“From Red Sonja, I learned that a chain mail bikini is appropriate attire in any situation, even the frozen polar wastes”: What have the Sequential Tarts learned from comics? Mainly that Batman is a pretty poor role model, is what I’m getting.
“The big point here is that Rankin, in literary terms, is a player”: Writing for the Sunday Times, Bryan Appleyard discusses Ian Rankin and Werther Dell’Edera’s Dark Entries graphic novel, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou’s Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (“This is probably the best and certainly the most extraordinary graphic novel I have ever come across”), David Small’s Stitches and the value of the medium in general. Meanwhile, here’s another article about Rankin’s Dark Entries, also from the other side of the Atlantic.
“At first I wasn’t sure how to make a whole book out of this. But … It’s something that’s totally ridiculous, but we make it so that it has some meatier elements infused into it”: That’s Nebraskan-born writer Van Jensen discussing his new comic Pinnochio: Vampire Slayer with the Lincoln Journal Star.
“Maybe the cartoonist should either have the courage to use the actual words, or else write material that’s appropriate to the medium. How is it edgy to have profanity in comic strips when it’s only pretend swearing?”: I enjoyed this post by Nelson Dewey about swearing and not-swearing in newspaper comic strips, in large part because I often find myself irritated with how some comic book writers handle swearing, and then trying to think of a better solution to the challenge. Not to pick on Brian Michael Bendis, but his Marvel scripts are the ones I tend to notice the most, wherein a character will “swear” in an extremely clear fasion so that everyone knows the word intended—”I’m going to kick your @#$” or “Shut the @#$% up!”—but the Caps-locked number keys obscure it, drawing attention to the absurdity of the tension in the dialogue. Like, the comic is so mature and grown up that it can use adult language, only not really, because it’s not really for adults. Sorry for the tangent there, but I seriously think about this a lot. Anyway, read Dewey’s post.
September 30th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I always liked the &*$# type of swearing; it’s something so “comicky” — I admit it’s kind of stupid. You should just swear or not, if you’re writing for a non-swears-allowed format, write that way, if you can swear do so. Blocking out the cussin’ is just lazy. But I much prefer the symbols to “—–” or black bars.