No Justifiable Homicides for Superheroes

Recapping network television episodes seems to be big business for entertainment websites these days. I did it myself for Den of Geek and the first season of Turn.

For the new Flash series, Playboy evidently has the money to go straight to the top because the magazine’s recapper is Mark Waid, who wrote scores of highly regarded issues of that comic book and its spin-offs in the 1990s.

In his discussion of episode 3, Waid starts by analyzing a superhero trope that goes all the way back to when the genre was codified in the 1940s. He recaps his argument with an iconoclastic comic-book publisher about the rule against superheroes solving problems by killing bad guys:

Yes, there is absolutely such a thing as justifiable homicide, but it’s a last resort, not a method of operation. The concept that life in all forms is sacred isn’t just a throwback to fairy tales or simpler times, I argued; it’s a philosophy as old as realized religion.

Okay, yeah. Cops have to shoot robbers sometimes. Soldiers have to kill. Homicide detectives and private investigators, real or fictional, sometimes kill. They’re people just like you and me, with limited abilities and limited tools.

But super-heroes were created specifically, from the imaginations of the young and the young at heart, to do the impossible — to defy gravity or bounce missiles off their chest or outrun speeding bullets. It’s baked into their DNA. To find a perpetual audience, super-heroes must seem relevant and relatable and admirable, but they are still creations of fantasy.

We read their comics and watch their TV shows and movies to see them do the things we can’t, to triumph heroically against odds that would flatten you and me...not to suffer with them as they’re forced into the trauma of making the same real-world choices that you and I, mere humans, would have to make if we [were] caught helpless with our only available weapon one that was designed explicitly to kill.

To be sure, some costumed heroes, like Marvel’s Punisher and DC’s Vigilante, are specifically designed to go against the no-killing rule. But it’s notable that neither of those characters has fantastic powers. And the companies’ biggest brands avoid killing even if (as in the case of Wolverine) they talk about being willing to do it.

Waid’s faith in that dictum is what got him in trouble in viewing Man of Steel a couple of years back, as he so memorably described:

Superman wins by killing Zod. By snapping his neck. And as this moment was building, as Zod was out of control and Superman was (for the first time since the fishing boat 90 minutes ago) struggling to actually save innocent victims instead of casually catching them in mid-plummet, some crazy guy in front of us was muttering “Don’t do it…don’t do it…DON’T DO IT…” and then Superman snapped Zod’s neck and that guy stood up and said in a very loud voice, “THAT’S IT, YOU LOST ME, I’M OUT,” and his girlfriend had to literally pull him back into his seat and keep him from walking out and that crazy guy was me.

That crazy guy was me, and I barely even remember doing that, I had to be told afterward that I’d done that, that’s how caught up in betrayal I felt. And after the neck-snapping, even though I stuck it out, I didn’t give a damn about the rest of the movie.

And in that Waid was exactly right. Flash is not exhibiting the same problem.

Corporate Cultures and the Marvel Method

This episode of Decompressed, a podcast by British comics scripter and journalist Kieron Gillen, is one of the most interesting discussions of comics scripting that I’ve ever heard.

Gillon tries to focus his podcast on the mechanics of creating comics, not just enthusiastic appreciation. The nominal subject of this discussion is the contrast between Marvel’s three-stage plot–art–dialogue method of creating comics and the full-script (or plot–dialogue–art) method that DC and most of the industry use.

Gillen shares lots of examples from the participants, including script pages and finished line art, on his blog. (At left is a first-stage “Marvel Method” script with short action descriptions and the artist’s thumbnail sketches but no finished dialogue.) The practical insights from fellow writers Mark Waid and Matt Fraction and special guest artist Jamie McKelvie are useful but not particularly surprising.

I was more struck by the participants’ observations about how the cultures of the “Big Two” American comics publishers have been shaped by those different approaches. Fraction notes that Marvel still pays a writer separately for the plot and the dialogue even if he (since it’s usually a “he”) delivers them at the same time. Waid points out that DC, at least as of the 1980s when he was an editor there, paid twice as much for a story’s dialogue as for its plot—which naturally motivated writers to provide full scripts.

The comics creators in the conversation—three of them writers—also make interesting observations about what happened when artists Dick Giordano and Joe Quesada came to be in charge of DC and Marvel, respectively. Suddenly the artists were getting more compensation.

But Who Would Be More Insulted by “Blind as a Bat”?

At Comic Vine, Gregg Katzman summarized last month’s discussion on the all-important question: Who would win in a fight, Nightwing or Daredevil?

Even current Nightwing scripter Kyle Higgins weighed in:

In my opinion, it all depends on how quick (if at all) Nightwing can figure out that Daredevil relies on heightened senses/radar. If he can deduce that, he’s a few gadgets away from screwing with DD’s navigation system enough to make it a fight. Of course, there’s also the variable of “what kind of mood is Mark Waid in while he’s writing this” (come on, is there ANYONE else you’d rather see write this fight?!?). I’m pretty sure he could come up with sixteen clever ways to take down either character without the other breaking a sweat.

Higgins’s comment acknowledges the dirty little secret of superhero battles: the fix is always in. The outcome of the fight depends on what’s necessary for a compelling, satisfying narrative. Early in a story, we’ve seen the Condiment King take down Robin and Black Canary together. But at the end of a rousing tale, and given the right circumstances, Jason Todd can conquer Mongul.

Adding fan popularity to the question further complicates the issue. In 1996 DC and Marvel collaborated on a miniseries that pitted a number of their brands against each other. The outcome of the major battles was determined in advance by readers’ votes. That resulted in the extremely popular Wolverine and Spider-Man beating the extremely powerful Lobo and Superboy.

That miniseries didn’t include Nightwing or Daredevil, but it did feature Tim Drake as Robin. He was set against Jubilee, a young mutant in the X-Men who could generate fireworks. Despite having no powers, Tim sneakily managed to pin Jubilee down without hitting her (he has trouble hitting girls), and they ended up making out, thus satisfying nearly all readers. Simpler times.

(Photo at top by Osvaldo Eaf 2, via Flickr.)

What’s New in DC’s New Digital Formats?

Wired reports on two digital storytelling techniques that DC Comics is touting this month. First up:

“DC2, which will feature “dynamic artwork” that unfolds as the reader taps on the screen. . . . Rather than flipping through pages, readers will “tap on the screen to bring the next element of the story to life, whether it’s a whole panel, or a word balloon or a sound effect,” DC Entertainment Co-Publisher Jim Lee told Wired. “What’s cool is that you really get to challenge the rules of traditional storytelling. You aren’t beholden to a strict left to right western culture narrative. You can have elements that leap back and forth.”

“Dynamic artwork” is making its debut in a comics adaptation of the 1960s Batman TV show. So I expect it will let readers make sound effects that say “POW!” and “BAM!” pop up over the art, amplifying the campiness those comics are probably seeking to replicate. But that wouldn’t really “challenge the rules of traditional storytelling.” Will it do anything else?

Already Mark Waid, John Rogers, and colleagues at Thrillbent.com have been exploring how to employ the technique of changes within a panel in a digital comic. Their storytelling remains sequential, but tapping to bring up new elements can move the story forward at a deliberate pace or draw our attention to particular details. It’s not a gimmick like the the picture-book apps where the young reader can poke around for an element on each page that moves or makes sounds.

DC’s other proclaimed innovation is “DC2 Multiverse, a choose-your-own-path format that will allow users to make decisions at key points that will unlock different storylines.” That seems like an actual challenge to traditional storytelling since it might affect character choices and endings—an author’s basic prerogatives. It’s no surprise that the tryout title for that format is a videogame tie-in, an entertainment medium that’s all about branching storylines.

A Bent for Thrillbent

Yesterday I commented on the content of Insufferable, the online superhero story from Mark Waid, Peter Krause, and team. I was even more interested in Insufferable’s format. Waid and Krause chose to break from the demands of print publication and format their work for the iPad and other computers.

The most obvious difference, also reflected in DC Comics’s digital-first offerings, is that the “page” is aligned horizontally rather than vertically. The lettering is slightly larger than for a print comic book. Even more important is the change in what a “page turn” means. It can be a whole new set of images, as in regular comics. But it can also be the same image with a significant change:

• more of that image than was in the frame before (as if a camera was pulling back to reveal more).
• a new panel appearing.
• a character’s shifting facial reaction or other change within the panel.
• a word balloon, the “page turn” communicating a pause in the conversation.
• captions (tweets in the case of Insufferable) filling up the screen.
• a version of the movies’ “rack focus,” in which the foreground goes out of focus and the background becomes crisp, or vice versa.

Waid conceived of Insufferable as a way to show the potential of that new approach, and it clearly has storytelling potential.

I preferred to download the episodes of Insufferable in PDF form from Thrillbent and then read them on my iPad with the Stanza program. That reader provides a way to switch from one page to the next instantly without the “sliding” function that iPad programmers love to show off. That matters for the new types of “page turns” I list above.

Having the episodes also let me check back, not just on the story but also the underlying technique. Late in the adventure I began to feel that each installment contained less “story” than at the start. Yet each episode remained about 20 screens. That suggests either that Krause and Waid were playing more with the new page turn techniques as they got used to them, or that I was getting impatient.

ComiXology recently started selling issues of Insufferable, each containing a month of the original weekly installments. I don’t know if they differ at all from the experience of reading the Thrillbent PDFs. (ComiXology has a system for guiding the eye from one balloon or panel to the next, useful in the transition from print to digital but not seemingly needed for a comic conceived for a screen to begin with.) Those files include the sort of extras that comics fans have come to expect in collections: early sketches, creator commentary, etc.

The first storyline of Insufferable ends with the heroes once in partnership and some mysteries yet to be solved. However, one of those mysteries seems to be when the next storyline might pick up. In mid-2012, Waid also announced several more stories from other established creators and Top Cow’s “Pilot Season” program of test series would appear on Thrillbent this year. He tweeted that Insufferable would be back after a “short break.”

But as of this evening, Waid’s personal website is down. The last blog entries that appeared there and at Thrillbent in October. Thrillbent has been besieged by hackers before. I’m hoping its small staff is gearing up for a big leap ahead because the format has so much storytelling potential.

A Duo with an Unhealthy Dynamic

This month Mark Waid, Peter Krause, and team finished the first storyline of their superhero adventure Insufferable on Waid's digital comics site Thrillbent. Since the concept is obviously inspired by the Dynamic Duo, it's an appropriate topic for the weekly Robin.

For BOOM! comics, Waid wrote two linked series called Irredeemable (drawn primarily by Krause) and Incorruptible, which explored what could happen if one of the cornerstones of the Superman mythos was kicked away. What if the alien with powers beyond anyone else on Earth suddenly turned hateful and destructive? And, conversely, what if one of his worst nemeses decides that it’s now up to him to turn his life around and save the planet?

Insufferable starts by remixing some basic ingredients of the Batman and Robin mythos. Nocturnus is a dark, unemotional, technology-driven crusader against crime. Kid Galahad was his young sidekick. But there are two major differences:

• Nocturnus is Kid Galahad's real father, not a father figure.
  
• Kid Galahad is not Dick Grayson; he's just a dick.

In other words, what if Robin is, if not evil, far from a good role model?

Years before this story begins, Kid Galahad broke with his father and blew their secret identity. Since then he’s built a lucrative business around his persona, and Nocturnus has retreated further into the shadows. But a new threat from an old villain forces them to work together again. There are, of course, layers within layers, betrayals, unforeseen allies, and so on. Waid knows how to write superhero stories.

Some aspects of the original Batman and Robin’s relationship are replicated here: Kid Galahad is more emotive, Nocturnus a better planner. As Waid has acknowledged in a summer 2012 interview, the opening chapters were designed to show Galahad’s perspective: “Nocturnus doesn’t seem to get as much play, but that’s only because we’ve made a conscious choice to not look too deeply at his thoughts and to veil him in mystery.” Meanwhile, Galahad just can’t keep his feelings to himself.

Yet the story’s sell line invites readers into Nocturnus’s point of view: “What happens when you’re a crimefighter and your sidekick grows up to be an arrogant, ungrateful douchebag? What on Earth could draw the two of you back together again?” Despite (or because of) his vociferousness, the story strongly implies that Kid Galahad’s big problem is Kid Galahad, and Nocturnus’s big problem is…Kid Galahad. If the kid sidekick is bad, the whole universe goes to pot.

Another theme that Waid explores in Insufferable is the power of social media. Kid Galahad has a big online following. His fans tweet about his latest appearances and exploits. (The Twitter handles of some of those fans match those of real comics fans.) Cameras are everywhere to catch Galahad’s mistakes and boasting. His smartphone plays a role in several scenes. To some extent that reflects the way we live today. But it’s in part also a commentary on online comics discussion, where vitriol goes well beyond what’s merited by fiction about people kicking each other in the face.

TOMORROW: The Thrillbent format.

The All-Important Page Turn, in Digital Form

On Mark Waid’s blog, John Rogers shared some principles for digital comics, including:

4.) Information should be dumb.

By dumb I mean "as platform independent as possible." Your comic should work well in a pdf reader on a tablet or laptop or desktop computer, on a website, in an app. Your workflow should allow you to easily slot your comic into as many different platforms as seamlessly as possible. As cool as that Infinite Comic Nova comic is, there's nothing in there you can't do with a bone-dumb pdf- reader. It's all about execution.

I’ve downloaded Waid and artist Jeremy Rock’s digital comic “Luther” on both my desktop computer and my iPad, and wrote about it here.

I found a significant difference in the reading experience on the two platforms even though Waid followed Rogers’s advice by offering the story as a simple PDF file rather than something designed specifically for one machine or operating system.

Waid and Rock designed their comic so that some “page turns” lead to the same image as the previous page but with a significant new element: another panel, word balloons, more visual details. That sort of transition works best when one panel is instantaneously replaced by another. That’s how my primary PDF-reading program on my desktop (Preview for the Mac) works.

However, the iPad is programmed to highlight its “sliding” interface. Moving from one page to the next in a PDF file means that the first page disappears off the left side of the screen while the second slides in on the right. This can look cool, no question.

But instead of seeing a word balloon, caption, or shovel appear in the image in front of my eyes, I see the first image move away wholly and another, similar image arrive. Every element moves, making the new elements harder to spot.

I’ve tried two or three iPad apps that reads PDFs, and they all work by sliding. (Does anyone know of one that can be set otherwise?) Will this apparently inherent programming undercut what Waid and his team are trying to do? Can a story appear on all platforms equally when some platforms are more slippery than others?

Mark Waid and the Evolution in Digital Comics

Mark Waid is one of the best superhero comics scripters around, and has created interesting comics in other genres as well. As a hungry freelancer and occasional editor, he’s very concerned about how digitization is affecting that storytelling form.

Two years ago Waid gave a speech at the Harvey Awards about file-sharing’s effect on the comics business that went over so badly he felt a need to rearrange his notes into an essay on Comic Book Resources. It called for innovation, concluding:

We are the smartest, most creative medium in America. We put out ideas on a periodical basis bam, bam, bam. We don’t put out a screenplay every three years. We don’t invent a TV show every ten years. There are more ideas in one Wednesday in one comic shop than in three years of Hollywood. We’re notoriously bad businessmen, but we are unmatched for creativity and inventiveness, and there are ways to make filesharing work for us rather than cower in fear that it’s going to destroy us.

Of course, the sort of creativity that involves ray guns and retroactive continuity is different from the sort that comes up with successful new business models.

A few months later Waid went into greater length about copyrights and digital comics in a long interview after leaving BOOM! Studios to become a freelancer once again. And late last month Waid previewed a new format for digital comics with this short demo film.

Currently digital adaptations of printed comics struggle to adapt art created for the aspect ratio of a magazine page to the various screen sizes of our devices. The most popular software, such as that from ComiXology, can offer a full-page view (readable only on iPads and similar large tablets, and sometimes not even then), but their main format involves showing each panel or part of a panel in sequence. This can be awkward.

Waid and his artists started with a smartphone screen, using a horizontal aspect ratio, as their basic page or canvas. A space that size can show one to three panels at a time. A “swipe” or tap can bring on the next set of panels, like a traditional page turn, or add elements to the current page, including:

• an additional panel, not shown to readers before.
• more of a panel image, which can produce the effect of a camera pulling back.
• new details within a panel image, which produces the effect of time passing.
• changing “showing the invisible” elements of the comics form, such as a caption or word balloon.

The result adds the dimension of time to the comics storytelling process while stopping well short of expensive full animation. It does seem innovative, both in format and in narrative possibilities. Whether it will be a successful business model is another question.

Daredevil and the Family Circus

A day after analyzing some big panels in which a single character appears multiple times, I read Tucker Stone’s Comixology interview with scripter Mark Waid highlighting this double-page spread designed by Marcos Martin for a recent issue of Daredevil.

Waid explained:

I said "look, I need the two of them in a street scene in the glory of all of New York". I used that Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali book as an example for him, that famous two-page spread that Neal Adams drew of the city. . . . It's an amazing drawing. And we needed something of that sensibility. And then I said I was sorry and that I would pay him back for it in the years to come. And you saw what he did. He turned an establishing shot into the Family Circus. And I mean that in a good way!

Stone notes that Martin did similar things in recent issues of Captain America and Spider-Man. I recall another example in Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, and Alecos Papadatos.

Waid refers to the well-known “dotted line” Sunday strips of Bil and Jeff Keane’s Family Circus. Those are different, however, usually showing the moving character only at the end while preserving his path across a landscape with a dotted line.

In many ways this multiple-figure image works like those I discussed yesterday (and not just because, technically speaking, it appears in a Daredevil comic). The action moves left to right, background to foreground, helping us English readers to arrange the moments in chronological order. Having a horizontal space to work with probably makes that easier. In addition, both approaches involve maintaining the same basic mood throughout the scene.

Notably, the individual vignettes on this spread are visually separated by areas without balloons or major characters. We can thus insert mental gutters between the moments. In contrast, the multiple figures in yesterday’s panels often overlapped each other, signaling how we should consider them as all part of a single quick series of movements.

(The panel above displays another way of “showing the invisible” for Daredevil, who’s blind but has enhanced senses and radar due to one of those convenient early-1960s accidents with radioactivity. The square boxes popping up around the scene communicate what he’s hearing, smelling, and otherwise sensing.)