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

[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