Alex Groff
Jul 23, 2005, 05:16 am
<img src="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/columns/te_logo.gif" align=left width=115 height=100 border=0 alt="Typographical Errors">by Alex Groff
Now, we've talked about how much you can fit into a single issue: how you can stretch the size of an issue, play with the length of a series, and basically how you can fit a novel into a picture book. The great creators have all done it, which is what makes them great. But then, I tripped over Coffman and McCubbin's XXX LiveNudeGirls and saw something that blew my mind.... Okay, that didn't come out the way I meant it.
XXX LiveNudeGirls is a collection of slice of life stories— devoid of nudity, you sick, sick degenerates— about female identity and sexuality. Everything society shuns, from alcoholism to one night stands, from lesbianism to drug abuse, is thrown into these stories that still manage to make these people seem, you know, like real people. Coffman and McCubbin have us look at the normally ignored or marginalized side of America, of society in general, and reminds us that they're really not all that different than the rest of us. Some of the stories are a bit thin (Despair and Sick coming to mind), but overall this is a great book: snapshots of life.
Part of what makes this book so good is its use of space. A blank page here. A page with two small panels an a bit of text there. A book that is not as concerned about filling the space as it is about opening up the space and allowing us to fill the rest of it. Oddly enough, I read this book slower than most other comics. Granted, you can't exactly fly through an Alan Moore comic, but there's something about Coffman's stories, about McCubbin's spacing, that makes me stop and linger over a page long after I've finished reading.
You don't see this often. We're efficiency-obsessed, this side of the Atlantic. Space must be filled. Silence must be filled. Whenever I turn the tv off, someone else turns it back on again, almost immediately. Sometimes I go outside for a cigarette, just to get away from anything resembling stimulus: to take a moment to feel my breath, and look at the smog-filled black sky (we don't have stars here, but I think I like it that way), and listen to the crickets. Sometimes the night is lit up by the planes landing at BWI, and I wonder who's coming home, who's going somewhere they've never been before: those kinds of things. Its a moment of reflection.
You can do this in real life. You can do this in a book. Films and comics, though, entertainment: they don't like silence, or space. The issue of Alpha Flight with a twelve-page snowstorm enraged fans, while Ellis' prolonged comic silences— especially on his pop comics— left a number of readers flat. But there are comics that can do this, and do it well, if you'll listen.
Now, silent comics have had their moments of infamy, most notably the 'Nuff Said idea that failed spectacularly. However, I would argue that any idea forced upon two or three dozen creators— often in the middle of a story arc— is a bad idea. And the truth is, the fact that some of these creators told strong stories without words is proof of how, even in comics focused on action, silence and reflection can work. Readers can look at Bruce Jones' The Incredible Hulk for a short but poignant story that was one of the high points of his run.
Really, though, silence is not designed for action stories, which is probably why it's not done often. The finest example I can think of is a short story by Dave McKean about a man who wished he could fly, from pictures that [tick]. In this story, a falconer releases his pet and prepares to jump, while his wife waits for him to return. There are some vague ambiguities, but the heart of the story— this man's palpable belief that he will grow wings and soar— carry this story without a word spoken. Its proof again that Dave McKean needs to write more comics, and that there is an entire field of stories that we aren't seeing often enough.
Perhaps the most recent example of silent comics I can think of is Meathaus: Love Songs. Meathaus is an anthology that has just continued to grow for years. I mean, it started as a 22 page anthology, while the seventh volumn, Love Songs, was around 180 pages. James Jean Fables, Batgirl), Jim Mahfood (Grrl Scouts, Brandon Graham (Escalator, Nate Powell (Tiny Giants), David Crosland (Puffed and a plethora of other creators contributed to this massive edition. Their task? They were to take a love song, and draw a comic to its words.
The comic itself is silent: it is telling the story of the lyrics.
Not all of the comics followed this model, but those that did offered surprising, entertaining glimpses into their words. Mahfood used They Might Be Giant's She's An Angel and told the story of angels, shriners, male insecurity and the pearly gates in four pages. Crosland's Native American story was visually moving, even though I didn't read the lyrics because I didn't know the song. The art stood on its own, and told a story that I didn't need words to follow. The way you can look at someone's face and tell what they're thinking: that's what silent comics can be. As 'Nuff Said showed, this idea can be overused, and inappropriate in many situations, but in the right story... there's nothing quite like it.
Top Shelf has, in the distant future, a book called Pinokio coming out, telling the non-Disney story of a sad, heartbroken old man and the puppet that could not be anything more than his wooden shell. I've heard that this story is going to be massive, and silent: allowing the moments to tell us things that words cannot express. I think of the Waffle Houses of North Carolina that I love to visit: of the man who sits in the corner and watches out the window while the rest of the restaurant talks about Andre the Giant's diet and how wrestling is staged— or is it? There's nothing that man can say that would do justice to the look on his face as he watches a young man ride off on a motorcycle, back onto Route 95 and away from Lumberton. The word "longing" just doesn't do that old man justice, and Pinokio really has the potential to remind us just how much we say without opening our mouths.
Sometimes, silence tells a story better than words. Sometimes space is what we need to fill out the details better left unsaid. And sometimes— not often, but sometimes— a great comic is one that leaves us pages and pages to fill ourselves.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Alex groff realizes that there's a certain irony to wasting so many words on the topic of silence, but he wrote this column anyway.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of Comixfan or its other staff in general. In fact, certain staff members are not adverse to spending good money to have him silenced.
Now, we've talked about how much you can fit into a single issue: how you can stretch the size of an issue, play with the length of a series, and basically how you can fit a novel into a picture book. The great creators have all done it, which is what makes them great. But then, I tripped over Coffman and McCubbin's XXX LiveNudeGirls and saw something that blew my mind.... Okay, that didn't come out the way I meant it.
XXX LiveNudeGirls is a collection of slice of life stories— devoid of nudity, you sick, sick degenerates— about female identity and sexuality. Everything society shuns, from alcoholism to one night stands, from lesbianism to drug abuse, is thrown into these stories that still manage to make these people seem, you know, like real people. Coffman and McCubbin have us look at the normally ignored or marginalized side of America, of society in general, and reminds us that they're really not all that different than the rest of us. Some of the stories are a bit thin (Despair and Sick coming to mind), but overall this is a great book: snapshots of life.
Part of what makes this book so good is its use of space. A blank page here. A page with two small panels an a bit of text there. A book that is not as concerned about filling the space as it is about opening up the space and allowing us to fill the rest of it. Oddly enough, I read this book slower than most other comics. Granted, you can't exactly fly through an Alan Moore comic, but there's something about Coffman's stories, about McCubbin's spacing, that makes me stop and linger over a page long after I've finished reading.
You don't see this often. We're efficiency-obsessed, this side of the Atlantic. Space must be filled. Silence must be filled. Whenever I turn the tv off, someone else turns it back on again, almost immediately. Sometimes I go outside for a cigarette, just to get away from anything resembling stimulus: to take a moment to feel my breath, and look at the smog-filled black sky (we don't have stars here, but I think I like it that way), and listen to the crickets. Sometimes the night is lit up by the planes landing at BWI, and I wonder who's coming home, who's going somewhere they've never been before: those kinds of things. Its a moment of reflection.
You can do this in real life. You can do this in a book. Films and comics, though, entertainment: they don't like silence, or space. The issue of Alpha Flight with a twelve-page snowstorm enraged fans, while Ellis' prolonged comic silences— especially on his pop comics— left a number of readers flat. But there are comics that can do this, and do it well, if you'll listen.
Now, silent comics have had their moments of infamy, most notably the 'Nuff Said idea that failed spectacularly. However, I would argue that any idea forced upon two or three dozen creators— often in the middle of a story arc— is a bad idea. And the truth is, the fact that some of these creators told strong stories without words is proof of how, even in comics focused on action, silence and reflection can work. Readers can look at Bruce Jones' The Incredible Hulk for a short but poignant story that was one of the high points of his run.
Really, though, silence is not designed for action stories, which is probably why it's not done often. The finest example I can think of is a short story by Dave McKean about a man who wished he could fly, from pictures that [tick]. In this story, a falconer releases his pet and prepares to jump, while his wife waits for him to return. There are some vague ambiguities, but the heart of the story— this man's palpable belief that he will grow wings and soar— carry this story without a word spoken. Its proof again that Dave McKean needs to write more comics, and that there is an entire field of stories that we aren't seeing often enough.
Perhaps the most recent example of silent comics I can think of is Meathaus: Love Songs. Meathaus is an anthology that has just continued to grow for years. I mean, it started as a 22 page anthology, while the seventh volumn, Love Songs, was around 180 pages. James Jean Fables, Batgirl), Jim Mahfood (Grrl Scouts, Brandon Graham (Escalator, Nate Powell (Tiny Giants), David Crosland (Puffed and a plethora of other creators contributed to this massive edition. Their task? They were to take a love song, and draw a comic to its words.
The comic itself is silent: it is telling the story of the lyrics.
Not all of the comics followed this model, but those that did offered surprising, entertaining glimpses into their words. Mahfood used They Might Be Giant's She's An Angel and told the story of angels, shriners, male insecurity and the pearly gates in four pages. Crosland's Native American story was visually moving, even though I didn't read the lyrics because I didn't know the song. The art stood on its own, and told a story that I didn't need words to follow. The way you can look at someone's face and tell what they're thinking: that's what silent comics can be. As 'Nuff Said showed, this idea can be overused, and inappropriate in many situations, but in the right story... there's nothing quite like it.
Top Shelf has, in the distant future, a book called Pinokio coming out, telling the non-Disney story of a sad, heartbroken old man and the puppet that could not be anything more than his wooden shell. I've heard that this story is going to be massive, and silent: allowing the moments to tell us things that words cannot express. I think of the Waffle Houses of North Carolina that I love to visit: of the man who sits in the corner and watches out the window while the rest of the restaurant talks about Andre the Giant's diet and how wrestling is staged— or is it? There's nothing that man can say that would do justice to the look on his face as he watches a young man ride off on a motorcycle, back onto Route 95 and away from Lumberton. The word "longing" just doesn't do that old man justice, and Pinokio really has the potential to remind us just how much we say without opening our mouths.
Sometimes, silence tells a story better than words. Sometimes space is what we need to fill out the details better left unsaid. And sometimes— not often, but sometimes— a great comic is one that leaves us pages and pages to fill ourselves.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
Alex groff realizes that there's a certain irony to wasting so many words on the topic of silence, but he wrote this column anyway.
<center><hr width=75%></center>
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and are not reflective of Comixfan or its other staff in general. In fact, certain staff members are not adverse to spending good money to have him silenced.