Passingships
Over at the Flight Comics Blog Kazu Kibuishi is previewing the cover to FLIGHT 4, and there is an announcement of an event:

This piece, along with others by Chris Appelhans, Khang Le and Israel Sanchez just to name a few, will be on display at the Imaginary Spaces gallery show at Nucleus, which opens this Saturday the 16th, from 7-11 PM. Be sure to check it out, and don’t forget to visit the Nucleus site for the full details.

Kazu has also contributed a piece to the White Elephant Show (of which Rad Sechrist is also a part of), which opens to the public on the 16th at Mauve, running from 4-11 PM. All proceeds from the sales of the original artwork on display will be donated to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Full details here.


Bigger image in the link.

Over at his blog Kibuishi also talks about the difficulty of maintaining focus while working on a long graphic novel project:

As a reader of graphic novels, it always bugs me that most long form comics read like they are the first draft of the material, when in fact they often are. And for good reason. As a creator of graphic novels, I am exhausted by my selfish reader tendencies by having to redraw page after page to smooth out the reading experience. I can see why, over the years, creators often compromised their stories under the pressures of deadlines and satiating the public’s thirst for the material. For the large amounts of time and energy a creator must spend to create the work, the reader only gets a small handful of information to chew on. Sometimes, working out the details are not an option. This is the pickle that the readers and creators of comics seem to always find themselves in. Readers are very forgiving of the story elements in a comic book. This is unlike other media, like films or novels, where audiences often criticize stories with sharpened talons, and only the very best and most appealing works make their way through the gauntlet. Is it because comics readers understand how difficult the process is and are simply happy to have reading material? Or is it simply that we have low expectations of the medium, as opposed to extremely high ones for films and novels?

1 COMMENT

  1. While I agree that the standards in comics are pretty low, I think most graphic novelists are going to take umbrage with the idea that their works are “first drafts.”

    Why doesn’t Kibuishi just work from a script? I did three drafts each of my NORTHWEST PASSAGE scripts, hammering and polishing each so that the storytelling had been good and thought through by the time it came to draw them. Thus little redrawing was necessary. If he’s not the type to sit in front of a word processor, why not simply work out the storytelling in rough form before proceeding to a more finished page?

    I admire Kibuishi’s work as an artist, but if he’s trying to make people feel guilty about not drawing every page two or three times, it’s not going to work on this cat. Some of us do our thinking *before* picking up the pencil.

    Also: people have high expectations of films?

  2. There’s a reason I quit reading monthly-for-the-sake-of-being-monthly-comics years ago. I’d rather wait for quality, like Northwest Passage, for example. :)

  3. In response to Scott, Kazu does work from a script, and thumbnails everything beforehand. And he has, in fact, thrown out dozens of pages worth of thumbnails along with the pages of finished art he describes.

    The problem he runs into, from what I gathered talking to him about it awhile back, is that once he does arrive at the finished art, he sees a way he could have done stuff slightly better, and therefore scraps everything and starts anew.

    Crazy? Perhaps yes. But he does plan.

  4. The problem he runs into, from what I gathered talking to him about it awhile back, is that once he does arrive at the finished art, he sees a way he could have done stuff slightly better, and therefore scraps everything and starts anew.

    Well, we *all* do that, but few can afford the luxury of drawing the same thing over again multiple times. In terms of drawing, most artist are rarely happy–it’s never as good as it was in your head. Storytelling is something people are likewise always improving and evolving at. There are a lot of things I’d go back and change about *all* of the book’s I’ve put out, but I hardly consider them “first drafts.”

    It’s great that Kazu’s such a perfectionist about storytelling (and I’m glad to hear he scripts and thumbnails…he made it sound it like he was just sitting down and pencilling, concocting the storytelling as he goes, in which case I could understand taking multiple swings at each page.) I wish more artists in the industry were. But complaining that other artists draw the line between “rough” and “finished” in a place where you wouldn’t seems a tad inappropriate. There are a lot of artists in comics whose work I don’t like, but I dislike them for the choices they make, not because I think they’re being lazy.

  5. As a noncreator, I’m curious how often people who make comics rewrite their or work, or reconceive the whole thing, as opposed to “just” redraw? Or if it all comes together in one great big composing effort? Obviously, this relates to writer/artists of the sort who populate the Flight anthologies. Kibuishi is certainly one of the strongest ones, but I often feel as a reader that it’s not the art and storytelling that could use work, but the stories that are being told at their base. I don’t mean that creator’s don’t think about their stories before they start creating, and that shifts don’t happen in the middle, but I’ve definately had the same experience that he describes of the first draft feel.

    As for audience and readership, I don’t think film and prose have necessarily harsher audiences as much as they have more critics, and in general critics willing to be sharper. Sometimes it feels like comic fans and press have a tendency of approaching comics and their creators as fragile things, like their nursing them or something.

  6. I often feel as a reader that it’s not the art and storytelling that could use work, but the stories that are being told at their base.

    I feel the same way. There are a lot of great storytellers in comics, but few great stories seem to get told. (Though I feel that as the graphic novel form continues to grow, this will change.)

    Doesn’t matter how many times you redraw, it doesn’t mean much unless you’re also developing *content*.

  7. As a noncreator, I’m curious how often people who make comics rewrite their or work, or reconceive the whole thing, as opposed to “justâ€? redraw?

    I almost never redraw things. Most of the time I’m fine with what I’ve come up with (perhaps I ought to consider myself lucky! XD), but I find that when I look back at my older work, I DO get an impulse to correct all the mistakes I made while doing it. I look at it and thinks of a million ways the story could have been told better, or drawn better, or told from a better angle, etc.

    But there has only been ONE instance of a short story where I went back and completely redrew (“Air+Space” on my website), and while I was happy with it back then, nowadays I wonder why I bothered (a lesson to myself, maybe). The story WAS better than the original, but not by much, and the base concept was not very good to begin with. It was then that I decided that if I were to bungle something up from the conceptual stage, or if an idea was mediocdre to begin with, there’s no point in going back and changing it. Better to plow on ahead and create NEW things with the skills I have than wonder whether a story could have been better if I did THIS or if I did THAT.

    Just my 2 cents. That kind of attitude suits me just fine though, since I never reread my older works anyway. I prefer to evaluate what I do NOW by my standards of NOW, and always look to the future.

  8. My seven cents (marked up for inflation)

    No matter how much polish, preparation and pre-work goes into the product it will still be a matter of opinion on the final quality. What’s good to one person is not to another – no matter how much planning goes into it. Some creator/artists know this and just let it go out to the masses, as is. Others will reinvent the wheel until it rolls smoothly. However, that “smoothly” is only the artist’s perception, not the publics.

    Once art leaves the safety of the nest and onto the public shelves there is NO accounting for how it’ll be received. Some readers will misunderstand even the basic concepts – depending what they themselves bring to the table. Others will read things between the lines that were never intended.

    Still, I see the advantages of redrawing. And in concept I agree with Kibuishi, but there are so many ways to skin a cat, and the artist will approach a page (each page) in so many different ways. I agree with Scott, that folks do, in large, consistently seek out the better image, thus redrawing constantly.

    Is there really an end to it?

    Still, good food for though from Kibuishi, there’s nothing wrong in what he said. I’m glad for the discussion.