By Cameron Kerkau, Staff Reporter.
One of the biggest mistakes that a creator can make is to neglect the unique strengths of the medium they are working in. It’s too common in the comic book industry that writers pen stories that feel more like a novel or film than a comic.
The first few issues of Brian Michael Bendis’ “Ultimate Spider-Man” are structured exactly the same as a film script. Then, there’s Mark Millar (“Kick-Ass,” “Wanted”) who seems to write comics so that they will be adapted into a movie. Meanwhile, the market is flooded with comics that essentially tell the same tired superhero story that we’ve been reading for decades. Comics like these cheapen the art form. When I buy a comic, I’m not looking for a cinematic experience, I want to witness something new that can only be done in a comic book.
The creators that stand out to me are the ones that really like to experiment with the craft, the ones that create comics that could only be comics. Take, for instance, the opening sequence of the second issue of Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey’s “Moon Knight.” It consists of a four by two grid of panels that, instead of showing a sequence of time, show the same moment in time in the lives of eight different characters. In this way, time doesn’t move between panels, but in between pages. A sequence like this could only work in a comic book, where you can see all eight characters at once, and absorb each of their stories at your own pace.
With “Moon Knight,” Ellis plays with plot structure in a way that is entirely unique to comic books, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential of the medium.
Kelly Sue Deconnick and Emma Rios explore this potential in a more visual way with their supernatural western “Pretty Deadly.” Referring to the image on the right, we meet an old man and a young girl that travel from town to town telling tales to locals. The man carries a signpost, and on it there’s a chart with pictures of the characters and plot points in their story. As the young girl sings the plot to the crowd, the old man directs their attention to different pictures on the chart. The creators use this plot device to give us a visually striking scene where the man’s pointing stick stretches across the page and becomes the border between each panel. The panels then alternate between depicting the story the young girl is telling, and showing the crowd’s reaction.
This kind of ingenuity elevates the medium as an art form. Which is fantastic, but sometimes that’s not the point. Comic books, like all entertainment, belong to a cannibalistic culture. Most creators grew up primarily consuming comic books, and so they have a very limited idea of what a comic book can be about. This is especially true in superhero comics. Everyone knows what a Spider-Man comic looks like, so what’s the point of buying one? Superhero comics have been starving for creativity. That is why it is so much fun when a writer or artist comes along and shakes things up a bit.
Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s run on “Young Avengers” is an exquisitely fresh and joyous superhero book, for many reasons, especially the way they play with form. The villain for the first part of the book is an inter-dimensional parasite. They use this as an excuse to bend the reality around their characters. This results in a sequence where one of the main hero’s not only becomes aware of the panel borders surrounding him, but realizes he’s trapped by them. That is, until Loki frees him, and they run across even more panels to escape.
I think that a majority of people see comic books as a lower art form. Personally, I blame this on lazy creators. In 1986, Alan Moore proved with “Watchmen” that comic books can be as visually stunning as a film, while at the same time being as thematically dense as a novel. He showed us the virtue of comic books as art, so why are there so few creators following his example?
The writers and artists I’ve mentioned have proven that there are a plethora of stories and ideas that can only be told through comics. There is an infinite amount of untapped potential in the world of sequential art. It can only be grasped when creators not only take advantage of the strengths of the medium, but also when they avoid the standard and overused plots that have plagued it for decades.
