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You heard me. Thought balloons. Even if they’re dressed up like narrative captions, we all know what they are. They’re the expression of internal monologue alongside the action. They can only happen in comics. Sure, you can do voiceover in film and you can run internal monologue in prose, but those thoughts cannot be physically embedded in the action in the way that comics can do them. Thought balloons are a powerful expressive tool, one that’s continually dumped on or laughed at as a crutch. But ask Grant Morrison; there’s something unique about them, about the distillation of mental energy into ink and space.
Page two of the inked art for STRANGEWAYS: THIRSTY. Artwork by Gervasio and Jok of Estudio Haus. Script is after the jump. I think...
PAGE 2
PANEL 1
Outside the bar, Joseph is falling/being thrown out the front door. Me might see Penny’s hand open, having tossed him.
PENNY
And don’t come back until you sober up and plan to stay that way!JOSEPH
Huuaaah!
JOSEPH
Ooof!
JOSEPH
Well if that don’t beat all?JOSEPH
Ah, who needs her anyways?
CAPTION
An hour of stumbling later.JOSEPH
Jus’ a little further. They got a bar in Drytown, I hear.JOSEPH
Woulda been faster on a horse…
SFX
Rustling of leaves
JOSEPH
Huh? Whuzzat?
“They don’t love you like I love you." Just like the song says.
What more needs to be said? When it comes to matters of the heart, humans express their most personal idiosyncracies, personality twitches and hidden needs. How else would it be love? How else would you be granted the strength to express the inexpressible? Only love gives you wings like that. Only love.
I won’t pretend to come up with a list of fifty things. The way things are, if I marshal the attention span to get to twenty-three, I’ll be happy.
Of course, I wrote that yesterday. I’ve got a list. But it’s not much more than that. Perhaps I’ll be adding to this later on. Some of these I’ve already expounded on at great length, but others perhaps not so much so. You’re welcome to guess at the meaning of each, though some are certainly easier than others.
Balloons
Strange
Thing
Ink
Serial
Costumes
Celestial
Disposability
Stack
Monastics
Gerber
Hanks
Cooke
Moore
Kirby
Ditko
Micronauts
Rack
Shakespeare
Surfer
Mutant
Marshal
Fireside
Frank
Thimble
Store
Panel
Horror
Warlock
Talbot
Stupid
McKean
Recreation
Phoenix
Fantastic
Punching
Flex
Silence
Alchemy
Dorkin
Bullpen
Pope
Monsters
Covers
Quarters
Outlaw
Opportunity
Text
Bitch
Deliverance
So, I got some questions about Steven's work after the first STRANGEWAYS trailer went up last year. I actually found a video with his music in it up on YouTube. I should direct you to www.worstward.com, his personal site where you can order albums and the like. There weren't any samples up last time I checked, but if you're a last.fm subscriber, you can get some that was as well.
So asked Michael Stipe in LIFE'S RICH PAGEANT (one of my favorites, even if it wasn't as earthshattering as MURMUR or an album I come back to even now such as FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION.)
News Sleazy Tintin book raises ire of estate - News from Spain - Expatica
So if I call it Tintin fanfic, I suppose I'm going to get a kick in the teeth, right? Oddly, it seems like this whole thing is kind of a non-issue. I mean, there's an issue, but if this book had been written by Herge, the there'd have been no kerfluffle at all, right? The point is that this was an unauthorized work that's being clamped down on by the holders of the copyright.
I realize that I hold an unpopular position in this regard. I don't think that there's any inherent right to profit from fanfiction based on characters for whom you don't own. If you can convince the copyright holders (better yet, the creators, but these two parties are often not the same, sadly) then, great, go ahead and publish the new work. But if you don't own the work and you go ahead and publish it, then you oughta expect to be clobbered.
Now, would anyone in the abovementioned case have cared about the book if it hadn't supposedly been about Tintin in the first place? No. It would have been an unremarkable potboiler by all descriptions. Seems to me that the writer was banking on a character that he himself didn't create (but spent some time re-imagining) to sell their work. I'll allow for the possibility of misreading things, but I don't think that I have.
Now, I realize that in comics we're quite used to pastiche. You know, pastiche, where you copy something not to make fun of it (that's parody) but to comment on it, obliquely or otherwise. For instance, WATCHMEN is a pastiche of the Charlton heroes, whom DC had bought up the copyright on. This allowed the story to go places that it couldn't have gone had the characters in WATCHMEN been The Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, et al. As much as I regard pastiche as theft (in the Wildean sense of stealing and not borrowing), there's a difference between it and outright theft (ie, writing a book about Tintin and getting frisson from the character doing things that they'd not ordinarily do. Yes, you can make the same argument about say, Grant Morrison and Rian Hughe's reimagining of DAN DARE, I'll allow it.)
We've come to lean heavily on pastiche, on "oh hey, so and so is this universe's Superman analogue," and it's far too much like borrowing for my taste. Write your own material. Comics aren't alone in this, mind you. There's been a whole raft of literature since the fifties and sixties where you get "WUTHERING HEIGHTS told from a minor character's point of view." The guilty know who they are.
We're already standing on the shoulders of giants. No need to advertise it.
If you want to see the script, check it out in the jump. May do this for the first three pages or so so folks can get a peek behind the curtain as it were.
STRANGEWAYS: THIRSTYPART 1 – TOWN WITHOUT CHEER
PAGE 1
PANEL 1
Interior, frontier town tavern/bar. Quiet, getting to the end of the night, not too many customers saying too much. There’s a Woman behind the bar, Penny Rybandt. She’s the wife of the head inkeeper and part-owner of the bar and she’s not happy right now.
Standing on the other side of the bar is her husband Joseph. He’s drunk to the gills, slouched, and asking for more. And he’s angry.
JOSEPH I’m still thirsty!PENNY
Don’t know how that’d be with all you’ve drunk tonight!
PANEL 2
Closer in, Joseph pleading.
JOSEPH I ain’t had all that much.JOSEPH
Still upright.PENNY
A feather could fix that!PENNY
You said “come with me and open a bar!” Not “come with me and drink it dry!”
PANEL 3
Joseph is really angry now. How dare she!?
JOSEPH
It’s my liquor as much as it’s yours! You got no right!PENNY
And you’ve got no right to waste yourself like this!JOSEPH
I need…
PANEL 4
Penny is reaching under the bar for something as Joseph leans forward to see what it is.
JOSEPH
Oh, getting the good stuff, eh?PENNY
Nope.
PANEL 5
Penny comes up with a bucket of washing water.
PANEL 6
And dumps it in his face. Joseph is a spluttering mess.
Of course, the dialogue is never final until I letter things. There's too much that can get changed like, oh say, my lines won't fit in the panel because I tried to crowd seven panels on a page. I try to minimize that, but you can bet that lettering will be rewriting.
But Dorian knocked this one out of the park. And it's the Best. Movie. Ever.
I'll have to do some math (which is hard), but I think with this edition of Full Bleed, I'm tied with the run on it I had back at Broken Frontier. This week, I talk about Robert Kirkman's video manifesto.
Comics Should Be Good! Strangeways: Murder Moon Review
The guys over at Comics Should Be Good! take a look at STRANGEWAYS: MURDER MOON and mostly like what they see. Go and give them some more hits, won't you?
In 2010, Dark Horse comics will be reprinting Guy Davis' work on THE MARQUIS (which has had a number of homes over the years), and there'll be a new series as well. Apparently it was announced at the comic-con at one of the many panels that I didn't attend.
Good news comes in threes, so I'm anticipating the next jolt.
The Strangeness of Brendan McCarthy: New Comic > Dr Strange & Spider-Man
Brendan McCarthy? In *my* Spider-Man/Dr. Strange?
It's more likely than you think. Which makes me pretty happy.
More Than Meets The Mogwai: Lee Marvin and google video
Likely to have some things to say about this particular film. But in the meantime, here's an interview with POINT BLANK star Lee Marvin, I'm guessing sometime shortly before his death in 1987.
One. Of. A. Kind.
Apparently this is a deal. I'm not entirely sure why. Lots of folks coming out of the woodwork to announce that the X-Men comics are all about prejudice and living as a persecuted minority. Which is funny, because to my eyes, everyone in the pages of that book is glossy and beautiful and at least come across as self-assured (not to mention comfortable in a skintight costume.) I'm not getting a lot of persecution out of that. Who doesn't want to be a beautiful mutant?
I'd like it more if the book was about the future, about inexorable change and how it best gets integrated into a world that isn't ready for it, whether it's forceful assimilation or quietly retaining a kernel of positive change, even in a sea of sameness that wears down shiny edges with overlapping sheets of dull mundanity.
But really guys, the book has been about persecution for a long, long time. At least it nominally was back when I read it printed on stone tablets that I bought at the corner store.
It gets really good about four minutes in. Your mileage may vary.
There may be real content tomorrow, but let The Wonder fill you in the interim.
On SDCC 2008, at least from me. Of course, I write this and then I read that Sean Collins has basically said a lot of the sam thing, only better, over at his site.
Quoth Alan Moore: "I will say this: I’ll bet my arse that within 6 months or a year, everyone will be sick to the back teeth of realistic superheroes."
As seen here., which I think was also reprinted in an issue of THE COMICS JOURNAL a long, long time ago.
Again, the irony is rich.