Ever see a really bad magician? How about a really good one? If you were pressed to explain it, what would you say is the main difference between the good and bad magicians you have seen? I will go out on a limb and say that the good magician keeps you looking away from what he or she is doing so you can’t figure the trick out, where as the bad one tries to do that and fails in some way. A good magician, for example, will talk and gesture and wave his hands high to keep you from looking down. Or they may bring up an audience member (prepared in advance, of course) so that you let your guard down and don’t suspect that the “helper” is there to help the magician get you to look at everything BUT the real trick…

Today’s Lesson Is: Stories Don’t “Magically” Tell Themselves

It freaks me out how writing, even in its most mundane forms, seems to throw people off. Look around on Google sometime for writing suggestions and you will find examples and samples of everything.

Want to get hired? You can find thousands of sample resumes. Want to quit your job? There are just as many examples of resignation letters.

Want to make a shopping list? There are not only list templates, but suggestions as to which order to write items down.

Dumping your Boyfriend? You can get examples of letters, emails, faxes, IM’s, Texts and Tweets that will show you how to word that. Anything and everything you could ever want or need to write, someone will practically do it for you.

Here’s the question that comes to my mind—Why?

Are people REALLY at such a loss for words?

I don’t think that’s the case—something else is at work.

The longer I have been doing comics, the more I realize that there really is no magic to it. The Big Players in comics try to lay a line on the fans that making comics is something that very few people can do, and I believe they do it to for the same reason that there are millions of writing samples on the Internet.

If I project to you that I am an “expert” and am doing something you can’t do, then you feel you need to come to me for that and I have value. People buy into that, and then when they are fooled into accepting it, they make that the “standard.” The form and format of something becomes equal in some way to it’s content, and people pre-judge work based on the names attached to it before ever opening up a book or peeking at a single page. That’s lazy and sad no matter how you slice it.

Think about why “standard” comic books have the dimensions they do- initially, it was based on press limitations and what sizes of magazines could be pumped out the most cheaply using standard dies and equipment.  That’s really all: comics were sized to be the cheapest form of reading they could possibly be.

Hardcover books, however, are sized very irregularly- that’s because they are seen as inherently more expensive. While there are dimensions which any printer would consider as “optimal” for hardcover books, publishers and printers alike go into a hardcover project knowing they can (and will) get a premium for the end product. Knowing that you are choosing the most expensive format gives you a lot of leeway as far as what a printer is willing to do.

Paperback books, by comparison, are often very regular from printer to printer for the same reason as comic books. Cheapest of all are Newspapers—their “standards” are based on the old equipment that isn’t even used anymore, but since the “standard” is so accepted, we now make modern equipment to conform to the limitations of out of date technology.

What does that have to do with making comics?

Everything.

The same people that dictated to you what is a “standard” comic are also telling you that you can’t tell a good story and that your imagination isn’t as good as theirs. You aren’t doing flashy, full color, “standard” sized books that are carried by Diamond into EVERY store in the country, so you aren’t as good as they are. Color comics are more important than Black & White comics, Marvel is more important than Boom! Studios or Image, “Standard” sized comics are more important than mini comics or something carrying a different shape…

That’s all misdirection.

What is really key is telling a story… and there is NO standard for that, and no way for anyone to corner the market on that either. Good stories don’t tell themselves—someone has to create them. And telling a story, whether it be with words or with art or with some mix of the two in comic form, is not about following someone else’s rules. In the end, ALL that matters is making a good Comic that people enjoy for what it is.

(Cont.)

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