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06/09/2003: interview meme
The answers to Lucy's questions:
1. Is there a particular style of comic art that you prefer? A type you really, really hate? Artists you admire? Artists you don't like?
I don't have a single favorite style. I really hate styles that are hard to follow and self-indulgent, even worse are pretentious styles (a good example is the art in many of the early Image comics, where idiotic visual effects render a comic nearly or totally unreadable while there's no story substance, and the art is okay on the surface level at most but not the level of visual storytelling, think Todd McFarlane). By that I do not mean that I don't like more complex visual techniques, or "avantgarde" exploration of the medium, but the style choice has to reflect the kind of comic that something is supposed to be. If a comic has a plot in the traditional sense, then I should be able to follow the plot.
Especially in "genre" comics, and when I'm mostly interested in the story, I prefer comics with a clear line (in general, not necessarily the "ligne claire" school, though), where the artist is willing to let the art become "invisible" yet aware enough of the complexities of page/panel layout and visual story telling that the whole isn't boring and pedestrian. And it is important that the artist is able to convey character emotion visually. Will Eisner's art comes to mind. John Romita Jr.'s art in the current Amazing Spider-Man series is a good example too, or Linda Medley's art in Castle Waiting. I really like the classic franco-belgian style from the 1960s, I adore Franquin's art and that of many others of that school. Carl Bark's Duck comics from the late 1940s and 1950s are awesome.
I can also appreciate very visible personal styles. I was going to say "individual" but then the styles that are not that "noticeable" like the examples I gave above are also very individual, I mean for example I can recognize Carl Barks art among any Disney art, unless the other artist is very good at imitating Barks' style, but there are comic styles that are more like a third person past tense, and then there are art styles that are more like a second person present tense. But with very distinct personal styles it is mostly a case by case decision for me. And styles can even look superficially close to each other and share similarities and features, and I'll like one and dislike the other. But for me to like a style it has to serve the intended purpose, either to tell the story, or to explore comics as a medium, but comic artists who do pretentious and self-indulgent art that serves nothing should be doing art pieces or illustrations or whatever, not comics. The art in comics isn't there only as art, it's there for the comic, whatever the comic's goal is.
I dislike photorealistic art in comics as well, because it is often static and boring, and my personal preferences in comics tend to favor line oriented styles over painted ones, though there are some exceptions where I truly enjoy painted comics.
The list of individual artists I like is quite long as well as the one of artists I dislike. For the ones I like I can refer to the list in the sidebar of my blog as well as to my comic rec page and my rec page for comics by women artists, though both are woefully incomplete, because I'm too much of a slacker for regular updates. To narrow it down to artists I admire is hard (assuming you mean I admire the art style, with some exceptions I'm not much interested in artists' lives and personalities), but if I had to list artists that influenced me, Carl Bark's would definitely top the list, and I admire his work.
Batman artists or artist teams I like are for example Tim Sale, David Mazzucchelli, Jim Lee/Scott Williams, Roger Robinson/John Floyd, I like what Michael Lark does in Gotham Central, though I think that style wouldn't be as suited for a focus on the "costumed" titles. I'm not sure I like the split DC seems to be making in giving some Batman titles a "hard boiled" title look, this sort of thing like Mazzuchelli did in Year One or Michael Lark now in Gotham Central and others a more superhero style, like Lee/Williams in Batman currently, but I think my main problem is that it takes a lot of skill to make a sparse style work, especially for superheroes, and for example Javier Pulido's art in the recent Catwoman just doesn't work for me, though I like styles that are similar in principle.
2. What do you think comics as a medium have to offer that other media (print, live action) don't?
From the creator's viewpoint comics are the only visual medium I know where as a fan you can produce the same level of quality the professionally published comics have. It's like writing that way. Publishing and distributing present challenges, and of course good art and color reproduction will cost you more than a page of print, but provided you have the skills to draw and write your comic pages will be as good as published ones. Maybe it is possible today to do the same with some kinds of animated films in home production, but I don't know enough to judge that, but with comics it's no problem and you don't need expensive equipment either.
From the viewer/reader viewpoint, I like the combination of text and images in the space of a page. It's hard to explain without writing long, theoretical essays and it's a rather muddled gut thing for me anyway, but that time is represented spatial, with this unique combination of viewing things simultaneously (a page, a panel) and reading them sequentially (the panel sequence, the text) is for me at the root of their uniqueness. It's true that you read comics panel by panel on the simplest level, but panels are not separate units on the page, and it's not like freeze frames of a movie, no panel represents the same amount of time either, nor is necessarily everything inside one panel happening at the same time (the simplest example for that is the spoken text, that lasts longer than the pose in the image would be held, but also movement inside one panel, and many other things). With film the time perception is controlled in a very simple way, one picture moving forward (except in rare cases like split screens), the mechanism is, despite the possibility of montage (like cuts, arranging scenes etc) very straightforward and simple. Whereas in writing there is no "inherent mechanism" to represent time at all, it has to be evoked by the writer, but only sequentially, because (at least with traditional texts) you only read in one direction.
The unique way comics handle time is most evident in experimental comics, that play with this in a visible "avantgarde" way, where the art form is explored primarily, form for the form's sake, not for any story, but it is utilized in each comic, sometimes more, sometimes less skillful, and can serve the "story" in very powerful ways too, and no other medium can do these things.
Another thing I like about comics is that while they are visual they are not limited in visual style like live action, especially for fantastical elements. No matter how good or how powerful CGI already is or will become, you will either have to make your fantastical elements (like a monster) look "realistic" enough that it passes as a real element in the context of photographic representation of humans (that's the approach most CGI seems to take today, that the CGI should look as real as filmed humans) or that you live with the real humans looking out of place. In comics you have the option to make your humans look less realistic to match whatever style is best for your fantastical elements, your mood, your genre, whatever, and the readers will perceive both as equally real (that's in a way true for animated films as well). That's why superheroes work so much better (and look less cheesy) in comics than in live action.
Over the decades the visual language of comics has become incredibly complex and flexible, and it's IMO a very powerful medium, though unfortunately that is also something that can make comics hard to access. I've noticed that for people not "trained" to read comics, it's hard to understand and "read" those with a more complicated visual language, and unlike with most other media it's not a given that someone will have learned to read them since childhood.
3. Now that you've been into Batman a while, where would you recommend a newbie begin? Is there a particular storyline/issue/compilation that you would say is particularly representative of "Batman" as a whole? Or at least a good indication of what to expect in terms of characters, storylines, tone, etc?
Hard to say. Since I'm invested into successful pimping ;) I think it would depend on where the newbie is coming from (for example are they from a "comic background" or not), which character they're interested in, and what kind of art they like (or whether art is important at all for them). For me art I dislike or even just don't care about much can be really off-putting, unless I'm already invested into a character or series and can ignore it to some degree.
For someone interested in Batman, if I had to recommend a single issue I'd go with Gotham Knights #24. While that is part of the larger storyline, it also stands on it's own in illustrating Batman's psychological issues, it is creepy, fascinating and intriguing, and for me it really stands for the current Batman, who is neither campy adventurer, nor violently dark, and gives a good idea what to expect from the current Batman comics, at least post-NML.
For someone interested in Nightwing, the single issue I'd recommend would be probably Nightwing Secret Files #1, for the flashback story "Taking Wing", the one reprinted in Darker Shade of Justice that Lucy dubbed "Dick Grayson, this is your life." It would be a good indication of what to expect, because even though it's an overview of Nightwing's life up to then and thus a good introduction in a way, it would be very confusing as well to newbies (I know it was, and in parts still is, to me), because there are references to decades of continuity, with lots of people they never heard of, and it's part of the NML Blackgate arc in the Nightwing series as well as of course the larger NML thing, and until a couple of years pass (or a fan has a really big wallet and lots of time) that is pretty much going to be the standard state of confusion. Together with the surface story there are almost always continuity references (sometimes more, sometimes less consistent) you won't get completely, and unlike with most tv fandoms, you have to deal with not knowing all of a character, at least not for a very long time after you start following that character. So the newbie might as well get used to that early ;)
When asked for a compilation I'd probably recommend Long Halloween/Dark Victory, because I really like the whole take on the emergence of the "freaks," and how Gotham became what it is, and I dig Tim Sale's art, though I don't think it's especially representative for what to expect from a usual Bat Family series issue.
4. You've been offered the opportunity to re-do (or at least guide the re-doing) of the art in one issue of a Bat or Bat family title. Which do you choose and why?
Hmm, that's hard. Especially if it's just a single issue. Probably Robin Vol. 2 #13 (that is the last part of the Prodigal storyline). I would have liked it, if the whole Batman: Prodigal had been done by really talented artists, better even if it had been done by just one really talented artist for consistency inside the mini-series. At best the art of Prodigal is pedestrian, at worst it's plain awful, especially since several of the artists seem to have been unable to do facial and body language beyond "angry with teeth showing" and "shouting" even in very emotional scenes. I can respect art styles I don't like very much, like Scott McDaniel's, when the artist is good at it, and for example wouldn't change the Nightwing issues, but not things like in Prodigal.
5. Assuming you've read some fanfiction, does the switch from graphic to print work for you? What elements do you think translate well, and which don't? What about live action? What elements translate, and which don't?
I haven't read a lot of Batman or Nightwing fanfiction (though I'm very open to recs ;). I think the whole costume and supervillain thing is almost always far more ridiculous in live action than in comics, and in a way it doesn't even matter all that much whether the CGI is good or there are "ka-pow" screens.
I also think that the impact of things like their costumes, the psychopathic freaks and the whole Gotham scenery with creepy gargoyles and nearly constant night and rain is harder to convey in fanfic, because in comics things like the Gotham atmosphere are truly background, but describing the same thing with the same level of detail in fanfic would take a lot of attention from whatever is happening, and the effect is then not the same anymore, in text "background" both of the land- or cityscape as well as the "style" or looks of characters can never be as constant and unobtrusive as in a visual medium.
Because it is hard to do long dialogs in comics (and not be boring) there are a couple of ways that comics deal with that, for example the dialog in fight scenes, which when done well, can really work, e.g. with the enemy taunting and hurting the hero, or with "bonding" between heroes, like when Dick and Tim talk while they fight. Another way are all those flashback scenes used to reveal background or what goes on inside a characters head. In fanfic there is nothing to stop the "talking head in white room" syndrome, and it isn't nearly as boring, because snarky interesting dialog can really work in written fiction, but there is the risk that it becomes out of character, because in the comics they don't talk in those situations (like while sitting at a table or something). On the other hand I assume it's harder in fanfiction to describe a conversation while at the same time you have to describe fighting moves, roof jumps, freaks, monsters and what not. I think it's easy to loose the dynamic and expression that (good) comics maintain even in emotional scenes. I mean in comics you can't avoid showing body language, movement and expression (you can just do it badly), whereas written fiction can and often does just skip most of that.
