A week has now passed since the guest lecture I told you about in my last column, enough time for me to reflect somewhat on the events of the day. Overall, I’d say the day was a rousing success despite a few minor snafus. But I suppose I won’t really know how successful I was in achieving my goals for the lecture for quite some time.
First of all, the attendance alone would make this event seem to be quite a success. We had approximately eighty people show up for the lecture, most of whom had no real history with comics. Now, eighty people might not sound too impressive until you place that number in the proper context. Keep in mind that our school is very small; eighty people is between five and ten percent of our entire student body. Plus, back when I was at a large university and planning social events and lectures as part of an activities committee, eighty people would have been a godsend even there. So for our little school to get that many folks to come to an event such as this was fantastic, I thought.
Before the event began, I had been nervous that the guys were going to be late. Clay (Moore, writer of the Image book Hawaiian Dick) had told me that he would call me on my cell phone when he, Jeremy and Matt (Haun and Cashel, respectively the artist and writer of Image’s Paradigm) had made it to town, and I had never received a call. But when I finished my first class of the day, I walked down the hall towards my office and there they were. While they went to get a bite to eat and have a drink to loosen their tongues and relieve some of their nervousness (Matt is kind of notorious for not being comfortable speaking in front of crowds).
While they were gone, I set up the auditorium a bit. I had decided to go with a panel discussion format which I would moderate, so we had to set up a microphone for each of the guys at this long table on the right side of the stage. On the left was the podium where I stood and where we put all of the audio/visual equipment.
Unfortunately our one major mix-up came with that A/V equipment. I had told the guys to bring some images from their books Hawaiian Dick and Paradigm on a CD-ROM. The plan had been to use a computer to project the images up on a screen, which we could then write on to point out certain aspects of the art. Unfortunately after finally getting the computer together and telling the techie we didn’t need his help anymore, we discovered a problem moments before the lecture began.
I guess that jostling the computer while moving it to the auditorium had shaken something loose inside the computer, because it was impossible for us to get the drive open to put the CD in. So we had to go to plan B; we used a video camera projector, placed comics pages underneath it, and simply pointed out things that were important. This worked well enough, but there was a bit of a glare that made these images difficult to see, and I was disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to use the tele-strater because of the mechanical error.
Still, the discussion itself went off very well. The very first question I asked was a very fruitful one, and (like most ideas in this column) it was one I had stolen from Warren Ellis: the simple question of “why comics?” Clay answered that the main reason he chose to tell Hawaiian Dick as a comic, apart from a love of the medium, was because it was different from most everything else being published in comics. This comment led into a discussion of what is considered mainstream in the medium of comics (namely, superheroes) and how the subject matter of both Hawaiian Dick and Paradigm stood out from the crowd.
I moved from that concept into a discussion of genre, asking if the genre of superheroes was the mainstream in comics, what genre they placed themselves in and how they played into or strayed away from the conventions of that genre. Jeremy made a very profound statement that with Paradigm he and Matt were simply trying to tell a story about life, that life has no genre. Matt agreed, saying that even though their book might tell about odd events that might seem supernatural in origin, utilizing elements of sci-fi, fantasy or horror, their focus would always solely be on the people in those situations and how these normal folks reacted to world-changing events.
Matt had replied to the question of “why comics?” by bringing up issues of pacing, so we discussed for a while how storytelling in comics allows for greater development of characters and storylines. The comparison was made to really good television shows, that like them comics allow readers to really get to know a character over a long period of time. Matt said that a serialized ongoing requires a higher level of commitment from readers. It asks them to be willing to invest themselves in the story so that they can see how events that are set in motion now will play out years down the road.
Finally there was some discussion about editorial control. Clay brought this idea up, saying that he chose to tell his story in this medium because he was in charge of it then. If he had written a screenplay, he would turn it over to a producer or director who might then fuss with it. By the time a movie hits the screen, it has been through the hands of dozens of people and no one person can claim it is his or her creation anymore. In comics (at least in independent comics, that is) you write what you want and put it out there for people to see. It’s a much more personal journey as an artist.
I had told my students in the week prior to the event that any of them who attended and then wrote a response to what they heard would earn some extra credit points (perhaps explaining why attendance at this event was so high). In this past week, I have been looking over the comments and find a very similar response running through most of the papers: surprise.
Every paper I’ve read has noted the lecturers’ intelligence and poise as they spoke, and many also noted how the guys had a great sense of humor as well, mixing their stories about their work with anecdotes of drunken escapades. They really drew the students in and held their attention, and some of the students admitted they were shocked. They had planned on being bored, looking at this as merely a way to earn a few points and possibly save their grades. They were also surprised at how normal the speakers seemed. They had heard that these gentlemen wrote comic books and their minds naturally went to the stereotype of the fanboy geek, which Matt, Jeremy and Clay do not embody at all (at least, to my students’ knowledge).
This aspect of the presentation alone broke down some barriers and helped advocate comics, showing them that comics are not “nerdy” but can be cool. This also was true when we discussed the research aspects of their work. Clay mentioned the great amount of research he and Hawaiian Dick’s artist Steven Griffen had done on the time period in which it is set, 1953, making sure to create a realistic atmosphere in their stories. Jeremy also mentioned the tremendous amount of photo referencing he does when creating his art. Both facts illuminated for those students not initiated into the comics fold that this is not a frivolous art dashed off quickly without much thought, that serious effort is expended in creating the worlds in comics.
Similarly the discussion of genre surprised some of my students, who admitted that when they thought comics, they thought Spiderman. They had never imagined that comics could tell such a broad range of stories, that those stories could have serious literary merit. Needless to say, we did open quite a few eyes that day.
So yes the lecture was a success in that regard. Those in attendance who had never picked up a comic before have been educated about what comics REALLY are, and even those who were devout comics readers learned a little something about the work that is put into a comic book. But as I said when I started, I measure the TRUE success of this lecture not in those ideas alone. You see, some of my students mentioned in their comments that they’re a bit more likely to check out a comic now and see what it’s about. Clay, Matt and Jeremy themselves handed out some free, or nearly free, copies of their books to people afterwards.
What will make this lecture a true success is if those comics are read, and if those people go into a comic shop or a library looking for another comic to read. And as I said in the beginning of this column, that success, whether or not these students actually follow through and get into comics, is something that only time will tell.
