I’m up to my neck in deadlines and it’s the World Cup, and the situation is compounded by my team suddenly starting to play soccer like they haven’t in 40 years, so this’ll be snappier than usual.
o “Good Writing + Good Art = Good Comic”
I’m not sure if I agree or disagree with David Brothers, but his essay made me wonder whether the differences between “pop” comics and “lit” comics (I know, I know—let’s try to not get hung up on the terminology, though; you know what I mean) run deeper than we’d generally expect them to.
My first instinct, certainly, is to embark upon a hazy monologue on how the way storytelling works in comics makes it impossible to separate “writing” and “art” in any meaningful way, because the notion of “narrative” in comics, in the way we tend to understand comics today, is something that can’t be narrowed down to either “writing” or “art,” but clearly requires something to happen on the page for which no better or more precise term than “comics” has been established.
But is that true for, say, Amazing Spider-Man? Or for 95% of the material that comes out of the direct market?
Most of these books, it seems, could be drawn by just about anyone: The artist rarely does more than to execute other people’s ideas, to realize other people’s scripts in a fashion that doesn’t seem to leave much room for actual collaboration when it comes to the creative decisions made on a page-to-page level.
I’m not saying that artists are interchangeable.
What I’m saying is that, by the time, say, Marcos Martin, whom I have a great deal of admiration for, gets anywhere near Spider-Man, both the story and the way it’s told tend to have been largely decided by people who are not Marcos Martin.
What I’m saying is that, under these conditions, it occurs to me that “story” and “art” appear to be separated from each other in a way that inherently contradicts the way comics work as a narrative form.
In other words: Are Chris Ware and John Romita Jr. working in the same medium?
o “We Actually Put Pants on the Martian Manhunter Too, Just Recently”
I don’t have anything to add to Wonder Woman’s much-publicized costume change this week. She just looks to me like she may have been in the Avengers in 1993.
Over at Techland, the ubiquitous Douglas Wolk has a preview of the English-language edition of the latest book by Norwegian cartoonist John Arne Sæterøy, alias Jason, that’s coming out this week, titled Werewolves of Montpellier.
At American publisher Fantagraphics, you can download another one.
Jason’s work, which combines anthropomorphic animal characters with ridiculous plots, absurd situations and fiercely mundane settings, is as good a reminder as any that it’s the how that counts, not the what.
In plot terms, Werewolves of Montpellier is about an art student/thief who dresses up as a werewolf before he goes out to break into people’s homes at night, which a society of actual werewolves is not amused about.
What that boils down to on the page, though, are scenes of people sitting next to each other at the laundromat, looking at each other in silence or talking about French actresses while playing chess—and each time, it’s utterly fascinating, and the scene draws you in almost immediately and you don’t want to stop.
Jason tells stories with comics in ways that never occur to a lot of people who make comics.
Marc-Oliver Frisch writes about comics at his weblog and at Comicgate. You can also follow him on Twitter.
In other words: Are Chris Ware and John Romita Jr. working in the same medium?
Sure they are. But they aren’t working in the same genre.
No need to redefine useful terms like medium (“a means for storing or communicating information”) and genre (“a category of artistic composition marked by a distinctive style, form, or content”).
The work is in identifying and defining the genres themselves. And you’re doing some of that work here (even though you pretend to avoid it–“I know, I know—let’s try to not get hung up on the terminology”). Here you’ve got a decent label–“pop comics”–and you’re identifying some of the characteristics of a subgenre of “pop comics”: serial adventures that emphasize plots and beats rather than character or emotion. (You didn’t say that last bit, granted, but I infer you’re sort of headed in that direction).
@Skipper, that’s not what I got from Marc’s question at all. From what I understand, the term “medium” is appropriate. If “comics” is a medium where a story is told through visual storytelling (using an equal combo of words and pictures) it’s fair to ask whether an artist illustrating someone else’s story is truly “comics” or just “illustration.” An illustrated story is truly a different artform using a different technique and process, not just a different genre.
I generally disagree with the “the writing and art of comics can’t be separated” point of view. Of course they can. The writing is what’s happening and the art is how that is depicted. Everybody can see it, it’s just that the one-author idea set forth by alternative comics mainline of thought has us pretend that the distinction doesn’t exist.
I’ve never bought this argument. Especially since we compartmentalize all sorts of things: music into instruments and lyrics. Movies into direction and script and acting.
Why should comics be any loftier?
Hell, we even do this to human beings:
“pretty but dumb”
“ugly but great personality”
I just don’t buy that comics “can’t” be analyzed in parts.
“What I’m saying is that, by the time, say, Marcos Martin, whom I have a great deal of admiration for, gets anywhere near Spider-Man, both the story and the way it’s told tend to have been largely decided by people who are not Marcos Martin.”
Sure, but that same story largely determined by others would still be entirely different if it was drawn by Chris Bachalo or Michael Lark (to take two other recent Spidey artists).
You can separate the creative process into any number of jobs, but what those jobs produce together is a work in the same medium as Chris Ware works in.
Comics isn’t a medium, though; it’s a format for telling stories. As a format, it resembles prose more than it does video, since the images don’t move and there’s no sound. If the cartoonist isn’t attempting to tell a story, and the art is only expressing his feelings, then it’s art.
There’s no difficulty in separating the writing from the artwork in a comics story. If what’s shown happening in the artwork doesn’t make sense or works badly, in terms of plot, characterization, etc., the writing is still at fault. If there are actual technical problems with the artwork, those problems generally don’t affect the writing. They’ll affect the enjoyment of the story, but the writing still succeeds or fails on its own. A well-known example of a superhero story that succeeded in spite of relatively terrible artwork is GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #4.
SRS
I would love to see a project where the same script is drawn by 5 different artists. Or for that matter, the same movie script shot by 5 different directors. The comics could be released in one of the 5-week months.
A car assembled from a kit by a hobbyist during a year of weekends is different from a car assembled in one day at a factory.
However, both use the same basic principles. They may not look anything alike, they may run differently, their owners may have different emotional attachments, but both will consider what they drive to be “a car”.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences does not care whether an animated short is produced by a studio with 100 individuals or if produced by a team of five in somebody’s office. I think the Eisner’s are the same way.
Collaboration should be considered when reviewing a particular story, but sometimes collaboration produces a better story than something produced by an individual. Jack Kirby produced some amazing comics by himself (DC’s Fourth World) but he also produce some which aren’t very good. He also created some amazing stories at Marvel, working with Stan Lee.
Sure, you can argue who did what, but it’s better to just discuss the story, the art, the writing.
Otherwise, you start splitting hairs… is a full-script better than a plot-script? Is a thumbnail script with breakdowns better than a full-script?
Regarding “illustration”… many writers frequently compliment their artists. They are surprised that the artist took words on paper, and then made the story better with the artwork.
@Synsidar “Comics isn’t a medium, though; it’s a format for telling stories.”
Uh…what do you think a medium is? (Keeping in mind that Skipper Pickle already defined the term in the first comment.)
That’s like saying “A Sugar Pine isn’t a tree though, it’s a woody plant with a single stem and branches.”
They’re working in the same medium. They are just contributing different aspects that compose the medium.
Thank you for the mention of the new Jason book “Werewolves of Montpellier”. I have loved all of the other Jason books that I found quite by chance at my local Library. A quick search on the Library’s website showed they already have copies if “Werewolves of Montpellier” and I have my reserve in place.
-Bob
“Medium” is too broad a term to use for discussion of comics-format stories.
SRS
Brothers approaches comic art in the way that too many comic readers do – to simply critique it based on style and draftsmanship, not in terms of storytelling. Great stylists/draftsmen may have poor storytelling chops, while others who lack the former may excel in the latter.
I tend to think that bad style/draftsmanship doesn’t inhibit the story as much as bad storytelling does. An artist with a great style can really ruin a comic through poor storytelling skills. A bad stylist who knows how to tell a story trough his pictures can’t really do the same to a good script.
And good writer/artist teamwork still exists in the mainstream – read what Brubaker & Philips say in the back of the Criminal hardcover about how Philips adds/subtracts panels from the script as necessary to make things work better.
Jimmy, that’s not really what Brothers’ reviews are like at all. AT ALL.
The post that is referenced here is just one about not putting up with shoddy craftsmanship, I think. His proper reviews are mostly focused on the narratives of comics and their implications for the stories and of course, the broader culture.
A bit like saying directors aren’t truly collaborators since all they do is interpret screenwriters’ decisions.
Does that sound ludicrous to you?
It should, and so should the idea that an artist isn’t bringing just as much to a narrative as a writer. Kind of stunned to see that notion get play anywhere.
It’s like saying Roy Lichtenstein was a comic book artist. He appropriated panels from comics in his chosen medium, but for whatever reason (place snark here) was not particularly interested in taking part in the comic book medium.
Phil:
“A bit like saying directors aren’t truly collaborators since all they do is interpret screenwriters’ decisions.”
Directing seems like a good comparison.
Comics are a storytelling form, so what I’m wondering is who’s doing the “directing.” Back when stories were given to artists “the Marvel Way,” it was Kirby, Ditko, et al. who were the “directors.”
But what about right now, in an age where scripts tend to be very detailed and very specific? Are artists still storytellers in the way Kirby and Ditko were? Or is it more accurate to say they are illustrators, because they largely tend to stick to executing stories told by “writer/directors”?
Yes, artists still bring to the table a million creative decisions that are absolutely unique to them, no matter what they draw. But it’s the storytelling part I’m wondering about. Right now, that seems to be almost exclusively in the lap of the writer, for much of the material that’s published in the United States.
Listen, one day, if Chris Ware tries realllly hard, maybe he’ll be as good as Marcos Martin.
Totally agree with Phil Hester here.
I guess my main argument is with the subtext that I infer that artists just “spit it out” with their innate talents and blindly follow what the writer puts down in the script.
Good illustrators go deeper than that.
Suppose I get a direction from my writer that the character in a panel is troubled or anxious. I might show her fumbling with a cigarette, or nervously twisting her necklace. Those actions aren’t specifically written, yet they become part of the story. At the very least, they enhance the writer’s direction.
Or perhaps I get a page with a six-panel breakdown from the writer. I decide that it would work better with a nine-panel layout. I run that by my writer, and the writer agrees. That pacing makes the perceived writing much different.
And the distinction between “writing” and “art” becomes less clear.
Look, I’m not saying that we do away with that distinction–we all refer to it when discussing comics. But I’ve worked with writers–especially Mark Waid–who very much invite collaboration.
And the notion that the way the story is told is already decided by the time it gets to the artist is one that doesn’t hold much water with me.
And Marc?
Not all scripts are as detailed as you might think.
I can give you plenty of examples from my own career.
Darryl (to Marc (to Phil)):
I don’t see why the “Marvel Way” of back-and-forth, fast-and-loose comics should be regarded or even implied to be better, stronger or more comixy. I like both the loose, crazed energy of early Marvel and the tight, detailed plotting of modern mainstream. They both have their powers. We need both methods of thinking because comics has to encompass every possible whim that a creator or group of creators may have.
I’ve been doing indie comics for a while. I see what happens when cartoonists who lack a strong driving vision just run free. Some people are perfectly fine and even much stronger working alone on a singular vision. For others, collaboration is what builds an idea into something greater and more exciting than what either partner could do alone.
Some collaborative comics are just an idea person and an executor. And some solo comics are just mindless, directionless wankery. Neither invalidates their method, it’s the talent in both cases that makes or breaks a comic.
Well, at the recent American Library Association conference, Barry Liga and Colleen Doran gave a very sneak peek to an upcoming graphic novel.
During the talk, which mostly featured how Ms. Doran designs the page, Mr. Lyga considered himself the screenwriter, while Ms. Doran was the cinematographer, casting director, costumer, director of photography…
In this particular book, Mr. Lyga considered his contribution finished when he handed over the script. Ms. Doran, talented professional that she is, would frequently ask Mr. Lyga his opinion on certain panels and designs.
The example shown was one panel… originally the main character was dressing up as a Japanese schoolgirl, and eventually both decided that a Catholic schoolgirl outfit suited the character better.
@Micah: “I would love to see a project where the same script is drawn by 5 different artists.
I believe there is just such a project out there. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the book or the writer (though I want to say it was Mark Waid?), but I clearly remember reading a short review of it in Steven Grant’s “Permanent Damage” column several years ago. I want to say it was a one-shot featuring the same 10-page story drawn by 3 different artists. Grant didn’t give it much of a positive review, other than it was an interesting experiment.
Damn, my initial Googling isn’t finding any references to it. Anyone else remember this book? Help!
When Aristotle broke down the six constituent elements of poetical works (though most of his examples were plays), he didn’t worry about whether there were one or two playwrights working on a play. He correctly recognized that elements such as “spectacle” and “diction” were separate actitivies in the mind of the playwright and so could be discussed separately.
So too for the actitivies of writing and art in comic books, whether they are conveyed by one man or a team.
There, Heidi, gave you a post having nothing to do with sex or violence.
Daryl:
“I don’t see why the “Marvel Way” of back-and-forth, fast-and-loose comics should be regarded or even implied to be better, stronger or more comixy.”
If I’ve implied any value judgment, it wasn’t intentional. I don’t think any particular approach necessarily leads to better or stronger results, and it wouldn’t occur to me to use the term “illustrator” in a pejorative sense, any more than I’d put down, say, an actor for “just” playing a role.
As to whether or not there are more “comicksy” approaches than others, that’s what I’m putting out there as a question. It’s not something I’ve made up my mind about, but the shift in the process of narrative decisions seems worth discussing.
Marc-Oliver:
I think there’s a pretty broad spectrum when it comes to comic book scripting. Alan Moore is choosing shots, angles, lighting, subtext, etc. He’s directing. Most writers don’t do that. Most give the same level of shot detail you’d see in a Hollywood screenplay.
I have a wide range myself. On some books I actually thumbnail the pages I’ve written, even placing balloons and spotting blacks (Kurtzman style), and on others I write very bare stage directions to accompany the dialogue. In both cases I see the artist bringing just as much to the storytelling as I do. Artists tend to exploit whatever storytelling opportunities you leave open for them and it’s always a pleasant surprise to watch them uncover ways to impart the story that I may have never considered.
To push the film analogy: I see artists as not only directors, but actors, designers, lighting directors, special effects artists, etc. It’s impossible to overestimate how much storytelling an artist can bring to the story. Good ones, at least.
As an artist I always appreciated those writers willing to let me fill in as many of those storytelling blanks as possible. After doing this for 20 years I can find places to exert my storytelling sensibilities in nearly any script. All that said, the best comic book making experiences of my life have been when I handled both story and art and all storytelling decisions were continuous.
The results of Grant’s experiment appeared in the 11/8/06 and 11/15/06 “Permanent Damage” columns.
The differences between artists and how those differences impact the scripting of a series might not be meaningful to a reader unless there’s an obvious mismatch, in which case the editor is at fault for publishing poor material. Englehart’s run on Dr. STRANGE, for instance — Brunner and Colan were markedly different, but the stories were excellent with both. As terrible as Heck’s pencil work was in GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #4, the story still worked. There was no need to go back and redo anything.
SRS
Synsidar,
The point being that Brunner and Colan approaches were “markedly different”. Hence, the argument is made that the artists contributed their own styles, sensibilities, decisions, etc. to the storytelling.
That they were both “excellent” does nothing to dilute that.
Yes, but unless the writer decides to credit the pencil artist as a co-plotter or co-scripter, the reader can’t know what the artist contributed and it doesn’t matter, as long as the resulting story is satisfactory. I doubt that many readers, if any, will put down a satisfying issue and wonder how the story would have read with “X” as the artist. If the writer wants a major plot development to happen, it’l happen regardless of who the artist is.
SRS
Synsidar,
Whether the reader doesn’t know or not, the argument stands that a unique product is produced with writer A and artist B–as opposed to writer A and artist C. To push the film analogy, what if the same film script was directed by Woody Allen and Robert Rodriguez? I daresay they would be different–although they both could be successful.
And I can tell you of one instance–a personal one, in this case–where there was a difference of opinion about a plot point. I disagreed on a matter of principle, and the writer graciously did a rewrite with a completely different scene.
Another artist might not have objected. So your final sentence is not universally correct.
–P.
Perhaps not, but if the resulting story was appropriate for the characters, the reader wasn’t disserved, and the writer could approach the same subject matter later, with a different artist.
The idea that the artist generally affects the writing of the story, so that the reader can’t distinguish between the two, fails to account for the specifics in the handling of story elements and the writer’s control. In Englehart’s AVENGERS, for example, he had several artists during his run, and he’s commented on how he adjusted to them as needed, but the handling of the characters — the Vision-Scarlet Witch romance, Mantis’s story, etc. — was his responsibility, his artistic success, and the various artists had little to do with it. Whoever the artists were, Vizh and Wanda would still have gotten married, Mantis still would have hooked up with the Cotati, and Kang’s plots would have failed.
If a writer has a complete story he wants to tell and the success of the story depends on certain plot developments occurring in a specific order, and characters behaving in certain ways, it’s not the artist’s place to substitute his judgment for the writer’s.
SRS
Synsidar,
I think I’ve made my points in a clear manner.
A comic book in many instances is a collaborative effort among a variety of creative people. Replace any with another changes the final equation.
And I think you give readers a bit of a short shrift here. Even as kids, we’d talk about the “what if” possibility of one of our favorite artists drawing a certain comic. I think readers do ponder such things.
–P.
Synsidar-
You seem to be talking abut “what happens” (plot, character introductions, etc.) and Peter and I are, for the most part, talking about “how it happens” (images, storytelling sequences, composition, acting). For me, those two concepts are so intertwined that they’re inseparable. It takes both in equal measure to tell a story well.
Pete’s example of Rodriguez vs Allen is pretty crystal clear. The same “whats” may happen in both films, but the difference in “hows” are why we go to the movies.. or read comics.
Some people only care about plot and formula.
I’m concentrating on “what happens” because what happens is far more important than how it happens. If someone is going to write a romance, he doesn’t agonize over the hair color (strawberry blonde, blonde, dirty blonde) or the exact height (5’5″, 5’6″, 5’7″) of the female lead. He concentrates on how the two leads are going to interact and what might threaten their relationship.
How a fight sequence is handled isn’t very important, given that the hero is going to win, immediately or eventually. The interest lies in the tactics used, and the writer decides what happens there. Decades ago, a writer on INCREDIBLE HULK might have wanted to take it easy, so he’d set up the Hulk versus a villain in a forested, mountainous area, and told the pencil artist to draw 15 pages of the Hulk fighting the villain. The artist could do whatever he wanted in that space, as long as it ended with the Hulk getting mad and overpowering the villain. The artist would effectively be in charge of the story, but — What’s the point of producing junk?
Any competent artist should be able to satisfy the writer’s requests to depict how something happens. The story won’t be remembered years or decades later for how something happened. It will be remembered, cherished, or hated for what happened.
SRS
“How a fight sequence is handled isn’t very important, given that the hero is going to win, immediately or eventually. ”
I can’t even tell you how much I disagree with this. By that logic, how a story is told doesn’t matter, because the hero is going to win in the end. I mean, really? That’s how you look at comics art?
My favorite contained superhero story, the one I’ll hold up as perfect if someone asks me, is the JLA Classified story Grant Morrison did with Ed McGuinness. It was the perfect marriage of great writing and fantastic art, and if McGuinness was just going “beep beep art robot thank for the blessing writer sir” it wouldn’t have been even a third as good. As is, it’s fantastic.
I think that art edges out writing as far as importance in a comic story, but both are extremely valuable. There are plenty of stories where you remember how it happened AND what happened. Daredevil slapping bullets back at a thug and being forced to kill him, Spider-Man lifting a million billion tons of junk off his back, Superman hugging a girl and telling her it’d be okay… none of those would have worked if the art and writing weren’t in concert.
Hey let’s be real here, isn’t execution and style totally just a load of bullshit? I mean the important thing is totally what pretend things the pretend people do in pretend land, since we already know the outcome. Why have a well thought out fight when two guys could stand face to face punching eachother in the arm until one of them loses? Aesthetics are really dumb and lame.
Let’s save some time and print scripts.
Why even print the script? Who cares how it was said, as long as we know what it was about? Just print the Wikipedia synopsis.
Why even print? I want to be able to read it online for fre-WRONG ARGUMENT.
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“How” and “Why” are more important than “What” happens.
C’mon, Darryl, stop returning to this thread. Already got high blood pressure problems.
The reasoning underlying decompression seems to be that the artwork in the issue is as important to the reader as the plot and character actions, but the result often is that a reader zips through the issue in under ten minutes, says “WTF? There’s no plot!”, is disgusted, and might stop buying the series. The effort devoted to the artwork is wasted.
Have people forgotten how, in the days of letter columns, readers would write in complaining about 22-page fights and how they wanted some quiet time, with the heroes relating to each other and acting like human beings? The writer was responsible for giving the heroes some quiet time and writing the dialogue the readers wanted.
Artwork does nothing for a formula fiction story. If a reader wants to be surprised by the writer, and knows how a formula fiction story begins, plays out, and ends, he won’t even bother to read it. What difference does the performance of the artist make then?
Note that I said the tactics in a fight can be interesting. The tactics used, and the stakes, can make a fight dramatic and interesting, but if the intent is merely to fill pages with action scenes and invulnerable characters send each other smashing through buildings, walls, etc., repeatedly until something causes them to stop fighting, the pages devoted to the fight are wasted. The writer decides on the tactics and the stakes.
I’m not claiming that the artist in a comics story is unimportant, but fiction doesn’t require artwork. Once a prose reader has a sense of who the characters in a story are, he doesn’t have to have them described again; he only needs to know about changes.
What’s the point of motion comics, if not to try to make the comics more like video entertainment than they already are? It might be unpleasant to think that an artist is dependent on the writer to make his work worth the effort, and if the writer ruins the story with plot holes, mischaracterization, a flawed premise, or other mechanical mistakes, the reader will reject the story despite the artist’s best efforts, but that’s the way it is. The writer provides the story’s substance.
SRS
Uh, the writer only provides the dialogue that allows the heroes to act like humans, the artist provides the actors. Anybody can read a screenplay, most sane people would rather watch the movie. Comics and movies really aren’t all that different. Some people draw the comparison between directors and artists, but I think that’s inaccurate. A better comparison is artists and everybody that isn’t the writer. In comics the artist has to construct the set, cast the characters, create the props, select the correct shots and timing and lighting and everything else, and then command a performance from every single character involved entirely by their lonesome. Sure, the writer gave them the words and some stage direction, but the artist has to take that and build it into something entertaining and legible for mass consumption.
And fiction REALLY doesn’t rely on writing either. People were able to tell stories before writing even existed(hell, some of them used art to do it), what’s important in storytelling isn’t the writer, it’s the storyteller. Whatever medium that storyteller uses is up to them, but a shitty storyteller is never going to be a good writer or a good artist. Claiming the artist relies on the writer for substance is just mindbogglingly stupid, but so is trying to compare comics and prose literature, so I guess a pattern is starting to arise.
Finally, the point of motion comics is to make money off jackasses with broken imaginations. Done.