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Archive for ‘July, 2009’
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I pulled this from Warren Ellis’ blog. Ellis is a bit of a hero to me, and this article is particularly well conceived:
Comics And Time: Dundee, 28 June 2009
from Warren Ellis by Warren Ellis
This is the bones of the talk I gave at Dundee University last month. Didn’t have time to write a full formal paper. I get massively extemporaneous when I do these things, moving in and out of the notes, so this isn’t everything I said. But what the hell. I was writing on the assumption of a mostly academic audience, so I recapitulated some old thoughts and re-used the old Harvey Pekar line I’m so fond of trotting out. Also, this was all written in pencil, in my hideous chickenscratch, in a notebook, a couple of hours before I took the lectern. Anyway. Here it is.
Hello. Forgive me from working from notes. No time to write a full talk in the end. Because I’m a working writer in a deadline business. Which is why I’m here.
I think I’m supposed to be talking about my career in comics, providing some kind of summation to a conference about the relationship between comics and time. To which I’d first offer this, inscribed on a stone plaque embedded in the courtyard wall of the hotel across town I’m staying at:
“God give the blessing to the paper craft in the good realm of Scotland.”
That stone was cut in 1870.
120 years later, I’m in Glasgow with Scots comics writer Grant Morrison, who’s just scored some brown acid off Bryan Talbot and is explaining to me how time works in comics. He explains to me his discovery that any comic is in fact its own continuum, an infinitely malleable miniature universe from Big Bang to heat death, and that in reading it you can make time go backwards, skip entire eons, strobe time itself, re-run geologic-scale periods in loops… reading a comic is in fact controlling time from a godlike perspective.
He was, of course, very full of hallucinogens at the time. This is why people were warned about the brown acid at Woodstock.
That said, we can now thank Grant for solving the mandate of this conference while in the grip of profound psychotomimetic hubris, and move on.
What I do is the Paper Craft, and there are few better places to talk about it than here in Dundee, where ink has run in the town’s blood since even before 1870, but thick and dark since 1905, when DC Thomson was founded, Britain’s oldest continuous publisher of comics… making this place the storied city of Jam, Jute and Journalism.
I’ve been writing comics since the 1980s — grew up reading Alan Grant (who was in the audience) — and doing it full time for approaching twenty years. I do a lot of other things too — first novel a couple of years ago, journalism, animation, anything that looks like it’ll pay a bill. Because I’m a working writer. But comics were my first love, and I still spend most of my time writing them. I love visual narrative, and comics are the purest form of visual narrative.
I’ve worked in television, and there are a hundred people between you and the audience. I’ve worked in film, and there are a thousand people between you and the audience. In comics, there’s me and an artist, presenting our stories to you without filters or significant hurdles, in a cheap, simple, portable form. Comics are a mature technology. Their control of time — provided you’re not intent on reversing universes (or even if you are) — makes them the best educational tool in the world. Hell, intelligence agencies have used comics to teach people how to dissent and perform sabotage.
When done right, comics are a cognitive whetstone, providing two or three or more different but entangled streams of information in a single panel. Processing what you’re being shown, along with what’s being said, along with what you’re being told, in conjunction with the shifting multiple velocities of imaginary time, and the action of the space between panels that Scott McCloud defines as closure… Comics require a little more of your brain than other visual media. They should just hand them out to being to stave off Alzheimer’s.
Although I think a headline of “Grant Morrison staves off dementia” might be a little premature.
The line I always quote in talks like these, the one I want you to take away with you, is something the comics writer Harvey Pekar said: “Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.”
And the nice thing about comics, the blessing of the paper craft, is that there’s really no-one to stop you.
© Warren Ellis 2009 all rights reserved etc etc
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Hi, Friends!
Can you believe it’s already Wednesday? Where the heck did the week go! Sheesh.
We got in a fresh new shipment of our trade-paperback, “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father,” today. We are expecting our shipment of Johnny Saturn no. 9 any day now, but very likely this week. This gives me a warm heart.
Yesterday, I helped Benita run a fabric and dye seminar at the Huddleston House, a historic inn built along the old National Road (US 40) in the 1840’s. I wasn’t involved in any of the teaching aspects of the day, but I got to help keep the fires going, and I drew some pictures for kids. I also snuck into the nearby barn and did a quick sketch of an original, un-restored Conestoga wagon. I expected such wagons to be somewhat crude: I should have known better. These boat-shaped wagons were built along exacting lines, with hundreds of specialized wood and iron parts. The men who built this thing would be building high performance cars if they had been born in our time. If you want to see pictures of Benita and me in action, and read a report on the day, please go here.
As an artist, I’ve noticed that I have gradually changed all my standard tools this year. I’ve gone from drawing with 2H leads to 3B leads, and I’ve switched from Hunt Crowquills and G Pens to Windsor & Newton Series 7 no. 1 brushes. I also bought a small cabinet, which I subdivided into long six compartments per drawer, and into this I put all my markers. “Hi, everyone, my name is Scott Story, and I’m a marker addict.” I have an obsession with tools that make black marks on paper, I guess.
You’ve by now probably noticed the knife that plays such a big role in the current Johnny Saturn storyline. It’s based on a real knife, one I found in stack of old car parts in our garage when I was about ten years old. I had always imagined it to be a World War II GI’s knife, but I’ve been cleaning and sharpening it, and I found an inscription on the pommel that says “Ontario NY, 1-1969.” This knife is still in very sturdy condition, and the pommel is solid, unlike the modern survival knives that hide a compartment full of miniature implements.
Scott.
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Hi, Folks!
One of our best traffic referers is Top Web Comics. We are now offering incentive images every workday, Monday through Friday, for all of you who vote for us.
These voting incentives are in fact the preparatory drawings I make before transferring the drawing to Bristol board and inking them. They will be interesting for those of you who might be curious how I lay out panels and build characters. Often, the original drawings are much bigger than the image that appears in the actual comic, because later I may crop them down to fit into their panels.
The vote button is at the right hand side of the vote boxes you see below every comic and blog post, and on the right column, second down and left among all the voting buttons there.
Thanks! It’s really easy and quick, and it will help us out a lot!
Scott
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The Nedor/Standard Comics
I’ve written quite a few times about “Heroes Inc.,” the excellent webcomic created by artist Scott Austin. If you haven’t been reading it, shame on you. “Heroes Inc.” takes a pretty intriguing take of the Nedor/Standard Comic Lines.
I’ve been a fan of these old Nedor characters for a long time. Originally published from 1941 to 1949, these characters since have fallen into the public domain. No one bothered to copy write them, and there are no heirs to the Nedor estate.
This turn of events is probably the best thing to ever happen to these characters, because their public domain status made them sort of open source darlings, familiar characters that can be used again and again by anyone. In the succeeding years, these characters have been published by AC, Image, First Comics, Eclipse Comics, Wildstorm, and Dynamite Entertainment.
Most of these later comics have revolved around the most popular Nedor character, the Black Terror. The original Daredevil, Skyman, Catman, the Black Cat, the Fighting Yank, and others have all made numerous appearances. How they have been put to work varies tremendously, publisher by publisher.
These characters are really cool, because they are pure Golden Age characters, with all their improbable storylines and origins, and none of muddy continuity between that time and now. Much is made of the “Greatest Generation,” the Americans who won World War II and set the country on its course to be a world power. The Nedor characters essentially are the Greatest Generation in garish costumes.
In Wildstorm’s “Terra Obscura,” the Nedor characters were trapped in the past and released in the modern day. This holds true for Dynamite Entertainment’s “Project Superpowers,” which is still ongoing. I can’t really speak as to how AC Comics, probably the most prolific publisher of these characters, has handled them because I have had a hard time finding back issues. When I find them, I grab them, but I don’t have many.
“Heroes Inc.” has taken a different approach from “Terra Obscura” and “Project Superpowers.” In the Heroes Inc. world, where the Allies lost World War II, most of the old supers lived and fought during World War II and the decade that followed, but now they are retired, dead, on death row, or even insane. When super violence rears its head in the 21st century, some of the surviving heroes search for all the old heroes, collecting blood samples to recreate a new generation of heroes.
In Marvel’s “Captain America,” the writers are able to get a lot of mileage off the old warrior with ideals and patriotism, and how he functions in a modern society of cynicism and distrust for patriotism. The same holds true for the Black Terror and Company.
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Hi, Friends!
It’s late, and my mind is awhirl with the day’s activities, so I present the only thing I can in this state: A potpourri of thoughts.
Please vote for us on Top Web Comics! It’s easy, quick, does not require you to sign up, and I put up a free voting incentive image every weekday. I know you want us to succeed, so please vote daily!
Our friend JGray of “Mysteries Of The Arcana” is overseeing the LGBT Webcomic Charity Art Auction, and there are still two days left to bid. Two pieces in particular are wide open, being this and this. It would be a shame for these pieces to go unpurchased!
Last night, a friend of mine asked me about the common modern practice of darkening pencils and skipping inks in comic books. I’ve gotten so used to this style that I barely noticed darkened pencils anymore. I still prefer good, old-fashioned inking, preferably done by hand, but I also have to admit there is a real charm to the work of John Cassaday, as seen in Planetary. In short, I’m still undecided, although I do not see myself ever going from pencils to color like that. My pencils are pretty clean, but I’m so darn picky!
On the flip side of that coin, lately I’ve considered eventually going all digital with the comic. It would certainly save me time. If I did, I would probably want to go the Cintiq. Those are quite expensive, so I do not foresee making this leap any time soon.
Well, that’s enough for today!
Scott
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