Author: Glenn Hauman

National Graphic Novel Writing Month: Pick Your Shots!

 

Your graphic novel writing exercise for the day:

Take a tracking shot from a movie or TV show– one long, unbroken take that runs for a minute or more. If nothing immediately comes to mind, we’re going to take the opening from the last James Bond film, Spectre:

Your mission, 007: select the single shots from this sequence that tells the story.  All the important visual pieces that tell the story. You don’t have to draw them, you can just freeze frame from the clip. Keep the continuity from panel to panel, shot to shot. This clip is great because there’s a minimum of dialogue, so you can’t easily link panels by covering the action with words.

Beginner level: This shot’s a little over 4 minutes, so we’ll make it easy and give you five pages to do the sequence. Pick your shots. Then hand it to someone else and ask them if it makes sense.

Intermediate level: Describe the shots for your artist— what are the important things that are happening in each panel that the artist has to include, including continuity between panels? (Obviously, assume your artist has never seen this clip before.)

Advanced level: Cut two pages from your beginner level sequence.

Ready? Go.

Glenn Hauman: Do You Really Need To Say It?

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Scènes à faire. Ever heard of it?

It’s an interesting concept that writers and artists encounter when they work, although they may not know what it’s called. It’s French for “scene to be made” or “scene that must be done”. In practical terms, it refers to a scene in a creative work that’s pretty much obligatory for the genre.

If you’re doing a story about a doctor, you will sooner or later have a dramatic shot of a patient on a cart pushed through swinging hospital doors. If you’re doing a story about a lawyer, sooner or later there will be an impassioned speech in front of a judge. If you’re doing a story about a little old lady in Maine who writes mysteries, sooner or later there will be a dead body. If there’s an evacuation, there will be a shot of a toy sadly left behind; if there’s a fruit cart during a car chase in an ethnic neighborhood, the fruit will become ingredients for a smoothie; if there’s a gun on the mantelpiece, it will be fired— on and on and on. ComicMix’s house metaphysician, Del Close, used to have a saying: “Never share a foxhole with a character who carries a photo of his sweetheart.”

And if there’s a superhero story…?

Sadly, you can probably come up with a lot of things in here that just seemed preordained to show up.

First off, it’s a one in a billion thing. A lightning bolt will hit a rack of chemicals that you’re near, a radioactive spider will bite you and not kill you, an alien will come down and give you a thingamabob of immense power, you’re the one in a generation prophecy made flesh, or a completely random mutation, or your billionaire parents were shot dead in an alley— you can list these as easily as I can.

At the same time or shortly thereafter, you get THE MOTIVATION. That’s the reason why they get dressed up and do what they do, and that is important, because that often reveals character. (It better reveal character, the person has suddenly decided to start wearing funny clothing outside and potentially be shot— “it seemed like a good idea at the time” just won’t do.)

Now: can you tell a superhero story without telling the origin?

Well, yes. Spider-Man: Homecoming avoided telling (or retelling) the more famous moments of Peter Parker’s backstory (although we do see how he gets various iterations of his suit) and instead focused on what he does now as a person. There was an early draft for a Green Arrow/Suicide Squad-ish movie called SuperMax where Oliver Queen was just tossed in prison with a bunch of supervillians and had to get out. No origin, no recap, just hit the ground running. The first X-Men movie doesn’t go into the backstory of all these mutants, just throws in the plot, the sides, the stakes, and go.

Some stories are even doing this now with fight scenes, because fight scenes rarely reveal character. The most extreme example that comes to mind was what Peter David did in Captain Marvel between issues #5 and #6, he had an entire cosmic crossover battle and destroyed the universe— and did it all off-panel.

The point? The point is: get to the point. We’ve seen the classic bits already, and many of us can pretty much take them as given. The point is not the origin itself— but how and why this changes the character.

We’ve seen the universe end before. Show me why your character wants to end it.

(Hat tip to Jim Valentino for Normalman #1.)

Len Wein: 1948-2017

len-wein-dc-entertainment-hosts-darkness-light-wyccbtjf2lml-4949606Len Wein, the Eisner Hall Of Fame comics writer best known for creating the New X-Men, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Mockingbird, Swamp Thing, Human Target, Lucius Fox, and editor know for editing New Teen Titans, Batman, Flash, Who’s Who in the DC Universe, and Watchmen, died Saturday. He was 69.

Over his nearly fifty years in comics, he wrote thousands of comics stories and edited hundreds more for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and Disney Comics, where he served as Editor-In-Chief. He also wrote numerous animated episodes for Action Man, Avengers: United We Stand, ReBoot, ExoSquad, and Batman: The Animated Series, among many others.

I last saw Len at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, where we both represented the pros for the fan-pro Trivia Challenge.

He is survived by his wife, Christine Valada. My heart goes out to her, all his friends (he had hundreds), all his fans (he had tens of thousands), and the people his work touched (millions).

Glenn Hauman: Comics Adaptations Overload?

This past weekend, I was a guest at Shore Leave (had a blast) and as I’ve been doing for the last decade or so, I’ve been helping Robert Greenberger put together a bunch of trailers for upcoming movies, tv shows, and the like for what’s going to be coming out between now and February (which is when Farpoint takes place).

However, this week was the first time I could have filled the entire time allotted with nothing but previews from upcoming projects based on comics and graphic novels.

And this is less than two weeks before San Diego Comic-Con, where there will be lots of new stuff revealed for the first time – it’s a safe bet we’ll see sneak peeks from Avengers: Infinity War and Aquaman, maybe something from Runaways or New Mutants or Deadpool 2: Dead Harder, and that’s not even talking about any of the animated projects or anything from Valiant, not to mention the slew of returning TV series…

Are we hitting oversaturation?

I doubt it. Instead, we’re finally hitting a point of market segmentation and specialization.

First: we’ve got projects coming out that many people wouldn’t know were adaptations from comics unless you told them because they don’t have superheroes in costumes. Atomic Blonde is the current best example (based on The Coldest City by Antony Johnson and Sam Hart, published by Oni).

Second: we’re getting to a point where, just like in your local comic book shop, we’re seeing stories that aren’t just guys in capes beating each other up. We have mysteries, science fiction, high fantasy, horror, biographies, romance, thrillers, young adult, noir— in other words, the things you’d see in any bookstore except for computer manuals (and those don’t get adapted to movies).

And that diversity is a good thing, because not ever story is going to be for you. We’re long past the days when the only adaptations you had were Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk on television, and you watched them because that’s all that we had. (Maybe the Doctor Strange tv movie, if you could convince your parents not to watch Roots.) Now, we have a cornucopia of high quality shows to choose from, all appealing to different tastes and sensibilities. Even though Supergirl is a well-produced show, it’s not made with me in mind. And that’s okay, it has its audience and it’s doing fine.

This is healthy not just for adaptations, but for comics in general. It means that comic creators will tell other stories which have just as much chance as hitting the tie-in jackpot, which will compensate for the long hours at the drawing table.

However, having gone through the previews, I do see one trend that could feel repetitive: the bunch of outsiders grouping together to fight off evil, fear, and prejudice towards their kind. Between Cloak & Dagger, Inhumans, Gifted, Defenders, to an extent Justice League, and the non-comics Midnight, Texas… I have to wonder if this is a response to the politics of the day. (And for heaven’s sake, no more emo piano starting these trailers. You’re tortured. We get it.)

And since you’ve read through all of this, you should probably see the trailers I’m talking about.

Atomic Blonde:

Valerian:

Cloak & Dagger:

Glenn Hauman: Is Binge-Reading Bad For Comics?

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On a whim the other day, I decided to go re-read some old Warlock comics.

It was an extremely mind-blowing experience, and not for the usual reasons when reading Warlock.

The issues blurred by in a smear— or maybe that was the old crappy printing. The seams in the stories were much more visible than I remembered. Things that seemed deep and profound just came off as silly and obvious. Even Adam Warlock himself, instead of being the tormented golden child trying to find his place in the universe, sounded and acted like a whiny brat.

Why? What happened? Was this book hit by the suck fairy?

No, that wasn’t it. It was because I was taking it in waaaay too fast. These books were simply not designed to be consumed one after the other so quickly.

You may have noticed this phenomenon yourself.

Scott McCloud spends a chapter in Understanding Comics about the way time flows when you read comics, how time is perceived, and the relationship between time as depicted in the comics by the creators and how it’s perceived by the reader. But, amazingly, he missed one important unit of time— the gap in time (and therefore reading) imposed from publishing.

We’ve talked for a long time about comics being written for the trades — that moment where we gather up six or so issues at a time, every six months or so, and put them together for a single unit of consumption. But for a lot of history, comics weren’t like that. There were no trades to be had. There were just single issues that you had to wait a month for. (Or, depending on where you grew up, you waited a week for 5-8 page chunks of stories, either in The Spirit section of the Sunday paper or something like 2000 AD.)

There were gaps of time. Cliffhangers. Come back next issue, kids!

Comics creators in the past used those intervals at the same time they were constricted by them. Chris Claremont was mocked for years for reintroducing all the X-Men every single issue, but he knew that every issue was going to be somebody’s first, while other readers were just going to have forgotten who was who over a month’s time. (And over time, X-Men became the most popular title Marvel published. He had to be doing something right.)

The biggest beneficiary of this gap? I claim it was Watchmen. Readers were tossed into a such a deeply detailed world where we were trying to just get more – we had to read the back matter of the issues, the non-comics stuff which hinted at a much larger world because there was nothing else to read. And fans would pore over it and discuss and argue while waiting, waiting for the next issue.

Around 400,000 readers read Watchmen episodically, you can tell who was screaming over the three-month gap between issues #10 and #11. But since then, there’s been the Watchmen collected editions, which is the way most people have read it in the three decades (yikes!) since with a total print run well over 4 million copies at this point.

And I really have to wonder… how are the new folks reading it? Are they going straight through? Are they skipping over the text pieces, and maybe coming back later? I don’t know, but I do know that they don’t have to wait for the next installment… and that has to change how the book impacts you.

What do you think?

Adam West: 1928-2017

Adam West, an actor defined and also constrained by his role in the 1960s series “Batman”, died Friday night in Los Angeles at the age of 88 after a short battle with leukemia.

For many people in the comics community and the world beyond, West’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader was the first version of Batman they ever knew, and while the role chafed on him after a while, he eventually became reconciled to his unique situation:

Some years ago I made an agreement with Batman. There was a time when Batman really kept me from getting some pretty good roles, and I was asked to do what I figured were important features. However, Batman was there, and very few people would take a chance on me walking on to the screen. And they’d be taking people away from the story. So I decided that since so many people love Batman, I might as well love it too. Why not? So I began to reengage myself with Batman. And I saw the comedy. I saw the love people had for it, and I just embraced it.

The enduring power of his performance lasts to this day, with DC Comics producing a Batman ’66 comics series and the recent animated release Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.

In recent years, West was introduced to a new generation of fans through his recurring voice role as Mayor Adam West on Fox’s “Family Guy.” The self-parodying West was a regular on the show from 2000 through its most recent season. Seth MacFarlane posted this tribute:

https://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane/status/873595796720975872

West in recent years did a range of voice-over work, on such shows as Adult Swim’s “Robot Chicken” and Disney Channel’s “Jake and the Neverland Pirates.”

He is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Our condolences to his family, friends, and fans.

Zack Snyder Steps Down from JUSTICE LEAGUE, Joss Whedon Takes Over

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Variety reports that Zack Snyder is stepping away from Justice League in order to deal with the death of his daughter. Joss Whedon, director of Marvel’s The Avengers who recently announced to direct Batgirl, will oversee the remainder of the film.

Snyder’s daughter died of suicide in March and the director, along with his wife Deborah, who is also a producer on the film, have decided to take a break from the film in order to deal with the sudden tragedy.

Filming on “Justice League” had already finished, and Snyder was in the throes of post-production in order to meet the film’s Nov. 17 release date. Whedon will now oversee a handful of reshoots that had already been scheduled prior to Synder’s daughter’s death, as well as the post-production process.

There are no plans to push the release date at this time. The film stars Ben Affleck as Batman, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Ezra Miller as the Flash, Jason Momoa as Aquaman, and Ray Fisher as Cyborg.

Autumn Snyder died by suicide in March at age 20. Her death has been kept private, even as the movie was put on a two-week break for the Snyder family to deal with the tragedy.

Our condolences to the Snyder family.

Glenn Hauman: Rejected!

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One of the most frustrating things to learn when you’re trying to break into the comics business is that you can be doing everything right – you can be skilled in your craft, pro-level, ready to go, with genuine audience pleasing work – and you still don’t get the job.

Even more, you can go back, show the same work again, get an even better response to it – and you still don’t get the job.

Let me offer myself as an example.

1989. Summer. Batman had been in theaters for six weeks and I was at the San Diego Comic-Con. My first, their 20th. I was 20, so it seemed fair. The show was still in what they now call the San Diego Concourse, with the Masquerade in the Civic Theatre, and it was the biggest convention I’d ever seen, bigger than all the New York shows I’d been to – why, there were eleven thousand people there!

(We pause for a moment of laughter – nowadays, that’s the line for Hall H. Onward.)

And there was a panel there called (more or less) “The Mighty Marvel Pitch Session.” You would get up on stage and pitch your plot to Executive Editor Mark Gruenwald and Historian / Archivist Peter Sanderson, who would listen and critique you to the audience, and give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. I went. And I had nothing, really, except for a She-Hulk story that I’d written up and mailed to editor Bobbie Chase in the wake of John Byrne’s leaving the book, who rejected it.

Heck, I didn’t even have a copy of the plot, just the memory of it. But it was what I had. And so I went up, to face the judgment of the duo doing Siskel & Ebert.

I don’t have the space here to recap the plot, but trust me: I killed.

The audience was laughing hysterically at all the right places, and Mark and Peter were right along with them. By the time I got to the point where She-Hulk was arguing with the new voice in the narration box, wanting to talk to Byrne, and the narrator explaining Byrne wasn’t there because he wanted to have She-Hulk shave her legs with her heat vision –

“ – I don’t have heat vision!”

“Yeah, we know. Messy, ain’t it?”

Mark turned into the gale force of crowd laughter, exclaiming, “Does everyone know this story???”

I finished the story to rapturous applause, and got the only double thumbs up of the panel.

Afterwards, Mark came up to me. “That was a great story! Why don’t you submit it?”

“I did. It was rejected.”

“Really? Who did you send it to?”

“Bobbie Chase.”

“Hmm. That’s weird. Why don’t you send it to me, and I’ll bring it over to Bobbie and see what’s going on with it?”

An invite to submit a story to Marvel? To the Executive Editor who already likes your story? “Yes, sir, I’ll send you a copy as soon as I get back to New York!”

And so I sent it off, and waited.

I waited through August, and just as I was packing up to head back to my Junior year of college, I got a reply – which I just found this weekend in my files and reproduce for you here.

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Good story, amusing story – just not usable anymore.

Argh.

By that time, school had started up again, and I got busy and didn’t end up pitching again – you know, just got caught up, had to finish school, had to pay the bills, had to move, yadda yadda yadda. My next time writing Marvel characters would be almost seven years later in a prose anthology, The Ultimate X-Men.

So, is there a moral here?

Yes, and it’s this: Don’t give up.

Seriously.

Every writing manual tells you not to get discouraged, just keep at it, and eventually it’ll break for you.

And it will, but it does take effort. It takes time to find a voice, a groove, a point of view. The only thing that moves that process along is output.

And even when you’re ready – the shot may not be there. Even crazier: the shot you take may miss.

And that’s okay.

Don’t take it personally.

There will be other chances, other places, other things that inspire you to create.

But also, this: Talent and skill does not necessarily correlate to career opportunity.

That’s a tougher one to handle; realizing that no matter how good or bad you are, your career will hinge to a completely unknowable level on blind luck and happenstance.

But that’s okay too.

Because then when you realize it, all you have to do is put yourself out there, and all you have to be… is ready.

Glenn Hauman: Trek Against Trump

  • News
  • October 3, 2016

armin-shimerman-usa-9517089Fifty years and one month ago, a new TV show came to the airwaves that was unlike anything ever really seen before – science fiction, but not childish stories of space cadets with their zap guns, only different from shoot-em-up westerns because they shot beams of light instead of bullets of lead. Star Trek was something different. Unique. And incredibly long lived. Star Trek has become part of the American story, with the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise hanging in the Milestones of Flight section of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, right next to the Spirit of St. Louis.

David Gerrold, author of the episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”, recently wrote,

“From the beginning, Star Trek was a series of little morality plays. From the beginning, Star Trek was an examination of the human condition. From the beginning, Star Trek was a vision of a future that works for all of us, with no one and nothing left out. For some people, Star Trek was just another job. Okay, fine. Collect the check and go home. But for many of us, maybe even most of us – Star Trek was something special, something apart from every other job in the world. It was a vision of possibility. It was an assertion that the way things are is not the way they have to be. It was a bold assertion of hope in a decade that had fallen into despair.”

And today, half a century later, despite the dated production values, Star Trek‘s best stories are still strong statements that the future will exist with humans in it, and will be what we make it.

But it’s not easy living up to that standard of a golden future. It requires commitment to an ethos of inclusion, that the stars are not just for rich guys, or white guys, or guy guys – we’re all going to go there. All of us, in our infinite diversity and infinite combinations, boldly going forward.

It requires a commitment to science – all science, not just the stuff that reinforces what you already believe. Why guess when you can learn? When you can know?

It requires a commitment to education – not only learning new things, but letting go off old lessons learned that we cling to because of nostalgia and superstition instead of accuracy.

It requires a commitment to competence. There are times when someone’s got to take the wheel— shouldn’t it be the best driver available? Shouldn’t it at least be someone who’s driven before?

And most of all, it requires a commitment to finding a way to work together instead of against each other. We aren’t going to go anywhere if people keep tossing sand into the machinery.

To a lot of the people who work on the franchise, including at various times me and ComicMix contributors Robert Greenberger, David Mack, Peter David and others, Star Trek is more than mere entertainment— it’s a message of hope, and we make contributions to a secular mythology where we are the gods and demigods who span the heavens.

And there has never been a presidential candidate who stands in such complete opposition to the ideals of the Star Trek universe as Donald John Trump.

That’s why over 130 members (and counting) of the cast, crew, and contributors to the Star Trek universe, including myself, have added their names to a voter mobilization movement called Trek Against Trump, an effort spearheaded by Armin Shimerman – and if the most famous Ferengi in the universe tells you that Trump is a greedy, manipulative, tasteless boor who doesn’t have the brains to run a banana stand, believe him.

Do you want to live in a Star Trek future? Well, you can’t take the future for granted — we build it today by what we all do in the present. If you want a better future, you have to make it happen, and you have to act like citizens of a better future. The people who made the stories of that future are telling you how to make it happen.

There are some who have objected to the group’s explicit call not to vote for third-party candidates, and I say— get over it. The only way Donald Trump is not going to be elected is if Hillary Clinton is. You don’t like “voting for the lesser of two evils”? Then realize you’re voting against the greater of two evils. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. You might have heard that somewhere.

So: register to vote. And if you’re really passionate about it, here is your five week mission– to explore strange new neighborhoods. To seek out 18 and older lifeforms to build civilization. To boldly vote, like you’ve never voted before.

Because if you don’t– Melakon wins.

I’m giving the last word to John deLancie, Star Trek‘s “Q”:

Glenn Hauman: Neil Gaiman Does Not Need A Pity Hugo

jeff_gillooly-1128121Remember this class act, America?

This is Jeff Gillooly. You may remember him from the 90’s. He “masterminded” the hit on Nancy Kerrigan’s knee on the eve of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in 1994, to prevent Kerrigan from skating and making the U.S. Olympic Team, for the benefit of his ex-wife, Tonya Harding.

What does this have to do with the Hugo Awards? Well, it should be obvious. Theodore Beale, by slating again with his Rabid Puppies, has decided to kneecap the 2016 Hugo Awards… and just to add to the fun, this time he’s trying to create poison pills by nominating famous authors in some categories, so he can take the credit if they win, and cry persecution if they are rejected with the rest of his slate.

John Scalzi, talking about the Hugo mess on his blog, takes the position:

…I see some people here and elsewhere swearing they’re going to put anything that was on the Sad/Rabid slates or recommendation lists below “No Award” this year. Bluntly, you’ll be foolish if you do this. As I noted in my LA Times piece yesterday, the Puppies this year slated things that were already popular outside their little circles, like, for example, The Sandman: Overture, by Neil Gaiman.

Come on, folks. Does anyone really think Neil Gaiman holds active membership in the Puppy brigades? Or Stephen King? Or Alastair Reynolds (who specifically asked to be dropped from the Puppy lists, and was ignored)? Or Lois McMaster Bujold? […] Don’t give credit for the Puppies slating already popular work and then acting like they got it on the ballot, or for dragooning unwilling and unwitting people onto their slates for their own purposes. That’s essentially victim blaming. Rather, use your common sense when looking at the work and people nominated. The Puppies would be happy if you didn’t do that, mind you. I’m hard pressed to understand why you would oblige them so.

With all due respect, John’s way off base here. Hugo voters are more than entitled to say, “While Sandman: Overture is worthy of nomination, I’m voting No Award for everything that was slated because the nomination process was corrupted. Because of slate voting, books like Saga, Bitch Planet, Chrononauts, and Kaijumax weren’t allowed to compete. It’s a fixed fight against weaker opponents.” After all, if the slate pushed off more worthy contenders, is whatever’s left actually worthy of being called “Best”?

By the same token, King, Reynolds, Bujold, and any other person whose works were placed on the ballot by Beale’s machinations are perfectly entitled to withdraw their works from consideration without any loss of honor, because Beale’s slating tactics insured a uneven field. Beale publicly admits this, claiming “even when we don’t control the category, we still have the ability to decide who will win and who will lose when the SJWs don’t No Award the category.”

610yff-hunl-8969345Neil Gaiman is well within his rights to say, “Yes, I believe Sandman: Overture is Hugo-worthy, but I don’t think I should win just because Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor was pushed off the ballot. I said The Sculptor was the best graphic novel I’ve read in years, it says so on the cover of the book. If I’m not going against that, it’s not a fair competition.”

Neil Gaiman does not need a pity Hugo. He’s already won five Hugos, fairly. He does not need a fixed fight to win them.

Lois McMaster Bujold does not need a pity Hugo. She’s already won four Hugos for best novel, tying the record. She does not need to play against the literary equivalent of the Washington Generals.

Stephen King does not need a pity Hugo. He’s Stephen Goddamn King. (And he won one in 1982.)

And getting votes for being the only good candidate in a bad field, a deliberately weakened field, is getting a pity Hugo.

One author has already realized this. Thomas A. Mays says he has decided to withdraw his Hugo-nominated short story “The Commuter” from the ballot:

I did not ask to be part of any list, but I hoped at the very least that it might bring other eyes to “The Commuter”, readers that might appreciate it for what it was and perhaps honor me with an uncontroversial nomination (or at least a few Kindle purchases).  But, now that all hopes for a clean nomination are dashed, it is my turn to speak:

Rather than eat a shit sandwich, I choose to get up from the table.  

You know who needs a pity Hugo? Theodore Beale. And he’ll never even get that. Maybe there should be a participation Hugo for him. The type some teachers give to a little boy who eats too much library paste, so he can feel better about himself.

Saying Beale wins by provoking others to further damage to the prestige of the Hugos is just silly– it’s Beale himself who kneecapped the Hugos. Beale’s claim of “You’re pushing worthy authors off!” is self-serving, because he pushed them on us in the first place— just because his actions insure someone other than him benefits is no reason to reward him for swinging a wrench at Nancy Kerrigan’s kneecap.

Here’s what Beale doesn’t get, not being a very good creator himself: good creators want to be judged on the quality of what they create. They don’t want to race against hobbled runners. Can you imagine the Cincinnati Reds felt good about beating the Black Sox to win the World Series? Beale is trying to force an affirmative action awards program, because he and his are not good enough to win on their own merits. And in doing so, he’s become the Jeff Gillooly of science fiction.

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