Writing Comics...

I attempted to write a comic about a year and half ago or so. My old roommate from college is a production designer in Hollywood and had always wanted to do a comic. He's an amazing artist, so I figured if he was offering to do the art, I could oblige with a script. I asked him about story topics and he said "something with clones"... a bit done sci-fi wise but doable.

For starters, I don't read comics, I've never read comics, save the odd one-off Frank Miller (e.g. Sin City, Ronin, etc...) It's not that I don't respect the genre, I do, but the mix of visual and prose I find distracting. When reading a novel, my imagination builds the images in my head, to have the artwork accompany it, I can't quite get into the 'feel' of what I'm reading. I attribute this to not understanding comics fully... I haven't invested the time. It's visual story telling that like writing, seems easy at first, but is of course a very difficult artform to get right. So when asked to write a comic book, I started from a place of complete ignorance. The first step in anything is to admit your limitations

The first thing I did was go down to the local comic shop and explained to the very generous/helpful proprietor what I was trying to do. She loaded me up with a stack of comics with 'extras', kind of like DVD extras, but with the comic script companion in the back. I grabbed a few Alan Moore comics and one by Grant Morrison, both are incredibly famous writers in comic circles, little was I aware. Alan Moore's responsible for the the seminal Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, while Grant Morrison wrote Arkham Asylum, a Batman comic that redefined the franchise completely. Both were written in completely different fashion.

Alan Moore's obsessive with his comic writing. He writes every single pane individually, every detail painstakingly, if not obsessively, described. He is a true visual story teller and a master at the art form. His only drawback is his inability to draw, but this is part of his strength. He's able to attract top name comic artists and each one of his comics looks and feels different because of it.

As an example, here's a just a single intro panel from Alan Moore's script for the much lauded "Killing Joke" Batman comic....

(PANEL) 5

NOW WE CHANGE ANGLE SO THAT WE ARE STANDING BETWEEN THE BATMOBILE AND THE RAILED FENCE OF THE ASYLUM, WITH THE NOSE OF THE BATMOBILE POINTING AWAY FROM US FROM THE RIGHT OF THE FOREGROUND TOWARDS THE LEFT OF THE BACKGROUND, WHICH IS WHERE WE CAN SEE THE GATES OF THE ASYLUM SITUATED, THE HEADLIGHTS STILL GLITTERING UPON THE LARGE PUDDLE

AT THE BASE OF THE NEAREST PILLAR. OVER IN THE RIGHT OF THE EXTREME FOREGROUND WE CAN SEE A LITTLE OF ONE DOOR OF THE BATMOBILE, INCLUDING THE HANDLE. OVER ON THE LEFT OF THE EXTREME FOREGROUND WE CAN SEE THE SCALLOPED BLACKNESS OF THE BATMAN’S CLOAK HANGING DOWN INTO THE PICTURE AS HE STANDS JUST OFF PANEL TO THE LEFT.WE CAN ALSO SEE ONE OF HIS LONG GREY ARMS, DENSELY MUSCLES, REACHIGN OUT THROUGH THE RAIN TOWARDS THE CAR DOOR, WHERE WE SEE HIS BLACK-FINNED GLOVE JUST PUSHING THE CAR DOOR CLOSED BEHIND HIM AS HE GETS OUT, STANDING BESIDE HIS VEHICLE AND GAZING TOWARDS THE ASYLUM GATES THAT WE HAVE SEEN IN THE BACKGROUND. THE GATS ARE CLOSED, BUT WE CANNOT SEE ANY PADLOCK, SO PRESUMABLY THE GATES HAVE BEEN LEFT OPEN IN ANTICIPATION OF THE BATMAN’S ARRIVAL. PERHAPS WE SEE A COUPLE MORE LEAVES, TUMBLING FORLORNLY THROUGH THE WINDSWEPT NOVEMBER BACKGROUND. IN THE FOREGROUND, THE RAIN RUNS DOWN THE SLEEK AND SHINY BLACK METAL SIDES OF THE BATMOBILE, DRIPPING FROM THE ODDLY-SHAPED WING-MIRRORS.

No Dialogue.

I admitted very early on, that I would not be able to accomplish this... not by a stretch. Alan Moore paints a very detailed picture. I'm not an auteur of the genre, and there's no way to mimic such talent, unless I decide to "go all the way" i.e. devote my writing future to comic book writing success.

Grant Morrison, on the other hand, wrote comics similar to movie scripts, highlighting setting, a bit of blocking, and dialogue. While thumb-nailing the action as a suggestive guide for the artist, he leaves the paneling to the artist themselves. So, needless to say, I went with the Grant approach. Since film production requires storyboarding on which to frame shots, I left this up to my film school buddy to work out.

Grant Morrison's script leaves a lot for interpretation, which exercises artistic style

So, I embarked on a script (which I'm planning on posting in parts... maybe as the follow-up post to this one). The problem with comic books is that its a shit load of work. Not for the writer, but for the illustrator. I gauged my comic would require about 24 to 25 pages, with each page being about 4 to 5 panes. That's 100 panels of artwork!!! That is a ton!!! I told my buddy this and he agreed. Although, he was determined to attempt it.

As of today, he's fleshed out a few 'master shots' which I haven't seen yet, trying for the look and feel of the comic. It's a tall order and for a reasonably busy person, I can only encourage my buddy to continue on. But despite the final product (if there is to be one) the process of flexing my story telling was an opportunity that proved exciting.

The End (of the Space Shuttle Program) is the Beginning...

The Space Shuttle's robotic successor, the X-37

I've spent a lot of energy lamenting the end of NASA's manned shuttle program. For a sci-fi writer who dreams of extra-terrestrial worlds, accessible, cheap, and ubiquitous, to have your sense of wonder stolen by U.S. policy decisions is a bit of a kill joy. Sadly, the United States will have no capability to put a man into space once Atlantis is stuffed in a museum somewhere. NASA plans for a future craft are woefully underfunded and its expected we won't see a U.S. manned spacecraft launch in the next decade. There's the "barnstorming" private spacefarers like Scaled Composites, but these are sub-orbital tourist ventures that are incapable of achieving orbit. To make orbit, a full rocket launch is required. Space, besides satellite launching and maintenance, is unprofitable. Its resources are still too challenging access.
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The Mars Rover: exploring the Martian surface so you don't have to.

I doubt the United States' feats in manned space exploration will be trumped. There's talk of the Chinese landing on the Moon in the next 10 years, but I sincerely doubt it. Regardless, old tricks. Neil Armstrong landed at Tranquility Base 40 years ago and I'm not sure how much they could push the exploration envelope. To build a sustainable Moon base is an exotic challenge, and I think the Chinese space program is nowhere near innovative enough. I could be proven wrong. But I doubt it.

My take is this.... human beings and their relationship to outer space is founded in old paradigms. The salient inroad to outer space is based in the obsolete. Why say this? Believe me, there'd be no bigger thrill to see a balls out race to put a man on Mars, but it's not happening, it's too dangerous, too expensive, all that. We're looking at the future of spaceflight and space exploration through the distorted glass darkly of the now.

Darpa's Big Dog robot, creepy but cool

The advancement of robotics in the past 20 years has been staggering. Those with the 'Right Stuff' are not human beings of flesh and blood anymore, but CPU's engineered to the proper environmental requirements. As we speak, there's a rush to eliminate fighter pilots from the cockpit entirely, and robots are insinuating themselves onto the battlefield in odd and peculiar forms unthinkable only a decade ago. Soon, they'll be driving our cars for us and who knows what else... One point that seems to be lost in this robotic/drone rush is that these type of machines are the hardened veterans of space exploration, their technology honed by the extremes of our solar system. To land and deploy a Mars rover from Earth is a monumental feat, no doubt as challenging as landing a man on the Moon in the day. Now, that very technology has fallen back to Earth, an invasion, if you will.

Singularity: Machines getting on with it without us

There's a sub-genre in sci-fi having risen to prominence as of late called "The Technological Singularity". It's the notion that we will soon develop machines with quasi sentience that will fundamentally change history in an unknowable ways. The idea originates with "Moore's Law" for integrated circuits, that artificial intelligence will continue at a rate where soon (maybe within our century) silicon brains will overtake their biological predecessors. Whether or not its plausible remains, but again, many of our current technological advances we now take for granted. The future has always been unpredictable. To have the audacity to believe that humanity's outbound quest into the stars is "over" with the death of a 30+ year old space truck seems bizarre.

Looking at the upcoming unmanned missions, there's some crazy stuff in progress. NASA's New Horizons probe is bound to intercept Pluto in 2015.... yes Pluto!!! While demoted planet-wise, it's a realm human beings have never laid eyed upon... undiscovered country. And soon we will know it. Personally I find this much more of a thrill than yet another launch of the shuttle a few hundred kilometers above the Earth, loaded with silly schoolkid experiments. Don't get me wrong, the ISS is the equivalent of the Giza Pyramids today. The engineering to allow human beings to live and work in the void is astounding. But I believe, by continuing to fund the exorbitant (relatively of course, its pennies on the dollar when compared to our military budget) we could be investing into robotics.

Trying to be positive here... I could watch montage hours of NASA's archives, lunar rovers, the power of the Saturn IV, EVAs in and around the shuttle and ISS, but that's nostalgia, and nostalgia is retrograde. Whether a technological singularity will bring the next Skynet, or something more benign (lets hope) remains. The death of human spaceflight is a tragedy no doubt, I would have dearly liked to see it continue, but its not happening. We need a reason to leave Earth again, and I believe our automated Louis and Clarkes will one day give us that reason...