I was thinking about the way the shape of comic affects the narrative.
I never, never start a story without knowing where I want it to end. Come to that, I almost always know the ending before I know where the start is. The end is final, but I can start a story anywhere, although I try to come into it as close as I can to the inciting incident.
Endings are easy. Beginnings are easy. It's the middle bits that are complicated, and it's also the area where the fact that I am writing (so far) in 22 page chunks comes into play, because that shape affects the way I tell the story.
I'm pretty meticulous about the individual issues having a beginning, middle and end, and they need to have some kind of story beat in them.
In Luther Strode, for instance:
Issue One - Ends with Luther realizing what he's capable of
All of the issues build through their story towards that final beat, following a rough three act structure, and the series as a whole follows this same progress. This gets kind of fractal, actually, because I have an eye towards structure within the individual scenes as well, and even down to the level of the page.
(It goes the other way, too - if I have my druthers, Luther will return in two sequel series, and these again follow a rough three act build towards the final series.)
Anyhow, this affects the actual substance of the story, because when I write, the stories are not simply chunks of story divided into 22 page sections, they're built around that structure, so if I were writing them for a different form, the actual way the story would be told would be different, too.
Finding the right amount of material that fits comfortably into 22 page chunks is by far the biggest challenge for me when I'm working on outlines. The first issue and the last are usually pretty easy - it's the four in the middle that take the bulk of the mental heavy lifting for me.
I do have other structural things that I strive for, as well - I like to make sure that each issue is "bigger" than the one before it - in Luther, this was both in terms of the relationships and the amount and intensity of violence that was depicted. This makes, for my tastes, a properly satisfying story.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Women, Comics, and The Other
I was thinking about this earlier this week, because I was actually writing about the role of women in stories.
On one hand, I make an actual point to try and make all of my speaking characters well, characters. One of the things I like about Elmore Leonard (and the show Justified, which is also good at this, even though it's onlu based on his stuff) is the sense that all the characters have lives that occur beyond where we're seeing them in the story.
So the female characters all have a life in my head, at least, beyond where we're seeing the on the page. I think I do a pretty good job of writing strong female characters because I don't really like writing weak characters (that is, in itself, probably a flaw in my writing).
Having said that I am aware that I use the women in refrigerators trope, where the women's function in the plot is to spur the hero into action. This is true in Luther Strode, although Petra has a lot of agency, and if you've read the first issue I posted of The Terror, you'll find it there, too.
But (obviously, since I'm writing this) I'm aware that I'm doing. I'm just not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I agree with the general notion of using women characters as a props is a bad thing. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing that makes these particular characters tick. Not to mention that at some level, all the characters serve the story.
(On the gripping hand, in Jenny Strange, a male character gets killed in the first six pages for pretty much the same reason, so I'm not at all adverse to stuffing a man in the fridge either.)
So I dunno. It's hard to judge how well or how poorly you do something like this, and if I'm lucky enough for people to care about my work, I guess they'll decide.
I haven't written a lot of gay characters, though. I'm trying to think, and I believe I've only ever written one. I've got two in stuff I have planned (Duel and The Professionals) although in the case of Duel I'm not entirely sure whether anyone but me would know - we'll have to see how that shakes out. It does come up in The Professionals as a plot point, because one of the characters is a bit homophobic and it causes some interpersonal stress.
On one hand, I make an actual point to try and make all of my speaking characters well, characters. One of the things I like about Elmore Leonard (and the show Justified, which is also good at this, even though it's onlu based on his stuff) is the sense that all the characters have lives that occur beyond where we're seeing them in the story.
So the female characters all have a life in my head, at least, beyond where we're seeing the on the page. I think I do a pretty good job of writing strong female characters because I don't really like writing weak characters (that is, in itself, probably a flaw in my writing).
Having said that I am aware that I use the women in refrigerators trope, where the women's function in the plot is to spur the hero into action. This is true in Luther Strode, although Petra has a lot of agency, and if you've read the first issue I posted of The Terror, you'll find it there, too.
But (obviously, since I'm writing this) I'm aware that I'm doing. I'm just not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I agree with the general notion of using women characters as a props is a bad thing. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing that makes these particular characters tick. Not to mention that at some level, all the characters serve the story.
(On the gripping hand, in Jenny Strange, a male character gets killed in the first six pages for pretty much the same reason, so I'm not at all adverse to stuffing a man in the fridge either.)
So I dunno. It's hard to judge how well or how poorly you do something like this, and if I'm lucky enough for people to care about my work, I guess they'll decide.
I haven't written a lot of gay characters, though. I'm trying to think, and I believe I've only ever written one. I've got two in stuff I have planned (Duel and The Professionals) although in the case of Duel I'm not entirely sure whether anyone but me would know - we'll have to see how that shakes out. It does come up in The Professionals as a plot point, because one of the characters is a bit homophobic and it causes some interpersonal stress.
Friday, August 26, 2011
How I'd Do It: Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange
By Justin Jordan, Age 33 and a Half
Doctor Stephen Strange was an asshole. Great at his job, neurosurgeon, but an asshole nonetheless. Most surgeons, if they wrecked their car and, in a demonstration of the universe's well tune sense of irony, sustained brain damage that prevented them from ever performing surgery, would probably have tried something like teaching at a medical school or lecturing.
But Strange was an asshole who couldn't accept that he could never do the thing he does again. He trie everything to repair the damage; brain surgery, stem cell therapy, illegal and untested medical techniques. He got more and more desperate until he ended up trying things like faith healers and psychic surgery. He didn't really expect any of that shit to work, and it never really did, but he was surprised to find out that some of it wasn't actually fake.
The supernatural existed. Not only was magic real, Strange could do it. He didn't really want to do it, but the talent was there. He agreed to become the pupil of The Ancient one, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, under the stipulation that if he did the training, The Ancient One would fix his brain.
Which might have worked out, had the Ancient One's former pupil Mordo not killed him after a year of training. Strange is able to defeat Mordo and, deserving or not, gets the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme. In magic, he finds something that can replace the ego kick he got from medicine.
But he's still an asshole. So he takes his story and turns it into a stage act. He becomes a magician and a mentalist, and frankly, he sucks at both of them but he has the advantage of being able to do actual magic.
Of course, the magic he can do on Earth is limited. When he travels to other plane and dimensions, he can use the fireballs and lightning bolts as he sees fit. But if he uses too much of his magical power on Earth, he risks attracting the attention of things from outside reality. That is the price of magic for the Sorcerer Supreme: use too much, go too big, and you weaken the defenses reality has for keeping things at bay.
The public at large views him as something of a buffoon, imagine Gary Busey crossed with Criss Angel, but his act allows him a nice lifestyle with money an women, and provides cover for his actual activites.
He never bothers to actually hide what he's doing - Sorcerer Supreme is how he bills his act - but whenever pyrotechnics do occur in public, it's written off as a publicity stunt. And if what he does can't be explained, well, that's because he's really good at what he does.
The act also provides him with people giving him tips about supernatural goings on, which he does investigate (because the Earth getting eating by demonic forces would be a blow to his ego) and sometimes fight. This can be something as simple as a poltergeist, or as big as a group of rogue architects building ...er....buildings design to cause a city to come to life and devour the inhabitants.
Notes:
The power thing lets me have my cake and eat it, too. If Strange travels to another plane he can do the pyrotechnics. On Earth, he is mostly limited to subtler magics. Basically, magic here results from the flow of unreality into our reality. This happens any way, so you can do magic if you know how.
But if you try to pull too much in, you risk pulling the holes open a little more, and that makes it that much easier for the things outside to slip in and do their thing. So if Strange takes the approach of simply blowing monsters up with magic, he's just going to attract something worse.
This is sort of an extrapolation of the original comics version, where he basically asks supernatural entities for power a lot of the time. He's doing more or less the same thing here, except that doing so makes it more likely said entities could come here, and since these are more Lovecraft style outer gods, this is a bad idea.
He can do this stuff if he's desperate, but he tries to handle supernatural problems with a minimum of magic. He really shouldn't use magic as firepower on other planes, either, for the exact same reasons, but he's enough of a dick that he doesn't realize that.
Liekwise, this lets me combine the camp aspects (although I don't know that I would use the wor camp) with more grounded stuff. He does glam it up for his stage show, and sometimes even fights evil dressed like that (easier to get people to believe that it's all some stunt) but it also gives me the option of having him dress like a relatively normal person when he's trying to investigate something.
Obviously, this take on Dr. Strange doesn't really integrate with the Marvel Universe as it is - I'd consider this the Max take on things, which is appropriate, because I would want the supernatural to be scary and horrible - imagine if when people speak to Dormammu, he speaks back by lighting another person's head on fire. Along those lines.
Strange would still have his place in New York full of occult junk. Most of it is just that, but some of it is real. It's all part of his image as the Sorcerer Supreme. The HQ is actually a fairly poorly done patch on reality, so the dimensions tend to change and Strange can tap somewhat more power than usual there, as well more easily shift to other planes and commune with spirits.
Wong is here, too. He was the physical bodyguard of The Ancient One, managed the Ancient One's life in general; someone has to go buy the rice and fish. He provides the same services for Strange, who is not a great physical fighter, being a surgeon who has shakey hands.
Wong basically serves as an all purpose roadie and manager, which he has adapted to with remarkable ease for someone who grew up in a remote mountain monestary. Hypercompetent at everything except magic, which is more or less the exact opposite of Strange, he's the Kato, basically.
By Justin Jordan, Age 33 and a Half
Doctor Stephen Strange was an asshole. Great at his job, neurosurgeon, but an asshole nonetheless. Most surgeons, if they wrecked their car and, in a demonstration of the universe's well tune sense of irony, sustained brain damage that prevented them from ever performing surgery, would probably have tried something like teaching at a medical school or lecturing.
But Strange was an asshole who couldn't accept that he could never do the thing he does again. He trie everything to repair the damage; brain surgery, stem cell therapy, illegal and untested medical techniques. He got more and more desperate until he ended up trying things like faith healers and psychic surgery. He didn't really expect any of that shit to work, and it never really did, but he was surprised to find out that some of it wasn't actually fake.
The supernatural existed. Not only was magic real, Strange could do it. He didn't really want to do it, but the talent was there. He agreed to become the pupil of The Ancient one, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, under the stipulation that if he did the training, The Ancient One would fix his brain.
Which might have worked out, had the Ancient One's former pupil Mordo not killed him after a year of training. Strange is able to defeat Mordo and, deserving or not, gets the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme. In magic, he finds something that can replace the ego kick he got from medicine.
But he's still an asshole. So he takes his story and turns it into a stage act. He becomes a magician and a mentalist, and frankly, he sucks at both of them but he has the advantage of being able to do actual magic.
Of course, the magic he can do on Earth is limited. When he travels to other plane and dimensions, he can use the fireballs and lightning bolts as he sees fit. But if he uses too much of his magical power on Earth, he risks attracting the attention of things from outside reality. That is the price of magic for the Sorcerer Supreme: use too much, go too big, and you weaken the defenses reality has for keeping things at bay.
The public at large views him as something of a buffoon, imagine Gary Busey crossed with Criss Angel, but his act allows him a nice lifestyle with money an women, and provides cover for his actual activites.
He never bothers to actually hide what he's doing - Sorcerer Supreme is how he bills his act - but whenever pyrotechnics do occur in public, it's written off as a publicity stunt. And if what he does can't be explained, well, that's because he's really good at what he does.
The act also provides him with people giving him tips about supernatural goings on, which he does investigate (because the Earth getting eating by demonic forces would be a blow to his ego) and sometimes fight. This can be something as simple as a poltergeist, or as big as a group of rogue architects building ...er....buildings design to cause a city to come to life and devour the inhabitants.
Notes:
The power thing lets me have my cake and eat it, too. If Strange travels to another plane he can do the pyrotechnics. On Earth, he is mostly limited to subtler magics. Basically, magic here results from the flow of unreality into our reality. This happens any way, so you can do magic if you know how.
But if you try to pull too much in, you risk pulling the holes open a little more, and that makes it that much easier for the things outside to slip in and do their thing. So if Strange takes the approach of simply blowing monsters up with magic, he's just going to attract something worse.
This is sort of an extrapolation of the original comics version, where he basically asks supernatural entities for power a lot of the time. He's doing more or less the same thing here, except that doing so makes it more likely said entities could come here, and since these are more Lovecraft style outer gods, this is a bad idea.
He can do this stuff if he's desperate, but he tries to handle supernatural problems with a minimum of magic. He really shouldn't use magic as firepower on other planes, either, for the exact same reasons, but he's enough of a dick that he doesn't realize that.
Liekwise, this lets me combine the camp aspects (although I don't know that I would use the wor camp) with more grounded stuff. He does glam it up for his stage show, and sometimes even fights evil dressed like that (easier to get people to believe that it's all some stunt) but it also gives me the option of having him dress like a relatively normal person when he's trying to investigate something.
Obviously, this take on Dr. Strange doesn't really integrate with the Marvel Universe as it is - I'd consider this the Max take on things, which is appropriate, because I would want the supernatural to be scary and horrible - imagine if when people speak to Dormammu, he speaks back by lighting another person's head on fire. Along those lines.
Strange would still have his place in New York full of occult junk. Most of it is just that, but some of it is real. It's all part of his image as the Sorcerer Supreme. The HQ is actually a fairly poorly done patch on reality, so the dimensions tend to change and Strange can tap somewhat more power than usual there, as well more easily shift to other planes and commune with spirits.
Wong is here, too. He was the physical bodyguard of The Ancient One, managed the Ancient One's life in general; someone has to go buy the rice and fish. He provides the same services for Strange, who is not a great physical fighter, being a surgeon who has shakey hands.
Wong basically serves as an all purpose roadie and manager, which he has adapted to with remarkable ease for someone who grew up in a remote mountain monestary. Hypercompetent at everything except magic, which is more or less the exact opposite of Strange, he's the Kato, basically.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Promo Stuff
The Librarian’s Guide to Life
Page Two
8/15/11
Six Panel Grid
Panel One – The Librarian, seated in a wingback chair, in a study. Fancy books behind him.
LIBRARIAN
One of the questions I get from
students of the Hercules Method
is how to get the girl.
Panel Two – Nerdy Boy trying to talk to a Pretty Girl in the hall of a high school, who isn’t giving him the time of day. Both teenagers, and the boy is slightly pudgy
CAPTION
As you know, women are fickle
and unpredictable creatures who
are unlikely to see your untapped
potential.
Panel Three – Nerdy Boy reading the Hercules Method while walking down the hall.
CAPTION
This is why you must tap that
potential so that you may tap…
other things.
Panel Four – The Nerdy Boy has done the Hercules Method and gotten much more muscular, although he still has a bit of the pudge. Here he is punching out the Pretty Girl’s boyfriend, and it’s more than a knockout, it’s a killer. The boyfriend’s jaw is coming off, blood and teeth going everywhere. The girl is in the background, hands over mouth in shock and horror.
CAPTION
Of course, there maybe certain
obstacles, but the course of true
love never did run smooth. It does,
occasionally, run red.
Panel Five – Nerdy boy being led away by the police, as the girl cries in the background.
CAPTION
If you don’t succeed at first, fear
not as new opportunities will
soon present themselves, albeit in
perhaps a form less expected.
Panel Six – The Librarian in his chair. He has a bloody red heart in hand, his hand and finger covered in blood. He’s looking at the reader.
LIB
Remember, no can truly give you
their heart, so you need to be
bold and take it.
LIB
I recommend going underneath the
ribs at an upward angle.
Page Two
8/15/11
Six Panel Grid
Panel One – The Librarian, seated in a wingback chair, in a study. Fancy books behind him.
LIBRARIAN
One of the questions I get from
students of the Hercules Method
is how to get the girl.
Panel Two – Nerdy Boy trying to talk to a Pretty Girl in the hall of a high school, who isn’t giving him the time of day. Both teenagers, and the boy is slightly pudgy
CAPTION
As you know, women are fickle
and unpredictable creatures who
are unlikely to see your untapped
potential.
Panel Three – Nerdy Boy reading the Hercules Method while walking down the hall.
CAPTION
This is why you must tap that
potential so that you may tap…
other things.
Panel Four – The Nerdy Boy has done the Hercules Method and gotten much more muscular, although he still has a bit of the pudge. Here he is punching out the Pretty Girl’s boyfriend, and it’s more than a knockout, it’s a killer. The boyfriend’s jaw is coming off, blood and teeth going everywhere. The girl is in the background, hands over mouth in shock and horror.
CAPTION
Of course, there maybe certain
obstacles, but the course of true
love never did run smooth. It does,
occasionally, run red.
Panel Five – Nerdy boy being led away by the police, as the girl cries in the background.
CAPTION
If you don’t succeed at first, fear
not as new opportunities will
soon present themselves, albeit in
perhaps a form less expected.
Panel Six – The Librarian in his chair. He has a bloody red heart in hand, his hand and finger covered in blood. He’s looking at the reader.
LIB
Remember, no can truly give you
their heart, so you need to be
bold and take it.
LIB
I recommend going underneath the
ribs at an upward angle.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Ideaville
Horns and Hotrods
I had a dream, a while back, that I was Viking warrior (this is strange for two reasons - my dreams are almost never stuff that couldn't happen, and I'm almost never not just me) back from a long war, and I'm a notorious raider and killer, and I take up residence at the house of a young widow, who is being rather forcefully "courted" by the men of the town. I was probably responsible for the death of her husband.
So yeah, that part is basically Viking Shane. What interested me was the look of the thing. I don't when this was meant to have taken place, but what we had has a bunch of men using swords to duel while tooling about in 1950's style hotrods. Hence the title, Horns and Hotrods.
Yes, I know Vikings didn't wear horned helmets.
It was such a striking visual, actually, that if I ever find the right person for the art, some one in the Nate Simpsin vein, I'm damn well going to have a go at adapting into an actual story.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Luther Strode Day!
It was sort of Luther Strode day at Multiversity Comics:
Me
If you're interested in how Tradd works and his influences and inspirations, they did three pieces on him. Read them, they, like Tradd, are pretty awesome.
Tradd Interview
Tradd Art
Holy crap, is there any end to Tradd's stuff?
Non Spoilery Review
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Digital Comics
An addendum to the last post, really, although it's near as long. People talk about digital comics (as in comics that you can download to your viewing device of choice) as something that will save comics. And I think those people are probably right. But we're not there yet.
Digital comics are tricky, because right now you have to serve two masters. Actually, you don't HAVE to, but if you're doing a book you want retailers to pick up you probably should. The thing there is that if you drop the price down low on the digital versions, you risk annoying the retailers, which is something to consider.
The other problem is that on digital comics, if you're going through the traditional digital outlets, is that you are only going to see probably 30% of the cover price, and maybe not even that. So at a buck an issue, say you get 30 cents. If you sold 30,000 copies digitally, you'd be doing okay. But you probably won't sell that many, at least not yet.
Digital comics have a lot of potential, because I think they represent an opportunity to grow the audience beyond what you're going to find in comic shops. It's rant for another time, but I think (and I realize I'm by no means the only one) that comics' biggest problem is that we've become a direct market only thing. If that were the case when I was young, I wouldn't be a comic fan now.
The other great aspect of digital comics, though, is that they allow comics to become more than just produce. Most modern publishing is built around what author Kirstine Katherine Rusch calls the produce model - the business is built around having new product that only lasts a few weeks and constantly needs to be replaced.
This is a little less true of comics than books, because back issue bins are fairly common, but the basic idea is the same. Unless you're actively looking for back issues of a certain thing, you're highly unlikely to just come across them. One of the reasons trades are popular is because they extended the functional life of a book, although they are also somewhat subject to the produce model.
Digital comics (digital anything) allow you infinite shelf space, which means that each of the individual bits you put out have an indefinite lifespan, since there's no out of print or out of stock. So your comic can, hypothetically, sell forever. Print book publishers are just starting to really exploit this, and some authors have discovered it, but comics hasn't really embraced it, although we're getting there.
So digital comics have a huge potential for both discoverability and permanence, but right now it's mostly just a drop in the bucket compared to direct market sales. Unless you're APE comics who can sell 1500 hard copies of a book and 150,000 digital copies.
*This model doesn't apply to the big authors and classic books as much, but it is true for most books, which have about six weeks to sell or be remaindered.
Digital comics are tricky, because right now you have to serve two masters. Actually, you don't HAVE to, but if you're doing a book you want retailers to pick up you probably should. The thing there is that if you drop the price down low on the digital versions, you risk annoying the retailers, which is something to consider.
The other problem is that on digital comics, if you're going through the traditional digital outlets, is that you are only going to see probably 30% of the cover price, and maybe not even that. So at a buck an issue, say you get 30 cents. If you sold 30,000 copies digitally, you'd be doing okay. But you probably won't sell that many, at least not yet.
Digital comics have a lot of potential, because I think they represent an opportunity to grow the audience beyond what you're going to find in comic shops. It's rant for another time, but I think (and I realize I'm by no means the only one) that comics' biggest problem is that we've become a direct market only thing. If that were the case when I was young, I wouldn't be a comic fan now.
The other great aspect of digital comics, though, is that they allow comics to become more than just produce. Most modern publishing is built around what author Kirstine Katherine Rusch calls the produce model - the business is built around having new product that only lasts a few weeks and constantly needs to be replaced.
This is a little less true of comics than books, because back issue bins are fairly common, but the basic idea is the same. Unless you're actively looking for back issues of a certain thing, you're highly unlikely to just come across them. One of the reasons trades are popular is because they extended the functional life of a book, although they are also somewhat subject to the produce model.
Digital comics (digital anything) allow you infinite shelf space, which means that each of the individual bits you put out have an indefinite lifespan, since there's no out of print or out of stock. So your comic can, hypothetically, sell forever. Print book publishers are just starting to really exploit this, and some authors have discovered it, but comics hasn't really embraced it, although we're getting there.
So digital comics have a huge potential for both discoverability and permanence, but right now it's mostly just a drop in the bucket compared to direct market sales. Unless you're APE comics who can sell 1500 hard copies of a book and 150,000 digital copies.
*This model doesn't apply to the big authors and classic books as much, but it is true for most books, which have about six weeks to sell or be remaindered.
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