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I’ve said before that it is perfectly possible to have a comic with pictures and no words, but it’s not possible to have a comic with words and no pictures.
So what happens when I have to try and override my own proclamation? I’m about to find out.
Several months ago I was contacted by a lady who was recruiting writers to do readings for Lit Crawl L.A., in particular her segment of the event which was framed as a “Zombies vs. Vampires” competition.
If you’ve never been to a reading, it’s a situation where several authors will get up in front of an audience, one after another, and read out loud a short story or excerpt from one of their books. Often this takes place in a small club venue, where authors get to promote themselves while the clubs get to collect cover charges and drink money from the attendees.
Lit Crawl L.A. is envisioned as several readings at several different clubs within a certain stretch of North Hollywood. In this case she wanted six authors–three to a side–spinning their tales of vampires or zombies in five minutes or less. I’m not sure how victory will be determined at the end, but I’m perfectly willing to let the fangbangers have their way if necessary. Zombies aren’t known for their egos.
Now on the other hand, I have the unique situation where my zombie work happens to be in the form of a comic book, not the usual prose situation these events are tailored for. I was contacted based on a kind referral from a friend, but I immediately warned the organizer that in my case there were pictures involved, which could be awkward.
She figured that was fine, but from my end I now had to figure out a way to solve the issue of verbally presenting a comic book without sounding like a total dork, the way you might when trying to describe a Sunday funnies strip to someone (“…and then Marmaduke gets up on top of the dad with his food bowl in his mouth and the kid is watching and tells the other kid, ‘When he’s hungry, Marmaduke really bowls you over!…”). I pondered perhaps being able to project images on a wall as I read, but once I saw the venue those hopes were dashed.
In the end I decided that I could perhaps see about turning a weakness into a strength. The beginning of Episode 3 is something I’ve always felt a bit iffy on because it’s very wordy, particularly on the first page. Then there’s some arguably on point dialogue that in some cases repeats what’s there visually (“This is a nice viewpad.”, for example, as opposed to just “This is nice.”)
On the other hand, I like the flow of the dialogue and how it sounds, and I do have that background in drama where I might be able to differentiate between who’s talking by changing my voice. Would that really be any more awkward than prose authors having to get up there, continually mumbling actions or “he said”s under their breath?
If this works out it might just be interpretable as proof that we failed at comics for that particular stretch. Or it doesn’t work, which I guess would act as the opposite and prove we really did still need the pictures to tell the whole story. Or the really optimistic interpretation — that it’s just so cool it works either way!
We shall see, I suppose. We shall see what happens, when there’s nothing to see at all.