Comic book lesson

[Barbara]

A recent pop-up got me thinking: How do comic books influence our novels? Comic books may not be linguistic masterpieces with all the fancy description and meaningful language, but they take @AgentPete's mantra of 'More meaning from less words' to the fullest. They are condensed down to the minimum; the bare bones. Of course, the pictures tell part of the story, but again, one single pic needs to say a 1000 words.

So I sat down and grabbed the nearest Asterix. I had never analysed them before, just enjoyed and giggled, and I soon realised I can learn a lot from the little Gaul in terms of story structure, tension, timing, and the character's voices. I also realised that this particular humour had seeped into my last novel. (I have the German translations.)

I have always enjoyed reading them, I just hadn't bothered looking at them in a literary way. I guess, I never took them to be heavyweight writing. Well, that taught me, didn't it. I shall now delve deeper.

Have any of your novels ever been inspired by the likes of Tintin? Which comics do you read? What have you learnt from them? Any comics you can recommend?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I regularly read graphic novels, borrowed from my local library. As you say, @Barbara, they're a good source of inspiration in how to tackle dialogue, though a graphic novel can get away with stylised representations of emotion by having ! and ? and Kerpowee in speech bubbles, something we have to do with carefully crafted description.

 

[Amber]

I don't read comic books or graphic novels but I read X-Men to my son when he was a kid. I really like them. Then of course the X-Men movies came out. Also, Spider Man movies ... and Bat Man....and I suppose it hasn't stopped yet... the latest one being The Black Panther. I think they tend to hit on themes that are timely and yet universal. Some of the comic strip characters are about 100 years old but they evolve and ... 100 years isn't as long as we think. When I was a kid Wonder Woman was my favorite for all of the obvious reasons I suppose. That version of Wonder Woman was a little love sick. I suppose she had to be so they could give her a reason to be mooning about the American air-force guy? Because ... why else would a single woman be away from home? It's a little scary when you think about how long bad ass women characters have been considered plausible. Don't get me started on Black Widow. I can't figure out what she does. Anyway.... much like you said, I think superheroes in particular are archetypal powerhouses.

 

[Marc Joan]

Interesting points, Barbara. I think comics / graphic novels are much under-rated, especially in the Anglophone world. I too have a fondness for the Asterix and Tintin oeuvres (I like seeing how French puns have been translated into English puns -- sometimes well, sometimes not so well! But I'm not criticising, because humour is notoriously difficult to shunt from one language to another. Do the jokes work in German, by the way?).

Having thought about your comment: perhaps comics teach us that a story can be considered as no more than an interplay between dialogue and imagery? Keep the dialogue sharp and to the point, and make the images as vivid as possible in as few words as possible -- perhaps that's the message?

Regarding other graphic novels, I would recommend the 'Blake et Mortimer' series by Jacobs -- very much of their time, and -- to me -- absolutely wonderful.

 

[Barbara]

Interesting points, Barbara. I think comics / graphic novels are much under-rated, especially in the Anglophone world. I too have a fondness for the Asterix and Tintin oeuvres (I like seeing how French puns have been translated into English puns -- sometimes well, sometimes not so well! But I'm not criticising, because humour is notoriously difficult to shunt from one language to another. Do the jokes work in German, by the way?).

Having thought about your comment: perhaps comics teach us that a story can be considered as no more than an interplay between dialogue and imagery? Keep the dialogue sharp and to the point, and make the images as vivid as possible in as few words as possible -- perhaps that's the message?

Regarding other graphic novels, I would recommend the 'Blake et Mortimer' series by Jacobs -- very much of their time, and -- to me -- absolutely wonderful.

@Marc Joan , you ask if the Asterix jokes work in German: Surprisigly, they are much funnier. Whoever translated Asterix into German has a flair for the funny. I was slighty dissapointed when I read my first English copy. Just shows you how important good translating is. I only wish my French was good enough to read the original. (I suspect one has to live in a country before one 'gets' the nuances for a language.)

I like what you say about the interplay between dialogue and imagery, and to make it sharp and to the point. I'm sure you're right that this is the message. And I'll look into the Blake et M. I haven't heard of it,

@Paul Whybrow, as for the stylised representation of emotion: I once used that kind of technique in a novel. Not sure if it worked. It did for me, but then again, my ideas have a habbit of being better in my head than on the paper. My beta readers didn't complain either, but maybe they didn't want to upset me, or else kerpowee. I'm sure a publisher will frown at it, should they ever get to read the novel.