Some thoughts on some recent comics

[laughing_tree]

These are not reviews.

Karnak #4, by Warren Ellis and Roland Boschi. People talk about how Ellis brought decompression to mainstream comics, but what doesn't get brought up much is how, for all the many creators who've followed in his footsteps, it's still the case that almost none of them take decompression to the extremes he does. I'm thinking specifically of stuff like that one issue of PLANETARY that spent... what was it? Six pages?... on nothing but a meteor getting closer,closer, closer to Earth and finally crashing.

Which leads me to two thoughts:

1. Some readers like to accuse decompressed writing as just being lazy, but I think this shows there's more to it than that. If it was purely about laziness, we'd see more writers who do take it as far as Ellis does because he proves that they could get away with it.

2. *How* does Ellis get away with it? I don't mean away with it with the editors. I mean away with it with me and my critical faculties? This is the weird and fascinating thing about decompression, at least when it's well-done: I can't actually explain why I don't feel ripped off. I just know I don't. I mean, this comic, KARNAK, does stuff like spend an entire page on a wordless sequence of a SHIELD Helicarrier moving through the sky. Not escaping enemies or rushing anywhere or anything else that's actually dramatic and plot-important but just traveling from one location to another. The latest issue spends an entire wordless page on Karnak descending said Helicarrier and walking into the bad guys' base.

If you described those pages to me, there's no way I'd feel they were effective usage of limited page space. But when I actually read the comic, I don't mind at all, so they clearly do work. I can't explain why, though.





Silver Surfer #4, by Dan Slott and Mike Allred. This book's a good example of writing and art being in utter sympatico. It's hard not to conclude that the writing and especially the dialogue in this comic is overly cheesy or overly sentimental, but Allred's style makes it work.





Squadron Supreme #7, by James Robinson and Leonard Kirk. It's interesting to compare this book with All-New All-Different Avengers. Mark Waid's talked about how the major strength of team books is the opportunities for interactions between the cast. You can see that in ANAD Avengers, where I think every character plot has been about how character A relates to character B (Nova distrusting Vision, Cap and Thor's bonding, etc.) None of those subplots are about an *individual* person. (I suppose this makes sense as an approach for a book where every character has a solo book too. It means Waid can't actually make changes in any of their lives, so what's left is changes in their relations with one another.)

Anyway, Squadron Supreme is the opposite extreme. This book often feels like it's halfway to being an anthology comic, like there's one Hyperion feature, one Dr. Spectrum feature, etc., and these five features just happen to have their pages mixed together instead of being told one after the other like in a regular anthology. The characters each have their own plots, with little enough connection to anything any of the others are doing.

The latest issue is about Nighthawk, Hyperion, and Dr. Spectrum, but they never interact with each other or even share the same page. Instead, one's meeting his Marvel Universe counterpart, one's driving across America, and one's getting involved in Inhuman/alien shenanigans under the sea, and the three strands have nothing in common. None of this is a complaint, though. It gives the book a more distinctive flavor.

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

"In the land of the blind Eye am king!"

Brother Eye's summer job in the Marvel universe got to an auspicious start.

And no, Norrin, you don't negotiate with terraformists (okay, so maybe Zenn-Laformists would be more accurate, but that just doesn't work).

[deh_tommy]

I'm still a bit confused, was anyone who passed through the transformative field accidentally or unwillingly (like the Avengers) brainwashed to fight against Earth Culture, or did they stay the same person and decide out of their own free will to do so?

[laughing_tree]

Brainwashing's more accurate. Shalla-Bal's field re-writes culture, so it made humans culturally Zenn-Lavian. So the Vision, for example, would still be himself in a sense, but instead of being fond of jazz, chess, and Walk Kelly comics, he'd be into Zenn-Lavian loop-lute music and 3D holo-strips, or whatever. And that brings with it changes in values and beliefs, of course.

[bruinsfan]

It's basically what Kulan Gath and Morgan Le Fay have done in the past with magic, right? Overwriting their own worldviews/birth societies over the existing present-day one, except in their case it physically transformed the affected area as well.

[crinos]

Okay, Alicia getting combat training (and one of those walking sticks that turns into a weapon) from Matt Murdock is an idea so awesome that I am amazed no one has ever done it before.

[long_silence]

It just makes sense that she get some self defense training considering her affiliation with various heroes like the FF, and who better to train her than Matt Murdock?

But I'm not too crazy about the idea that every single blind person in the Marvel Universe fighting like Daredevil and by extension Stick.

[crinos]

Well its not every blind person, its the blind person who happens to be dating the Thing and so has an in with various street level super heroes, including the blind ninja man.

I can just imagine how the conversation went.

Alicia: So... you're Daredevil. The blind super hero.

Daredevil: Yeah, that's me.

Alicia: Alright, cards on the table here, I want you to teach me how to fight.

Daredevil: What? Why?

Alicia: Because I'm a single woman living in New York City, because my boyfriend is a Super hero on the team that regularly fights Dr. Doom, and my dad is a Super villain. Look, I'm not looking to become Lady Daredevil or anything, its just that the next time a Skrull tries to replace me or the Mad Thinker kidnaps me or the Yancy Street gang sneak in here and rearrange my furniture on me, I'd like to be able to defend myself a bit.

Daredevil:.... Okay then. We'll start next week. Pick up some work out gear and a first aid kit.

[bruinsfan]

It really makes sense to have Murdock train her too, as his fighting style would take blindness as a baseline rather than having to be adapted like anything Steve Rogers or Shang-Chi could teach her.

[starwolf_oakley]

The 1990s Fantastic Four cartoon had Matt and Alicia as friends, for the episode that adapted "And a Blind Man Shall Lead Them."

[doodleboy]

On the decompression thing, there's a video series called "Every Frame a Painting" which talks about storytelling in film, since the creator is a professional editor it talks about editing alot. In his latest episode he talks about how long scenes play out affects the emotion and rhythm of the scene and adding or subtracting a few seconds completely changes the feeling.

Of course the limited space in comics makes picking which scenes to draw out really really hard. I guess that's one of the reasons manga-artists do it much better (look at Naoki Urasawa's and Shuzo Oshimi's work for people who do it well).

Anyways, just a few random thoughts, here's the video I was talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q3eITC01Fg

And on the Slott thing, one of the things I do like about manga and the Indie scene is that the artist and the writing are integral parts of each other. Rather then corporate comics where art teams change every which way. A good comic has the art and the writing working together to be something more substantial then it's individual parts. Just like how a good director can elevate a script.

Also think I'm using too many film analogies here, but ah well. On another note on (more stuff happening equals better), I've heard a story about a writer in 2000AD who pretty much started slowly taking words out of his issues and then taunting the other writers about how the less words he put into an issue the better the reviews got.

[laughing_tree]

Wow, that's an informative video. Thanks!

I'm aware of the effect decompression can have on a scene. I just find it hard to justify when done as extensively as Ellis does it, what with how much page space it comes at the expense of. I mean, seven pages on a meteor getting closer and closer to Earth! 7! Think of how much more story could have been included if he'd tightened it up. However much decompressing the meteor descent makes it more impactful or effective, is it really worth sacrificing six pages?

I mean, clearly the answer's 'yes' because I love that issue of PLANETARY. Like I said, I don't feel ripped off. But my brain tells me I should...?

[bruinsfan]

I look upon decompression as a particularly difficult-to-use stylistic tool. Ellis is a talented and creative enough writer to use it capably and make sure it has a powerful impact within the story. As opposed to Bendis-style parroted dialog and multiple pages of talking heads that say very little. (I also recall the similarly plotted and scripted Giffen/Bierbaum Legion stories back in the 90s frustrating me by making me feel I'd gotten about 1/3 of a comic for my money.)

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

Nice David Bowie cameo on that first page.

[cainofdreaming]

I wonder how many civets Hyperion had to squeeze to get that coffee. Super animal cruelty ahoy!

[q99]

"2. *How* does Ellis get away with it? I don't mean away with it with the editors. I mean away with it with me and my critical faculties? This is the weird and fascinating thing about decompression, at least when it's well-done: I can't actually explain why I don't feel ripped off. I just know I don't. I mean, this comic, KARNAK, does stuff like spend an entire page on a wordless sequence of a SHIELD Helicarrier moving through the sky. Not escaping enemies or rushing anywhere or anything else that's actually dramatic and plot-important but just traveling from one location to another. The latest issue spends an entire wordless page on Karnak descending said Helicarrier and walking into the bad guys' base."


I think a lot of it is, while not rushed, stuff is very much happening and changing in these images. It's *not* just 'a cool page,' it's not just stuff happening with maximum show, and also the stuff you do see is new- that first image? There's stuff to absorb there in the establishing shot in a way there isn't in 'the fourth fight splash of this battle'.

Decompression is not inherently bad, but it's common to flash over substance people, but it can also be used to emphasize impact, show emotions and subtlety, put more detail into one moment, etc. in the space. Even if the time passed in the story is low, stuff happens.

[laughing_tree]

To clarify, I don't consider the pages I chose to post to be examples of the decompression I'm talking about. In fact, that first pages is an excellent example of when a splash page is perfectly justified, to the point of almost obligatory.

I'd post an example of the decompression I *am* talking about, except showing them in isolation doesn't really get across what I mean. It's the cumulative effect of how much Ellis does it that makes it stand out, not any individual instances on their own.

[bruinsfan]

I can't be the only one who really likes it that Hyperion's getting flirty with a waitress who's old enough to have a mid-gradeschool-age kid and looks like a regular person rather than a photoshopped Victoria's Secret model.