Yesterday I stopped by Vector Comics, my local dispenser of all things comics related, to pick up my readings, which included Vertigo’s Saucer Country by Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly, ComicMix columnist John Ostrander’s Dawn Of The Jedi: Force Storm from Dark Horse, and the latest issue of Dark Horse’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer by Andrew Chambliss, Scott Allie, Cliff Richards, Andy Ownes – executive produced by Joss Whedon, of course. Does that man ever sleep?

Before I left I got into a discussion with Alex, one of the guys behind the counter, about summer movies. Well, specifically, about The Avengers. Alex told me that he had already seen it, having gone into Manhattan to get in line for the first showing at midnight. Which made me very jealous and pissy, ‘cause these days my life is about work, school, work, school, work, school, work, school… and oh, yeah, writing this column. I will probably be the last person in America to see it on the big screen. No, make that the world. Thanks to Denny’s column last week, I know that the movie has been open in the international market for nine days already.

So then Alex and I got to talking about other summer movies, and the first season blockbuster that made an impression on us. For me it was in 1975, the summer I saw Jaws.

I was at Camp Monroe in Monroe, NY – going to sleep away camp is a time-honored ritual for Jewish kids in the New York metropolitan area – and working as a nurse’s aide in the camp infirmary. I knew the camp was planning an outing to the movies, and with some wheedling I got to go on the possibility of some kid getting carsick. I didn’t know what it was about. I don’t think there were that many who did, except for some of the counselors and adult staff who had read Peter Benchley’s book, but I had a hankering to get “off-campus.”

That night the infirmary was busy with kids having nightmares and unable to sleep. The next night the pool was full of “great white sharks.” And me? I’m still way more comfortable in a pool than in the ocean.

Anyway, the conversation got me to thinking last night about summers and movies and how sometimes the movies and the summers become entwined in your life and make great memories.

For me that movie was Star Wars. I remember coming home from working that 1977 Memorial Day holiday and being incredibly pissed off at my then-boyfriend because he had gone to see it that afternoon with some friends instead of waiting for me. I immediately said, “Well, we’re going tonight,” Incredibly, instead of him complaining, he said, “okay.” Curious, I said, “You mean it? You just saw it a few hours ago.” All he said was, “You’ll see.”

Boy, did I ever! I can’t even describe the experience, even after all these years. I was so blown away by what was happening on the screen – the rolling introduction fading into a sea of stars, the endless Imperial battleship coming in seemingly over our heads, the Falcon jumping into hyperspace, Luke and Leia swinging across the chasm – that I didn’t really get the actual story until the second time I saw it. Which was the following Wednesday, ‘cause I was off from work and I went by myself to a matinee showing while then-husband was working.

I remember coming home and sending off for a subscription to Starlog. No more waiting for the next issue to appear on the newsstand. I wanted more. Lots more. I devoured everything Star Wars. When I found out there was going to be a sequel, I drooled and yeaned and read and reread every article I could find on it. I discovered NPR by accident one night and they were playing a “radio theatre” of Star Wars. (I’ve been a devotee of NPR ever since.) I sent away for the cassette (yeah, remember those?) so I could play it whenever I wanted to. I even saved the issue of Time magazine with Empire as the cover story – it’s still somewhere in the house.

Oh, I was a geek, and it was a great time to be a geek. I didn’t have to hide it anymore. Except around my family.

Which is why I had my daughter Alix. She was a great excuse to indulge myself.

By the time Empire came out my daughter Alix was nearing her first birthday. I remember buying her a full-scale model of the Millennium Falcon. For Hanukah, Christmas, and her birthday, I told my family. “Yeah, right,” they said. I remember that when she was two I brought her to the rerelease of Empire, buying a shitload of candy and soda so she wouldn’t be bored ‘cause I couldn’t find a babysitter. I remember seeing, in the back of Starlog, an ad for Luke’s Rebel jacket. Adult sizes. And kid’s sizes. I remember chickening out of buying one for myself. But I bought one for her. She looked so cool in it, even if it was kinda big. My family said, “what a great motorcycle jacket.” I said, “It’s Luke’s jacket from Empire.” Suddenly it wasn’t so great. (But she had that jacket for years, as she grew into it. And even kept trying to squeeze into it as she got older.)

And what was the effect on Alix? She’s 32 now, married, with a Master’s degree and a corner office with a window and responsibilities. She’s a serious adult.

Isn’t she?

Well, I just got off the phone with her. We’re going to see The Avengers at 5:00 p.m.

Tuesday Morning: Michael Davis

We’re all storytellers. It’s the common currency of our social interactions. We use story to explain, to amuse, to communicate and a host of other tasks in our daily lives. Some of us get to make our living telling stories. Some of us are better at it than others.

The problem with some people who tell stories verbally (and I have been guilty of this from time to time) is that we tend to lose our audience. That’s because we forget to check in with those who are listening. If the eyes of the listener are glazed ever so slightly, you’ve lost them. It’s harder to tell when this happens when you’re writing a story but it can happen there, too, and often does.

A big question is – how much do we need to tell to communicate the story? Actually, I should say how little do we need? What’s the minimum? What is really necessary? What is necessary to know and what is necessary to tell?

I have what I call the iceberg theory. The bulk of an iceberg exists under the waterline; only about ten percent of it shows above it. That other ninety percent is necessary, however, for the top ten percent to show. That’s plenty enough to sink an “unsinkable ship.” The same is true with character and story: you have to know a lot about the characters, the setting, the background of the plot and so on but only a small part of it can or should be used. You’ll sometimes have an author (and, yes, this is another thing of which I have been guilty of from time to time) who, having done all this research, wants to use it. Guaranteed fatal error; the audiences eyes glaze and they’re lost.

Or the author may want a certain scene or bit of dialogue in the story because, you know, it’s so swell and makes them look really clever. Those bits need to be cut out unless they are moving the plot, the characters, or the theme forward. It’s called “kill your darlings.” Elmore Leonard said that when he goes back over a draft he removes anything that sounds like writing. He’s pretty successful and that’s good advice.

A lot of the time, whether in story or in real life, I think we over-explain. We don’t want to be misunderstood and there’s lots of good reasons for that; we see all too many examples of people not only misunderstanding but willfully misunderstanding. Witness the current presidential election season. However, it’s fatal in storytelling.

Some rules I try to follow in my storytelling: 1) Assume the reader’s/listener’s intelligence and goodwill. Assume they want to be told a good joke or read a good story. 2) What is the minimum they need to know to understand the premise? Usually less than you might think. 3) When in doubt, cut it out. If you’re not sure a line/character/scene is really working, try taking it out and see if everything still makes sense. If it does, then delete the junk permanently. 4) Fewer words are better. Leave your audience wanting more instead of wishing you were done already.

What you choose to tell is what makes it your story. Another person might choose different elements to tell the same story. It’s why different people can tell different versions of the same joke.

Remember, glaze is fine on a doughnut; not so much in your audience’s eyes.

Hmmmmm. Doughnuts!

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

One would think that of all the major conglomerates in the world, The Walt Disney Company would have the greatest empathy and respect for creators who have made bad deals that resulted in their characters being torn from them. Disney, in fact owes its own success to its founder’s resolution resulting from having his creation hijacked by corporate greed. (more…)

From The Gutters.

Just for funsies, I cracked open my DC Archives: Green Lantern hardcover the other day. An hour later, I’d reminded myself why I was never the biggest fan of Hal Jordan. But that’s a discussion I’ve bemoaned about here before, so I’ll spare you. What struck me, though, was the sheer density of the material presented. Oh, how have times changes. Some argue for the better. Others say nay. Concerning the amount of plot presented today in the standard off-the-rack rag we all love so much, it’s a debate I’m willing to fill a few inches of babble about.

I can’t personally put a pin at the exact moment of time when comic book writers started decompressing their material. My best guess is that it was a slow burn starting in the mid-eighties, that reached critical mass somewhere around the time Brian Michael Bendis was being knighted by Joey Quesada. Truth be told, I’m not a comic historian (like the incomparable Alan “Sizzler” Kistler) and I’m inspired by Michael Davis’ Lazy-Man, so I’m not doing the research to find out exactly when. Suffice to say, it’s no difference to me when this all happened, so much as whether it has been for the better of the medium. And that answer isn’t exactly black and white.

The thing is, when I read through those Silver Age reprints I couldn’t help but feel slighted. Huge problems for the titular hero were dispatched in a matter of a few panels. Why? Because by the turn of a page, we were already onto the next plot point / problem / story beat. In one story, Hal is called to a prehistoric world where he must save the blue skinned Neanderthals from evil yellow dino-birds. One panel? He’s punching them. Next? He’s blasting them with a big green canary. Next? He’s home. In less than a handful of pages, the entire story is wrapped up. For anyone out there that wants to defend that as being higher quality that last months’ issue of GL… come see me behind the shed. Simply put, this “gotta cram an entire story in 12 pages!” mentality may have suited people 20 years ago… But not now.

When it’s done right, modern comics have the pacing, depth, and content akin to a good movie. Take the first arc of Mark Millar’s The Ultimates. Not only do we get origins for Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant Man, the Wasp, and Captain America, but we get true moments of cinematic glory. When the Hulk rampages in the city, horny and angry, it’s a moment earned through the build up of tension across the four books it took to get there. If the same book were made in the Silver Age? Hulk would have been tearing up a building in one panel, booted out of it in the next, and laughing about the lessons learned before the page turn. In other words? Decompression gives the reader a chance to absorb characterization and depth.

When it’s done wrong, a book becomes a banal burden. How many times in the modern era have we plunked down good money to read a book that doesn’t move a story forward, for seemingly no reason? When an arc is immediately all too familiar, we can end up purchasing six or more issues of a story despite our ability to glean the entire plot beat for beat.

Case in point? Justice League International. In the very first issue, it was as clear as day: The team would assemble for the greater good, but show terrible cooperation. The big bad guy would do increasingly bad things and the team would eventually have to unite in order to win the day. And because I knew that this would be the arc they’d travel on, I simply dropped the title. The idea that all stories must “write for the trade” is a double-edged sword. When the plot comes out of the box of “been there done that,” all you’re doing is wasting ink and paper.

Let me not poo-poo the Silver Age without pulling back my anger just a bit. These older tales had something modern comics lack. Balls. Big brass ones. Do you think, even for a second, Batman of Zur-En-Arrh could have been pitched and published as an original concept in 2012? Not on your life. The older books had a mentality to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. It allowed ol’ Hal Jordan to be on a primitive planet fighting dinosaurs on one page, and then be whisked away to the anti-matter universe for a skirmish with the Qwardians on the next.

With the way modern books are published, those two concepts alone might take up the better part of a year to explore. Modern books slow time down to a visceral crawl. Case in point? For as good as Ultimate Spider-Man is… did you know it took Bendis five-plus years of bi-monthly issues to cover a single year of Peter Parker’s life? In 60 issues in the 60s, Spider-Man had fought 47 villains, went to college, teamed up with the Avengers, became a lounge singer, and still had time to forget to bring the eggs home for Aunt May.

The key here, in this carpy columnist’s opinion, is balance. Not every book needs to “write for the trade.” Some of the best comic books I own are single-issue stories that aren’t anchored to one trade or another. When done well (for example, GrimJack: The Manx Cat), a dense story across six books can feel like a novel in and of itself. When done poorly (the middle 30s and 40s of Irredeemable), a decompressed story can feel more like a worthless stall and cash-grab.

Far be it from me to spend so long pontificating about the pacing of a story as my article gets longer and longer. I guess when it comes down to it… to summarize… or in other words, wrap things up: Pacing in modern comics has never been more important. As a fan, all we can hope for is a feeling that we’ve gotten our money’s worth by the time we place the comic in its bag and board.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander