drupal stats

The Death of Comics: Funeral for a story?

Picking up some more thoughts on Brian Hibb's recent Tilting at Windmills article, he had an interesting piece about the actual writing that's taking place in mainstream comics nowadays:

Y'know, I just read an interview by a Marvel editor discussing a particular writer, working on a spin-off one-shot tied to a major crossover, and he phrased his praise as something fairly close to "He's really a good go-to guy when I need This Emotional Beat, taking place between panels X and Y of issue #Z", and I thought, "Wow, that's everything that my comics store really really doesn't need on my racks right now."

Because comics that are This Emotional Beat, Taking Place Between Panels X And Y Of Issue #Z are not rare things. TEBTPBPX&YOI#Z comics kind of fill my racks, and like any midlist cash-grabby kind of thing they usually sell pretty in mediocre numbers, all things considered. And there are more of them coming in next week, too. And the week after that. I don't actually need any more comics that are simply TEBTPBPX&YOI#Z. We'll talk more about this in a minute, though.

I would say that a lot of Geoff Johns writing right now is about those emotional beats.  The way he has Blackest Night and Green Lantern dancing around each other, not covering the same ground but providing the beats that the other story needs to be complete is a perfect example of this.  While I don't know if it's as harmful and horrible as Hibbs makes it out to be, it's hard to argue that the comic racks right now aren't full of comics whose only purpose is to provide "This Emotional Beat, Taking Place Between Panels X and Y of Issue #Z."  (As a side note, I'd love for this phrase to become as commonplace as Heidi MacDonald's "Satisfying Chunks" is.)  For better or worse, a large portion of Brian Bendis' Avengers stories for the last 6 years have been constructed around the idea that certain characters need to be in certain positions for the next big story beat.  How much of New Avengers has been maneuvering characters for Civil War, Secret Invasion and now Seige?

Yes, I realize that I've just named two of the biggest writers in comics right now as directing Hibbs TEBTPBPX&YOI#Z.  These are the creators who have been in command of DC and Marvel for a while now, setting the storytelling agenda of both companies for the last couple of years.  Other writers have to either step in line with the larger stories or step off the ride.  That's what JMS did, stepping down from Thor rather than letting his writing become TEBTPBPX&YOI#Z on that title.  Of course, now that he's taking over a Superman title, I wonder how long until he's taking part in some big Superman crossover and having the writers of Supergirl bend to his will? 

Another interesting piece of writing that surfaced on the 'net last week is David Mamet's Master Class to the writer's of his TV show "The Unit."  In this letter to his staff writers, Mamet sets out his views of serialized TV storytelling.  It's quite a fascinating read that everyone should take the time to peruse through but, near the end, it gets quite fascinating when you think about how this could be applied at Marvel or DC:

START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS.

LOOK AT YOUR LOG LINES. ANY LOGLINE READING “BOB AND SUE DISCUSS…” IS NOT DESCRIBING A DRAMATIC SCENE.

PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR OUTLINES ARE, GENERALLY, SPECTACULAR. THE DRAMA FLOWS OUT BETWEEN THE OUTLINE AND THE FIRST DRAFT.

THINK LIKE A FILMMAKER RATHER THAN A FUNCTIONARY, BECAUSE, IN TRUTH, YOU ARE MAKING THE FILM. WHAT YOU WRITE, THEY WILL SHOOT.

HERE ARE THE DANGER SIGNALS. ANY TIME TWO CHARACTERS ARE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

ANY TIME ANY CHARACTER IS SAYING TO ANOTHER “AS YOU KNOW”, THAT IS, TELLING ANOTHER CHARACTER WHAT YOU, THE WRITER, NEED THE AUDIENCE TO KNOW, THE SCENE IS A CROCK OF SHIT.

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT. WRITE A RIPPING THREE, FOUR, SEVEN MINUTE SCENE WHICH MOVES THE STORY ALONG, AND YOU CAN, VERY SOON, BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.

REMEMBER YOU ARE WRITING FOR A VISUAL MEDIUM. MOST TELEVISION WRITING, OURS INCLUDED, SOUNDS LIKE RADIO. THE CAMERA CAN DO THE EXPLAINING FOR YOU. LET IT. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERS DOING -*LITERALLY*. WHAT ARE THEY HANDLING, WHAT ARE THEY READING. WHAT ARE THEY WATCHING ON TELEVISION, WHAT ARE THEY SEEING.


What's one of the common knocks against Bendis?  He has too many scenes of the Avengers sitting around a table discussing what they should be doing?  I hope Mamet doesn't get his hands on one of Bendis' scripts.  Or Johns' for that matter.

Part of me wants to think that if these "rules" are good enough for David Mamet, they should be good enough for anyone writing comics.  But the only rule to comics (and writing in general) is that there should be no rules.  Each piece of art is different.  Mamet is setting down the rules for HIS television show but this wouldn't work for Aaron Sorkin.  Mamet's "crock of shit" is Sorkin's bread & butter on shows like The West Wing, Sports Night and Studio 60. 

The problem with comic's writing, mostly Marvel and DC, is that there's not enough variation in it, not enough different voices trying different things.  And that's because Marvel and DC have shown time and time again that they don't want to try different things.  They've fallen into the comfort zone of having huge, line wide story beats that almost everything else has to fall into.  Maybe that's part of the success of Amazing Spider-Man; for the most part, it's avoided the need to serve the general direction of the Marvel U while it concentrates on it's own story. 

"Scenes must be dramatic" vs "He's really a good go-to guy when I need This Emotional Beat, taking place between panels X and Y of issue #Z."  It seems like an easy choice to make and it's probably is too easy.  One creates a story while one ties an issue into a larger picture.  Look at the stories we're getting right now:  Nation X, Seige, The Heroic Age, Cry For Justice, Blackest Night and War of Krypton.  How much of those stories are emotional beats to get from point A to point B?  That's exactly what Blackest Night and everything tied to it has been.  Blackest Night may be one of the biggest successes in comics right now but it's also one of the most disappointing attempts at storytelling, even after the promising start of it. 

In the end, isn't Blackest Night turning out to be an "emotional beat" to get us to Brightest Day?