EXTRA // 6.13.02

ACADEMIA: I FEEL BETTER THAN JAMES BROWN
by Gus Dahlberg

Friend of mine used to keep this little quote from writer Mark Waid lying around - something I think Waid said in an interview a while back, maybe from around his early CrossGen days (he said without a trace of irony.) The quote, whose essential meaning has stuck with me even if the exact phrasing hasn't, was something to the effect of "the best, most promising writers are the ones who can open up their own veins, pour themselves out on paper, and Make. Me. Feel."

(I remember those last three words and that comic-booky punctuation in particular - why, I don't know. Some weird mutation of Louis Lane's uniquely annoying delivery, no doubt… and come to think of it, that's certainly not the first time I've seen it used in comic writers' lexicons, appearing more and more often over the last four or five years. So easy to use to create emphasis - the dry pronouncement as if from on high, delivered in three broken word balloons, set off by periods, fragments that try to Command but more often than not only Amuse, sometimes unintentionally...)

Tangent. Sorry.

Where was I? Bleeding. Right.

I always liked that particular image as applied to writing, suggesting that good storytelling is fired by the same intangible energy that creates life, that good writing can't survive without it. It seemed to put into words something that always seemed obvious to me: the writer (or, more generally, if we're talking comics, the creator's) most basic and essential task as a storyteller is to make the audience care about the story itself, to feel some emotion, some need or desire to follow the tale; to ultimately give a shit. Otherwise, you understand, what's the point? The storyteller might as well be reciting binomial equations from a textbook if you, the audience, didn't give a shit about what was being said. Thus and so: the storyteller is not a lecturer; the storyteller is supposed to involve you, to drag you along for the ride, to let you experience the thrill of living vicariously through the story itself.

Will Eisner has written that a story is essentially a contract between writer and reader: an agreement of representation, if you will. The writer promises that he will deliver something comprehensible, something that the reader will understand and be able to relate to. The writer promises that the reader's time will not be wasted as spent in the telling of his tale. On the other side of the table, the reader promises to attempt to understand the story the writer has delivered, using the tropes and tools and clues left by the writer as guideposts.

The writer, in other words, warrants that the reader will be led to some feeling, some emotion, through the course of the tale.

A good comic - a good story - should make the reader care. Which seems obvious upon reflection, but consider:

Do you worry about the characters in the comics you read? Are you happy when they're happy? Sad when they're depressed, or upset when they're angry? Do you feel anything when the latest shock of the month befalls them?

Honestly?

Empathy is one of the trickiest elements of good writing; sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not. But you can tell, can't you, when it's gone? You stop caring. Happened to me on more than one occasion. I used to enjoy Christopher Priest's BLACK PANTHER, for example, but lately, I couldn't give a shit. I no longer empathize with the characters. It's not the setting or the situations or the lunatic atmosphere Priest spreads throughout the book - I don't have to have superpowers or fly spaceships to share in the genuine emotion of a book like POWERS, for example, so it's not that. With BLACK PANTHER, I don't feel any of T'Challa's pain, or joy, or anger - and, honestly, what a great setup to do just that! Wasted on action and fights and random appearances of Iron Man and Wolverine, and I think Priest knows it too, which is a tragedy.

No empathy.

Whereas I'm in the middle of Alex Robinson's BOX OFFICE POISON - not yet having finished the damned book - and I'm worried about the characters. I feel like I've kind of left them at a rough patch where relationships are fragmentary and shifting, and I should be there for them - if only I didn't have work and family and friends and all the other things in life to contend with…! But that barely repressed rage, that drowning helplessness and drifting sense of waste, the deep conviction that things will be better some undisclosed time in the future? I feel like I've experienced and shared every bit of all those things and more with these characters. I feel their pain, in Clintonspeak, and I wish I could help them avoid the choices and mistakes that make those feelings unbearable.

Which, of course, I can't. Because their tale is already concluded, waiting for me at the end of the book, their fates inevitable - and yet, not knowing their destinies, I hope - I yearn - for the resolutions I know may never come. Their tales aren't yet written, for me, and the possibilities are endless - even if real life doesn't always work out that way.

Can you say the same thing about AVENGERS? About the TRANSFORMERS, or THUNDERCATS? About CAPTAIN MARVEL, the book that was supposedly so beloved that the comics industry rose up and convinced Marvel to spare it?

Probably not.

Which isn't to say they don't accomplish that which they set out to do - children's books don't have to be terribly deep, after all - but haven't they violated that Eisnerian contract? Don't they fall short of genuine emotion? As entertainment for adults, aren't they just distracting you rather than involving you? Haven't they failed to give you a reason to care?

It's not a difference of format: it's not a preference for finite comics over serial ones (not in this instance, at least.) Plenty of ongoing serials reach for that kind of emotion; I'm sure you could come up with a list just as easily as I could. It's not a matter of preferring "indy" books to spandex ones: I've read superhero books that reached inside and dragged up some emotion, just as I've read black and white books devoid of any emotional depth.

It's about the storyteller bleeding on to the page. It's about the stuff of life, flowing through the story.

The best stories, the best comics: they're the ones who hold up their end of the bargain, who fulfill that contract. They touch those feelings and emotions we recognize from our own lives. They hold up the mirror and show us ourselves, whether writ small or larger than life. They tell us some things about ourselves and let us discover others on our own. They empathize. We are pulled in when we see ourselves on the page, or hear echoes of our own lives in the characters' voices - and then we, the audience, are satisfied. The contract is complete.

It's perhaps an undefinable, unquantifiable element that we're discussing, but it's fundamental to the chemistry of a good comic. It doesn't matter whether it's an intimate conversation over coffee or an army of tenth-dimensional demons invading Topeka: if the reader can't feel the blood of emotion, of real people pulsing in the story, it might as well be vacuum cleaner schematics as a comic. Empathy must be a part of the recipe, or the whole thing falls apart.

And if the mix is right - if there's just enough outpouring of veins into the story to get that glimmer of recognition from the reader? Mission accomplished.

Good storytelling. Good comics.