Comic books can do things no other medium can.
And comic stories can be told by everyone... from a rock star to a former CIA agent…
to you.
While we were at New York Comic Con we spoke with Tom King, Gerard Way and Nick Derrington,
all of whom are working on some of DC Comics most original comic series.
Each of them had insightful explanations about what makes comics unique.
When you’re doing counterterrorism it’s all about perspective…
I think that’s true of comics.
It’s about placing the camera in the right place so it can scare you and it can inspire
you.
First up, we asked the team behind the new DOOM PATROL what their advantage was in telling
stories with comics.
The strength of comics is it’s such a small team.You get a proper full visual experience
with just a couple of people.
A real personal, tight voice.
It can take chances.
It’s not a movies set where you’re spending millions of dollars.
It’s 2 weirdos a country apart.
Sheets of paper and some pencils and stuff and you’ve got a studio.
There’s no limitations.
There’s no barrier of entry.
We’re communicating all day everyday.
Pitching ideas back and forth to each other.
I keep saying it’s improvisational jazz a lot of times.
We have a plan, but we’re willing to skew off it if we come up with a better idea at
the last second.
The monthly schedule of comics forces you to make quick fast decisions which causes
some cool effects.
Very creative while still being mainstream comics.
That’s still pretty punk rock.
How it starts with a script.
Sometimes you show three things at once.
You got Casey playing a video game but she’s thinking about something else and Sam is talking
about something else and then all these things kind of converge at the same time.
You’re basically throwing a disorienting thing at a reader that they really have to
pay attention to to get the full story.
You’re almost forcing a reader to engage with you in that way.
And then Nick takes that and he really makes sure that the body language, the expressions
on the faces, conveys a lot of that stuff we’re trying to convey.
Casey’s really distracted in the video game, you get that from the way Nick’s drawing
her.
Then when we zoom into the gyro he uses a totally different art style.
It’s about juggling multiple elements at the same time.
But with all these possibilities, how can comics tell a story in a way that film or
prose can’t?
I feel in comics you can control time better.
There’s a sense of time passing.
In prose, everyone reads at the same rate.
Little tricks.
But in comics I have so much more limitation to what you’re looking at and how you’re
reading it.
If I can control how you’re reading it I can control how I think it will have the most
impact on you.
Comics have a different mechanic to themselves.
You have the page, you have the panel, you also have the tier.
They work together as a unit and they work on their own.
Gutters.
Jumping between those two moments creates a mood and a feeling.
Stuff that’s not there is part of the creative decision as well.
There’s something about how you arrange panels on a page that can tell a bigger picture.
You can step back from it and see a bigger image.
You can’t do that in film because you’re only seeing one image at a time.
You’re not seeing them all at once.
The best part about the 9 panel grid is that we
tend to think in 3s.
You’ve got 3 sets of 3s.
Storytelling is all about patterns.
I think of it like jazz.
Create the pattern, break it, etc…
The Iliad… set up a pattern, break a pattern.
It’s about getting you relaxed so the tension of the hit gets you.
With all these tricks and tools, it seems like you can do anything with comics.
But the medium does have its limitations.
You CAN’T do anything in comics.
There are things you can’t do in comics.
Sound is tough.
I can’t control the sounds in your head in a comic.
I can’t use music.
Sopranos… that’s not comics strength.
It’s not something you can do everything in.
You can do specific things well, but there’s some things that you can’t.
With that, Tom gave us a brief glimpse of his vision for what makes the comics medium
unique… and left us with one last piece of advice.
In comics you eliminate the adverb.
Get the words out of the way and let the pictures do the work.