Well, it's Kinda Like...

Well, it's Kinda Like...

Building a world involves more than a writer conveying plot points to an artist. It is about having a shared frame of references or a shorthand to work through problems that arise in the story. With all the tools of social media available, there are novel ways to construct a shared language (and it goes beyond images). If you can't draw past a stick figure in a game of hangman, here are some suggestions for how to use social media to streamline your process.

Spotify: This Playlist can save your story

Tarantino, The Andersons (Wes and P.T.), Cameron Crowe (grudgingly), they understand that a great soundtrack can turn a movie into a memory. So much can be communicated with music, perhaps even more than a panel description. In the same way that unspoken teenage tension can be resolved in the sweet arc of a well-constructed mixtape, you can now score your entire story...for free. A great soundtrack is as indelible as the images it bolsters, so why not make your own? As I have been working with Michael Lapinski on MEYER, we have used Spotify playlists as a way to express where we want characters to be on their individual journeys. In laying out the story sonically, it becomes very clear if you're doing something new. Spotify listeners, check out my 'Meyer-On the Move' mix to see what I mean. If you're ever stuck on something, always turn to Nancy Sinatra to shake it up a little.

Pinterest: Panel work for the artistically challenged

I thought Pinterest was for shopping for Bridal gowns. Well, it is, but it doesn't have to be. What you have is the ability to share EVERYTHING that is inspiring the look of your book. This can be AP photos (check those rights if you are using them) to album covers, and everything in between. So start hunting. Comics are a visual medium and if you can't draw, you're still responsible for shaping the look of the book. Writer, you are no longer a visual vestigial appendage. There are privacy settings so you can keep everything on the hush. In the act of building you will strengthen the rapport with the artist. Do the work.

Netflix: Remember that part in...

During an early FEEDING GROUND brainstorming session, Michael, Chris Mangun, and myself had a slumber party in the Catskills. While we did not share sleeping bags, we definitely got close.  We immersed ourselves in collective imagery as we tuned up the hive mind. John Carpenter's The Thing became a touchstone in communicating the sense of the landscape being its own monster. Now, working with artists all over the country, it's a little bit more complicated than making another bag of microwave popcorn. Sharing recommendations in a Netflix queue is an excellent way of allowing the artists to understand exactly what you are trying to say. It's easier to show what you are borrowing from than describing it.

Many writers will say that if you cannot express what you want on the page, then you have failed. It's simply not true. You are in the communication business and ANY WAY that you can clarify an idea to your creative partner in an efficient manner is storytelling. During Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Sam Peckinpah lent his now iconic sunglasses to Warren Oates. He wore them throughout the film as they became a lynchpin in his construction of the character (clearly based on the director). Be willing to give completely. The bottomline: it's your responsibility to say what you mean. One of the best thing about comics is their ability to make words unnecessary. Shouldn't the tools to build images be as transcendent?

He's the DJ, I'm the Writer - The Art of Comics Collaboration

 



Michael Lapinski and I frequently stated that, making comics is like being in a band. The writer is essentially the MC, while the artist is the Producer/DJ. The artist, inspired by the writer's concept, characters, and ability to contribute, builds the beat, does the math, and lays out the visuals. While initially at times I felt as if I was competing in a New Yorker cartoon caption contest, I recognized that the sum must be greater, otherwise work in another medium. The solitude of writing is frequently smashed by the ink stained fingers of an artist, and I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Typically the artist on a comic will go through a series of steps in bringing the writer's vision to life. These are well known: character design, thumbs, pencils, inking, possibly coloring, and lettering. This escalation yields the final product. What is often believed is the writer's word is bible, they have written the genetic code for how the project will develop and it is the artist responsibility to facilitate the narrative gestation. I don't work this way, and I don't believe that this yields the best book.

Each draft that the writer creates is a template for which the artist can and should build off of. On YEGG, the current book I'm creating with Turner Lange, every single draft is a response to the work's evolution. I may shout first, but ultimately I am responding to the echoes. I am not the voice calling out from up high.

A talented artist serves as an editor as much as a world builder. Comics is a fundamentally collaborative medium. While Stan Lee's 'Marvel Method' is often viewed as a kind of quaint hackery in which Stan jacked various artist's storytelling gifts, it is a method that is valuable in 21st century storytelling, especially when new collaborative tools continue to become available.

Great comic creation is call and response, the ability to listen and stay open as much as dictate and make decisions. In my experience and artist who is contributing to the narrative and has a stake in the work (I firmly believe in sharing the "created by" credit) will deliver better work. It is personal, not just a gig. There are very few people who can do both. How many solo-geniuses like J-Dilla are there?

Smashing the Light Bulb - Constructing the Archetypal Narrative

When I was in kindergarden, as a class we built puppets using a light bulb and paper mache'. We would layer the wet news strip around the bulb, and eagerly mix our paints while the paste dried. Once the paste had hardened, the teacher would take a hammer to the light bulb, smashing the interior into a glassy pulp. What was left was a clean hard surface to create and to paint something entirely new. The bulb was necessary to build upon. Archetypes are the bulb.

One of the tools I find most helpful, my lightbulb,  is The Writer's Journey, by Christopher Vogler. It came recommended from a family member and employs mythic structure initially analyzed by one of the true geniuses of the 20th century, Joseph Campbell. If you have read anything about George Lucas' process for writing Star Wars, his name is certainly familiar. Essentially, he traffics in archetypes, and recognizes the timelessness of effective storytelling.

Understanding the value of archetypes allowed me to bypass a major obstacle I had as a writer;  a desperation to be original. I wanted to create stories and characters that people had never seen before and sometimes at the expense of giving a reader something to latch on to that is familiar. What I have come to learn is that nothing is really "original" and true originality comes from combining existing pieces in new ways. Successful story telling is about innovation.  Finding pieces to build a story upon can be very liberating.

As I begin to create my new story Yegg, a crusty-punk revenge story, I had a very clear picture of the character and the world he would inhabit. I had a strong thematic sense of issues I wanted to address. And as I iron out the plot for the story, I will draw upon a book that is over 400 years old, Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, to illuminate my protagonist's path. Then, I'll smash the light.

Armchair Eberts

    My rule for this blog is quite simple: if I am discussing it here, I like it. I will not tell you what to avoid. I will hopefully encourage you to seek something out you may have overlooked. Though I have been a critic of the thumbs variety, as a creator I simply don't want to embrace that anymore. The reason is simple. There is too much negative criticism on the internet, everyone can now be an Armchair Ebert.
 
    I do believe that the role of the critic is to contextualize something and also advance an idea with the work being the vehicle. I enjoy criticism, it's made me a better writer, and creating has allowed me the ultimate insight into the process. I still have a lot to learn on both fronts.
  
    Some of the filmmakers I admire most started out as critics: Francois Truffaut, Peter Bogdonavich, Paul Schrader. Their work was deeply influenced by learning about the history of their art through criticism. Their writing gave them access to their contemporaries (give a listen to the Hitchcock and Truffaut tapes) who became mentors, it taught them the language to not only articulate an idea, but an emotion.

    Most critics act as filters from the deluge of entertainment options. Their role has changed and so the tenor of the conversation. The dialogue has become more bombastic. Tearing something apart in a couple of keystrokes is our new bloodsport. We enjoy crucifying, and don't want to see a resurrection.

    The small change I can make is to avoid putting forth the venomous review. It doesn't do anything to improve the work, or offer insight into the process. I can tell you from experience, the joy of creating something is far greater than the satisfaction of calling someone out.


   

Twisted Memories - The Reboot and Swamp Thing #1

 

        Swamp Thing #1 is not a retelling, reinterpretation, or in the latest Hollywood parlance a reboot (as if it were even possible to shock the mind and strip the referent from its source material). Though the relaunch of Swamp Thing has been highly praised and is easily one of the most anticipated comics in the new line, the latest hobby in comix crit seems to be putting DC’s New 52 (a relaunch of all DC’s current titles) in the cross hairs and pulling the trigger, picking-off each new story as woefully inferior to its source. While it’s impossible to forget a cultural legacy, these stories must be examined on their own terms; there is nothing duller than a fan of the original griping about a sequel. A production of Shakespeare from the onset is viewed as the director’s interpretation, while the actor most often is unfairly compared to the legacy of the role (such is the price for being in front of the curtain.)
           Although comparisons between the Bard and Scott Snyder may be premature, he has certainly taken on a challenge that is daunting, and has achieved great success.  Much has rightfully been made of his meteoric rise in comics: the guy can flat out tell a great story. Yet, the challenge of writing Swamp Thing, a character that through Alan Moore’s poetically twisted interpretation virtually launched DC’s Vertigo Imprint, is to fundamentally rise again from the muck, as a creature that has absorbed past influences and yet, has become something wholly new. Swamp Thing is DC’s Golem and he is a creature worth watching.
     Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette’s story oozes virulence in every panel.  From the onset, some of the most recognizable Supes (Batman, Superman, and sure Aquaman) in the biz are up to their boots in bloodshed.  Birds are falling from the sky; there’s some strange hoodoo in the air.  Death cannot be avoided. The panel work is brilliantly paired with remembrances of things past and that is exactly the point. Snyder does not dodge the act of remembering, the reader’s or the protagonist's, he embraces it: a bold move when some diehards have unfurled their Alan Moore editions to examine.

             

 In fact, Dr. Alec Holland’s  M.O. in issues #1 is attempting to forget, to distance himself from the memory of what he has become, and what he still might be; a violent perversion of nature.  The past is the horror in this story, and memory is its co-conspirator. A fellow construction worker chides Dr. Holland about his past, Superman spurs on memories about a botany teacher who taught Dr. Holland about the inherent cruelty in the plant world; his origin story is told in nightmare. Infused with the existential angst of a great Noir character, Dr. Holland simply can’t forget. Could this be akin to the very angst that Mr. Snyder experienced in taking on the task? I am neither Harold Bloom nor a trained psychologist, but I certainly would be nervous.

            I will not focus on the well-executed and inventive horror of the body that takes place (you will have to read for yourself). I leave you with this, Snyder and Paquette have given us a vision of Swamp Thing that is now in all of our collective memories.

PIT! - Cockfighter: A Portrait of Sacrifice

Finishing Charles Willeford's Cockfighter: this has already become one of my favorite books. Willeford is a writer who is hard to pin down as he flirts with the crime drama through his protagonist's hard-boiled perspective, yet retains a range of references that surpasses many of his peers. His books are not to be relegated to the scrapheap of genre-fiction, but are downright literary. He offers first-person portraits of characters searching for their singular Macguffins (in the case of this novel, it's the Southwestern Cockfighting Championship) but, what is most revealing is the process of the protagonists contesting with their temporary rudderlessness.

Frank Mansfield is the greatest portrayal I've seen of a modern-day ascetic. He's a man that is so uncompromising and principled that he has given up the gift of speech as a form of self-flagellation from a cockfight gone bad in a hotel room. Yet, he has not lost his ability to shape his world; such is his strength and reputation. He frequently destroys what he loves most as not only a of matter of principle, but as a visceral sacrifice for what he wants most: to be the greatest cockfighter in the world.

The book is not for the faint of heart. There is blood, brutality, and backhands to women, but the source of all violence is the passion of the man himself. From Roy Hobbs (not the Malamud novel) to Rocky what we admire most in our fictive sports heroes is the discipline of the protagonist and their desire for glory. Frank is no different, and he may be the greatest sports hero to grace the fictional landscape ever created.  There is no doubt that the story still rankles feathers (the film version is still banned in England) and the subject matter will turn some readers away, but as a portrait of a man and perhaps even a definition of aspirational masculinity this book is unparalleled. Much like Frank Mansfield, I won't say another word.