Heroes Never Rust #82: Epilogues: Your Last Shot

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

Tags

Epilogues, Mark Millar, Nemesis, Steve McNiven, Wanted, Watchmen

Heroes Never Rust #82 by Sean Ironman

Epilogues: Your Last Shot

The fourth and final issue of Nemesis features a great deal of violence as the police chief eventually overcomes and kills Nemesis. The villain dies with three pages remaining for the comic. These pages fast-forward years after the Nemesis encounter and acts as an epilogue. Like I have mentioned in previous posts, there is not much to Nemesis in terms of story. The comic is filled with beautiful artwork displaying action scene on top of action scene. But, there are no real twist and turns. It is all pretty straightforward. Nemesis wants to kill the Chief. He proceeds with an elaborate plan. In the end, the Chief kills him on the White House Lawn. With the comic being direct, there is not much impact with the ending. The good guy wins. The bad guy dies. In those final few pages, however, the comic offers up, or at least attempts to offer, a greater mystery, something to stay with the reader after the comic is done.

Epilogues are a tricky thing. At what point does the ending begin to pander to the audience? At what point is the sequel set up, instead of the first story closing? The best epilogues, to me at least, close out a mystery found in the comic. Or if it is not a mystery, at least it calls back to the main story.

Since this is a blog on superhero comics, I will stick to giving examples of epilogues in superhero comics, but the same ideas work in novels, short stories, film, and other genres and mediums. In Watchmen, the reader is given two epilogues. One featuring Silk Spectre and Nite Owl visiting the original Silk Spectre in a nursing home and one closing out Rorschach’s story. In the first, closure is offered by telling readers what Nite Owl and Silk Spectre will do now that the world has been changed by the events of the conclusion, and it even offers a touching last scene for the original Silk Spectre and her love for the Comedian. In the second, an employee at Pioneer Publishing Inc. finds Rorschach’s journal, which he had been writing in throughout the comic from page one. It solves a mystery that the reader did not even realize was a mystery and shows that Rorschach will have succeeded in his mission after death, or at least it offers the possibility. These epilogues work because they give the comic closure after the big finale. The world continues on and new things are afoot, but the epilogues serve to end the comic.

Mark Millar, the writer of Nemesis, had an incredible impactful epilogue in Wanted. In that comic, Wesley Gibson succeeds, and then the final two pages talk directly to the reader about how the reader is killing himself or herself at jobs he or she hates and basically be a sheep. It works well because it continues the theme from the comic and even brings up the idea that the events in the comic take place in our world. Again, the epilogue succeeds because it offers closure to the ideas presented in the comic, like a conclusion paragraph in a research essay.

Epilogues seem to have trouble, like the one in Nemesis, when they are geared more toward bringing up new ideas. In Nemesis, the epilogue takes place so many years after the events of the rest of the comic and brings up the idea that there is an organization funding the wealthy who are bored and want to play supervillain. It helps explain how Nemesis has access to so much throughout the story, but that never seemed to be a mystery. It seemed more like a plot hole. The final page shows a man, barely shown except for his beard, sitting on a tropical beach as the sun sets (or rises?). The epilogue tries to give something for the reader to think about, and I love the idea of an organization funding bored rich people who think they are better than the rest so they become supervillains. Honestly, I would not be shocked if something like that does not happen in our world.

The problem is that the comic brings up an interesting idea to go nowhere with it. It sets up a sequel, but because the comic takes time to set up a sequel already, I feel as if I am being sold something. I am not given a story to enjoy and think about—I am given a product to purchase. The epilogue is more concerned with making people money than with art. That is why it fails. If the comic wanted to explore the idea of a supervillain’s funding, then it should have used it more throughout the whole story, even if we were never shown the full extent of the organization. Funding should have been brought up a couple of times by the characters in the story. Perhaps have the Chief try to track down Nemesis by bank account. Something like that. Ideas in storytelling should be explored, not just thrown out into the world.

Epilogues, at least as I think of them at this moment, seem to succeed more the closer in time they take place to the actual events of the story. The epilogues in Watchmen take place soon after (the actual time is left up in the air) the conclusion, as does the epilogue in Wanted. When the epilogue takes place years later, like in Nemesis, it either brings up unnecessary ideas or tries to pander to the audience. I cannot think of one that does it in a comic, but I am thinking of the epilogue for Harry Potter, which takes place many years later to basically give the reader the rest of the characters’ lives or to show them live happily ever after. The writer needs to ask the tough question of whether the reader needs the epilogue or wants the epilogue (or even possibly neither). If the epilogue is needed, go for it. If the story needs another beat, needs a sense of closure, nothing is stopping you. But, if it is an attempt to show the characters all happy to please the reader, or if you feel something in the story is lacking so you need to throw out a curve ball in the end to make the reader think, then maybe you should skip the epilogue, or just revise the main story. I am sure there is an exception to what I have said (when is there not?), but epilogues are tricky (especially multiple epilogues in one story). Remember, as a writer, you came to explore a story, not live out the characters’ lives.

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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.

Heroes Never Rust #81: Personal Taste, or Bad Craft?

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Craft of Fiction Writing, Heroes Never Rust

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Tags

Darin Strauss, Half a Life, Mark Millar, Nemesis, Steve McNiven

Heroes Never Rust #81 by Sean Ironman

Personal Taste, or Bad Craft?

If it has been unclear in my last two posts, I’ll come right out and say it here—I dislike Nemesis. I think it represents everything wrong with comics in the last ten years. It’s a comic consisting of shock after shock. So many shocks that nothing is shocking. Or important. Or cool. Or dangerous. Or interesting.

Every scene fights to be the scene that is memorable. Nothing has lasting effect. Nemesis reads quickly because there is no depth beyond the death and explosions and violence. There is some talk of the personal life of the good guy and, at the end, apparently there has been a mystery as to the identity of Nemesis that seems like it comes from nowhere. To me, this is terrible. I would not suggest this comic to anyone. But, does that make it a bad comic?

The more I read and write, the more I come to believe that work should be judged by authorial intent. Though the literary community likes to make fun of books like Twilight, that book cannot be judged under the same criteria as The Scarlet Letter or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I tell my students Dumb and Dumber cannot be judged under similar rules as Schindler’s List. While that is an extreme example, I think the reasoning is sound. Even an author’s own new work cannot be judged against the old work. I enjoy Frederick Barthelme’s work, but I feel it would be wrong to judge Bob the Gambler with the same rules as Tracer. The novels are trying to do different things. In a way, I am trying to play fair in an unfair world.

If we should judge storytelling by authorial intent, then what makes a bad novel, essay, poem, or in this case, comic? How can we judge what the author intended with the piece, without reading an interview? Leo Tolstoy wrote, “The presence in various degrees of these three conditions — individuality, clearness, and sincerity — decides the merit of a work of art as art, apart from subject matter. All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in which they fulfill the first, the second, and the third of these conditions.” So, a work of art could be clear and sincere, but in terms of individuality, be lacking. But, a great work of art would have all three. Of course, this is only Tolstoy’s view, but I agree with him.

People tend to create rules for how or what a piece of writing is supposed to be. For example, many people seem to think that a character has to be likeable for a story to be good. Some people think foul language makes a story bad. But, there are always exceptions to these rules.

For example, I have been told a few times that I should not begin a piece of creative nonfiction with something shocking. Yet, Darin Strauss’ Half a Life begins this way: “Half my life ago, I killed a girl.” That’s pretty shocking, and it works well for that memoir.

The critic Robert McCrum wrote, “You’ll rarely get a better first line.” Were the people who told me I should not begin with something shocking wrong? Many people tend to take the attitude that there are exceptions that prove the rule, but I always take that as someone who has been proven wrong and no longer wants to take part in the argument. To me, there are no rules for good or bad, and writers (and readers) would do well to remember that. One of my favorite things to do with students in a beginner’s class is to discuss a story or essay, come up with why it works well, and then assign a reading that does something completely different and contradicts what we just discussed.

Nemesis is a comic. It follows the rules of comics, or sequential art. It features a series of images with text to tell a story. The sequences are easy to follow. The art is well drawn. The panels are laid out to not cause confusion for the reader. Characters are distinct. A lot happens and characters have to deal with real conflict. I could not care less about any of the characters, or the mystery of Nemesis’ plan, or the good guy’s family issues presented in the third issue, or even who wins or who dies.

But, I believe that is what the creators are going for here. Maybe they want the reader to be a bit more invested than I am, but I believe the story is meant for a different audience than myself. At no point is there a scene that slows the story down to get the reader to care for the characters or to explore the mystery of Nemesis. Characters move from action scene to action scene. From violent encounter to violent encounter. The comic is meant for an audience that prefers those summer blockbusters that require no thought. It is meant for an audience that wants realistic, detailed drawings and incredibly drawn fight scenes. It is not a thinking man’s comic.

Should it be? Does that make Nemesis bad? I think not. It is not for me, and I can understand that. More readers should understand the difference between bad craftsmanship and their personal taste. I feel art is held back by people who have egocentric, rigid aesthetics. Perhaps if more people could say, “This isn’t meant for me,” instead of, “This sucks,” artists would be freer to explore. Perhaps artists would not be so afraid of their work being judged.

Maybe. Maybe not. But, I find myself unable to judge work based on anything other than authorial intent and the execution geared toward that intent. I cannot judge a steak poorly because it does not taste like swordfish.

_______

Photo by John King

Heroes Never Rust #80: Ridiculousness in Fiction

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust, Mark Millar, Nemesis, Steve McNiven, Suspension of Disbelief

Heroes Never Rust #80 by Sean Ironman

Ridiculousness in Fiction

As the story speeds along in the second issue of Nemesis, the situations get more and more over the top. That’s not necessarily bad, unless you wanted a different type of story. In the last few decades in comics, there’s been a push toward realism in superhero stories. In the eighties, comics like Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Born Again and Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen began a study of superheroes in the real world. There was outrageousness still to be found, but comics had definitely taken another step closer to our world. For decades prior, there were steps, such as the Marvel Universe in the 1960s with characters like the Fantastic Four and Spider-man, but in recent years realism has taken a firmer hand in comics storytelling. You can even take a look at the films based on superhero comics. Up until a couple of years ago, the idea filmmakers went to was how do we take these comic book characters and put them in the real world.

This has begun to change, however. First, in the comics themselves, and then this past year, we’ve had more outrageous ideas in many of the films, such as Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men: Days of Future Past. I like a bit of ridiculousness in my comics, in most stories come to think of it. The more I write creative nonfiction, the more my fiction gets a bit ridiculous. But, and here’s where I have the issue, when does the outrageousness become too much? How does a writer fit in ridiculous events and characters and yet still have the reader buy the world? Because at the end of the day, no matter what type of story the writer is telling, the reader has to believe that the events can take place in the story’s world.

The more I read, the more I think it has to do with pacing. Pacing isn’t focused on as much as it should, I think. Or perhaps in the creative writing classes I took in undergrad and grad school it wasn’t. But, to me, pacing is one of the most important craft elements a beginning writer should focus on. The reason a lot of realistic superhero stories fail is that they spend so much time on trying to explain why the superhero does what he or she does and how they were created. Take the Amazing Spider-man series with Andrew Garfield (a terrific actor stuck in crappy movies). He can’t just be bitten by a radioactive spider and the story move forward. The movies try to explain that Peter Parker’s father did something to him so that he could have survived the bite. By spending more time on this idea, the audience begins to question the outrageous idea. And at no point is the audience going to be given a good enough explanation on why Peter Parker gained powers instead of dying. Pacing is really just the speed at which the audience is given information. The faster it moves, the less time the reader has to question what is going on. If the writer spends too much time on an idea, the reader gets to run that over and over in the head and find holes and start disbelieving what is going on.

In Nemesis, the supervillain does some outrageous acts in the second issue. He has an underground bunker that I think Bill Gates would have difficulty financing. He blows up a football stadium, steals the Hope Diamond, breaks into the Pentagon and fills the building with nerve gas killing nearly everybody in the building, has his car split in two and rides a hidden motorcycle out of it to escape the police, grabs a rocket launcher in mid-air and fires it to destroy a helicopter, and swims through a sewer grate in the Potomac like he knew exactly where it would be. Keep in mind that this is in twenty-five pages (and he has the President of the United States still held captive from last issue). That’s a lot for the reader to buy. But, the comic moves along at such a quick pace that the reader doesn’t have the time to question what is happening.

Perhaps the fast pace helps the reader feel safe, as if the writer knows exactly what he is doing. The more I read the more I believe that to be true. Anything can happen in the story, but the reader needs to feel like there is a solid authorial plan. Nemesis could do whatever he wants—Hell, even after all the crazy things he does, he ends up getting caught and tells the cops that this is all just part of the plan. How can someone really plan something so complex? Well, they can’t, but it’s just part of the suspension of disbelief of the story. The comic sets it up pretty early on that the story is going to play loose with reality. The characters are going to do outrageous things and the reader can’t think too hard about it. It’s up to the reader at that point if they are going to read the book. If they’re on board, great. If not, oh well. After all, haters gonna hate.

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Photo by John King

Heroes Never Rust #79: Skip the Obvious

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Tags

Mark Millar, Nemesis, Steve McNiven

Heroes Never Rust #79 by Sean Ironman

Skip the Obvious

Two weeks ago, I met with an undergraduate student to discuss her thesis, a collection of essays. One of my suggestions for her essay about the sickness and eventual death of her grandfather was to skip the paragraph about how upset she was over his death. I told her that it was unnecessary because it was already understood that she was upset because of the language used throughout the essay up until that point. I said that it is important in nonfiction to not tell the reader the obvious. If you write an essay about a loved one dying and went on about how sad you are about that person dying, the reader will begin to skim the page. Then, this week, I sat down and read Mark Millar’s and Steve McNiven’s Nemesis and I realized that this same approach is used in comics. It’s basically the same lesson that many writers already know—skip the door—but it goes beyond just choreography.

On a smaller level, skipping the obvious is used all the time in comics. In the first sequence in Nemesis, a SWAT team enters a building, the wrong building, and they run into a trap and they are blown away as they activate a bomb. This sequence uses the typical skip the door approach. Readers are given an aerial shot of the building at night. Then, the SWAT team runs toward the front door. Then, they are walking carefully up a staircase. Two members of the tem kick down a door, and walk into a room full of explosives. And finally, the outside of the building explodes. The reader will, of course, put together the information in the gutters—the team moving through the building.

But, a few pages later, the approach is taken to a greater level. Part of the villain’s plan involved a train that ran near the building where the explosion took place. The explosion also destroyed the tracks. In a full-page shot, the train goes over the rails. But instead of showing the train explode, the destruction, the page stops short. The train is only a few feet from the ground. The next page features the villain celebrating. There’s no explosion. No sound of the train crashing. No bodies. The story just continues to the next scene.

Nemesis is not high art. It’s a widescreen comic about a supervillain who hunts the world’s top police officers (at this point in the comic, seemingly for no reason but for fun). Perhaps it’s just me being a pessimist, but I feel about Nemesis the same as I feel about many of Mark Millar’s comics these past few years—they are storyboards for a film he’s trying to sell. The comic is far from subtle. But, Millar does show some restraint in the first issue, even with having panels of a few thieves being shot and one man being hit by a train.

Being subtle, though, doesn’t have much to do with skipping the obvious sections. I doubt Millar and McNiven chose not to show the train being destroyed because they wanted to be subtle. If they spent too long on the train, they would have less room for other scenes. One of the constraints comics have to deal with that many short stories don’t is that comics are a set length. The length may change depending on the publisher, but one issue is usually 22 or 24 pages, not counting ads. And even in prose, while it’s not as strict, I know about the length of an essay or a short story as I write. I know which stories can be 6000 words and which have to be 3000.

If a writer (or in the case of comics, an artist too) decides to spend so long describing the obvious, the reader will lose interest. Partly, it’s an issue of not treating the reader as if they are stupid. And partly, it’s an issue of pacing, to me. Pacing is really just deciding how much space you have to give the reader certain information before you move onto the next set of data.

Here, in Nemesis, do we really need a full-page shot of a train being blown apart? Perhaps some readers want nothing more, but this incident at the beginning only serves the purpose to introduce the Nemesis character. It has nothing to do with the main plot. So, the story needs to show that he is dangerous and has done a great deal of planning, and then the comic needs to move on. People always complain that we see the same movies, watch the same television shows, read the same books. Nothing is new. Well, all we as writers can do is to ask if a certain scene or action or event or line of dialogue is necessary or if the reader will understand the greater story without it.

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Photo by John King

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Tag Archives: Steve McNiven

Heroes Never Rust #82: Epilogues: Your Last Shot

Heroes Never Rust #81: Personal Taste, or Bad Craft?

Heroes Never Rust #80: Ridiculousness in Fiction

Heroes Never Rust #79: Skip the Obvious