Month: December 2014

I’m going to keep this installment of the blog somewhat short since we’re on our Holiday break, but I wanted to be sure to clue you guys in to a great article for your reading pleasure. Last week I discussed at length the idea of using boldface type as a storytelling element, but that’s merely scratching the surface of the kinds of things you can choose to do or not do with comics lettering, and Balloon Tales is home to a fantastic roundtable discussion on the subject featuring some of the most respected names in the business.

The discussion is supposed to be about obsolete and/or abandoned techniques, but these are folks who know their stuff enough to not just be content with blanket bans and omissions, expressing their frustration with editors over the years who have enforced such things regardless of whether it might actually be appropriate. This discussion, incidentally, is where I got my insight that the misuse of boldface might have been due to printing errors more than any errors on the part of writers or letterers, and yet because it could be done badly in the past, there were those with veto power who had barred it from consideration— a rather irritating situation for dudes like Kurt Busiek who damn well were putting a lot of thought and care into their decisions, only to be overridden because others had been careless before.

Which is sort of like outlawing science fiction films because bad science fiction films have been made, isn’t it? Speaking of which, the roundtable begins right off with the worry that comics these days are being expected to be too much like movies, to the point where a lot of comics-specific techniques have been nixed by editors as being, ludicrously enough, “too comic-booky”. Sound effects, for example, and boy howdy did I have my own say on that.

But I, for all my opinions, am still but a small fish. Without further ado, I bid you read the words of some of the true movers and shakers: LETTERING ROUNDTABLE

Oh, and Happy New Year!

So, for the last several months I’ve mostly taken over the lettering duties for Zombie Ranch, except on those rare occasions where I beg Dawn to help me with a certain visual effect I don’t feel confident of pulling off with my shaky non-artist hands. Even before I started doing the actual balloons and captions, though, I had begun the practice of formatting the text itself in certain ways, the most common of which was deciding to present certain words in boldface, for emphasis.

Not every comic does this. In fact it fell out of favor for a long time because careless hand lettering and/or print errors would make the sentence seem like it was being said by an insane person if you tried to read it out loud. Traditional comics lettering being all capitals, you would read “GREAT SCOTT!! THE MISSILE IS ONLY SECONDS FROM IMPACT WITH THE CITY!!”, and if you care to think about that, Superman now sounds like a malfunctioning voice synthesizer. “GREAT scott!! THE missile is ONLY seconds from impact WITH THE city!!”. Linkara occasionally loves to call this phenomenon out as part of his Atop the Fourth Wall reviews, although it’s perhaps unfair to do so for anything published before the advent of digital lettering.

Mind you, if digital lettering is used, then there’s really no excuse for using boldface badly. You can continue not to use it at all, and that’s a perfectly valid choice, but I personally have really fallen in love with it as a part of my comics writing toolbox. I feel it helps me in my simulation of the rhythms of how people would talk, and as such becomes an important storytelling element.

Examples, you say? All right, take a look at this page from Episode 7 (the link should open a new window/tab for you). Note how Frank starts off with no boldface in his speech, which suggests an even keel, even when he declares Eustace’s kin as good as dead. The one exception is the boldface on his exclamation regarding Muriel, where I let his simmering frustration with the situation briefly spike through.

Eustace meanwhile is making all sorts of desperate pleas. What about this? Or this? Finally Frank cuts him off with my favorite bit of the page, one of our “whisper balloons” we’ve already established that blends with the background and is in a smaller font, but is still boldface so that I, at least, can almost hear Frank hissing the command. Frank continues with a non-whisper and some emphasized words to drive his point home, but the font remains slightly smaller than the rest of the page. Even if a reader doesn’t consciously register that, I hope subconsciously there’s still a sense of restraint that comes through.

Panel 4 is back at regular size font, but not one word is bolded, suggesting an almost monotone speech that reinforces what’s being said. Slow and steady. Keep your cool. Don’t draw attention. In Panel 5 Eustace is, of course, too panicky a sort to follow that advice to the letter (heh), so his fear still bubbles up when he asks about the stampede, but Frank’s response is very simple and neutrally delivered, capping off the page.

So there’s a prime example of my using boldface (or lack thereof) to help show character, establish rhythms, and reinforce the story. Another thing you may notice (or at least may notice on another read-through) is that almost any time speech is coming from the camera drones or walkie-talkies, there is no boldface involved, which is my choice to show the detached and/or more “lo-fi” nature of such communications. On the other hand, the overproduced media interludes run rampant with emphasis to make sure the viewer is as excited as possible!

Now all this would be obnoxious in a pure prose story, but if we accept the idea of lettering being a visual element in comics as much as anything else on the page, then shouldn’t we be considering how to present it visually? As long as some care and thought is involved in the usage, I see no reason that you can’t boldly go forwards with some boldface type.

I think it’s fair to say that no artist has ever perfectly realized their vision. You might argue such a statement is pessimistic or perhaps a case of sour grapes, but everyone I’ve ever personally known in the creative arts can point out the flaws in their own work and is never truly 100 percent satisfied with the final product, be it prose, poetry, sculpture, dance, or any other medium of expression. I can certainly picture Michaelangelo looking at his statue of David and thinking, “Well crap, I botched that bit. Hopefully no one notices.” Meanwhile a significant chunk of humanity is in awe to this day of what he accomplished.

And there’s a significant chunk of humanity that don’t care (ignorant or not), and I’m sure even a chunk of humanity who consider that sculpture to be an overrated piece of junk. The other side of the equation is the audience, where even if an artist theoretically considered his work to be perfection (like, I suppose, Kanye West might?), the viewer or reader can still be entirely unmoved, or moved in a way the creator didn’t intend. Paul McCartney might have conceived the song “Helter Skelter” because he “liked noise“, but I’m sure he was as horrified as anyone else when Charles Manson was inspired to do some very nasty things while listening to it.

Does that lack of connection or unintended reaction make the art in question a failure? Good question. Does Fifty Shades of Grey selling millions of copies make it a success? What about works that go unrecognized or even reviled at the time they’re first published or put on display, only to later be inducted into the ranks of the all-time classics every schoolchild gets subjected to?

There’s no easy answer to this, which is why I feel that from a creator standpoint it’s a trap to create things that you think will appeal to the masses rather than something you personally are passionate about. On the one hand, it’s easier to handle the idea of flawed work or unmet expectations if you don’t really care about what you’re doing. On the other, it seems like a pretty hollow exercise. That’s probably why a lot of Hollywood or Triple A gaming output leaves me cold, since they’re usually conceived first and foremost as something focus groups or statistics say will work and make money. When you encounter the rare exception where the people involved were excited about what they were doing and believed in it enough to take risks, you can just about feel that joy and effort shining through— and then it becomes a success and everyone rushes to copy it and try to cash in, meanwhile making excuses on why they passed it up and making more excuses when their soulless retreads fail.

In most cases, the more money and overhead and people involved, the less risks will be tolerated. And that’s why the wild world of webcomics continues to be an exciting thing, because with few exceptions, they’re all passion projects of their creators that don’t need a big bankroll for production and distribution. That’s far from saying we present uncompromised visions, mind you. Certainly I don’t consider Zombie Ranch to be a flawless product, and there have been many times where our reach has exceeded our grasp, or at least where my grandiose intentions have exceeded my artist’s time and patience. But we continue to try. To do otherwise wouldn’t be very passionate at all, and if we didn’t care, there’s no excuse for expecting you to.

The creative process can be a funky beast. I remember reading one of Alfred Hitchcock’s storyboards for North by Northwest where he detailed the famous cropduster chase scene right down to weird little things like Cary Grant’s leg flying awkwardly upwards just so on one of his dives for cover (as you’ll see in the 89th panel shown in this presentation).

Creators like Hitchock and Stanley Kubrick were well-known for being nearly tyrannical in their attention to detail and insistence on the finished product matching the vision in their minds. You might argue their films were finished before they even started. Was there any room for improvisation? For changing circumstances? In Kubrick’s case there had to be, since there was no way in hell he could keep a lid on someone like Peter Sellers,  and in point of fact it seems he didn’t even try. The rest of the production might have been tightly controlled, but whatever Sellers said or did while the cameras rolled tended to make its way retroactively into the script, as if there were spots there marked with the cinematic equivalent of “This Space Intentionally Left Blank”.

It’s funny because Kubrick’s far from what I might think of as an adherent of “seat-of-your-pants” storytelling, but clearly he had some tolerance and even encouragement for it under the proper circumstances. Hitchcock I’m less familiar with, but film productions are such complicated things that surely he must have had to bend at times? (cue cameo appearance where he steps out and gravely informs me not to call him Shirley).

I find it impressive when someone has that level of drive and vision, birthing worlds and stories whole cloth right down to the smallest minutiae. Conversely, there are several classic films and classic moments in films out there that were more immediate and organic in their development, and yet no less enjoyable as an end result. Rutger Hauer’s final monologue in Blade Runner. The ‘shoot the swordsman‘ scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pretty much the entirety of Casablanca.

Somewhere in this tug of order versus chaos lies all art that ever was created and all that ever will be created, but at each point of the spectrum there are examples of greatness. The creative process may be a funky beast, but it takes all comers, and that’s a fairer shake than most things in this existence of ours.

You know what one of the greatest ironies of Zombie Ranch (at least for me) is? It’s that despite his demonstrated lack of empathy for fellow human beings and despite all his scheming and plotting from the shadowy depths of his office, our nameless executive has so far been running a reality television show that seems actually pretty real.

Now you might think that that’s no great accomplishment. It’s reality television, right? That means people are going about their business as they usually would, just with the addition of a camera crew recording them. That’s part of the whole allure for producers as well, isn’t it? Not having to pay actors and scriptwriters?

In many cases, you’d be distressingly wrong. On the one end, you get the phenomenon where you have “fix-it” shows like Biggest Loser or Kitchen Nightmares where the fixes don’t stick, often because the real people involved are not any more equipped to handle their problems than when the network swooped in to be their saviors.

“The unfortunate truth is that people on The Biggest Loser don’t do anything but train for the entirety of the season — the show’s producers cover all their expenses during filming. It’s not like they’re going to work and then driving over to the gym to film some sit-ups. They aren’t doing anything except training, under constant supervision, for however many weeks production lasts.”

Now I don’t know about you, but if I had someone paying for healthy meals, personal trainers, and basically me being a professional exerciser (and nothing else) for a few months, I reckon I’d be able to shed some pounds. It’s not really representative of what your average American has the time or money to do, and so almost inevitably when the cameras leave and the contestants return to their normal lives, back come the pounds. But we the audience don’t need to know that any more than we need to know a lot of those restaurants “saved” by Gordon Ramsay are going bankrupt again. Like a fairy tale, we’re led to believe in a Happily Ever After.

The reality, post-“reality”, is far more depressing, but still, at least they’re real people with real reactions, not actors in staged scenes, right? Well, hold on again. They may not be being paid like actual, SAG member actors, but the issue of whether or not they’re being directed is another matter entirely. Read this first-hand account if you dare. See, real-life doesn’t lend itself as neatly to all the narrative devices we’re used to like good guys and bad guys or three act structures where a hero emerges through trials, but a production crew will often be trying to shape it that way, particularly if the premise isn’t one that’s naturally lending itself to interesting conflict. Do the Italian-Americans on Cake Boss really constantly talk like they’re Sopranos extras, or are they being encouraged to exaggerate for entertainment purposes? How many of the back office scenes in Pawn Stars are actually candid?

From the article by Michael Thot I linked above, it’s not that the people involved are being fully scripted, but I’m betting a lot of it is akin to the set-up for improvisational skits: “Okay, Bobby and Sheila, let’s get you into Bobby’s office. Now, Bobby, you know Sheila lost the concert tickets and you’re going to try to get her to confess. Sheila, you try to change the subject. Aaaand… go!” There was possibly even a moment earlier where this happened naturally, but now it’s being restaged. Or does anyone really think the experts that get called in on Pawn Stars are readily available at a moment’s notice whenever someone happens to bring in a questionable antique?

An episode of Heroes of Cosplay supposedly centered around the Emerald City Comicon Masquerade, but the way it was being presented was rather fishy to anyone familiar with the event, right up to there being a “First Place”, “Second Place”, “Third Place”, instead of the usual awards given out by category. It smacked entirely of producers wanting to go with a format they felt would be more familiar to a mass audience and more conducive to the idea of winners and losers. Once I realized that, the wires started showing and I could see that the audience and the stage were in two separate places even though they were being edited to appear to be part of the same room. Most likely scenario was probably that the people involved did compete in and judge the actual competition, but the HoC cast and some others were then pulled from that into a separate smaller room where a more controlled scenario could be played out.

Or there’s personal testimony I have from people like my friend who responded to an actual extras casting call for the reality show Game of Arms. They set up at a bar, and according to him the actual arm wrestling was unscripted and could have gone either way, but everything around that was totally staged. He was paid to be there to whoop and holler and pretend to drink beer (no one got real alcohol) alongside a bunch of other extras doing the same. Perhaps the most bizarre element was the casting call asking for “hipsters and biker-types”, but yeah, if you ever watched that show and wondered how so many people could be that excited over arm wrestling? Now you know.

Clearly, our ClearStream exec has to step up his game. As these things go, he’s still in danger of being entirely too ethical.