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Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 8:29 pm Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
I think the horror comic can be done but it involves a lot of pacing that isn't found in typical books. Some of the HEllboy stuff borders on it with the extra panels, etc. It jsut takes a lot of those to pull the pacing to a new level.
I agree with you both, and I'm not worried about thread drift: we'll get back there sooner or later.
The techniques which are effective in horror films and in horror novels are different: it's just a matter of finding equivalent techniques for comics. I think Hellboy gets what horror effect it has from Cthulhu elements: the horror of tentacled alienness. I've seen this called something like the arachnid reaction: the instinctive unease we feel when we look at something as alien as a spider.
Yes, I think horror can be most strongly felt when it borders on the mundane. Dracula's best when he comes to England. Ramsey Campbell, known for supernatural horror, wrote a book - the title of which, as usual, I can't remember - in which the horror is just the brutality and monstrousness of a London cab driver's family: it's a nightmare, very powerful, and might be recognised more widely if it wasn't ghettoised, including by its publisher, as horror fiction. It's for the same reason that films from Stephen King's non-horror fiction tend not to headline his name: Stephen King writes horror, so if it's not horror, how can it be Stephen King?
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Popping back on-topic for a second, finished House Of Mystery today, read a Marvel Avengers one-shot - Heroes & Legends, from '97 - set at the time of the first major line-up change, which - strangely, considering all the writer had to do was imitate - somehow got the tone not-quite-right, and read an issue of Alan Davis's Killraven. I love Davis's work and have bought most of it, but left Kilraven alone because money was tight and I really don't like the character. The concept's okay, but the costumes are ludicrous and the original series was rubbish. In my very humble opinion.
In the Avengers thing, seeing Gil Kane for a few pages drawing the original Avengers reminded me of his classic What If - was it #4? Wonderful drawing.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 7:26 pm Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
Cleaning out a cupboard the other day, stumbled across a load of old stuff
Along with the elusive Chris Foss Portfolio I found several years worth of 2000ADs & Judge Dredd Megazines
Ah, Chris Foss: awesome book covers, not so sure about Diary Of A Space Person.
Some fine stuff in 2000ADs. I read a stack of collected Time Twisters and the like recently, which was fun, but there's some good series stuff too, in Dredd and Trooper and the gang. Heaps of good artists. Oh, and of course Zenith, which is a favourite.
Read most of Essential Moon Knight. I often can barely read Doug Moench - it's the Sienkiewicz art I bought this for - but it's interesting how the writing changes - and improves - when the book goes "adult" in the Hulk magazine.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Can't argue with that. I wish he'd done more in the vein of Stray Toasters: that was a mind-blowing, original, intelligent and funny comic which nobody seemed to "get".
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:45 pm Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
The Horror talk sounds interesting. I can appreciate all the different kinds of horror techniques, some of which I think work better in comics, books or films. I'm glad you mentioned Ring, Palmers, because I've been thinking for a long time how you could get this kind of effect in a comic myself. I have some imagery ideas- bloodless, but disturbing- which need more development but I'll definitely go there one day.
Strangely, one of the most chilling stories I've ever read is a 1949 short by Fritz Leiber called The Girl with the Hungry Eyes. It's difficult to categorize but it can be very loosely labelled a vampire story, I suppose. I really don't know how or why it chills me, but it does.
Also, another absolute stormer is a one-and-a-half page story called Red by Richard Christian Matheson. It's extremely subtle, but as the intro I have to it states: "The end result is like a timebomb going off inside your head."
Just wanted to share; now I'll let you get back to the topic at hand...
Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 3:26 pm Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
Yeah .. I liked Stray Toasters a lot ... It was a bit too far out there for most it seemed. Even his basic Batman stuff is very cool. He did a great Batman storyline a few years ago and a Punisher Spiderman thing that was very cool.
I'm just pleased to have found someone else who's read Stray Toasters...
Electranaut, I might have read either of those short stories, because when I was young I read every SF and horror anthology and magazine I could find, but although the Leiber title rings a bell, I can't actually recall either.
Jon J. Muth has painted Dracula and adapted Fritz Lang's M, and the results are atmospheric and, in the case of M, creepy; but he paints so realistically - or so much like stills from the film - that he can copy the visual effects directly.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
I have a rather worryingly large collection of Horror/Sci-fi/Oddball anthologies too. I've read them all but I can't get rid of them; I'm a ferocious collector of whatever books cross my path.
Actually, my current reading comics-wise has been a bit bizarre. It's old British Fleetway-type annuals. I have another stupidly big collection of these- in fact piled up they reach from floor to ceiling. Some of them are very childish of course, but I've got some of the more esoteric ones like Misty (yes, I know it's a girls horror comic, but still some cool stories and seriously collectible now- also great nostalgia fashions!). I've got some stuff which goes way back before my reading childhood, which is great as a snapshot of the times. You've got these characters in Valiant, Hotspur and so on like Battler Britton, Captain Hurricaine, Springheel Jack, Wally Pye and so on and so forth.
It's quite odd because when I was becoming a teenager I didn't like this kind of thing; I only wanted to read DC comics which no-one else I knew liked and which were quite tricky to get a hold of regularly. Now, I've got myself all interested in these great forgotten Brit characters.
I am, I have to suppose, a very contrary creature.
Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
I like Stray Toasters a lot and I know a number of people that do as well. So you aren't alone.
The Muth Dracula I really like but I am not sure it totally establishes the proper feel .. Though it is moody it doesn't quite have the proper pacing. And, as you said, it is really based in reality so he can used established tricks.
Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:57 am Post subject: Re: Current Reading.
Returning to my favourite topic for a moment (I had planned on leavin git alone, because I didn't want to hijack the thread so completely, but now that electranaut has brought it up...)
I think the key to horror in whatever form, is twofold. You have to be able to identify and empathise with the protagonist character(s), and you have to see them, not just in peril, but in abjet terror when faced with that danger. The most obvious way to do this in film or theatre, or television, is the scream. It's a primal thing that cuts deep into our reptilian hindbrain and dumps all the adrenaline into our bodies (it's only when our conscious brain says 'relax, it's only a movie' that we can comfortably continue to watch it). In literature, you can describe the mental processes going on in the protagonist's mind, which helps on both counts: you can empathise more clearly, and you get a clear indicator of just how terrified that character is.
In comics, the only real way to show a character's fear of their situation is to show still images of their face contorted with fright - something which is no mean feat to pull off. Also, the scares need to be (if anything) used even more sparingly than they would be in any other medium, since repeated views of a scared person are likely to become repetitive and lose their edge. So what comics need to emphasise more than any other medium in the horror genre, is the underlying tension and threat. That state of knowing SOMETHING is going to come and get you, but not knowing what, where, or when it's going to happen. it keeps people turning the pages, waiting for the denouement, and it hopefully maintains a state of anxiety in the reader, as well.
Dang... wish I'd been able to articulate this half as well when I did my diss as I can now... mind, I got a first on it, so can't grumble!! lol
Absolutely correct. Among the drawbacks of comics in storytelling terms are that you can't control the pace of reading, and that you can't stop people turning a few pages ahead. A mis-timed glimpse of something you've been holding back, and you've lost it. So the implied is the best weapon you can use. It also makes for subtler and cleverer storytelling: a simple, telling discontinuity between something someone says and the way they look saying it can be quite powerful.
I wish I was as articulate as you right now, actually.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
Just read, from the public library, the second Planetary collection. I don't mind Planetary, but here I am at the end of the tenth or twelfth issue, about forty dollars in if I was buying the books (I bought the first one), and nothing's really happened yet. Elijah Snow's story seems to be just about at the end of Act One, and there's been a lot of splash pages, three-panel pages and pages with about twenty words on them on the way here.
I read somewhere that Warren Ellis claims to have introduced decompressed storytelling to comics. I think it was actually Grant Morrison, and I have a theory that it happened because he came from UK anthology comics and had learned to write eight pages, not twenty-two; but anyway, I want more story. My first graphic novel, RIVER, was sparse in the manner of Sin City, but when it was printed I found it was too quick a read, so I added a denser fifth chapter. I expect the same when I buy comics. It's like going to see a film and then finding it's twenty minutes long.
I want more story.
IMP. _________________ RIVER: skin on the outside. First chapter FREE from www.ianmpalmer.com
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