Comics Are Not Movies Waiting to Happen

     Alan Moore once commented that his (epoch-shattering) comic Watchmen could never be adequately adapted into a movie because it relied so heavily on the actual sequential art form to tell its story.  Perhaps because movie storyboards are done in panel form or because strips of comic panels bear a surface resemblance to film strips, comics have often been considered a sort of movie on paper, visual storytelling that was ready-made for easy translation to the screen.
     The truth is the form is full of its own visual language, and expresses itself in ways that film simply can't encompass (though, of course, film is full of its own intricacies that can no more easily be adapted into comics form).  The misinterpretation has something to do with seeing the comic as its parts rather than the sum of them.  Taking the entire work as an artistic whole, however, exemplifies some of the form's artistic possibilities.  Mr. Moore and artist Dave Gibboms, for instance, took the second half of Watchmen 5 (Chapter Five in graphic novel form) and turned it into an exact compositional reflection of the first half, creating a perfectly symmetrical comic book (the issue's title?  "Fearful Symmetry.")
     The next time you pick up a comic or graphic novel, take a look at a page in a slightly different way.  After you've read it from panel to panel, have a look at the page as a whole.  Plenty of comic pages are, admittedly, just one panel laid out after another.  But sometimes you hit a page that does something magical, either subtly or forcefully.  It takes control of your eye and guides it on a journey through the images in a manner no other medium possibly could.  Maybe it's about how the panels are laid out in relation to one another or maybe the figures guide you with their placement and body language effortlessly through the narratie or possibly the elements of the page comment on the very form itself.  A good place to start is with the work of Jack Kirby, who was considered the King for a number of reasons, but among them was his ability to plumb these possibilities and turn a single page into a work of art that deepens and magnifies the overall experience of reading the story.
     

More Realistic, Less Believable

     It was recently recounted to me that  David Mazzucchelli, the incomparable illustrator of (among many other things) Batman: Year One, once commented that comics creators had put in a lot of work making superheroes more realistic and, in so doing, had made them less believable. 
     Fictional characters have a nature, both individually and collectively.  Superheroes were conceived as fantasies, the pure embodiments of ideals (social and physical).  Indeed, at the very beginning, they didn't really even have personalities beyond a commitment to that which they were fighting for.   As they evolved, they effectively developed personalities and simulated psychologies, but somewhere along the way, it feels like a line was crossed (maybe Watchmen was that line), where the deeper into realism creators went, the further they got from the characters' natures.  There comes a point where, when you try to explain and delineate the nuances of a fantasy, you merely highlight how much of a fantasy it is.

Spring Break

    Beyond Where You Stand is going on Spring Break.  A new post will appear on Thursday, April 2nd.

The Way Inn

    Attending a conference, Neil Double checks into the Way Inn, one location of a Holiday Inn-like super-franchise.  But the Way Inn's hallways wind much deeper than anyone suspects and when Neil follows the wrong person through the wrong door, he steps into a surreal nightmare of cosmic proportions.
     Will Wiles has written a powerful rumination on the effect our modern physical and social structures are having on the world and on us.  Beyond the fact that it's beautifully written, I found that Mr. Wiles explores many of the same ideas I do in Those that Wake and What We Become, though with his own sophistication and expression, of course.  If I may be so bold as to say so without Mr. Wiles's permission, the Way Inn feels like an adult counterpart to my own young adult novels.  For this, as well as for reasons of pure quality and enjoyment, I couldn't recommend the Way Inn more highly.

Couples Retreat Redux

     The last Couples Retreat, a conference on collaboration hosted by the LREI librarians and Tech teachers, went so well, they asked us to do it again.  The next retreat will take place on Friday, May 1st, when the fine folks at Fieldston have agreed to co-host and open up their space for attendees.  All details can be found here.
     If you missed it last time, please join us.