It’s the first sci-Friday of the month of March which means it’s time to gather in the Enormous Room. Today I want to talk about deep nerdery, the art and narrative of monthly graphic stories in that resplendent delivery system of stapled paper: Comic Books.
I love comics — or really, I loved comics —or more really, I love the idea of comics, because often they don’t live up to what I want them to be, but when they do (and I can afford them) it is truly happy times.
The first comic book I read was Detective Comics #649, sitting in a baseball card shop while waiting on my dad. Later that year I would buy my first comic book, Superman #75 aka the Death of Superman. From there I went on to explore the wider DC Comics universe. I dabbled in my cousin’s Spider-Man and X-Men comics, but preferred something about DC’s optimism and joy to Marvel’s cynicism and grime.
But the golden age of Marvel Comics has had a profound effect on American culture, even ignoring the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Two modern masterpieces had key inspiration in the golden age of 60s comics, the The Ice Storm by Rick Moody (made into a devastating film by Ang Lee) and Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Knowing that Marvel had a profound effect on many of the creatives shaping the culture made me want to know more about what made those Marvel Fanboys tick.
This is what initially got me interested in Douglas Wolk’s All of the Marvels.
The book is a wonderful overview of the grand story of Marvel Comics, and I had fun learning about the Fantastic Four, X-men, and other classic characters, but what was most enlightening were the creative insights. There were three lessons for writers that stood out and one more for fans.
Lesson #1: Trauma over Troubles
One thing Marvel has done a better job than DC is the internal conflict of their characters. For writers who have difficulty pairing internal threats to the external threats, Marvel has a lot of examples. Everyone knows the trauma of Spider-Man in losing his Uncle Ben and Gwen. Then there’s the bigotry at the heart of the X-Men universe, the struggle of Hulk, the shame of Ben Grimm, the lost world of Captain America. These are all character defining, but also narrative driving traits.
Yes, Batman has his traumatic origin, but it isn’t as tightly tied to his adult persona as Spider-man. Yes, Superman was orphaned and thrown into a new world, but his story isn’t about fitting in and finding a place. And can anyone else readily define the internal conflicts of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, and Green Lantern? It’s a different universe with its own strengths, but there’s no denying the trauma in Marvel is great.
The temptation is to rush to the plot of a story rather than laying out the character. Marvel does a good job of highlighting the engine of narrative is the characters. The action is the arena in which to feature your character.
Lesson #2: Write Messy
Marvel’s story is a collaborative effort over the course of decades, a sort of seat of the collective pants. Nobody saw what was coming in those early days, few thought past that month’s deadline, but slowly a macro-story was hewn out of the rough rock of the monthlies.
The early masterminds were in fact the second generation. The ones that read the first slough of books, who were drawn into the craft, became the writers of the next era. They were drawn to the rich world, the unconnected threads and side ventures, the background, the untouched snow.
In every writer there are two people: the storyteller and the storycrafter. The storyteller wants to get it out there, the zinger, the cliffhanger, the climatic bakeoff; the crafter wants to pace the dialogue, establish the cliff, and write a shopping list. The crafter is important, but the writer needs to give him plenty to organize.
The dramatic principle of painting yourself into a corner is a scary but vital impetus to creativity. This is messy writing, when you’re following the exciting thing, running headlong into a dead-end.
In Caliban, Book 2 of the Unique Miranda Trilogy, I wanted Unique to get deeper and deeper into the prison of Ocalus, highlighting the difficult and ultimately impossible obstacles to her escape. My initial idea was that the rescue would come from the outside and it would be a big and exciting fight, but Unique isn’t a fighter. I thought that perhaps she’d become a fighter, but as I wrote her, she resisted that impulse. So I had to ask myself, who was Unique becoming? What had been established previously that I could draw on? Searching through a messy psychology (and recognizing that because people don’t have clear and simplistic notions of motivation) helped me see how she’d act.
Lesson #3: Recursive Storytelling
Go back and fill in. Marvel and comic books in general are always ret-conning, revising past stories into a new continuity: retro continuity. The “there and back again” is an inescapable principle even if it isn’t geographically true. The characters often go back home after their adventure, but even when they don’t, there is a return to some foundational characteristic that was tested across the course of the story.
In a series, which should tell a macro-story amidst the micro-tales, there’s comfort and interest in a return. It can be a setting, character, theme, or test. Galactus returns. Darth Vader returns. The King of Gondor returns. Each time there’s a building, an expansion, but also a familiarity.
Marvel likes to return to specific moments, mostly traumatic memories, such as the death of Gwen Stacy, but also into the past to avoid the future such as Days of Future Past. I hate repetitive flashbacks in movies and tv, but to return to an event with a fresh take and a new angle is fun for readers.
Lesson #4: Steel-fanning
The first lessons were for writers, but this one is for fans.
I hate the whole searching for plot-holes that has plague pop-criticism. Most of the time it isn’t a hole, but merely something left unexplained. But because of Cinema Sins and Youtube videos like it, we now have these utterly boring exposition scenes that explain things. Ugh. Far better is the practice of Steel-fanning.
Steel-manning is the opposite of straw-manning, in which you address the strongest case of an opponent’s argument, regardless of what argument is offered. For fans, this means filling in a story’s unexplained elements that expand and improve upon them. Fans should cultivate a spirit of steel-fanning to see a story in its best light.
Here’s an example of a fan asking about Cyborg Superman (who attempted to trick the world into thinking he was Superman after Superman died). The question was, why didn’t he hid his cyborg elements more thoroughly? Obviously, the artists designed a dynamic visual and a character that would shock the reader when he appeared, but thinking more deeply about it is quintessentially Fan-steeling.
Marvel does this constantly. Motivations are shifted, character traits fudged, silly plot devices are strengthened or explained away. Fans often remember the lame explanations or retcons (Captain America was hypnotized by Hydra? Spider-man was a clone for twenty years?), but Marvel has massaged their stories from the very beginning.
“Rogue One” is the most well-known case of steel-fanning, which explained how it was that the Death Star was built with an exhaust pipe that functioned like a detonation button.
Once this spirit becomes dominate, storytellers won’t be tempted to write dull scenes whose only purpose is to close off criticism from lame fans. Just let the weird thing be weird and unexplained and get on with the fun stuff. If writers want to return to the character/franchise/event to expand or explain, great, but if there’s no story there, don’t force them to create one.
If you enjoyed this and want some writing lessons from the horror series Goosebumps then man are you weird, but also lucky because Cole has done that:
Whew. Sorry for the wordy post. I also want to alert you to a great deal on some fun sci-fi: the Silo Series by my close (via instagram) friend (barely acquaintance) Hugh Howey is 1.99 for a limited time. That’s a huge savings.
I alerted readers immediately on my page Facebook.com/mythrillite so if you want more immediate announcements of such deals you can follow me there.
That’s all for this one, but I’ve got a surprise for next month. I’ll be serializing a ghost story that I’ve been working on. Don’t forget to tell your friends about the Enormous Room, and thanks for reading!