15
2008
Panel Discussion
So, Turnus is live.
Another day, another webcomic. But what makes this one any different from the plethora of other comics out there and how exactly do I approach the issue of comic writing? To find out, we have to go back to the beginning.
When I was just a kid, I drew the odd comic. I say the odd comic because they were um… probably quite odd. I mean, kids are odd, aren’t they? I’m sure my sense of humour hadn’t developed to the razor-sharp levels that it’s reached today (notice that issue pun earlier? that’s pure gold, right there). But anyway, even when I was young, I dreamt of having my own comic. Not that I could draw well enough to achieve that or anything.. it was just one of those childish dreams that you have when you’re younger and then forget about over the years, as the bitter pill of reality slides down your throat before finally, inevitably, blocking your wind pipe.
Well, actually, that’s a lie.
It’s a lie because this dream didn’t quite die. In fact, it just lay dormant for a while until I was finally drawninto the world of webcomics by none other than SupSuper (who would eventually go on to construct the websites for Rooms, It Makes No Sense and most recently, Turnus). The idea of making a webcomic nagged at me and I decided to give it a go, finding an artist to complement my writing.
Sadly, this wasn’t without its problems and, after about a year of trying to get Rooms on the web, I got it online only for my artist to quit on me within a month. Lovely.
I’ve talked before about how my art is fairly weak (although it certainly improved over my three years of doing Rooms) but what is worth noting is that the weakness in my art also effected my writing. The reason for this is that when there’s someone else drawing your words, you can take your imagination as far as you want. Need Character B to enter the scene riding a unicorn? Sure, the artist can do that. Think that an overhead view of the city would give your story a sense of scale? Not a problem.
But when your art is limited, it is a problem. Want to show your hero fighting for his life against a wild koala? Uhhh… well, you could try to draw it but it’d look pretty crappy and probably detract from the story. Needless to say, I did push myself and try and draw some tough stuff over the course of those three years but I didn’t really have enough time to learn how to become sufficiently good at art to tell the stories the way I wanted to. After all, I’m not an artist - I’m a writer.
So yeah, a lot of Roomsfeatured ‘talking head’ style dialogue to move the story along and as such it became more focused on character driven stuff than grand sci-fi style story arcs. Which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing, it’s just that sometimes you need to tell those grand stories for the characters to evolve. Having 90% of the action happen off screen isn’t really going to be that satisfying for anyone.
So how do I write a comic? Well, it depends on the artist and the format. Rooms was the typical four panel strip format which meant that, although I had large scale story arcs planned, it had a lot of freedom to change direction if I changed my mind about how a certain plot was going. On the other hand, the four panel strip format does limit your writing, as does a M-W-F schedule. You have to keep things compact and try to keep dialogue within those four boxes. Not an easy task and it works better for strips like It Makes No Sense where you’re just trying to tell quick-fire jokes and not an elaborate multi-stranded narrative.
Turnus, on the other hand, is issue (or case) based, in the same way that Ben’s Jump Leads is. This means you have to write each story beforehand as one big block. This allows you the freedom of making sure you tell a good self-contained story and don’t drift aimlessly but also has the downside of meaning you can’t really change things as you go along (well you can, but not to as large an extent).
When writing for an artist, I always try and keep the artist in mind as it’s a collaborative process not a master-slave thing. In the case of Turnus, I let phillby rewrite the start of the first issue based on what I’d written as he had a very set idea of how he wanted it to begin. This wasn’t a problem as it’s his comic too and the intro is still faithful to the story and characters (plus it’s going to lead round to my script soon enough) but if you think it’s dragging at all, you know who to blame ;).
Anyway, I’ve got more to say on all this but I’ve been waffling on for a while now so I’ll continue this in a later post (which will also allow me to comment on some of the plot developments in Turnus/Jump Leads as they unfold).
Thanks for reading!
