Max Riffner
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The Cartoonist's Dilemma
Reading more of the Eisner/Miller book has got me thinking of an old idea – the cartoonist versus the penciller/writer/inker mentality. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a penciller, because that was what Jim Lee (hot artist at the time) was. Even while I was starting to think about Golden Boy, I still thought that this would be good to get a start as a penciller.
Now more than ever, I want to be a cartoonist. Something I read in the book was that Neil Gaiman, no matter how successful a comics writer he is, will never be a cartoonist; he can’t draw. Writers Joe Casey and Matt Fraction touched on this when they reviewed the book this week in their Basement Tapes column: they both read Eisner/Miller and wished they could actually draw their own stories.
Late on the Friday night we arrived in Kansas City for Planet Comicon, Fredd and I were talking about his webcomic (which should be coming shortly) and how he was almost scared to tell me that he wasn’t writing a script for it. We had been discussing how his vision and ideas were so purely formed, and I told him he shouldn’t even bother with a script so he wouldn’t get hung up on the idea of “doing it right” and not ever getting this work out in the world. He admitted to having much the same idea, but was almost scared to mention it, somewhat because only the greats seem to do that (we were talking about how Moebius would just sit down and bang out a graphic novel with not much prior planning). He almost felt that it would be presumptuous and egotistical to believe that he didn’t need a script, even though that method of storytelling is “pure” cartooning.
I have traditionally always written a script first, but now I’m wondering if i should try my hand at being a cartoonist in the purest form.
The worst I can do is fail miserably.
Not quite the point I was going for, but yes, if you suck at storytelling, you aren’t a very good cartoonist, since that is the crux of what a cartoonist actually is (storyteller with pictures). This is probably my biggest gripe with the majority of webcomics out there; they absolutely blow at storytelling. We are in a world today where one’s artistic style, no matter how polished or raw, is acceptable. But comics are storytelling. Tell the story! If you don’t know how, try studying your chosen craft for god’s sake! This really bugs the hell out of me when I troll around webcomic sites. Everyone wants to do it, but no one wants to learn it.
I digress; I guess where I’m coming from is that most professional comics today are assembled by a team of creators. Now, Neil Gaiman is a hell of a creator and storyteller, but he isn’t a cartoonist (although I must redact one statement, he can draw; he did a 24 hour comic all by himself). Frank Miller (and Will Eisner when he was alive) doesn’t need that assembly line. He can do it all on his own. That is a cartoonist.
Now, within that realm of cartooning, there is a form of creation that some subscribe to, which is to create the work as you go. Miller doesn’t do this; he writes a script, draws all the pages in pencil at once, then sits down and inks all the pages at once. Eisner, Jaimie Hernandez, Moebius, and several others start at panel 1, page 1, without much idea as to how everything is going to unfold. To an extent, they’ve mentioned that this act is, in a sense, a more “pure” form of cartooning.
Now, the danger with doing that is you could completely bungle the whole work up (and many have) because you have no real plan or blueprint (aka script) to go off of. I’ve always done it the way Miller has: wrote it, revised the script, pencilled the whole thing, inked the whole thing, in that order, like a one man assembly line. I’m wondering if I should maybe give the “fly by the seat of my pants” method a shot.
Make sense now?
I’ve always been more interested in cartooning than just the guy who penned the story or the art for that matter.
As you explained above, a cartoonist encompasses all aspects of creative storytelling typically on a whim, instead of the assembly line approach.
In my experience I rarely focus on the construction of it and just “fly by the seat of my pants”, unless it’s a project like Sideville of course, which will be less of a cartoon strip and more of an ongoing storyline.
Of course this brings up a good point as to whether its better to be the cartoonist who creates self contained panels with the witty joke towards the end or one who creates engaging and ongoing plotlines. I’m a fan of both but in my own experience only usually do the ongoing thing because in the end the storyline and overall feel of the comic (or cartoon comic) seems more fleshed out.
Shouldn’t a person trying to start out master one skill and find success in it before trying to master all of the other skills all at once? If one skill were a weak a point while trying use all the skills at once, it would be a handicap overall. Never mastering the weak point would cloud the larger picture.
If one mastered and became successful in a skill first, then moved on to the other disciplines after success and mastery in one, they would have a better chance of success in the long term.
Special Ed Student Say: Before joining the pole vault team, perhaps learning to walk might be an asset.
Never mastering the weak point would cloud the larger picture.
I should point out that the splitting roles of comic creation only came about as a business decision to get the work out faster and is unique to comic books. Originally, comic books sprang from the newspaper’s comic strips (when Gaines went and made a book out of all the funny strips). Cartooning used to be just one discipline.
Ironically, comic strip cartoonists do everything themselves still.
And I think that there are some really wonderful creators out there that are part of the “assembly line” production; I don’t think they are any less valid as a creator. They just aren’t all cartoonists.
Of course this brings up a good point as to whether its better to be the cartoonist who creates self contained panels with the witty joke towards the end or one who creates engaging and ongoing plotlines.
I don’t think it matters as long as it is good. Bill Watterson never had really long storylines and focused on the punchline, but I don’t think anyone would say he wasn’t one of the greatest cartoonists of our time. I had a better sense of his characters and their lives than most comic books today.
I agree with your first insinuation. The audience has absolutely nothing to gain from it necessarily; the story will either suck or it won’t. Remember, I don’t think one form of comic creation is any better than the other. A good comic is a good comic, no matter if it was produced by one person or a team of people.
I disagree that it is ego-stroking, however. It isn’t like I’ll be advertising the fact that it is all done by one person and somehow a superior read; it isn’t a marketing sell to a reader. Rather, it is just a different way of doing things, or a personal experiment. I’ve done things one sort of way my whole life, would the work be any different if I did it this way? What could I learn from an experience like that?
In the pantheon of creators, I don’t care how they do their work, per se, I’m just trying to be a better creator than I am now. And people learn by testing themselves, not by doing the same thing over and over again.
If I find this method frustrating for me to produce and the audience doesn’t like the resulting story, I think I would change my approach pretty damn quick, especially since I’m usually trying to earn money off of my work.
Another experiment that I’m working on right now is in fact to do a team creation, where I am only the writer, and I’m writing stories for three different artists. This is all for the sake of learning, and seeing what sticks.
Yet another experiment I’m working on is to draw another writer’s script. I’ve done it once before. I wanted to try with a different writer this time and see what happened.
So you see, I’m pretty much doing everything I can do at the level I am at right now because I can afford to. My main source of income isn’t soley in comics right now. Time to experiment!
Is there a large proportion of consumers who buy comics based on how they are created versus the quality of the product? I would assume one would have to be a pretty saavy comic reader to know this information. What drives the comic market?
I am all for you pushing yourself to be a better creator by trying different methods. I always find discussions about methodology to be fascinating. Especially when there is a gold standard and that standard is constantly being challenged.
Traditionally, people either purchase comics by creator or by title. Usually, certain creators will prove out over time to be a reliable quality. There are some people out there, however, who only buy the entire selection of Batman comics. These people will always buy Batman, despite quality or creators, mostly out of collection-obsession. They will usually bitch about how bad the book currently is, but will not stop purchasing it, insanely enough.
Now, we are seeing a new kind of comic consumer with the rise of webcomics and manga. Most of these two groups of customers have likely never even been to a comic store.
Manga is readily available at bookstores, and for about 10 bucks a pop, they offer quite a bit of story. Manga is also non-genre specific in general. There is sports manga, homosexual manga, adventure manga, romance manga, and so on. This has led to a ton of female readers age 12 – 26 to come into the mix. It is exciting to see so many of these girls at comic conventions, because it is the sort of diversity needed in our readership, and it also forces the publishers to take a good hard look at the market as manga challenges many of their long-held business beliefs.
Now with webcomics readers, they are an interesting bunch as I am finding out. They are a bit too hard to segment into a specific market as of yet. There are some readers who are rabid about a certain genre of comics, such as gaming-only webcomics (PvP, Penny Arcade). Some are willing to pay for the work online, some aren’t, but are willing to support the artist(s) with the purchasing of related goods or advertising. It is just a big mixed bag with that audience still.
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May 16, 04:58 AM
Okay, if I’m following your logic correctly, if one sucks at storytelling, then they fail at being a true cartoonist?