A change of pace then. For I've only just started to collect together my digests, comics and notes for a piece on "Runaways", which won't even be posted for weeks to come, and already I'm wondering which of the book's writers had the best grasp on the title's underlying metaphor, and to what degree the traditions of anime are relevant to the representation of what's still pretty much a mainstream Marvel title, and whether the three volumes of "Runaways" considered in sequence are best characterised by continuity or change, and if so to what degree, and so on, and so on, and on and on and on. And it's then that I realise that I'm not reading comic books this morning so much as skimming them while thinking about how best to write about them, and that surely means that I've lost a little bit of perspective, to say the very least.
After all, if you're only skimming a comic, you've got no right to even think about discussing it, not at all.
A change of pace then, indeed. For it's easy to get caught up in not wanting to repeat yourself when blogging, while the thought of repeating what others have said is as abhorrent as it is sadly unavoidable. And then there's the thought of those good and kind folks who will even turn up and read a piece over here every once in a while, and how I'd like to try to ensure that it's worth their time to pop over, and then there's also how I haven't forgotten that I started blogging in the first place to try to learn how to write a little better, and all of that, with all of a lot more, all conspires until the wood and the trees start to shift position with each other, and I forget to remember that a blog about comic books is fundamentally a blog about reading comics books, and about how much fun that so often is.
And so, like a late-Victorian traveller to the tropics reaching for the whiskey and quinine at the first worrying signs of a temperature and the shakes, I open up the archives here and cut'n'paste the introduction to the "Some Fantastic Place" pieces which get run here every once in a while, because I know it's time to take a step back and start remembering what I loved so about comic books in the very first place;
"It's really tough working out how good a comic is. So this time, let's not bother. Let's take a more relaxed and emotional path to evaluation. Let's do away with all pretense at intellectual analysis and abandon all critical thought, fanboy indignation and continuity cop-ness. Let's just start looking for good things. Little good things, perhaps, just tiny nuggets of fun. Imaginative single panels, witty snatches of dialogue, unexpectedly appropriate sound effects. All the things we would have noticed and treasured when we had less comic books to indulge in and far more time on our hands."
Because it is still too easy to miss the good things in the comic books we read, and perhaps too easy to feel a little disappointed by anything that doesn't seem almost perfect. Take "Runaways: Dead Wrong" by Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos, for example, a collection of stories which received an often less-than-enthusiastic response when released a few years ago. And yet picking it up now and thumbing through it as the 10.30 news approaches on Radio 4, I can immediately recognise three panels which, in their own modest and unprepossessing way, make me feel very pleased to have come across them again. (*1)
A change of pace, then. Three eye-catching, even heart-tugging, panels from "Runaways: Dead Wrong", for your cogitation and delectation. For the sheer splendid comic-bookness of it all.
*1 - And there's of course more than simply three panels worthy of note in "Dead Wrong". Please don't let me give the impression that there aren't
2. "Ready Or Not .... Here They Come."
There are, if not rules, then clear expectations about how jeopardy should be portrayed in a Marvel Universe superhero book. The overwhelming threat posed by whoever or whatever this month's unbeatable protagonist is should be represented as a stomach-quaking, bowel-thinning, hair-stiffening nemesis. The protagonist will be at worst shown as helpless and hopeless and listlessly prone, while at best "our" side will be tense and crouched in order to best ward off the killing blow. Moustaches may be twirled, vainglorious declarations of final triumph declaimed, and, all in all, the reader should be left in some doubt as to whether next month's issue won't be more concerned with the heroes' funeral than any impossible against-all-odds triumph. But, the above closing panel of "Runaways" volume 3, number 4, refers to none of that tradition at all. Indeed, it's so atypical for a scene of the helpless heroes facing the approach of their irresistible end that at first I didn't recognise it for what it is at all, though what it is is quite beautiful.
There's a sense of resignation, if not weariness, about the Runaways in this panel which at first I couldn't place. Their body-language is neither tense and fearful, or relaxed and complacently confident. Instead, there's a sense of "here we go again", as if they've played this part in so many other and similar dramas that all they can register is that the conclusion of Act Three is here already, and once again too. These are closer to kids in the seconds before they have to dive off the high board in swimming class rather than anything more apocalyptic. In such a way do they fall between a show of aggressive defiance and a collapse into fearful cowering, escaping the traditional superhero's narrow repertoire in such situations. And I do admire this. I admire how Mr Ramos has trusted his readers to know, after 20 and more pages at least of this one issue, that a spaceship full of fearsome aliens is scary enough without even more hyperbole being added to the four-colour-brew.
In fact, the Runaways are themselves the most competent and powerful objects in the scene: they're placed securely front-centre in the panel, standing solidly on what appears in the starlight to be the flattest and most supportive of surfaces. What's more, should things take a turn for the worse, there's plenty of room for them to run towards and right beyond the panel borders at either side of them, so there's no sense of them being hemmed in, while the world around them, with the exception of the twisting spaceship, is quite still and rather beautiful. It's a warm starry night, the Runaways are relaxed in their t-shirts and shorts, the clouds are gently stacked and drifting and hardly claustrophobic in effect, while the surface of the ocean is as flat and waveless as a child's drawing of a perfect holiday. All those elements of the scene which would normally be turned to extremes in order to raise the scene's sense of extreme jeopardy are here as lovely and unthreatening as a picture-postcard.
And, strangely, just as the Runaways seem free of extreme fear, the descending spacecraft of their antagonists carries little weight of intimidation at all. The parabola of its progress appears to describe nothing so much as the unsteady and smoke-accompanied fall of a steampunk prototype that's just as likely to overshoot its target as land nearby. For though having a spacecraft close in on the Runaways from that height should make them seem vulnerable, instead they're placed so securely in the panel that it's the aliens who seem at threat; that's a long way down, the panel seems to be saying, from sky to sea, and this odd little vehicle with its prongs and big circular windows may not make it down in even several pieces. (Having the craft turn back away from the panel's right-hand border only makes it seem slower and less threatening than ever: this is not a flying death machine tearing into the Runaway's future, this is a juddering and slow metal beast that can't even roar along into the next page.) And those beautiful pastel tones which seem to be shimmying plates of colour along the shell of the craft only help to increase the sense of benignness about the whole affair.
The kids are aware and engaged, but not so frightened. The world is peaceful as the summer's night ebbs onwards. The spacecraft turns slowly and with considerable effort across the heavens, but instead of shaking the world with the howl of its approach, it rather kindly illuminates the night with those gentle colours.
Well, there are moments when reality unexpectedly shifts gear and what is self-evidently awful can for a brief moment become beguiling and rather beautiful. Anybody who's been in a minor car accident will recall the moment between recognition and impact, when the mind knows that the worst is on its way and slows down time for any last seconds' flinching and bright ideas that maybe, just maybe, be of some help. And that's what I imagine this panel is about, the moment just before the moment when that front bumper, or rather spaceship, hits their sidedoor, or rather the Runaways, that second when the slowing down of time becomes such a wonder in itself that it temporarily shuts out the internal voice shouting "OH MY GOD!! WATCH OUT!!!"
And instead, the world looks strange, and slow, and rather numbly pretty too.
But then, that's just what I thought when it caught my eye, and it's a thought which never would have occurred to me otherwise. I was so caught by the panel and the unfamiliar take on such a familiar scenario that I felt pleasantly compelled to ask "why?". And so, even knowing that my interpretation is incredibly unlikely to reflect the intentions of Mr Ramos and Mr Moore, or anyone else's interpretation at all, I'll keep it with me. Because I didn't have it before, and now I do.
What did you think?
3. "I Have All I Need Right Here"
It's so often argued that a writer is quite useless without an artist setting their intentions into an appropriate visual form, but I think the above panel might be forwarded to contend that hoary old truism. For if Mr Ramos created a thing of some wonder in the first panel under discussion above, I think that here he found the going rather more difficult. The scene, from "Runaways" 3:6:18, concerns Molly saying goodbye to what she thinks is Karolina, who is facing a lonely, protracted and uncertain exile in space. The scene is simplicity itself, but it's the type of elegant brevity which marks fine comic book writing:
Molly: (Handing over an object to Karolina) "I want to give you a going-away present, but this is all I have on me. I got it from a box of cereal."
Karolina: "A compass?"
Molly: "You might need it to find your way back to us."
Those of an exceptionally cynical level of sophistication might decide that this is nothing but sentimentality, but the book itself is actually more thin on sweet declarations of fond intimacies than you might imagine, and a twist of heart-tugging, and just a twist it is, can be precisely the thing to turn a scene from unaffecting to eye-moistening. Yet, compositionally, the scene has somewhat gotten away from Mr Ramos. He's not solved the problem of the relative heights of Karoline and Molly, and so the figures never seen to be in the same scene at the same time with each other. The reader has to engage with the expression of one and then the other, and the two never seem to be looking at each other at the same moment. Perhaps only in retrospect might it seem that having Karolina kneel down would've solved that problem, would have brought her and Molly together into a shared moment rather than two events running side-by-side. Still, even if the characters appear to a degree disconnected when the scene requires a much greater degree of intimacy, Mr Ramos has movingly focused on Molly's hands to accentuate the loss she's feeling. (Above you can see her clasping Karolina's forearm, and below Molly's interlocking of her fingers with concern is of itself truly touching.)
But even though the art here is but serviceable, though warmhearted, the script, that simple and straight-forward script, carries the day. The post-Bendis conservatism that renders narrative captions and thought balloons taboo has elsewhere done Mr Moore few favours, with such a substantial cast and such a great deal going on to explain, but here discipline is its own reward. The script at this moment, indeed, passes the only test I know to apply to a supposedly sentimental scene in order to judge whether the soap there is just a little too frothy. For, yes, on reflection, I do believe that it all happened exactly as its been shown, and I don't feel that the compass and the little speech was placed there in the text simply to make me feel a little dribbly-eyed. And so, for me, it's not sentimental at all; it's touching.
If I'm ever taken by alien soldiers into outer space, and it could still happen, with little chance of ever coming home, I hope someone thinks just enough of me to gift me a compass. I don't care what Corn Flakes packet it comes from at all, I'd just appreciate the compass.
4. "Did It Work?"
The last of the three panels to discuss here is a deceptively simple one which carries not the slightest trace of human action in it. But it is an example of an apparently by-the-board piece of art which yet makes me want to applaud, though if I hadn't spent some time in my Twenties in the business of graphic design, it might have passed me quite by. For imagine what the panel description for the above might have read like:
Issue 2, panel 4: The Majasdane spacecraft hovers above the Great Wall of China. It's night. A teleport beam can be seen landing on the wall.
Now, I have no idea how you'd respond to that, but I think that I'd have kittens. High-angle shot, low-angle? Artificial light, moonlight? Detail, silhouette? Great Wall Of China!!! The choices for such a simple combination of story-elements are in truth quite complex and intimidating, especially for a minor panel in a relatively unshowy part of the story. To the credit of Mr Ramos, he's decided upon a solution which echoes many of those deduced by Carlos Ezquerra in his work on "2000AD", where the internal and engine lights of the craft illuminate the world around it. Yes, it's a minor panel, but in itself it's elegantly designed, and it's the kind of example of craftsmanship that's far too often ignored in the rush to admire all those fine little lines on all that spandex-covered muscle. I especially enjoyed the way that the bottom of the panel is left entirely dark, while behind the spacecraft is a purple swirl of cloud, creating a cone effect which guides the eye from the bottom of the teleport beam to the top of the panel. In such a way does the spacecraft become rather mysterious and substantial, the vanishing point of the scene seeming to exist just at the point where teleport beam hits spaceship, making the fact of the machine's being suspended in thin air all the more pronounced, and what might have passed as a few lines of visual exposition becomes in itself rather quietly impressive.
4. "Make Yourself Comfortable, It's A Long Trip"
There's always one simple effect for me of doing these "Some Fantastic Place" pieces, and that is that I'm compelled to engage with a single comic book, or collection of comic books, on its own terms, rather than considering it as part of a run, or as an artifact to process through a theory, or whatever else a mind might do rather than actually reading a book for itself. In writing the above, for example, for all that I recognise how it may appear to be a terrific indulgence and sadly of little interest to anyone else at all, "Runaways: Dead Wrong" has become a distinct comic book in its own right for me. It's no longer something that was done with Brian K. Vaughan's characters, or a supposed disappointment after Josh Whedon's time on the book. (Which, of course, was itself supposedly a disappointment on what came before.) We all read so many comic books these days, and we've all certainly read so very many before, that it's hard to slow down and, if you'll pardon the expression, chew our food before swallowing. Or perhaps that's just me, and perhaps I'm assumming too much. But even if I am, I know this: I'd've been proud to have been part of the team which produced the work above, and any consideration of whether their run of books as a whole that the Moore/Ramos team undertook is "good" or "not" is in some ways quite irrelevant to me. Yes, the "macro" level of epic, metaphor, art and meaningfullness is important. But so are the individual moments which might otherwise get missed when more obvious and less deserving cases are praised all out of proportion to their virtues.
And so I shan't be passing "Runaways: Dead Wrong" onto anyone else's bookshelf after this, and I was thinking that I might eventually do so, which proves, I suppose, that I've just not been reading carefully enough these past few days.
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