I Don't Want To Write Superhero Comics
Why, you ask?
Just take a look at something I did for fun. I actually posted this not too long ago, but I had to take it off within an hour. It gave me a sort of a quiver, you see. It's the first fifteen pages of an Atom script, in the Morrison/Porter period. I should probably mention, too, that it's a part of an imaginary twelve-issue...
Well, just take a look at what I had planned to post.
...
Submitted For Your Disapproval
A while ago I was thinking about how difficult it would be to come up with comic scripts on a monthly basis. Now, I complain about bad comics as much as the next guy, and that isn't going to change, but I wondered: could I even come up with reliably half-decent FF scripts month in, month out? Could I even write a script that held together at all?
So I decided to try it out. Of course I had to come up with a story first...but fortunately, I had this old idea for a twelve-issue mini-series featuring The Atom kicking around in my head, so I thought “what the hell”. And this was cheating a bit, I guess. I mean I'd had the idea quite a long time ago. I had many, many lines of dialogue all figured out well in advance, so I was quite prepared to write them down.
But, screw it, I reasoned; I'm just playing around, so who cares? I glanced briefly at somebody's sample script on the web, got some beer from the liquor store, and sat down to type. And then a funny thing happened: I didn't get to use all my carefully-crafted lines after all. Everything up to the third-page title of my little story went according to the script in my head just fine, but then right after that I found I had noplace to go.
So I opened another beer!
What follows was the result of that beer. Readers please note that the JLA used here is from the Morrison period, and that I mostly picture them in my head as being drawn by that same great Porter/Dell team; and I hope it's obvious that everything written here is no longer at all compatible with DC continuity, which is why I throw it out there.
In fact you don't even know the half of how incompatible it is with current DC continuity!
Holy Mackeral, is it ever not compatible!
And so now...you've been warned. It's quite long. It's my first try. It's entirely likely that it may be a huge pain in the ass to slog through. It will be amateurish. You don't have to read it!
But if you're absolutely determined to read it anyway...
Then I guess I can't stop you.
So here it is:
...
...
...
...
The Atom falls wildly, face first at the page. Behind him we see wild swirly inter-molecular Ditkoesque jazz going on, but Ray's face is calm, determined, as he reaches out for a strange spherical device that has apparently fallen from his grasp.
Ray: (capt.) Have you ever had a secret?
Ray: (capt.) I mean, a really big one?
PAGE TWO AND THREE SPLASH
Big view of crazy subatomic world as Ray tumbles through it, shrinking, trying to catch up to the sphere...he strobes through Steranko-like vertical panel divisions from left to right as he gets smaller and smaller, the little glinting speck always just out of reach.
Panel 1:
Ray: (capt.) When I was a young man, I discovered a secret. Right out of a clear blue sky.
Panel 2:
Ray: (capt.) And it changed my life.
Panel 3:
Ray: (capt.) At first, of course, I thought it was my secret to tell.
Ray: (capt.) Then, a little later on, I thought it was mine to keep.
Panel 4:
Ray: (capt.) It took me years to realize the truth. Which was, I didn't really keep the secret at all.
Panel 5:
Ray: (capt.) It kept me.
[TITLE: “IMPROVISATION”]
PAGE FOUR
Panel 1:
Ray catches up with the shiny globe and gloves it, removes a module from it and tucks it in his belt...this was how it was shrinking without him holding onto it.
Ray: (capt.) My name's Ray Palmer. I'm a scientist. Or at least, I used to be.
Ray: (tht) There. Managed to stop the runaway shrinking, anyway...
Panel 2:
He pulls the globe apart into a sort of open spherical cage, affixes it somehow to what looks like a fuzzy, glowing ball of light, so it's clamped around it like a football helmet.
Ray: (tht) Now, if this works like it's supposed to before the damn thing blows up...
Ray: Okay, Wally...I'm set. Do your stuff.
Panel 3:
Flash: (voice over communicator) Uh...yeah, okay. So do you just want me to, uh...?
Ray: Just do some kind of super-speed thing. It doesn't matter what. Anything that'll give me vibrations I can measure.
Flash: You know, Ray, like I said, I don't know if all this is really necessary. I mean, I could just tell you whatever you want to know about the speed force...
Ray: Wally...who's the Ph.D. here, anyway?
Panel 4:
Flash: Uh...well, that would be you, I guess.
Ray: So...?
Flash: So I guess I'll get started, then.
Ray: Great.
Panel 5:
The “atmosphere” around Ray starts to brighten up, flashes of yellow energy spitting everywhere as the speed force energy starts to flow. Particles rush into the crackle, and then finally the sphere zooms off into it too.
Ray: (capt.) I shouldn't really be sharp with Wally. Maybe strictly speaking he isn't a scientist like Barry was, but it isn't like being the Flash has nothing to do with physics. I mean, I happen to know Barry Allen's doctorate was in chemistry...
Panel 6:
Ray: (capt.) ...But when you can run zigzag patterns at the speed of light, you're pretty much a walking thought experiment in relativity anyway. So even Wally probably deserves an honorary master's degree in the subject.
Ray: (capt.) And it's not like I even know what I'm doing half the time, myself...
The light from Flash's speed has been getting brighter and brighter, and things around Ray more and more dynamic, like almost scary-dynamic, a Negative Zone-type thing. His body is silhouetted against the light, where the sphere's gone.
Ray: Okay, that's great, Wally. You can ease off, now.
Ray: Wally!
Ray: Wally!
PAGE FIVE
Panel 1:
Close up on Ray's face.
Ray: Oh, for God's sake...
Panel 2:
Pretty big horizontal panel: Ray dives into the maelstrom of speed energy, and grabs the sphere.
Ray: (capt.) ...In fact, to be honest, most of the time I'm just making it up as I go along.
Panel 3:
Still partly silhouetted against the Kirby dots, he unhooks the device from the particle it was attached to (which zooms off), and starts fiddling with the sphere's control panel one-handed, trying to upload his data...
Ray: (tht) Tricky, tricky...well, the uplink's working...datastream's a bit sluggish, though.
Panel 4:
...But it's starting to spit weird crackly static at him, and the energy of the speed force is still swirling all around him. Partial close-up as the energy sizzles around his ears...he's still not completely out of the hot zone, and it's getting hotter.
Ray: (tht) Although, what can I expect, right? All new technology...all new tolerances...
Flash: Uh, Ray?
Ray: (tht) Still, if I can just tweak it a little to handle this extra flux...probe can't last much longer before it...
Flash: Ray?
Panel 5:
Long horizontal panel: the probe explodes; Ray is sent flying.
Flash: Ray!
PAGE SIX
Panel 1:
Ray: (shakes it off) Wally, I thought I told you...
Flash: Look, Ray, you better get up here, man...
Panel 2:
Close up on Ray's face.
Ray: Why? What's going on?
Flash: Well, let's just say...
Panel 3: TWO-THIRDS SPLASH
Ray returns to visible height, riding Flash's shoulder, we see things through his eyes. Big fight scene in the Watchtower with the Morrison JLA and the fully space-armoured Weaponers of Qward. There's fire everywhere, especially a huge amount of it surrounding J'onn J'onnz, who is practically out of commission, and who has reverted to his original freaky pterodactyl-form. Green Lantern is behind a circular shield that is fraying at the edges under an attack by some kind of big yellow energy-beam. Batman is protecting Connor Hawke, who's shooting flame-retardant arrows into the fire. Flash is circling the attackers at high speed. Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman are absent
Flash: ...We're having a fire drill.
PAGE SEVEN
Panel 1:
Ray: Who are these people?
Flash: Do they look like friends of mine? Ask Kyle!
Panel 2:
Ray: Right.
He jumps off Flash's shoulder...
Panel 3:
...And out into the path of a blast aimed at Green Lantern's faltering shield, shrinking as he does so, while in the background Flash steps into some kind of mine-type device or freeze-inertia ray or something. Long horizontal panel: we just see Ray's trajectory as he shrinks toward it, the Atom-effect symbol flaring up about two-thirds of the way along so we know he has just vanished into the subatomic. Despite the fight, it's almost a quiet scene, because since Ray's no longer visible there's no figure in the centre of it.
Ray: (capt.) No one ever notices me doing this, for some reason.
Ray: (capt.) Too bad. It's a good trick.
Panel 4:
Ray is shrinking right into the energy of the blast, feet first. It's like a river of swarmy yellow particles, like squash balls with spikes on them.
Ray: (capt.) I mean, why waste time guessing what your enemy's throwing at you, when you can just take a look?
Ray: (capt.) Why speculate, why theorize...
Panel 5:
Ray shrinks down small enough to land on one of the squash balls.
Ray: (tht) ...When you can just go and see?
Ray: (tht) Hmm...that's odd. Something coming from the “ground” here, like...
Ray: (tht) A humming noise?
Ray: (tht) Some kind of resonance pattern...and Green Lantern's ring isn't vulnerable to yellow anymore anyway...
Panel 6:
Ray jumps off the golf ball, gaining size as he flies upward through the “air”.
Ray: (tht) Of course! These aren't just particles...
PAGE EIGHT
Panel 1:
Ray expands out of the particle stream and over Green Lantern's quickly-fragmenting shield, to land first on his shoulder, before bouncing off and onto the wrist of his outstretched power-ring hand. Old-time DC art action!
Ray: (tht) ...They're machines!
Ray: Kyle!
Panel 2:
Close up on Green Lantern's face, breaking a sweat. Ray is in foreground, on his wrist.
GL: What up, Ray? Little busy here...
Ray: Uh-huh. What would you say if I told you this energy blast you think you're fighting is really a stream of billions of nanomachines designed to set up stress harmonics across your shield?
GL: What, really?
Ray: Really.
GL: Well, I guess I'd say...
Panel 3:
GL: WHOO-HOO!
Another big horizontal panel, this time incorporating a diagonal shot from in front and overhead: as Ray leaps away, GL turns his shield into a gong in the blink of an eye, and conjures up the guy from the J. Arthur Rank movies to strike it. Show his patented ridiculous imagination here: as the nanostream scatters into bits under the pressure of the gong's vibration, he also whips up a huge batch of Arabian concubines doing the Dance of the Seven Veils, green drummers surrounding them, and a squad of harem eunuchs with gigantic scimitars that attack his opponent. It's a whole B-movie in itself, pointlessly elaborate, lots of action.
GL: J. Arthur Rank presents me kicking your butt, Weaponer buddy!
Panel 4:
Ray grows to full size, lands on the ground next to Batman and Green Arrow.
Ray: So...what's going on?
Batman: The fire-suppression system's been disabled. Everything else is just a feint, to stop us from dealing with it.
GA: (firing arrows) Classic misdirection. Tie up Lantern and Flash with attacks while the fire spreads, and then when the oxygen's all eaten up...game over.
Panel 5:
Ray: Huh. Kind of a low-tech solution, though, isn't it?
Ray: So what about the rest of the Watchtower? Fire-free?
Batman: No idea.
GA: Uh...guys? I didn't exactly make a million of these chemical-foam arrows...
Panel 6:
Close-up of Batman's cowl and ear and eye, looking spooky.
Batman: We need J'onn. Now.
PAGE NINE
Panel 1:
Long horizontal panel, in which Ray is sitting atop one of GA's arrows, preparing to be shot. Connor holds the bow sideways, which is probably incorrect, but what the hell.
Ray: (capt.) Anyone will tell you that physics is a young man's game.
Ray: (capt.) Usually, if you haven't broken significant new ground in it by the time you're thirty, you never will.
Panel 2:
The arrow is loosed; Ray clings to its head.
Ray: (capt.) When I was in my early twenties, I broke ground so new that the rest of the world hasn't even started to catch up to it yet.
Ray: (capt.) And almost every day since then, I've discovered something else that builds on it. But, I can't tell anybody about it. What's more, there's no point in me even trying to.
Panel 3:
The arrow flies through a bank of fire; Ray shields his head.
Ray: (capt.) No one can reproduce my results. No one can review my work.
Ray: (capt.) I should be living in a mansion built entirely out of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals by now, but I'm not.
Panel 4:
Ray leaps off the arrowhead and through the flames.
Ray: (capt.) Crazy world, isn't it? Where you can either be a scientist, or a superhero, but not both?
Panel 5:
Ray lands by J'onn, in the midst of the flames, at full size. Fishes around in his belt for the shrinking module he used on his probe earlier on.
Ray: (capt.) This is going to be tricky.
Panel 6:
Ray pulls out the shrinking module and sticks it on J'onn, programs it swiftly.
Ray: (capt.) But hey, it's all tricky.
Panel 7:
They shrink away in the Atom effect.
PAGE TEN
Panel 1:
In the Ditkoesque microverse, beyond reach of the flames. Ray “swims” over to J'onn.
Ray: (capt.) At this size, we're actually in between the photons that carry heat. So J'onn should start recovering almost right away.
J'onn: Uhnh...
Panel 2:
He removes the module.
Ray: (capt.) I've just barely figured out how to make this module shrink inorganic material without destroying it, so this shouldn't work at all...but as long as we can maintain physical contact, J'onn's Martian molecular structure should protect him, at least for a little while...
Panel 3:
Another long horizontal panel with diagonal view: more old-time DC action, man! We're looking up at Ray as he starts to grow. So does J'onn, but Ray stays big enough to hold J'onn in his hand.
Ray: (capt.) And, well...
Ray: (capt.) Maybe it's not quite science as we know it, but it gets the job done, and that's all that's important...
Panel 4:
Ray reaches normal size, pitches the still-growing J'onn over the flames.
Ray: (capt.) Because some things are worth all the Nobel Prizes in the world.
Panel 5:
J'onn is full-size, or very close to it, as he flies over the heads of the Weaponers, and somewhere past Batman and GA. Weaponers point up at J'onn, very alarmed he's free.
Weaponers: The Martian! The Martian!
PAGE ELEVEN
Panel 1:
Long horizontal panel: J'onn lies behind Batman and GA in a heap; they take dramatic, serious-as-hell defensive positions in front of him.
Batman: Back.
Panel 2:
J'onn's eye opens blearily, obviously still in pterodactyl mode.
Panel 3:
His eye changes to his normal quasi-human mode as he comes fully alert.
Panel 4:
Long horizontal panel: the Weaponers, staring at our heroes, suddenly freeze rigid as J'onn turns his telepathy on them off-panel. He addresses the others through his thoughts.
J'onn: (tht) Somewhat simplistic, these creatures.
J'onn: (tht) Lantern. Flash. We should evacuate.
J'onn: (tht) Immediately.
PAGE TWELVE
Panel 1:
Reasonably long horizontal panel: the JLA is on the lunar surface, protected by one of Green Lantern's constructs. Not a simple force-bubble, of course, but something more elaborate, like a Mexican beach hut bar, with attractive waitresses and tropical cocktails all in green. The figures of the JLA are in silhouette: nearby, a smaller green bubble holds trussed-up Weaponers to the lunar surface, also silhouetted. In the background, the Watchtower is depressurizing ostentatiously. What looks like a shooting star is in the sky, far away. Of course there's no such thing as a shooting star on the moon.
Batman: Aquaman set up an emergency oxygen-hydrogen splitting system in the reserve water tanks for just such a situation. It's only a temporary measure, though. We'll need to replenish our nitrogen/oxygen mix as soon as possible.
Batman: And the water, of course.
GL: I can do that as soon as you're all back inside. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes.
Flash: It took you twenty, the first time.
GL: I tend to pick stuff up.
Flash: Really, new girl? 'Cause from where I sit...
Panel 2:
J'onn interrupts, points to the shooting star.
J'onn: Look.
Panel 3:
Long horizontal panel: Superman streaks in from space.
J'onn: Superman.
Panel 4:
Reasonably long horizontal panel, again: a few seconds later. Superman is standing just outside GL's artificial bar environment, in the lunar vacuum, completely comfortable. Never mind how he manages to talk: he's Superman.
Superman: ...And that's it. So as soon as Arthur and Diana and I took care of the Weaponers...
Superman: ...Although there's something funny about that, they didn't quite act like Weaponers...
Superman: ...We tried to teleport up to the Watchtower, but got an error message saying it was an unsafe environment. And no word telepathically from J'onn, so...
Batman. Hm. It was...
GA: Planned. They weren't Weaponers.
Panel 5:
Just GL and GA.
GL: Dude, you don't even know the Weaponers!
GA: I don't have to. You do.
PAGE THIRTEEN
Panel 1: TRIPTYCH PART ONE
Batman in left foreground, Atom in near-left middle foreground, Superman beyond the green bubble in middle-right near-background.
Batman: He's right. It's too much of a...what did you call it, Atom?
Ray: A low-tech solution. Weird, for a bunch that prides themselves on their technological superiority...
Superman: Hmm. Yes, they usually rely on...
Panel 2: TRIPTYCH PART TWO; BUT DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE, AS IF ROTATING AROUND SCENE
GA: ...Tactics...
Flash: ...Instead of strategy. Right.
GL: (to Flash) Dude, now you're doing it?!
Flash: Doing what, grasshopper?
Panel 3: TRIPTYCH PART THREE; ROTATED OUT NOW TO SUPERMAN'S PERSPECTIVE – HE STANDS WITH CROSSED ARMS AS THE LUNAR SUNSET ARRIVES.
J'onn: We should get inside, now. Batman?
Batman: I agree.
Superman: Me, too. (So maybe he's a little cold, or tired of holding his breath, or something.)
Panel 4:
Long horizontal panel, again with the diagonal-from-above thing: inside the Watchtower, everyone is relaxing a little. Superman and Batman stroll off down a hallway off the main meeting room, deep in conversation (hey, it's not like it sounds...!), GL, Flash, and GA are goofing around at one end of the table, J'onn and Aquaman and Wonder Woman are conferring intensely around the other...meanwhile Ray floats above it all, close to us, notepad in hand in his Atom-chair, tapping his head with a light-pen.
Ray: (capt.) Some people do how, and some people do why. Usually, the superhero game is all about the action: high-speed detective work, high-speed engineering. In other words, problem-solving.
Ray: (capt.) But those are all hows. Whys take longer. For whys, you have to try to see problems that don't exist yet, problems that sometimes don't even really matter...
Ray: (capt.) The first thing that comes to my mind is a tracking device, for their unique anti-matter signature, but the fratboys are probably right. This isn't standard Weaponer behaviour.
Panel 5: ANOTHER TRIPTYCH, BUT SKINNY, ABOUT HALF NORMAL WIDTH
Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman fighting dimly-seen enemies on Earth...somehow we know this is Ray's imagination, based on what he overhears from one end of the table. In at least the last panel, the moon figures prominently, maybe over Superman's shoulder or something.
Ray: (capt.) No extra-durables on the moon, except for J'onn. No telepaths on the moon, except for J'onn.
Panel 6: ANOTHER TRIPTYCH, SLIGHTLY SKINNIER
J'onn immersed in flames, in pterodactyl mode. Batman and GA standing in smoke; GL and Flash caught by super-scientific weaponry.
Ray: (capt.) J'onn and fire – so easy to think, in the heat of the moment, that it's to cover their real attack...
Panel 7: ANOTHER YET MORE SKINNY TRIPTYCH
Lunar landscape, with flaming Watchtower in background. Lots of black, like symbolic darkening that tells us what would have happened had things gone wrong.
Ray: (capt.) When really the attack itself is the cover...
Ray: (capt.) But then there's the antimatter...
PAGE FOURTEEN
Panel 1:
Close-up on Ray in his chair, tapping his head with the pen, legs crossed, going into physics professor mode.
Ray: (capt.) And why antimatter, at all? Why the Weaponers?
Ray: (capt.) Why not something else?
Batman: (off-panel) Ray.
Panel 2:
Batman looking up at Ray.
Ray: Any new information?
Batman: Unsurprisingly, no. Our “Weaponers” were all conveniently teleported out before J'onn and I could finish interrogating them. Superman's gone to track the teleport signal to its source...
Ray: ...But you don't expect him to find anything.
Batman: Not really.
Panel 3:
Ray: You know, Bruce, the people we fight...
Batman: Yes?
Panel 4:
Reasonably long panel.
Ray: Well, they're not usually big on subtlety, are they? It's always superpower against superpower: whose power is the best, whose power beats whose. Even when they have a plan, the plan's all about the powers, ultimately...
Batman: Of course.
Ray: Because that's the point of it all, isn't it? The whole reason a super-villain is a super-villain is because he's a megalomaniac, too. So using his powers is the way he flexes his ego.
Batman: That's occurred to me.
Panel 5:
Ray: So given that...what kind of megalomaniac wants to use his powers to distract, instead of to defeat?
Batman: Isn't that obvious, Ray?
Ray: No. Should it be?
Panel 6:
Long horizontal panel: Batman talking while ghostly images of famous villains muralize themselves behind him...Luthor is in there, as well as R'as Al-Ghul, but most notably the Joker is at the right-hand side of the mural, as a kind of summation of Batman's point.
Batman: Well...in my experience the most dangerous madman is the kind that doesn't just want to defeat you, but convince you somehow. Which means he needs to impress you. With his cleverness, or his morality, or his ruthlessness...as long as you remain unconvinced of his superiority, he can't really win, because he can never really be the person he thinks he deserves to be unless he can get you to admit it to him...
Batman: So powers are immaterial, in that case. It may be a conflict, but it's not a competition, and that's why the most dangerous super-villain is the one without superpowers, because he has the most to prove...
PAGE FIFTEEN
Panel 1:
Ray: So...what's this one trying to prove?
Batman: (almost off-panel) At a guess?
Panel 2:
Again, the close-up of Batman's spooky cowl, eye, ear. Irony!
Batman: That we're ridiculous.
Panel 3:
Batman and Ray regard each other silently for a moment.
Panel 4:
Batman turns to go.
Ray: We're not, are we?
Batman: Actually, no. Maybe we should be, but we aren't.
Batman: What we are, is needed. And there's nothing ridiculous about that.
Panel 5:
...
Aaaaand...sorry, folks, that's as far as I got! I ran out of beer, you see, and then later I had to work on other stuff. And it was just an experiment, anyway. Very instructive, actually! But since it can never be a real script, I don't see any reason to turn it into one, so...
I suppose it's faintly possible that somebody out there wants to know how it ends. Well, as Buddy Baker was to say to Ray Palmer in about issue #4 of this imaginary series, "I'm not going to tell you how it ends." How it ends isn't the point! I post this because I'm curious about whether I did it right, that's all.
So...how'd I do? What's clumsy? What wouldn't work, and what would? Is this remotely similar to what they call “full script”, or was I writing Marvel-style? And most importantly, was this way, way, way too long? Because that's kind of when I stopped, when I realized it might be getting that way...
...
Because I just can't have my voice say what Ray says to Kyle when he's perched on his wrist. As comic-booky a guy as I am, something in me rebels at it. It feels phony. It feels forced. It feels...
Silly.
And so now I have an even greater respect for those immensely skilled creators who can push past whatever phoniness they may be forced to deal with, and on into something good...and even less respect for those that don't see it, or don't care, and don't bother pushing past. This is a terrible razor's edge, this genre writing. It really is difficult; it really does take a special sort of mind. Looking back on this little experiment of mine, all I can think of is the bit from Countdown To Infinite Crisis (or whatever it was), where Blue Beetle confronts Shazam about the lightning bolt that killed Booster Gold. Because the first time I saw that dialogue was not in the context of a drawn story, but just as words on a page that someone had abstracted, and it sounded obnoxiously stupid to me. Something like:
"The lightning that killed your friend was not of magic. It only laid claim to be."
And Ladies and Gentlemen, I submit to you that that piece of dialogue, read on its own, is a brick that the whole building must founder on. It's bloody horrible. It's as clumsy as a man with three elbows. It's everything we don't want people to think of us when we say we read comics. It stinks. And yet in the context of a drawn page it doesn't seem horrible, though that's just exactly what it is.
And I, I've just realized, can't do that. I think I could just about manage a Stan Lee: "Gosh, these web-shooters I whipped up work great!", and I think I could manage a James Robinson: "Ultra, the Multi-Alien!" "Surprised, huh?", but somewhere along the line contemporary superhero comics writing for the most part seems to have fallen between those stools of naivete and irony that Lee and Robinson exemplify, and I don't think I've got the guts to help it up from where it lies. I never was embarrassed of my comics until I read that line, and then watched myself write a line just like it, but now - as the original post warned! - I am. And, possibly, you are too.
And, well, thank God Steve Gerber's writing the new Dr. Fate, is all I can say. Because make whatever remarks you want about those old Seventies pros, but they don't write clunky. Their dialogue never contrives to fall between those two stools, as mine did. Somehow they manage to stay realistic, no matter how ludicrous their subject.
Oh, and did I just write around and around a major point, without ever picking it up and pointing at it directly? My, my, how metatextual of me. Why I feel positively Morrisonesque...
Yes?
No?
You got all that, right?
Well, thankyou for that. For the catch. For everything. As Derrida says, you know: one can always write a letter, but sometimes the letter does not arrive...
posted by plok at 1:28 AM
12 Comments:
Now that, I quite liked. Including the billions-of-nanomachines line. I don't know if DC ever wrote Ray Palmer that way, but if they didn't, they should have. Why bother going to all the trouble to launch yourself into the air and increase your mass to that of a regular human just to punch some guy on the jaw when
a) Superman and Wonder Woman are on your team, and
b) you could be gathering important information instead?
DC never quite got as much out of the Atom as they could have. Here's a guy who comes as close as the present-day DCU can come to Reed Richards (the far-future DCU has a much better candidate, of course), and what do they do with him? They turn him into a jungle barbarian and have his wife go nuts.
Anyway. I don't know if there are any plans for Ryan Choi to start traveling in Justice League circles, but if there are, I hope Gail Simone reads this.
None of which addresses your larger point. I didn't catch any dialogue in there that grated on my ear as being silly or out of place in a comic book. Some of it might not have matched the characters' voices perfectly, but that's not the point either. The DC Universe may be a strange or even silly place, but the characters who live there have to deal with it on its own terms. And it's strange to them too! Especially to a guy like the Atom, who is after all a brilliant scientist, but who is also routinely confronted by things that his profession must insist are impossible and unpermissible (even if it's just Zatanna whipping up some coffee). So it doesn't strike me as an impossible balance to strike: the characters have to say ridiculous things sincerely, because they're facts, but they can still acknowledge the ridiculousness in some way consistent with the character's own personality.
Like matthew e said, I don't notice anything that sticks out as too silly. In the context of superhero work, seemingly silly dialog just... is. But it doesn't seem silly when you read it in that context! Like the Countdown line you referenced.
On the other hand, it feels ridiculously silly when you write it, which is something I've run into as well. But, you know, I bet every comic writer runs into that. 1963 is fantastic, but imagine how badly that dialog must have grated on a mind like Moore's, even though it was the right dialog for the project! So I'd be willing to bet that the reason writers can get past how silly their dialog feels is that once they show their work, once they take the plunge past self-conscious worry and let others read it, people reassure them that it doesn't really seem silly at all. Once the realization hits that it's not just your voice being heard, but also the voice of over 50 years of comics work, I bet it makes things easier. That history is a powerful ally to have as a writer, and it takes that pesky "silly dialog" problem and puts it right into the proper context.
But knowing that stuff and really knowing it are two different things. I know I still can't write superheroes.
Actually, the hardest thing for me so far has been an attempt to create an original world of superheroes. I'll jump from a character concept that I like and start fleshing out the world and the reasons behind the powers, and it just devolves into this pointless long session where I'm trying to rationalize every detail to my mind, trying to suspend my own disbelief, and I can't do it. Never even get to the point of having dialog when I try that ;)
I loved it -- particularly Ray's musings about why all his discoveries CAN'T be shared, since science is all about reproducibility and peer review.
Though I suspect that Barry didn't HAVE a doctorate -- nobody ever called him "Doctor" or "Professor". To get land a Police Scientist job probably wouldn't take more than a Master's. Everything else Barry knew about science was on his own time -- and "on the job training" while he was moonlighting in the red suit.
Verification Word: ipnbfdpz -- wasn't that the Son of the Bat?
I'll just say thanks for your guys' comments here, as I head off to bed...
Thanks!
I'll have something a bit more in-depth to say tomorrow, about all these wise words...
Or, wait, hold on, I'll just cherrypick one thing apiece right now, actually, and then tomorrow jump off from there. Right. So:
Matthew: Kind of you to say so, man! And, yeah, it seems to me there's more than a couple ways that the Atom is uniquely placed to gather information in and about the world of the DCU...hey, just like the Flash! So that's always intrigued me: he isn't Terry Thirteen, after all. He's probably finding weird things out all the time, and just not bothering to tell anybody!
Dead Penguin: Well, those are just exactly the right words, thank you for saying them. And you raise some thoughts that I'll have to be sure to get to later on, but briefly I could say that this really felt quite a bit different from my little FF Dream fan-treatment, and I suppose that too was because of the 50-year-old voice...because this not being a "real" writing project made me conscious of, in a weird way, how unallied I was with that voice in composing it, which is strange because I know that voice so well and it was just what I was trying to please! But the fact remains, an unserious fan-fic thing in the superhero genre of the comics medium gave me WAY more qualms than cranking out an unserious SF treatment in the genre of film did. And where a non-superhero comics effort of this type...
Well, hmm, I don't think I could do an unserious one of those, actually. Pretty sure that would just be real, ipso facto. It'd just be another story, see? And wouldn't carry all my fanboy baggage.
I'll have to mull this over a bit more, very possibly I may have just misspoken myself slightly...more to follow.
Finally, Serpent: Very kind of you as well! The superhero/scientist thing was intended to be a bit thematic, so there you go, so glad you mentioned it! The Ray Palmer Atom has a pretty interesting progression if you plug this in, I think, in that he goes from scientist, to superhero "masquerading" as scientist, to full-on superhero whose scientific acumen is seemingly only ever called upon for the purposes of clocking someone in the jaw, and then somehow after all that he winds up back in regular (not super) academia as...what? Not having had the good fortune to read Gail's Atom, I don't know what it was he left behind him, but I like the whole idea of that kind of out-and-back stuff.
And, you're probably right about Barry's education. That did cross my mind. But then I thought, wouldn't it be just like him to do an accelerated Ph.D. instead of a Master's, and then go off to work for the police anyway? So in the end I left it in, just because it occurred to me that if I was gonna be all realistic, I seem to remember reading someplace that his degree wasn't in Chemistry at all. However, I wanted to say it was, anyway, so...I figured, you know, why not just bump up his certification while I'm at it?
Whoops, this definitely took longer than I thought. Good thing I didn't attempt full replies! Thanks again for the comments, folks...
The meta thing fell flat, though, huh?
Plok, this was a fun read. Nothing like getting your superhero vanity project on.
Nothing indeed, Jon! Now back to work on that Marvel Family script!
...No, seriously, doesn't anyone want to know who the villain was gonna be...?
I honestly will make more of a run at some intelligent comment tomorrow, it just so happens I had some drink tonight, and can' see straigghrt...
Hoppy New Year! Jon..."Hoppy"...you know...
Sorry I'm coming in late, but wanted to share some comments.
I have grown to dislike first-person narrative captions, but I did like your use of them for the most part. The bits at the beginning where the captions exist alongside the thought balloons might be a bit confusing on the page.
Also, these captions indicate that their narrative takes place "outside" the action, most likely after the fact -- so I suppose you know "when" Ray is narrating, and that itself may well be part of the plot. (He's addressing the Nobel committee; no, he's talking to a fellow prisoner of Chronos or Dr. Alchemy or whoever your mystery villain is....)
I agree wholeheartedly with Matthew E. that Ray should be DC's Reed Richards (although Ray never had Reed-Stubble, or for that matter a stable marriage). One of the nice aspects of the Ryan Choi Atom is that he's pretty heavily connected to Ray Palmer, and that in turn gives him a similar science-first approach to superheroics.
I also agree with your sentiments about writing dialogue. It sounds clever coming out of your fingers, but look at it sideways and it might become too cute by half. One of my vanity projects is an Earth-2 Batman & Robin story which had the advantage of being told in an ironic retro style, so I could imagine William Dozier speaking the captions. There has to be some kind of objective standard beyond "it sounds cool to me," otherwise it's fanfic.
But again, lest I sound overly negative, I did like the script and hope to hear more about the story. Good work!
My mission in life is to discourage better writers than I from writing superhero comics. There's only so much work to go around and too much competition as it is. Unfortunately, this is such a credible first effort that I could not in good conscience discourage you if that were what you truly wanted to do. Fortunately, you've said it isn't. Anyway, drink will be the ruin of you yet, so that's one potential rival out of the way. Whew! In some parallel universe perhaps we two could be like Morrison and Millar...um, bad example maybe, but this universe is probably better off that we aren't.
Any errors I can spot are the sort of thing that anyone makes starting out -- primarily trying to cram too much into individual panels. A few times with actions that should be broken up over several panels, more often with more dialogue than any single panel can comfortably contain. This is the single hardest part of the gig for verbally-oriented folks like us. Count the number of words per panel in, let's say, one page from any issue of Watchmen and you might be surprised at how small that number is. One might assume Gerber or Englehart are more verbose...but actually go and tote up their word counts per panel, and you'll see that their economy of language could be staggering relative to how much information they convey.
It's a constant struggle. These days All-Star Superman is the book that makes me want to slash my wrists. I reread every issue obsessively just to figure out how Morrison conveys so much with so few words.
But, you know, this is something you learn with time and practice. It wouldn't take much to whip this into perfect shape.
And the thing of it is, you can't look at the script and see if it sounds dumb -- it almost always will. That's in the nature of scripts, for comics or film or television. You're writing for a director (or an artist) rather than for a lay reader. It's always going to seem flat and somehow...unpersuasive in transcript form. If it doesn't, if it reads perfectly, then you have to question if you're writing a script at all or a prose story.
Because...guess what? That one line you single out here as feeling "phony" or "silly" is my absolute favorite line in the whole thing.
Oooh, I'm so gonna change it to be Chronos and Dr. Alchemy now!
I quite agree about the first-person captions, Tom; they've gotten tiresome over the last few years. But in this instance I was trying to pretend to myself that no one had used them since Messner-Loebs' run on Flash, because...well, if you think about it, why would they? Unless there's something important to say with them that can't easily be accomplished any other way, there's no reason to do it...
Ha!
Anyway, since my intention with plugging in thought-balloons as well was to draw a solid line between inner dialogue and narration, I'm glad that came across...you know, even if the thought-balloons didn't help that much. I figured there was a precedent for it, too, since this Atom story was supposed to contemporaneous with the Morrison JLA...he did something similar in the Hyperclan story in Flash's speed-duel with Zum, and actually I tried to just slightly ape a couple elements of Morrison-JLA style in there anyhow...and I love the distinction you draw between "fanfic" and "vanity"! Makes me feel much better...
Hmm, now I can't quite summon up any of the elaborations on previous comments I wanted to make. Damn! So, I'll have to delay once again, and I don't even have any drink to blame it on...
...But now suddenly I notice RAB appearing, saying it'll ruin me in the end. Well, too right it will, RAB, or I'll know the reason why! Thank you, as well, for the kind words, and once again...whaaa-aat? The "nanomachine" line?
Really?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's a damned shame that the skill one acquires in reading can't be applied as advance credit to the learning curve of writing. But oh well. I'm not going to argue with you guys, since you've obviously got it taped...but, ah, this jogs my memory about things I was going to say before, so after I get finished thanking RAB again (thank you, RAB -- I confess I tried to imagine Weisinger standing behind me, but it was all just too darn tempting), I think I can make a comment on a different front, and enlarge on something I was going to say in response to Dead Penguin.
I think if I was writing a real script, for a real editor, and a real artist...the silliness wouldn't bother me so much.
I'm a big believer in authoritative criticism, you see. I consider form rejection letters useful, even though they're low on information in an absolute sense, because they come from the right source. It's that 50-year voice Penguin was talking about (you don't mind if I call you Penguin, do you? At least it isn't "Peng", or "P"...), writing this purely for vanity I somehow felt disconnected from that voice, even though I understood I wasn't doing anything to outrage its accent. I still think "...it only laid claim to be" is atrocious, but on reflection, if I'd written it, and an editor told me "yes, this is right, shut up", then I think I'd feel pretty well absolved of having to worry about it...because that would be a local expression of the voice. So I suppose you're all quite on the money when you say (and allow me to paraphrase, in stuntman language): "if you don't get the butterflies, don't do the stunt."
But now, check this out: my favourite line is the one about how you can either be a superhero, or a scientist, but not both. Well, actually my favourite line is the title, but the superhero/scientist one is a close second. Ray's confession that he's just making it up as he goes along comes out of a certain (you'll pardon the expression) identity crisis he's got going, which although being an experienced grown-up he's learned to accomodate himself to, he still hasn't exactly managed to solve. What it is, is that he's kind of gone beyond the pale, physics-wise. His last legitimate peer review system probably consisted of talking to Barry Allen over coffee, and joking that Barry represents GR to his own QM, and that both of them know a lot of really, really weird stuff that no one else suspects, both important and trivial, about what's connected to what in the DCU, and how, and even (sometimes) why. And yet a lot of it is just "feel", too: Ray puts his hand on the little yellow nanomachine and feels it vibrating, and that's not science, exactly, even though it beats anything Emil Hamilton can do at STAR. He sits next to Zatanna at the big meeting table and finds he actually has no problem with magic; he shrinks down to the angstrom level and takes a look at solar neutrino flux, that even Superman has to theorize about instead of witnessing directly, but perhaps feels the wrong sort of thrill at doing it, a non-sciencey thrill; he's given up serious work on a more accurate replacement for the Standard Model, because although it's a pleasant diversion and it keeps his math skills sharp, there isn't really any point to doing it. He's gone all the way along the arc from scientist to superhero to teacher (let's say he likes teaching undergraduates, even though he's senior enough not to have to, because -- simple! -- what's on their curriculum is stuff he can still relate to, and their enthusiasm is uncomplicated), and he's okay with it all, because he realizes no one's had to do this before: he's the first one to make this kind of composite identity up, out of nothing at all, so he has no rules he has to follow about it -- he knows by doing, in this too. So he's not going to rewrite the Book Of Physics! Why should he? And: who is asking him to? The only reason his academic colleagues don't feel threatened by him is because he's happy teaching Phys 100; meanwhile his superheroic colleagues aren't scientists, and don't get it anyway. Well, they don't.
So that's where the story starts, and I guess you can see that Ray is fated (by me) to have some unique DCU puzzle present itself to him which reinvigorates his old love of his field, as distinct from solving whodunnits (ouch! pardon me again), which after all are only science sublimated, or even saving the world. And, in the process he shows us what's been up to all this time, that he hasn't been talking to Barry about. And, there's a girl. So.
Yeah, let him be Reed Richards for a while, was the idea. Cut the guy a break.
Wow, that was long.
But, on-topic! So all in all, I'll take it as a win.
No, Plok, my friend, this isn't bad at all, though I plan to come back and read during daylight hours:) Bringing something a little different is what distinguishes each writer's run. I just wrote Reed for a story, and when the situation calls, it is delightful to mine an absurd situation for its thoughtful reflections upon what we all live through individually. At such a time, a voice comfortable with science fiction's technological aspersions is welcome for bringing the mind bending questions as well as analysis.
I actually culled characters from my novel-in-progress and worked out an understanding of the climax from a different facet, bringing in the Fantastic Four for their type of solution/ interaction with the problem. I included an illo with each chapter, which together equals a King-Size Comic Story, all in appropriate grammar and spelling---and my next, real-life based story is already up, part one of two, with a defenders tale and my Not Another Comic Book also to come this summer, if get a sec.
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/
I like your style, did you ever end it?
No, Cease, I never did...thanks very much for the kind words, though! This was clumsy despite how much I liked (and still do like) it...on the other blog I did another couple of fan-fic scripts about Karnak of the Inhumans, which were also clumsy but which I also quite enjoyed...well, enjoyed a lot, actually! And they were instructive exercises, which is what I was really going for in the first place. It's a pleasure to write some of these characters, even in a lame way: the FF, for example, you just really appreciate how hard those characters really are to WRITE WRONG, you know? Fun stuff; on this here blog I also did a couple things I called "Fan-Fic Film!", which was all about a dream I had of seeing an FF movie. Because I had been so nervous about the FF movie, you see? So I guess that's why I dreamt about it. I still like that one a lot, and its sequels too. Think I had some alright ideas there.
Right: over to your blog, then!
Weirdly: verification is "mistest".
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