classics illustrated

[egypturnash]

So a couple of grizzled comics vets did an adaptation of the report of the governmental investigative commission on 9/11. Slate is serializing it. It's not all online - I wouldn't be surprised if the last chapter goes up on the anniversary -

I have no comment on the political undertones of things like choices of how far to push caricatures of various people. But damn, the first chapter is a really beautiful use of the medium: a sparse adaptation of the events on each of the four airplanes involved, from boarding to crashes, plays out in parallel, stacked down the page and stretching across the whole chapter. Now and then I've seen similar parallel narratives done in film, but it can easily become a complete information overload; this is a mode that comics uniquely excels at.

And oddly enough, it's a trick that's rarely used. Even when a story consists of multiple, interwoven threads. The only other example I can think of offhand is issue #4 or so of Those Annoying Post Bros., where the titular brothers split up, and one gets the top half of the pages, while the other gets the bottom. It's tough to get all the rhythms to combine and work, I suppose; to manage two separate threads to run at the same length, and recombine.

Note to self: Is there a part of Drowning City that would benefit from this bit of pyrotechnics? I don't think so; the narrative focus is very much on one character's viewpoint. It is by no means a mosaic narrative. I have parts that will use other uniquely-comics trickery. (And I should be making time to work on it. Other things pulled me away from the progress I was making in sorting it all out and making ready to start drawing. I need to just draw.)

Comments

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I saw that comic at my store, and while it might be a good piece of work overall, a quick flip through it made me feel that the comics medium was not the way to approach this as it felt, again at the intial gaze, as if the subject were being trivialized. Especially when we're shelving the actual Commission report right next to it, and it's three times the size. So I'll take another look.

As far as pyrotechnics and special effects go, I've found that the story will call for them itself. If needed, there they are. If not, they clash like cymbals. You'll know.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I've always felt that the cheapness implied in comics has to do more with how they're sold than with what's in them. That includes, of course, the so-common flimsy magazine-paper covers instead of even the slightly-better card-quality stuff that crappy dime-store novels are wrapped in.

Now, as to the quality of the art and stories inside... a lot of that is traditional, anymore, sadly. Even after straining things through the filter of a publisher (as opposed to webcomics, where the readers are the filter), there's a lot of crap based on what they were doing thirty years ago.

I am damn tired of the X-Men, for example, but they're too well-known a franchise to let go.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong; there's some amazing, serious stuff being done in comics, such as nearly anything by Will Eisner, and "Blankets," as two examples. When I flipped through this book, it looked very much like it had been done by folks that were used to doing Superhero comics and as such, it tinged something 'real life' with a slight taste of fantasy. I think there are folks that could pull this off, I just don't know that those two guys were right for it.

I used to work for a comic store in Boston for 14 years. We were constantly trying to get rid of that cheap and sleezy fan-boy feel. :"D

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's neccesarily a good thing - but it's an interesting handling of it. And using the narrative techniques of comics to deliver a big dose of complex history like this interests me: can they be used for this sort of thing?

I don't know if I'd buy it, but it was interesting to look at.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Slate is doing a chapter a day through the 7th.

Good stuff.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I'm still standing in the corner shouting "TOO SOON! TOO SOON!" at everything. Remember when Pearl Harbor came out, and everyone was all in a tizzy? Meanwhile, WTC: THE MOVIE came out and nobody cared. I remain disturbed.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I watched some TV for the first time in ages last night and there were ads on it for a WTC movie. And I was just kinda squicked by that. Because the ad made it look like it was going to be totally a feel-good thing. This is not the kind of thing we should be feeling good about.

There were also ads for documentaries on Katrina, which made me cringe. That's still pretty raw for me, what with it having been part of my own life.

Spiegelman's "In The Shadow of No Towers" came out three years after 9/11. It was his perspective on it as a New Yorker, told as comics because that's where his voice is. Was that too soon? I dunno. Would I say "too soon!" at a personal tale of Katrina? No. But I react that way at the prospect of one-year anniversary documentaries on it.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

It's definitely too soon to make it into a spectacle, which the WTC movie definitely is; but it's pretty much been treated that way since it happened, car window flags and all.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

woops, replied to the wrong place.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

You know, when you described the day you had a snowball (http://shatterstripes.livejournal.com/464149.html), I immediately pictured it as something out of Watchmen: A close-up of the umbrella, with a spiral design, suddenly in your face, and the next panel a satellite picture of the coming storm, the isomorphism unsubtle, juxtaposed with the narration in that seemingly profound way...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It may well have been a gust stirred up by all the activity just off the coast that day, too. I've looked back on that moment and wondered at the symbolic resonance of such a close shave with the wind, followed by the next weeks...

But we always mythologize our lives, don't we? It's what we do. We tell ourselves the stories of ourselves, and we try to make them better stories.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I've got a Graphic Novel where that is used. A recent "World of Tomorrow" thing, or something that starred a character called Greycloak I think. I can tell you the name if you really care at home.

I once wrote a short story like that actually. It had the narrative of events across 2/3s of the page, and the other third had the "computer" view of the commands going through the cyborg that was participating in the action. Acquire target, arm, stand down, sort of stuff that fleshed out the 3rd person view of the scene it was involved in.

It was more fancy than functional, but still I tried.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Wow. I really like it as sequential storytelling and for the light, more illustrative linework. I didn't expect to like this, and in general I try to avoid discussion of 9/11, but this was actually really good. It definitely holds up Eisner's ideal that you can actually use comics to talk about serious stuff.

I think part of what I like is that the drawing part of it, and even the storytelling part, has very little value judgement implied, compared to the way the whole thing has been presented in the press. That takes it from being a story I am supposed to feel very emotional, angry and hawkish about, to being a story about a big coordinated terrorist strike.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

The actual storytelling is (just) okay, but the art bugs me; it just looks so cheap and cheesy, like an old Classics Illustrated comic. Also, I don't know if it was a stylistic intention of the illustrator, but the whole comic has the feel of those in-flight safety brochures you're supposed to read before the plane takes off...