ section includes digital effects types of things.  For example how 3D computer models are joined with pencil sketches to make a composite page for a large Woodstock-type festival or how the particular speech of a god is crafted as in the following example, where the color of the word balloon was experimented with to get the correct motif for the festival god (Dionysus) in question.

Of course color and form are important aspects of the storytelling but the central concept is the narrative that moves the story and the plot along.  The creative team offer us some looks at what worked well, what worked adequately, and what, perhaps, went awry.

As an entry under the heading ‘worked well’ consider the following script page and its evolution from words to pencils to finished layout.

Note the limited amount of descriptive prose associated with the page.  Compare this with the previous two methods discussed.  In the Feldstein method, the writer/editor, provided the dialog, the captions, and the page layout to the illustrator.  In the Gaiman method, the writer provided a screenplay with the desired page layout, the dialog, the captions, and large amounts of additional imagery.  In this example, the Gillen simply provides a sparse set of directions indicating the mood.  He even says

But otherwise, lets the overall imagery fall in the hands of the illustrator team.  The resulting page is successful in that it conveys both the quiet nature of the magic (a slow fade in rather than a pop) and the creepy nature of the morgue but I can’t help feeling that the pose struck by the god doesn’t fit the solemnity of the scene or the reason for his visit.

Another example from a later issue is the arrival at the Ragnarock festival where the 12 gods are being adored by their irrational fans (are there any other kind?).

This script from Gillen has a lot more descriptive imagery than the earlier page, including a specific call for the page layout (DPS = double page spread) and he also includes a rough sketch of the top view and two of the lead characters (Inanna and Laura) as they arrive at this Woodstock-meets-cult-gathering (or Glastonbury meets Garden of Eden as the author describes it).

The final page spread captures these basic ideas but the structure of it is quite a bit different in angle and, I would argue, in tone.  The stage and 12 standing stones were produced with a 3D CAD-type program and the additional pencils were mated to this image to produce the final result.  I think this mixing of methods results in an overall image that straddles the two worlds (digital and analog) without achieving harmony with either.

The final example I’ll consider, comes from issue #8, which is set at one of the psychedelic parties thrown by the god Dionysus.  The idea for the layout is that the panels should reflect the dance beat in the background. By and large, I found the end result hard to follow and dissatisfying, in that it interfered with following the story.  While there are profound similarities to film, comics are fundamentally a static medium and trying a ‘1-2-3-4’ beat doesn’t work for me (see CBR’s review for a different take).

It was interesting to see how Gillen tried to work the page layout in terms of a grid with little pieces of paper.

This approach got me wondering if other creative teams use different size sticky notes to play with page layouts.  I’ve not heard of such a thing but perhaps it is done.

As I close this look at The Wicked + The Divine, I can’t help but note that creative process seems to focus more on style and less on substance.  The story seems to be relegated to a lesser role compared with the older instances examined in the previous columns.  Perhaps this is due to the fact that the whole premise of this comic is style and its cult of personality but I am not so hopeful.  It seems to me that the new technologies have seduced creators (these, specifically, and others, generally) into producing comics with a lot of art and fury signifying very little.