for lack of a better post

I was at wizard world recently and picked up the first hardcover volume of supreme power, having recently come to J. Michael Straczynski thanks to his run on Amazing Spiderman and also from reading a few issues of Squadron Supreme. I thought I'd check out how that whole supremaverse reboot began. Turns out it is a really good read but it isn't just the work as a whole that brings me to this virtual repository for brain droppings but something that according to his introduction he put forth as a deliberate challenge for himself in approaching writing this particular comic. Throughout the book, he chose to not one single time use the caption as a story telling device. For those of you who just came in, a caption in comic books usually consists of a floating box in which we are let in on the secret inner thoughts of the person who's point of view we happen to be seeing the action through. Sometimes it would be narration from the writer, sometimes it's voice over from the protagonist in a very noir style. Stan Lee and Ed Brubaker respectively come time mind as examples of those two types. Now, the interesting thing is that because comics provide that one of a kind presentation of story through visuals and written words, you would think that everyone would be using captions all the time. I mean it's a pretty easy way to give insight into deeper happenings within your narrative that you might not otherwise get across by just using dialogue or action. Book writers do it a lot. Straczynski however showed that he was more than capable of producing a coherent and fascinating narrative through only showing you action and dialogue. I liked it a lot. And I started paying more attention to other writers that do so. I don't know about you but when I first got into comics, I used to really love the captions. I loved seeing the innermost thoughts of a character and the reasonings behind their actions laid out in perfect prose. It was sort of a way to get away with adding poetry to comics and elevated them to some higher literary form in my mind. Sometimes it got to be too much though and a lot of writers are guilty of Naval Gazing and completely taking you out of the story by providing you with aimless stream of consciousness meanderings from the characters that make you want to shout at the page "GET TO THE FUCKING POINT!"

I guess the thing is, comics are a visual medium of story telling. The words are necessary and maybe needed at times when there's more that you need to explain than there is room on a page to convey. It's possible though that if there is such a thing as perfection as an ideal that can be approached by comics writers, it may just not have any room for captions. After all if pictures are worth any amount of words, shouldn't the visuals speak for themselves and be capable of providing more of an emotional context for your story than any silly captions could?

THE DISCLAIMER
I still love captions. They're really well used by people like Ed Brubaker and Allan Moore and Paul Jenkins (when he isn't naval gazing) and I do think they are relevant in comics as a useful and even positive story telling device. So don't get all reactionary. Or do.

nobody fucks with the truth

Some things you will see in this blog:
(coming soon!)

uneducated, philosophical pseudo-scientific ramblings
poetry?
stuff that's more enlightening than what you'll find here.
discussion and ramblings that may intersect with what you'll find here
maybe some stuff about writing
maybe some musical stuff
maybe nothing at all! piss off!

Some things you will not see in this blog:

Intelligent Design

Intellectual Dishonesty

IDiocy

if you are capable of looking at the universe and seeing intelligence in its so called design, that calls into question your definition of intelligence.


So welcome one and all! If you are here by invitation please move to the back so I can address the ones who got here through the magic of the interweb.

Humanity is like a seething leviathan. Separate we are unique and odd individuals. Lonely even... Together, we form like voltron into a not so cooperative species where the individual parts are no longer discernible from the whole. A thriving and bountiful species of groups, sub-groups, categories and... individuals? This will become my outlet for the things that I discover and learn and read about.

It's pretty cool to be alive.