As you’re reading these words, I will be standing on a stage in front of a packed auditorium, preaching about the benefits of the art form known as comics. And as I’m writing these words, I couldn’t be more excited about it.
Now that excitement does not come from a desire to convert some new disciples to our ways, introducing them into the comic fold. That’ll be great if it happens, and I hope that the lecture I provide that day does convince a few people that comics aren’t exactly what they had thought. I hope I do make one or two of them pick up a comic again, or maybe for the first time, and see what all the fuss is about.
But my ability to draw in new readers is going to be rather limited, being an outsider in the industry and only having my words to woo them with. No, what has me excited are the three guys who’ll be sharing that stage with me, who will also be courting new readers but who’ll have much better tools at their disposal.
These three gentlemen are B. Clay Moore, writer of Hawaiian Dick, and Matt Cashel and Jeremy Haun, the creative team behind Paradigm. You see, Friday is a day I’ve been planning for since I first thought I’d like to teach a class on comics. On Friday these three comic professionals, guys actually involved in the creative process behind comics, will show up in my little backwater town to deliver a guest lecture.
The long road to Friday began when I first met Matt and Jeremy back at Chicago Con last summer, and I started hitting their message boards heavily (as you can tell if you read the lettercolumns of Paradigm—my message board posts seem to turn up there quite often). On those boards I met Clay and found out they all lived in the Kansas City area. So we talked about my class and somehow I managed to convince them to drive seven hours east of their homes and tell some total strangers about how good comics can be.
In the weeks we’ve been e-mailing back and forth about this event, these three gents have become real friends of mine, and I feel confident that they are going to handle this lecture brilliantly. They know their stuff very well, and I know that they can be very persuasive when they want to be. So I imagine their words, much more knowledgeable, refined and insightful than mine, will convince many of those in attendance to read their books, much more so than I ever could on my own.
But they will not have words alone to work with. Luckily our lecture is taking place in a state-of-the-art facility where we will have the technology to project story pages onto a screen, which I can then write on like a chalkboard. Basically during the lecture as the guys discuss certain points regarding a story I will be Vanna White, calling attention to these points visually. Or better yet, I will be John Madden, using my tele-strater to call plays on the instant replays of their comics.
It’s going to be a heck of a show, so if you’re in the area of Olney, IL on Friday April 11 at one p.m., you ought to stop in and listen to these guys speak. I’m sure it’s going to be a brilliant lecture.
But just in case you’re not in the area (or if you are and instead are attending the lectures at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus on comics unfortunately scheduled for that same day), here’s the questions you’ll be missing their answers to.
Why tell your story in the medium of comics as opposed to another medium?
What do you see as your book’s place in a specific genre of fiction? What aspects of the noir genre can be found in Hawaiian Dick? How does Paradigm continue to test boundaries, jumping from one genre to the next so seamlessly?
What influences have other works in these genres had on your book? How do noir archetypes play into Hawaiian Dick’s structure? For what purpose is pop culture so dominant in Paradigm?
Do certain artistic styles naturally achieve certain tones? Are certain styles just better suited to telling certain stories? What led to the decision to do Paradigm in black and white and Hawaiian Dick in color? How do you achieve the photo-realistic look of Paradigm, and what discussions were had with artist Steven Griffen about Hawaiian Dick’s style while it was in the planning stages?
How do you use words and pictures together to tell your story more effectively than you could with one or the other alone? How does your collaborative process work between writer and artist? Is it more difficult to collaborate with one member of the team in another country than it is when you live in the same tiny little Missouri town?
How does pacing of a story affect its shape? Paradigm is a story told slowly over the course of many months. As an ongoing, is there any additional pressure to achieve certain character moments or reach plot points by a certain point? Hawaiian Dick is more quick-moving and is also a series of mini-series. Do you think those two aspects of its publication are related?
How important is setting to your book, not just place but time period? Hawaiian Dick obviously draws from a real time in history, yet Paradigm uses the fictional setting of Bogsdale. Are there specific things that make one easier than the other? More difficult? How do differences in setting affect a book’s mood or atmosphere?
Next week I’ll fill you in on what the answers were to all these questions.
