DOING THE WORK // 3.20.03

A WORD IS WORTH A THOUSAND PICTURES
By Harris O'Malley

March 17, 2003

It's as hoary a cliché as you can get, but it's still true: there's nothing more terrifying for an artist or a writer than a blank page.

This is almost an aphorism: either you get it on some level or you think it's the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. It's a piece of frickin' paper, and it's kicking your ass? How much of a wuss are you?

Does Adam Warren ever have these problems?

Getting that first line down can be tough, but once you do, it gets the ball rolling and it makes it much easier to continue.

I'm working on the last issue of BETWEEN THE CRACKS and it's been an interesting process. Like "Still Waters", "The Scent of Night" is adapted from a short story I had written back in the day. Actually having a frame to work from helped get me over the usual initial pre-comic inertia, but actually turning it into a comic was a new headache.

Adapting a comic from prose is remarkably similar to adapting a movie; prose allows for far more narrative decompression than either medium. Unless you want to do a lot of thought balloons or first-person voice-overs, much of the characterization has to be expressed visually. Since both film and comics have inherent limitations that restrict the scope of the story (the running time of a film, the page count of an average comic issue), you have to be far more economical with what you carry over from one medium to the other. Often what's left out is more important than what you keep in.

"The Scent of Night" was a werewolf story told from the viewpoints of three separate characters, each intertwining at key moments. Each character had a certain amount of back-story required to keep things relatively coherent. If I wanted to stay strictly true to the story, the comic would have had to have been at least 60 pages, far beyond the scope of BETWEEN THE CRACKS. And frankly, I'm not entirely sure it could stand up that well. Obviously cuts had to be made.

Not to say that I didn't make a valiant effort. I tried to keep as close to the original as close as possible. To say that it wasn't a narrative success is putting it kindly at best. In reality, it was the script equivalent of the ugly brain-damaged mutt that constantly shits itself and should really be put out of it's misery.

Once I resigned myself to the adaptation process, it became fairly simple. The first step: printing the damn thing out and attacking it with a Sharpie. Having a physical copy in hand was critical, to my mind. The brain processes words on the computer screen differently than in print; as a result, it's easy to miss errors or passages that would leap out from paper and proceed to repeatedly stab you in the forebrain. As odd as it sounds, the act of physically marking out the sections that needed to be cut helped the process along. And I cut it to fuckery.

For starters, I had to cut one of the viewpoint characters and merged him with several minor ones into a single gestalt entity that would serve the same functions. Lots of subtle moments about werewolf politics? Gone. Sub-plot about the main character's sanity? Gone. Subtlety takes too many pages. And frankly, when I try to be subtle, I tend to veer into obtuse. So no subtle. This is a very brick-to-the-face kind of story.

Ok, a little subtlety. But that's because BETWEEN THE CRACKS has an overarching theme, dammit.

At this point, it became a matter of economy. In prose, I can take several paragraphs to highlight a moment in time; in comics I have far less wriggle-room if I want to keep things to a manageable level. A lot of this process was a matter of learning compression: how could I express different types of inner conflict in as concise a matter as possible. So I watched movies. Tried to absorb different actor's styles and apply them to the characters in the story. A little Nick Cage, a little Gary Oldman, a little Jean Reno…

And by this point, it starts to flow.

Flow is good.

Now I just have to finish drawing the damn thing.

Because I've got another blank page staring at me.

* * * * *
After much wrestling with accounts and tech-support, I am now able to take credit card orders through Studio Underhill. Head on over to http://www.studiounderhill.com/store.html and buy some comics. Hell, buy two, they're small.

Meanwhile, I also have an 11 page preview of "The Scent of Night", the last issue of BETWEEN THE CRACKS available for viewing. Give 'em a look-see and drop me a line at domalley@studiounderhill.com to tell me what you think.