A comic short influenced by Tom Waits’ 16 Shells from a 30 Ought 6. Words by me. Art by Matt Northrup.
A comic short influenced by Tom Waits’ 16 Shells from a 30 Ought 6. Words by me. Art by Matt Northrup.
Liam Sharp’s Novella Paradise Rex
Liam Sharp performs the role of exorcist in his new novella Andrew Wilmingot’s Paradise Rex, wrestling metaphysical demons at the heart of self-doubt.
Set in Derby, a town in the Midlands of England that is also referred to as Deadby throughout the story, the plot slithers around one Parliament Jones, the main character of Andrew Wilmingot’s Paradise Rex.
Derby provides that stark setting where dreams seed a barren land, never coming to fruition in that small town that eats its young. Sharp takes this old totem of the trapped artist cliché and subverts it through a simple but effective tool – honesty.
He finds the unique identity of Derby and why it’s a boneyard for the big dreams; it’s a blue-collar sensibility within the town’s identity that believes in the tangible and measurable in order to survive the drudgery of making a living. There is no place for the dream that imagines a new world and a new life in its stifling confines.
Thrown in is one of the more curious artistic movements, Beardism, and Sharp is off to the races manifesting and morphing reality and fiction into an inseparable tapestry rich in emotional hues that resonate through a Russian Nesting Doll narrative.
And then there’s Parliament Jones, a man of sweat and ink and carousing, the kind of archetype male shaped in the idea of vitality coming to an end. He’s a vehicle, an engine for the story that tunnels from the depths of the bedrock in which the seeds of dream are buried and left for dead.
Do they die? It’s a question that has an elusive answer at best as the plot snakes through a labyrinthine funhouse of mirrors within the dark recesses of a mind unsure of itself, illustrative of the process in which an artist tries to find their voice. This is where Sharp shuffles the deck on readers and takes a straightforward treatise on unfulfilled promise and deftly turns things upon their head.
Each chapter is a room in this psychological funhouse of a narrative he creates, taking the reader into the strange spaces within the head of the artist, the different compartments where prose turns to poetry, which turns to stage play and back in twists and turns as he experiments with form to take his meditation on creativity to dizzying heights.
A contemplative piece of work that is just as much fiction as truth, Sharp is a quantum cosmonaut, weaving through abstractions, concrete realities, and meta-fictional quantum entanglements while exploring the vastness of the artist mind with Paradise Rex.
Sharp’s narrative experiments create a pocket universe in which a meeting of the minds can occur, a place where reality and fiction find their lines as warped as time is by a singularity. He succeeds in creating a work that has sincere emotion, the kind that makes the reader think of the kind of feeling where there is no word in our human repertoire capable of describing that feeling. That feeling is the place within that we all try to draw off of and dream into existence.
While the narrative can be challenging in the way that it spins and weaves its way around, there is a pot of gold at the end, a reward in which we have reached an impossible place where a rainbow begins and ends. A rich vein has been tapped by Sharp that stands up to the rigor of a fractured reality that we all live in.
Paradise Rex is available through PS Publishing and Amazon.
Music and Comics: What is the connection?
Comics’ legend Jim Steranko, who holds court on Twitter every Sunday with his Sunday night TNT, had hinted at this idea from time to time. Naturally, I asked him to explain it.
Being that Twitter is a limited place for explaining this, he had to delay the full theory’s explanation. We crossed paths at SDCC last year, but being the master he is, Jim had hardly a minute with all of the fan and business interests clamoring for his attention.
Tonight, he managed to make the time, so here’s a full transcript that I only edited to help streamline the tweets in which Jim beautifully articulates the concept of music and how it connects to comics.
Every once in a while I get this bizarre, academic kink–so with your permission, tonight it’ll be my turn to hold court IN THE CLASSROOM for what may the most outre NARRATIVE ART theory you’ll hear this week! Or perhaps ever!!! Can you handle it?
Sometime last year, maybe earlier, I randomly mentioned an offbeat narrative-arts theory I’d developed a while ago. It was during the period I took on comics professionally, my COMEUPPANCE PERIOD–when I thought I knew it all–and really knew NOTHING!
I was a kid who had spent his entire life (reading at a year-and-a-half old, with third-hand comics as my teachers) exposed to the form and, by some osmotic miracle, felt I had it all IN MY POCKET!
However, the attitude was not out of arrogance, but deep AFFECTION for the material, a natural affectation because comics are an art showcase–and I had some inclination toward art.
I’d made a living as a commercial artist (since I was 17) & was fortunate to have scored the ART DIRECTOR position at a prominent ad agency. So, I had 13 years of experience under my belt when I entered the comic book arena.
Believe it or not, I initially generated pages at a prodigious rate (despite shouldering THREE full-time jobs during that period), and the reason was not because I was a crackerjack craftsman, but because I knew nothing about WHAT MAKES COMICS WORK! I was flying by the seat of my pants–and barely at survival level!
Even though my first three Marvel assignments were working over Kirby layouts, the process not only taught me NOTHING about storytelling, it OBSTRUCTED my development. Kirby told a story HIS way, and his way was diametrically opposed to MY way. Read it and weep, Steranko!
True story: Although I wasn’t aware of it, I actually had developed a kind of subconscious NARRATIVE PHILOSOPHY, vivified by a lifetime of reading books, listening to radio dramas, & viewing films. It was there, it existed, I just didn’t KNOW about it!
I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid! From my first solo image, I realized I was working under the HANDICAP OF IGNORANCE! Although I’d digested thousands of comics as a kid, I was really only aware of their RESIDUAL EFFECT, similar to that of other mediums. The HOW was essentially missing (except for a smattering of early, amateur excursions into panel art).
A graduate of the SELF-TAUGHT SCHOOL OF APOSTASY, my only recourse was to attack the problem in the standard way: To put the subject under the atomic microscope of analysis/discovery/conclusion!
My ad agency experience pointed to the appropriate pathway, one I’d explored previously, from product evaluation to client credibility – by applying the study of COGNITIVE SCIENCE to the material!
A world suddenly opened up to me, a challenging array of problems and a multitude of provocative solutions, many of which I experimented with on my pages, and some of which became authentic INNOVATIONS in narrative art, no easy task considering that the comic book had been a dominant American art form for almost a HALF CENTURY.
As I explored the turf–generating a Niagara of honorable experiments with varying degrees of failure and success–I began to posit theories to support one of the most important strengths a writer/artist/colorist/editor can embrace: a personal, idiosyncratic approach to creation which I term NARRATIVE PHILOSOPHY aka the Rules by Which the Game is played!
Surprisingly, many creators to whom I mentioned the approach, didn’t have the vaguest idea what the hell I was talking about!
Sometime last year, possibly earlier, I referred to the theory here & was asked several times to articulate it, so THANKS for prompting me!
What follows will not change your life, but it may help establish a deeper understanding of the form and a richer appreciation of NARRATIVE ART!
As stated, the idea initially occurred to me in my earliest comics period, when I was also spending three or four nights a week rock ‘n’ rolling across the tri-state area. Pick up on that key word: ALSO!
The idea: An obvious correlation between STORYTELLING TECHNIQUE and MUSIC!
In addition to both requiring considerable study/practice and intense creativity, there is a similarity in STRUCTURE & CONTENT because, after a fashion, THEY BOTH TELL STORIES! I felt that similarity needed to be explored.
Music has THREE ELEMENTS: Rhythm, harmony, and melody–all of which are analogous to comic art.
Perhaps the most abused/overlooked aspect in comics today is RHYTHM, which is essentially defined in two ways.
First, the velocity with which the ACTION IN THE PANELS unfolds. For example, a dark figure walking down a deserted street after midnight suggests a relatively slow, steady pace (adagio in musical terms) one which, by contrast, obviously makes the action sequences infinitely MORE explosive. A page or two of what is termed SIT-DOWN SCENES in cinematic jargon, allows the reader to relax on some emotional level (even if the scene is confrontational) and establishes a contrast with hard action scenes (allegro), giving the story a wide dramatic range.
Another way: If a story is ALL action, there is NO action! I term what happens in the panels INTERNAL PACING.
The second method of visual rhythm is expressed in PANEL SIZE: Major, third-of-a-page panels, for example, can suggest an epic quality to the action, the kind of panoramic shots that require significant time and effort to read/analyze.
That type of shot might stay on the screen for 20-60 seconds, a long time cinematically, because there’s so much to digest INTELLECTUALLY. And, in doing so, it can RETARD the story’s tempo.
Smaller or narrower panels, however, which often capture singular, but important details can INCREASE story tempo, especially if their imagery is tightly related. I term the aspect of panel size in storytelling EXTERNAL PACING (perhaps in writing about the concept some years ago, I termed the latter TEMPO, the former PACING. I may revert to it in the future).
HARMONY is the next musical element, one which provides a strong FOUNDATION for the final aspect.
That foundation is defined by a host of supporting devices and themes, including environments, vehicles, weather, props, costumes, weapons, and even minor characters.
That critical background MIRRORS the chords played on a piano or a full orchestral accompaniment in musical orchestration.
A story’s harmony often underscores, sometimes DICTATES, the mood/ambiance/atmosphere of NARRATIVE ART.
Just as music can harness and control a listener’s EMOTIONS (minor chords suggest darker, more ominous development; diminished, augmented, and suspended chords create tensions and attitudes from ambivalence to expectation; 6ths and major 7ths have a lighter, more upbeat, and conclusive quality), so can specific elements and how they are depicted in panels INFLUENCE comics’ readers and create psychological arousal.
Those elements can express a RANGE of qualities from simple to complex, light to dark, quiescent to wildly animated. The process is invaluable in establishing powerful, nuanced narrative themes such as greed, jealousy, fear, despair, joy, cowardice, desire, hatred, etc. Harmony is a KEY TOOL in the storyteller’s craft!
MELODY is the remaining element, one which defines the dramatic trajectory of the primary characters – the HEART OF THE STORY!
Musically, the melody line has the most direct connection to the listener, and is generally a series of notes that propel audiences on emotional rollercoaster rides.
Similarly, much/most of a story’s subtleties are engaged by how, what, when, and where the protagonists and antagonists take the drama’s themes and manipulate them to a satisfactory climax.
In the comic book format, that process is not only achieved through words and images, but by layouts, textures, directionals, color, special FX, and more.
The accomplished narrative artist uses ALL the techniques available to attain maximum reader impact. That means you, junior!
Again, when I began my comics tour, I generated pages with inordinate speed because I knew little about the intricacies of NARRATIVE ART. But, my forced and rapid self-education took a severe toll on production.
In a little while, however; that number grew to perhaps twenty five and solving (notice how graciously I give myself the benefit of the doubt) that volume of challenges took REAL time.
But the work was MORE important to me than the time. Now, over the span of decades, all that remains is a PERCEPTION of the work and my hope someone out there finds it worthwhile.
And speaking of time and work, the board needs my attention! Thank you for your consideration. Until next week – BE SAFE, BE SMART!
Behold!
What you see is the new cover for Ballad of the Two Headed Dog #2, “Cheers”. The minute I got the artwork from Phil I was blown away (Phil did the pencils, inks, and colors). Everything about this kicks ass. It’s definitely my favorite cover of ours. I’ve had it for awhile now and it’s KILLED me not to turn it into a giant banner and hang it from the side of my house. Aside from the various ordinances that would prevent such a display, there was another reason I’ve held the cover back. Keen observers may have already noticed there is something different about this one. Yes, there is more to this cover than just the artwork. The absence of one name and the inclusion of another.
As you may have guessed, David Halvorson is no longer coloring our book. It came as a shock via email one terrible Easter. I’d be lying if I didn’t say what followed was a terrible depression. As anyone who ever read the book can tell you, David was an integral part of the work. He was a third pillar and I couldn’t imagine the book without him. His talent is immeasurable. From the first issue to his last, David made Deadhorse better. David has a family, he has a business, and comics, comics eat time. And we as humans only have so much of it so I don’t blame him for reprioritizing. I can certainly understand. I wish him the best and I am hopeful that we will continue to work together on future issues of Planet Gigantic.
So what did that mean for Deadhorse? Well, for one, Deadhorse is in its final run so quitting was never an option. There are five issues left and nothing can stop it now. That said, going forward certainly wasn’t going to be easy. Phil and I were in trouble and we needed to find someone. Not only a colorist, but someone with the talent and vision necessary to help shape our world. Someone that would fill it with light and beauty and make it a place people wanted to be a part of, a world worth spending time in. Yeah, finding someone like that is no small feat. It’s near impossible. Well my friends, let me assure you that we have done the impossible.
We’ve hit the goddamn jackpot.
I’d like to formerly welcome to the Deadhorse team Marissa Louise (@marissadraws). A brilliant artist whose works include among others: The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury, Robocop, Headspace, and Exit Generation. The pages coming back from Marissa are INSANE! Better than I could have possibly hoped for. I am forever indebted to her and completely honored that she has added Deadhorse to her list of projects.
I can not wait to release this issue, we are still working hard on finishing it up but for now here’s a peek at the first few pages as done by Phil, Marissa, and myself. I am very lucky to be working with creators like Marissa and Phil. You can’t imagine.
So please, stick with us. The end is near and we become doves.
The amazing run of awesomeness continues with this preview of the new Deadhorse by Eric Grissom, Phil Sloan, and Marissa Louise. One of my favorite comic books running.
Review: Faction Comics Anthology 1-3
Having recently received Faction’s anthology set, I was eager to dive into a different set of voices from what I’m accustomed to here in the states.
While there was unevenness in the quality of storytelling, at its best moments the Faction anthologies rate favorably. Volume One’s most engaging read was Damon Keen’s One Giant Leap.
Keen has the gift of being able to tell a story visually that can stand on its own. It’s hard not to appreciate when a comic artist attempts to scale the same heights as Moebius when it comes to the wordless comic book tale.
I found One Giant Leap to have astounding clarity in narrative while accomplishing a lot in a short breadth of space. Keen’s sardonic sense of humor takes a rather bleak tale and injects the right amount of humor at the right time to make it a memorable read.
Volume Two’s Awakening, by Allan Xia, also manages to develop a strong narrative without words. Set in a future that feels slightly influenced by The Matrix and Mad Max, there’s a simple element that effectively conveys what remains important in the darkest of times - love.
Xia’s art is beautifully rendered with a painterly feel that adds to the gravitas of the plot while showcasing his deft touch in even-handed subtext. Awakening was a story that I read a few times to appreciate its nuances.
Volume Three’s standout is something that I’ve already reviewed, but couldn’t resist mentioning again – Tim Gibson’s Moth City prequel The Reservoir.
This is a flashback story, telling the origin story of Governor McCaw and his daughter in a land and time well before the present day conflict of Moth City.
There is an epic feel to the narration and imagery in this story that really impressed me, and left me with a lot to consider. Gibson, a fantastic artist and visual storyteller, leaves no doubt that he equally adept at writing.
I opined these particular points in my long-form review of The Reservoir a few months ago, so it was a pleasure to see it contained within this anthology. Reading it on paper made for a different experience, which my tactile needs for something in my hands appreciated.
If you’re looking for different storytelling methods, Faction’s anthologies one through three should help you get out of the humdrum of conventional comic book formats and into something off the beaten path.
Rating – 4 out of 5 Stars
Tom & Violence (2013)
Story by me, art by Phil Sloan. There’s a Tom and Violence pitch that was nearly completed. Hoping one day to return to it.
Originally appeared on Ryan Ferrier’s ReadChallenger.com
Download a PDF.
Eric Grissom and Phil Sloan doing what they do best: Flying their freak flag with their idiosyncratic storytelling. There’s no one quite like these guys.
To Die a Good Death in Comics
CAUTION: MASSIVE HARBINGER 23 SPOILERS: It’s funny how I can still look at A Death in the Family or The Death of Superman and get a little misty eyed at the powerful emotions evoked by the imagery and then catch myself, realizing the compositions are designed to have an emotional impact but ultimately signify nothing.
They were a powerful, carefully orchestrated set of compositions that ratcheted up the drama with each panel leading up to the death of the character with a grandiose sense of dramatic irony attached, keeping readers on edge because they wanted to know the how more than the why.
This is especially prevalent like most death events including the impending Death of Wolverine series. Readers buy into this because they want to know the how instead of the why to it. In the end, they’ll sit around awaiting the resurrection of their latest hero to be killed off and loudly complain that deaths don’t matter in the comic universe.
As sure as life and death, the reader/publisher relationship works this way in comics, a cyclical relationship of love and hate, death and resurrection. Why? Well, these intellectual properties must keep making money for their publisher.
It will be interesting to see how Valiant handles the death of Flamingo in Harbinger. When I saw Harbinger writer Joshua Dysart last, I predicted it would be Kris who was killed off because he seems to be a pragmatic man, and Kris is a liability in a world of super-powered beings.
He offered to clue me in on what was going to happen, but I resisted that temptation mostly because I didn’t want to know. In fact, I resisted any previews and only got myself out to the comic shop today to buy it. I’ve been on board with Joshua from the beginning as a fan. I didn’t want any of the characters to die, and I knew he meant business, unlike the majority of writers who kill off characters.
Why Flamingo? That’s a fine question, but I can see the hints at it now. She could never quite figure out how to use her powers while running with the Renegades. Even when she learned to control thermals to slow her descent, it was just barely which seems to portend at her demise. It certainly wasn’t with the grace and skill needed in combat.
She was also the odd person out once Faith and Torque hooked up. I’m not sure she ever found her footing as a character in the series despite Joshua working his considerable mojo on her. But he managed to make her something important to the story in her death.
I think of Neil Young’s Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) with her death because “It’s better to burn out because rust never sleeps.” Flamingo burned like a meteor across the horizon. Fast enough to see her shine, but not long enough to get to know her as a character the way we know Peter, Faith, Kris, and Torque.
There was little in the way of fanfare in trumpeting her death. Joshua didn’t tease or let it linger with a melodramatic build-up that climaxed near the end of the issue. He just hit you with it early because death can be sudden in real life.
You can see Flamingo’s death served an important element to the storytelling with her death in the sense that things have become real for the young Renegades. Death does that. It’s like being 21-year-old me when my mother died of cancer after a short and sudden fight with it.
Your world is sent reeling quickly and all of your childish notions about reality are turned back on you. That’s where Joshua succeeded in telling a story about death in a meaningful way. He found a way to contextually make this matter and not pander to the traditional death of a character event where publisher, writer, and reader give each other the nudge nudge, wink wink.
Instead, I found this story powerful in its own way because it shocked me like deaths of people I know do in real life. It’s entirely possible that she’ll be resurrected at some later point, but another writer would have to come up with one hell of a story to undo the definitive nail in the coffin of her character that Joshua just did. Long live Flamingo…
Jenny from Caballistics, Inc by the incredible Dave Kendall.
Review: The Reservoir by Tim Gibson
Tim Gibson, the powerhouse talent behind Moth City, takes a different path by going backwards with his latest work The Reservoir: A Western in Black, White, and Blood.
This is a flashback story, telling the origin story of Governor McCaw and his daughter in a land and time well before the present day conflict of Moth City.
Gibson takes a unique approach to the narrative by telling his story exclusively through narrative and images; it’s almost like a silent film. I found this reminiscent of a movie trailer from the golden era of Hollywood.
The interesting features of the Thrillbent digital format, which Gibson uses with amazing facility, give it a semi-animated feel of the movie reel. I felt like I needed to have a popcorn and soda to full appreciate the experience.
However, that simply describes the feel of this story from an experiential standpoint. Mentally, I found The Reservoir to engage me as a reader much more tightly by making my mind have to sync the captions with the images.
Governor McCaw is a man of action. That’s all you need to tell a good story about him. Everything is there in The Reservoir that you need to know about what kind of man he was and why he is who he is.
There is an epic feel to the narration and imagery in this story that really impressed me, and left me with a lot to consider. Gibson, a fantastic artist and visual storyteller, leaves no doubt that he equally adept at writing.
He cracks open some interesting ideas about the nature of man and ambition without being didactic. Instead, there are insights that leave you thinking about this story for a good while.
Whether it’s ideas about family in a Cain and Abel sense, fidelity, or wraith, Gibson covers these ideas gracefully with the smooth flow of the story and outstanding imagery.
I highly recommend this prequel to Moth City. The Reservoir is another fantastic read from Gibson. Buy it here from comiXology.
4.5 out of 5 Stars
Some food for thought on what a person can personally do to change their world
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