Ah, the joys of writing.

Well, not when you’re working on your capstone project, the culmination of the past 18 months, the paper that will lead me to that walk down the aisle in mortarboard and gown to the hallowed, somber notes of Pomp and Circumstance. How did that get to be the graduation processional march anyway? Wait, I’m going to look it up. Tawk amongst yawselves….

This is what Wikipedia says: “The Pomp and Circumstances Marches, Op. 39” are a series of marches for orchestra composed by Sir Edward Elgar. In the United States, the Trio section,” Land of Hope and Glory” of March No. 1 is sometimes known simply as” Pomp and Circumstance” or as “The Graduation March,” and is played as the processional tune at virtually all high school and college graduation ceremonies. It was first played at such a ceremony on 28 June 1905, at Yale University, where Samuel Sanford, Professor of Music, invited his friend Elgar to attend commencement and receive an honorary Doctorate of Music. Elgar accepted, and Sanford made certain he was the star of the proceedings, engaging the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the College Choir, the Glee Club, the music faculty members, and New York musicians to perform two parts from Elgar’s oratorio – “The Light of Life” and, as the graduates and officials marched out, “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.” Elgar repaid the compliment by dedicating the “Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47” at the first London Symphony Orchestra performance later that year. The tune soon became de rigueur at American graduations, used primarily as a processional at the opening of the ceremony, although it is still used now only as at Yale.”
Oy, the things you and I learn because of this column!

As I was saying, academic writing is not at all like writing fiction, or like writing this column – which could be fiction. Some of it, anyway. You’ll never know, will you? Academic writing is about rules that must not be broken under any circumstance, although I think that only God knows why. I’ve had arguments with several professors – before I learned better – about why academic writing must be so dry and impersonal and polysyllabic. In other words, b-o-r-i-n-g. “Look,” I said. “Doesn’t it make sense that if the writing’s engaging, fun, and inclusive of the audience, that audience will enjoy reading it, and if the audience enjoys reading it, then the audience will r-e-m-e-m-b-e-r it. As in, the audience will not need ten cups of coffee just to get through the abstract.”

“Ha-rumph!” said the professors, looking down their snoots. “Balderdash! Ms. Newell, we assume you want to pass this course.

”Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, ma’am.”

In other words, just shut up and do what they say, Mindy. And I do. And my academic writing is damn good, if I do say so myself, even if those last two sentences would never get through the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6^th Editon. Because they start with conjunctions.

But fiction writing – now that’s, as the doorman to the Emerald City said to Dorothy, a horse of a different color.

You can have fun when you’re writing fiction. Oh, there are rules about plot and structure and grammar. But those rules are easily broken. It’s about style. And style, baby? That’s the fun part. Style belongs to you. You, the author.

Raymond Chandler. Edna Ferber. Alan Moore. Toni Morrison. Ernest Hemingway. Anne McCaffrey. Brian K. Vaughn. Gail Simone. Neil Gaiman. Louise Simonson. Grant Morrison. Lynda Barry. Harvey Pekar. Mari Naomi. Frank Miller. Alison Bechdel. Each of these wonderful writers with their own style, their own voice. It’s one of the reasons, maybe the reason, why they are loved, why their books are snatched off shelves and downloaded onto e-readers.

Or maybe it’s not so fun. Maybe it’s hard, maybe it’s heartbreaking, maybe it’s terrifying, maybe it’s cathartic. Maybe you don’t really know where these words are coming from or why you have these ideas, but you only know that if you don’t get them out of your head or your soul and down on paper, someday they will eat at your guts and corrode your brain and destroy what’s left of your humanity.

Fiction as primal scream therapy.

Tuesday Morning: Michael Davis Continues With His Black Thing!

Tuesday Afternoon: Emily S. Whitten Reveals You, Too, Can Get Started! 

One of the reasons World War II is called the last good war is that the stakes were clear and unambiguous. Those years spawned countless stories of heroism, sacrifice, and loss that never cease to fascinate subsequent generations. Some movies have gone to great lengths to recreate what the horrors of war must have been like while others go for a different approach, going for a stark contrast to exemplify the acts of one or a few. The pilots resulting from the Tuskegee training program deserve proper treatment in mass media of their experiences.

It was long known that this was a passion project for filmmaker George Lucas, who has been discussing making this story for over 20 years. Not surprisingly, the bean counters at the studios balked at an all-Black film fearing it wouldn’t play well domestically and fare even worse overseas. Thankfully, Star Wars made Lucas a wealthy man and allowed him to help finance and see his project to fruition. During the intervening years, he brought survivors of those years to his ranch and interviewed them, capturing their tales while the men were still around to provide first-hand accounts.

He assigned the scripting to John Ridley and the direction to Anthony Hemingway and the story was shot in 2009. Dissatisfied with the results, Lucas himself helmed reshoots using script material from Aaron McGruder. The resulting film was released earlier this year and will be out Tuesday from 20^th Century Home Entertainment. Given the amount of time devoted to research and the passion from Lucas, one would have hoped for a more satisfying yarn. Once more his vaunted storytelling skills failed him as Lucas neglected to make the characters anything more than cardboard constructs, each filling an archetype but denying them a chance to shine via personality or dialogue. Instead, the 332d Fighter Group are as flat and wooden as the war movies made decades ago. (more…)

So I finally joined the clamoring hordes who have gone to see The Avengers and, yes, I had a really good time. No spoilers but I can define my favorite scene in two words that won’t spoil the show: “Puny god.” ‘Nuff said. Those who have seen it know what I’m talking about. I also really enjoyed the little scene at the end of all the credits.

It’s made a billion dollars worldwide, and its already on its way towards making a bazillion, I’m sure. Marvel has played it very canny, building up to it by way of Iron Man (I and II), Thor and Captain America. You’d almost think that The Avengers success was inevitable and you’d be terribly, terribly wrong.

I got two words for you.

Joss Whedon.

Joss Whedon is the real star of the film, having both written and directed it (having worked up the story along with Zak Penn who, among other things, wrote a bunch of Marvel X-Men movies, created the TV show Alphas and directed and co-wrote – with Werner Herzog – the wonderfully strange and funny film Incident at Loch Ness and, yes, that’s a recommendation). It must be really nice to be Joss Whedon right now. The Avengers is making money hand over fist and breaking all sorts of records. That translates into power out in Hollyweird – the power to get the movies you want to do green-lighted.

Yet, I’m also sure there will be those (especially those on the studio end who will have to negotiate with Mr. Whedon’s agents on his next salary) who will claim that it was all set-up by the other films and that anybody could have directed The Avengers and it would have done just as well. That sort of mind just sees us puny artistic types as widgets – take one out, plug in another. Same result, right?

To minds that think like that, I have two more words for you (and not necessarily the ones you’re thinking):

Michael Bay.

Bay, in case you don’t remember, has directed all three Transformers movies, among other things. In many ways, I’m surprised they didn’t tap him – all three Transformers movies are big, spectacular, lots of special effects, playing with a franchise created elsewhere and made lots of money. In some ways, he’s the more logical choice – he has the experience with doing that kind of film.

Imagine what a Michael Bay version of The Avengers would have been like. This is also the guy who is producing the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, only now its just called Ninja Turtles and they’re not mutant turtles, they’re aliens from space. Go ahead; imagine what he would have done with The Avengers.

Okay, I’m obviously not a big Michael Bay fan. But plug in someone else as well (who I don’t like) such Roland Emmerich who also has experience with big special effects laden money making films like (gawd help me) Independence Day, 2012, The Patriot, Godzilla (the remake) and so much more. What would an Emmerich Avengers film have looked like?

If you subscribe to the artistic widget theory then these guys could have made The Avengers and it would have made money. Would it have made the kind of money, however, that Whedon’s version is making and, more to all of our fannish hearts, would it have been as good? Would it have been such a quintessential Marvel story? I don’t think so. I have relatives and friends who aren’t fan geeks like most of us and they’re going back to the film and seeing it more than once because they just plain enjoyed it so much.

Why? Because whether they know it or not, it’s a Joss Whedon film, a Joss Whedon story. We who know his work can see it all over the place. The respect and power of the female characters in the story. The traditional Marvel tropes (heroes meet heroes, don’t like each other, fight and bicker, and then come together) done RIGHT. The clever dialogue, insightful characterization, playing with theme that Whedon does over and over again. It’s Whedon who made The Avengers the film that we all, fan and novice alike, are really loving worldwide.

I’ll give the suits their due – they chose Whedon instead of the more logical and safer choices. Joss Whedon had never directed a film on this scale before (Serenity is great but it’s not on this scale). However, he brought a passion and respect for the source material that satisfied all of us fans and made it accessible to everyone else. There may have been some questions out in Hollyweird when Whedon was picked but there can’t be any now. He wasn’t the “artistic widget” choice; he was the right choice.

‘Nuff said.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell, R.N., CNOR, C.G.

The Sunday after Free Comic Book Day, we Unshaven lads participated in a very old-skool styled convention. Housed in a ballroom and corridor in a hotel off a major road with little to no foot traffic. Don’t get me wrong, the show was fine for us. We made back our cost of attending, and a little to spare. Even better? I found some old Exo-Squad action figures and Matt got some old Marvel trading cards. It was a good day. What really made the con for us though, was our across-the-aisle neighbor. A young pup, still in college, selling at his first show. Shucks, we thought, that was us just a few years ago.

And then he asked us for advice.

Gasp!

We tripped over ourselves to unearth every con-attending-tip we’d accrued over the years. And this dude … well … he ate it up. This is what it must feel like to be Mike Gold.

With that in mind, I thought I might take a week off my normal ranting and raving to give some sage advice to all four of you reading this column who are either younger than me, or like ironically reading advice from a nobody. Specifically, I want to address people out there looking to start a web-comic. Why? Well, because Unshaven Comics wants to do it. See? I’m offering advice to myself. How meta! But I digress … some things to consider:

1. Deadlines exist on the web too.

The best web-comics being produced today all share one thing in common. They update on a schedule. The point is clear: Commit or quit. If nothing else, I freely admit this is the single reason Unshaven Comics has yet to have to throw a tooned-up beard in the ring. We’ve simply never mustered the gumption to produce work in such a manner people can depend on it. With the advent of our website we’ve slowly come to terms with posting content on a schedule. We’ve released podcasts nearly every week the site’s been live … as well as releasing monthly sketch contests inspired by our fans. It’s only now that we feel comfortable enough to commit to a schedule. Hence … a forthcoming launch is inevitable.

2. Your voice will come all in good time.

I look at my favorite web-comics these days … Penny Arcade, PvP, Let’s Be Friends Again, The Gutters … and it’s easy to notice how styles (both in script and in presentation) evolve over time. Well, maybe not so much The Gutters, but there’s always an exception to the rule. One of the best parts of working on the web is that it’s a forever-shifting canvas. All artists evolve. A web-comic is as much a timeline of an artist’s work as anything else. The key here is to just start making strips, and let the product and the responses you get to it, help shape it as you continue. This applies not only to the ‘funnies’ mind you. Even the serious web-comic is a never-ending project in process. Just as joke writers learn to find their own voice … so too, do novelists, musicians, etc. Simply put? Your comic needs to have a point-of-view, and a set of rules to play with and then eventually break. None of this comes though, if you’re waiting to “perfect the idea.” Sometimes you just have to hit “post” and let it ride.

3. Putting your name on it means it shouldn’t suck.

It’s an oldie but a goodie. If you sign your name to something, mean it. A commitment to craft at all times can only stand to sway your readership to stick it out with you. Read and reread your script. Ensure characters stay on model. If you can’t draw a hand, go take some classes and come back when you’re ready. Your audience will evolve with you, but if your “pilot” isn’t enough to capture them the first time you’re wasting pixels and bandwidth. While this may seen an antithesis to my previous point, it is indeed not. Put frankly, you need to find a balance between delivering a product you’re proud of, and challenging yourself to get better with every book/strip/joke/piece.

4. No creator is an island.

The single best part of making comics for me is sharing the experience with my two best friends. The second best part of making comics is meeting and collaborating with like-minded creators. Scott Kurtz eventually packed his bags and moved to Seattle to be inspired and challenged by the Penny Arcade dudes. In Art School the critique exists not to knock us down as much as it’s there to pick us up after we fall. That being said, sharing your work as you create can only stand to ensure you reach your target audience with the best foot forward.

5. Don’t be afraid to get off-topic.

Some of my favorite strips have all been smart enough to know when to take a break. Not from posting mind you … but from continuing a narrative without coming up for air. Fans of PvP no doubt refer to LOLBat, Scott Kurtz’s love letter to Memes, action comics tropes, and lighter-than-normal punchlines. And after a heavier set of strips, nothing cleanses the palate (of both artist and reader) better than a well-placed non-sequitur. The key being able to know when to “go to the well” to take that break. Cookies are only a sometimes food, kiddos.

I’m sure there’s tons more points to be made on this subject. Consider this being me putting a pin in the idea. And hey, I’m no stranger to listening to myself. If you have any suggestions for budding web-comic creators … why not put some of them in the comments below?

See you in the funny pages. Well … webpages that is …

SUNDAY: John Ostrander Gets Weird On The Avengers