As Slow and Transparent as Glass

Okay, I'll admit it: I haven't been reading The Pillars of the Earth. I've actually been trying to gear up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by brainstorming plots and characters. And by "brainstorming plots and characters" I really mean that I've been haunting their message board, watching to see if there would be any write-ins near me. I may have to organize one myself. It all kicks off on Monday, which I just happen to have off from work. I'm still not sure who or what I'm going to write about, so I picked up No Plot, No Problem by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty today. It's really good; he's got a great sense of humor in his writing that makes me laugh but doesn't diminish the points he's trying to make. We'll see where I go from here but I'm already more excited now than I was last year.

One medium that intrigues me is the comic book or graphic novel. I don't have the drawing chops to pull it off by myself but I'd love to team up with an artist sometime to create a comic. While it seems like the focus is much more on the art than on the words, if the dialogue is lacking then the whole book goes down with it. I say "book," but really there are so many different formats that comics come out in now: strips, books, webcomics, graphic novels. And so many ways to access them!

It's also a really versatile medium that lends itself well to lots of different topics. Art Spiegelman created Maus to tell his parents' experience during the Holocaust. Neil Gaiman, with various artists, wrote the Sandman series about the Dream King and his siblings: Death, Destruction, Destiny, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. And Scott Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series takes a love story and sets it to a video game soundtrack. These are all stories that could have been told completely in words but the graphic aspect of each strengthens them. Spiegelman uses the "Jews as mice" theme set up by Nazi propaganda but subverts it brilliantly. The artists of Sandman built a world that Gaiman, talented as he is, couldn't have stirred up in my imagination. As for Scott Pilgrim, an ode to video games, rock music, love, Canada, and youth is perfectly expressed to my generation through comics. We grew up on television, computers, and Nintendo (and/or Sega). We're incredibly visual.

It's a magical thing, to be swept through a story frame by frame. When an author can work with an artist (or create his or her own art) to show us instead of tell us, we as readers get a very unique experience. It's almost like a peek inside the writer's head--I know how I see this, but how do you see it?

I'm a day late in posting and approaching brain dead, so I'll wrap up with a question: What's your favorite comic?


-Bridget

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"Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting."
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger