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Heroes Never Rust #89: Dream Sequences

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Heroes Never Rust #89 by Sean Ironman

Watchmen: Dream Sequences

When I took Introduction to Creative Writing as an undergraduate student, I was given a list of things that I could not use in my writing. I was told that my stories would be stronger if I did not include certain things, at least as a beginning writer. I have forgotten most of the list, but a few of the items were: flashbacks, drug-addicted protagonists, and dream sequences. After reading the list, I was pissed off, as many undergraduate students seem to be when given constraints for their writing. But, as I get older and more experienced as both a writer and a teacher, I believe my instructor was right in restricting the content of our work. Yes, those items I listed are used in many stories, but as a student it was important to limit the playing field so that I could learn certain craft elements before moving on to more complicated elements. I still have a habit of trying to avoid elements such as dream sequences in my own work, but when used well, they can strengthen a story in unique ways.

Watchmen VII

Issue seven of Watchmen is focused on Dan Drieberg (Night Owl II) and Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre II). Up until this issue, the two have mainly reacted to the story’s events, staying on the sidelines. But, now, they are reinvigorated and put on their costumes that have gathered dust over the years since their retirement and they go out into the night and rescue tenants from a burning building. And, in the end, Dan decides that they need to break Rorschach out of prison. Watchmen has entered its second half and it is time for the characters’ stories to come together.

The difficulty in this issue lies in getting Dan and Laurie to put their costumes back on. They have been retired for years. In a comic, at least in this one, there is no interiority, no thought bubbles. And while that may be different in prose, point of view could prove limiting at times, and it may be more interesting to show something than to tell. Here, Dan falls asleep and the reader is given a one-page dream sequence (although there are two panels of the dream sequence on the next page). In the dream, he runs to a woman dressed in a black vigilante costume. She removes his skin from head to toe to reveal that he is Night Owl, and he in turn removes her skin, revealing Laurie. They go to kiss, but a nuclear explosion behind them obliterates the two lovers. The dream itself is very obvious in its metaphor. Deep down, Dan is a superhero. So is Laurie. He was not Dan Drieberg pretending to be Night Owl. He was Night Owl pretending to be Dan Drieberg. And now that he has found happiness with Laurie, it is too late. The world will be destroyed. Finding happiness does not really mean anything. He has to protect the world or else his happiness will be destroyed. Because of this dream, he decides to suit up, and along with Laurie in her Silk Spectre costume, they head out into the night to protect the city.

WatchmenDream

The dream sequence works on a technical level because the sequence changes style from the rest of the comic. Most of the comic is told in a nine-panel grid (3×3). But, the dream sequence is told is many more panels, which are thinner. There are two rows of six panels, and the final row has four dream panels and one panel (the size of two dream panels) of Dan waking up from the dream. The reader should not be tricked. The reader should not turn the page and think what they are seeing is really happening in the story. By changing the structure and the style of the panels, the comic signals the reader that there is a change. The pacing picks up. It takes a shorter amount of time for the reader to absorb smaller panels than larger ones. Then, in that final panel of the page of Dan waking, the reader stops, hit with the same intensity that Dan is. There is no other page in the issue that is set up like this dream sequence. And it works because of just that. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons makes the dream crucial to the story, stylistically different so that readers know it’s a dream, and a combination of easy to understand and weird to take advantage of a dream state without losing the reader.

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Photo by John King

Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Word from the King #1: Some Thoughts on Ben Affleck Being Cast as Batman

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Word from the King #1 by John King

The blogosphere instantaneously shit itself sideways when Ben Affleck was cast as the next Batman. Here are some meditations on the ensuing misplaced hysteria.

1. There are actually real problems in the world.

2. No, really. There are. Instead of bitching about who has been cast as a comic book hero, be a more heroic person by paying more attention to the world you live in. The real world needs you more than Gotham or Metropolis does.

3. While Christian Bale was credibly intense, frankly, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is over nine hours of abysmal storytelling. As the Joker, Heath Ledger stole the show in The Dark Knight; the principle actors and characters were inconsequential otherwise. We needed Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine to care about Bruce Wayne because the movie gave the audience no reason to. The smart storytelling of Memento and Inception didn’t find its way into the Batmans, which were mostly boring, goofy, awkwardly sanctimonious, and (for too many moments in The Dark Knight) incomprehensible. The only reason the Chris Nolan versions seemed good was the aesthetic deprivations of the Tim Burton Batmans, which only the Joel Schumacher Batmans could make look good.

4. The jury is very much out on Zach Snyder, too. Man of Steel got a passing grade because it was graded on a scale that included Superman Returns. Snyder turned Watchmen into a mediocre film. He doesn’t do real characters well.

5. Ben Affleck may have played the lead in what is almost, ALMOST, the worst film imaginable for Daredevil (all cleft chin, cumbersome, scrunchy leather, and fight scenes that might as well have been choreographed by Sid and Marty Krofft).

Daredevil

And Ben Affleck might seem oddly unlikable and unwatchable much of the time. But he can also be amazing, when he acts with affect, as someone much different than himself. He held his own in Shakespeare in Love, opposite Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Judy Dench, and others. And his performance as George Reeves, the original superman, in Hollywoodland is really shockingly nuanced and good.

Hollywoodland

6. Frankly, I am ashamed of myself. Go back to #2. And when you do so, don’t wear tights, and please don’t carry a weapon. The cape is optional.

Heroes Never Rust #3: Superhero Films’ Effect on the Comics

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Heroes Never Rust #3 by Sean Ironman

Superhero Films’ Effect on the Comics

Before the first Iron Man movie, I never liked the character. Some of my dislike for Tony Stark surely came from people constantly mentioning the character because of my last name and from getting the same Iron Man action figure as a gift year after year as a child. When I was young, I didn’t like superheroes that were human. I didn’t want to read about something that could happen. A person could build a suit and fight crime. My interest was more in the X-Men. But, even as I grew older, I came to love human characters like the Punisher even more than the super-powered ones. But Iron Man was never interesting to me.

I read some Iron Man stories, and other than comics like Warren Ellis’ “Extremis” and David Michelinie’s and Bob Layton’s “Demon in a Bottle,” the character never really grabbed me in the long run. Superheroes that were millionaires never really interested me. (Except for Batman, who got a pass because I considered him to be crazy, and that was interesting.)

But then the movie was released.

While much of the success was because of Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark, the movie succeed for me because they went back to basics with the character.  And around the same time, Marvel Comics did the same in the comic books. I actually started to read Iron Man comics, Matt Fraction’s run, and looking forward to the next issue.

ironmanomnibus

Now, the reason I started reading Iron Man comics, and I’m sure a big reason for Marvel’s push on the character, was because of the film. There have been many changes to the comics because of the films over the last decade or so. I tend to remember only the bad decisions. Decisions like changing the 5’3’’ Wolverine to look like Hugh Jackman. Or bringing any number of the characters that return from the dead around the time the film is released, for example, William Striker returning in X-Treme X-Men and partnered with Lady Deathstrike when X2 came out in theaters. Not too long ago, Marvel Comics brought in an African-American Nick Fury into the Marvel 616 Universe to coincide with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in the movies. (Although the Ultimate Universe Nick Fury was based on Samuel L. Jackson.)

Usually, I think about films’ effect on comics as a negative. I have a hard time believing many of these changes have comic from the writers and artists of the comic instead of some higher-up in the company. But film adaptations can help refocus the character in the comics.

One of the benefits of creating a comic book instead of a film is cost. Comic books cost nothing compared to a film. The great thing about this is the ideas for a comic can be incredibly wild. They don’t need to bring in as huge of an audience to be successful. This is one of the reasons is why comics are so cool.

But this can also backfire from time to time. Like in the 90’s story Avengers: The Crossing when Iron Man kills Yellowjacket, another Avenger, and the rest of the Avengers travel back in time and get a young Tony Stark to defeat the adult Tony Stark. The younger version ended up staying in the present timeline and replaced the adult Tony. That’s just confusing.

A film can help set things straight. Sure, I understand that the higher-ups want things to change or at least some stories be ready for the audience that watches the film and may be interested in the comics, but it can work when the focus is still on character, getting back to what made the character a success in the first place.

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Sean Ironman

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Heroes Never Rust #2: Why is Batman a Superhero but James Bond isn’t?

15 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust, James Bond

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Heroes Never Rust #2 by Sean Ironman

Why is Batman a Superhero but James Bond isn’t?

One of the inaccuracies about superheroes I’ve found is that all comic book heroes are superheroes. Since the sixties, superhero comics have been the most popular genre in the comics industry. People forget comic books are not just superheroes, and superheroes are not just comic books. Today, I’m not interested in going down what created this issue or trying to get non-comic readers interested. One of the issues with people equating comic books with superheroes is that the definition of superheroes gets blurred. What is a superhero? It sounds like a question with an easy answer at first, but it’s much more complex than it looks.

batman_robin_batmobile_01

JamesBond

The initial answer many people think of is that a superhero has superpowers. Flight. Telekinesis. Super-strength. Telepathy. Teleportation. Healing factor. Duplication. Even power negation. But a quick look at the superhero canon refutes that idea. One of the most popular superheroes of all time is Batman, who has no superhero powers. Then, we have Iron Man, Hawkeye, Steel, Huntress, etc. These are heroes that are highly trained and have access to some pretty cool toys, but they don’t have powers. So what makes them superheroes? Are they even superheroes?

While I do think some characters that people refer to as superheroes are not superheroes (Just the other day, I overheard someone refer to Nick Fury as a superhero), I do believe Batman and Iron Man are superheroes. Some people might say, well Iron Man has a powerful, high-tech suit, and Batman has the Batcave filled with cool gadgets. But if Batman is a superhero, then why isn’t a character like James Bond?

bondCar
Like Batman, James Bond has cool gadgets, fights crime, and is an orphan. His parents died in a mountain climbing accident in the French Alps instead of being gunned down in an alley in Gotham City, but it would’ve still been traumatic. Actually, I’d say James Bond is saner than Batman, that’s one difference. But most superheroes are sane, so regardless of whether they’re insane or not, a character can still be a superhero.

batmobile
I’ve heard some people argue that characters like Batman and Iron Man are superheroes because they are super smart. I don’t buy it. Being smarter than the average person doesn’t make a person a superhero. Although, now that I think about it, most superheroes seem to be very intelligent. But that’s not why they’re superheroes. Is a Princeton graduate or an MIT graduate a superhero? They’re incredibly smart, and nothing against those schools, but being smart doesn’t make someone a superhero. Plus, why do you think someone like Batman is smart? Could it be that because of his family’s money and connections that he was able to attend great schools and get great tutors? The same with Iron Man. Superheroes are superheroes regardless of whether they’re in the upper class or middle class.

Now, one could argue, and the pessimist in me does, that superheroes aren’t real. Tell that to Superheroes Anonymous, who cleaned Times Square and helped the homeless, or Phoenix Jones. Superheroes are as real as anything else.

Well, how do Batman and James Bond go about fighting crime and saving people? Batman protects Gotham. James Bond protects the British Empire. Both protect the world. But this is where they start to differ. Batman works on his own accord. James Bond works for the British government. Both have their crossovers. Batman helps out the Justice League and the police. James Bond goes off on his own, like in Quantum of Solace. But when Batman helps out another organization, he does so because a villain threatens people. When James Bond went AWOL in Quantum of Solace, he was seeking revenge.

I don’t believe there’s a firm definition of a superhero, not one that encompasses every superhero. (The versatility of the superhero concept is something I’ll be exploring from time to time with this blog.) But something that shows up again and again, is the idea that a superhero, in order to protect those he or she swore to protect, must have no oversight. They can’t work under someone else’s thumb. A superhero does what they feel is right, not just for them, usually it’s worse, but for others. The “super” in Superman doesn’t refer to the external traits of the character—It refers to the internal. A superhero rises above their basic instincts to help society as a whole, not just individuals. A superhero doesn’t just save their family. In a way, they don’t just save lives, but inspire. Back in the Golden Age of comics, Superman took on corrupt landlords. He even killed back then. Superheroes do what’s right regardless of their own feeling and whatever organization they’re associated with.

I wonder if it’s possible for a character to be a superhero and only do work for the government or for another group. Is the Superman that takes on Batman in The Dark Knight Returns a superhero? No, I wouldn’t say. He’s a government stooge in that story. Captain America fought for the U.S. in World War II, but I tend to think of him as a Super Soldier in that time, and a superhero when he joined the Avengers in the ’60s, an Avengers that unlike the movie version didn’t work for an organization. Just a few years ago, Captain America fought against superheroes getting registered and becoming part of the government in Marvel’s Civil War.

Are all superheroes, like the comics scene, punk? I think they exist to do what normal people can’t. They’ll fight against anyone and everyone for what’s right. What do you think? What makes a superhero a superhero?

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Sean Ironman

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Heroes Never Rust #1: Gambit

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Heroes Never Rust #1 by Sean Ironman

Gambit

The first comic book I remember reading is X-Men (second series) #33 written by Fabian Nicieza with art by Andy Kubert. I was ten years old and had read comics before, but X-Men #33 was the first to have an impact on me, enough of an impact to remember it nearly panel by panel almost twenty years later. My parents had seen the issue at Waldenbooks on a trip to the Coral Square Mall. I immediately stopped playing with action figures on my bedroom floor and read it.

The issue focused on Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit, who became a favorite of mine after reading it. It takes place in the present-day at the X-Mansion, the headquarters of the X-Men, and in Paris many years before Gambit joined the X-Men, back when he was with the Thieves Guild. Rogue, Gambit’s love interest in the present-day, talks to the villain Sabretooth, who has been imprisoned by the X-Men in an attempt for rehabilitation. She orders Sabretooth to talk about a past encounter with Gambit. (This must have been setup in a previous issue that I had not read.  I’ve heard people complain about this kind of thing before, but not knowing what had happened in past issues was never a problem for me. It just made me want to track down what I had not read on the next trip to the store.)

As it turned out, Sabretooth and Gambit both tried to steal a necklace from an attractive French woman many years before. Sabretooth, in all his rough and tumble ways, attacked the woman. Gambit, at seventeen years old, protected her and used his charisma to get the woman to fall in love with him, to trust him. This was something superheroes just didn’t do in my ten-year-old mind. Gambit sleeps with the woman and steals the necklace before she wakes. To get it back, Sabretooth captures both the woman and Gambit’s step-brother, Henrí, who was in town.

The final showdown occurs on a rooftop. Gambit hands over the necklace, but Sabretooth, because he’s a psychopath, drops both the woman and Henrí off the roof. Gambit can only save one. He chooses his brother, and the woman falls to her death. (Which is made much sadder when I read the Gambit mini-series that had been released around the same time that opened with Henrí’s death.) Her final words were that she loved Gambit and would have gladly given him the necklace if he had just asked for it.

xm-33-015

Back in the present-day, Gambit goes to look for Rogue, and they discuss their relationship. Rogue doesn’t think Gambit is capable of love, and she leaves.

The issue was thoroughly depressing. There were no fights to save the world, no returning from the dead. My take on it is that Gambit wanted to love the French girl—he was acting while with her, but not just to get the necklace. I think that he wanted to love her, but wasn’t capable. In the issue, he briefly discussed with Henrí his arranged marriage. This was a man who wanted love in his life, but couldn’t have it. He was an orphan taken in by the Thieves Guild and was forced to marry a woman from an opposing guild, the Assassins Guild. And in the present day, he still wanted to love.

Many superheroes have tragic beginnings, Spider-man for example. But the death of Uncle Ben in Spider-man allowed Peter Parker to become a superhero. Spider-man became a superhero to make amends. But this woman’s death didn’t have any effect on Gambit being a superhero. He didn’t become an X-Man because of it. It was just something that had happened. He continued being a thief. It was so human, so real, to see Gambit not be able to just flip a switch and turn his life around, make everything better. Rogue walked away from him in the end. This was no villain he could punch in the face until he wins the fight. This was no person to push out of the way of falling rubble. It was a hurt man unable to escape his past no matter how much good he had done as an X-Man.

This is what I love about superheroes. When I opened that issue, which featured Gambit and Sabretooth in mid-battle on the cover, I wanted to see Gambit and Sabretooth fight, Gambit win, and then everyone be happy in the end. That’s what I saw on the X-Men cartoon show on Saturday mornings. Even though I couldn’t understand all the issues at ten years old, I still knew it was deep, important. I read the issue again and again.

rogue

Today, many superhero comics are geared toward adults. They feature huge city destroying battles with millions of people dying, profanity, and sex. Many deconstruct the superhero concept. While, all of that has its place—and I read and enjoy just as much of those comics as every other comic book reader—I think what’s important to make a comic book mature lies in the psychology of the characters. Characters that can’t be figured out immediately. An adult could have enjoyed that X-Men issue just as much as I did at ten. The sex in the issue was off panel. I don’t even remember at ten if I knew if Gambit had sex with the French woman or if he just slept over. It wasn’t sexual. I know my mom wouldn’t have gotten it for me if it did.

I’m always hearing that a big problem facing the comics industry is that kids don’t read comics, that comics are made for adults and even if a kid wanted to read a comic, they couldn’t find one suitable. I think that’s been changing over the last couple of years. But I don’t think it’s an issue of comics either being made for kids (When I was a kid I didn’t want to read books for kids.) or backing away from adult topics. It just falls on using the psychology of the characters to create a mature book. Why did Marvel Comics become so huge in the sixties? They created characters that were like real people, people who happened to fight crime. The issue shouldn’t be whether to have adult comics or kids comics, but to have comics with complex characters where both adults and children could enjoy.

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Sean Ironman

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

Gutter Space #1: Why Focus on Comics-That-Aren’t-Superhero-Comics?

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Art, Comic Books, Gutter Space, manga

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Gutter Space #1 by Leslie Salas

Why Focus on Comics-That-Aren’t-Superhero-Comics?

Comics as a medium has a richer and more involved history than many people recognize or remember. Comics analyst Douglas Wolk explains in Reading Comics “the argument about the between relationship between painting and poetry, the generic classical terms for image-making and word-assembling, has been going on for a long time. The earliest people to try and figure it out concluded that painting and poetry were basically different forms of the same thing.”

Reading-Comics

Simonides of Ceos’ formulation poema pictura loquens, picture poema silens aptly illustrates the point that “poetry is a verbal picture; painting is a silent poetry.” (Horace later reduced this to ut pictura poesis, “as is painting, so is poetry.”) This is mostly true in the broad sense that both are ways of representing perception: comics functions as a successful marriage of the visual and lingual.

The medium of comics also goes by many names such as graphic narrative and visual storytelling. In light of this muddled nomenclature, let me clarify that by saying “comics,” which seems to be the most common term, I specifically refer to “sequential art,” as defined by cartoonist Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.”

UnderstandingComics

Comics started their ascension into literature around World War II in the form of propaganda ads: some sort of illustration with a caption below it. Think of the captioned cartoons in The New Yorker or René Magritte’s famous painting, The Treachery of Images, with the painting of a pipe and the caption, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”—“This is not a pipe.”

Margritti this is not a pipe

From there, the art form evolved into gag strips, like those you would see in the newspaper. The strips took a pornographic turn with Tijuana Bibles to help soldiers overseas needing entertainment (or as psy-ops propaganda leaflets to convince reduce soldier’s morale),

Tijuana Bibles

and even mainstream comics still had a political agenda (see the cover for Captain America #1, where Captain America is punching Hitler in the face).

The political content of American comics caused them to be cut off from Europe and Asia (Axis vs. Allied Powers). As a result, two other comic traditions, Japanese manga and Franco-Belgian bandes dessinés, evolved independently. It is only now, several decades after the end of WWII, that all three styles of comics flourish worldwide.

Comics critic Justin R. Hall notes that “comics meets [people’s] sensibilities on a cognitive level.” We live in a visually saturated world, so many people of all ages are naturally drawn to the combination of words and pictures. Reading comics, however, requires a different type of literacy that incorporates not only words, but visuals such as movement between panels, line of sight, and gutter closure.

By reviewing independent comics and webcomics that aren’t superhero comics, my goal is to draw attention to some of the interesting and effective techniques used by cartoonists all over the world. This can help develop visual literacy, identify various narrative structures, provide a dynamic view of cultures, and prompt interdisciplinary study. Plus—it’s interesting and fun!

And if you’re sad that I’m excluding superhero comics, check out Sean Ironman’s column, Heroes Never Rust. He’s got you covered.

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Leslie Salas

Leslie Salas writes fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and comics. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida and attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute. In addition to being an Associate Course Director at Full Sail University, Leslie also serves as an assistant editor for The Florida Review, a graphic nonfiction editorial assistant for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and a regular contributing artist for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Episode 28: J.T. Waldman

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Comic Books, Episode, Graphic Novels, The Bible

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Episode 28 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available on iTunes, or right click here to download

On this week’s show, I interview the comic book writer and artist J. T. Waldman,

JT Waldman

and Elizabeth Sauchelli discusses Star Girl.

Elizabeth Sauchelli

Texts Discussed

MegillatEsther.JTW

NTIMPPM.cover

stargirl

Understanding Comics

introducing Cultural Studies

Darin Strauss’s Reasons to Rejoyce.

Notes

Pages 106-107 of Megillat Esther.

Pages 106-107 of Megillat Esther.

Pages 146-147 of Megillat Esther.

Pages 146-147 of Megillat Esther.

NTIMPPM.page.35

Page 35 of Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me.

Page 148 of Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me.

Page 148 of Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me.

Episode 28 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.