classics illustrated
Aug. 30th, 2006 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashSo 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.)
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.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 07:34 pm (UTC)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.