Epilogue
August 30, 2005
Three comics in a row, pretty much on schedule. That's gotta be some sort of record.
I did decide to go for the epilogue. Doctor Hydros isn't
supposed to be the most fear-inspiring of villains, but perhaps I've made him a little too
goofy.
It's a curious thing, stick-figures and super-heroes. Heroes are best known by their
distinctive costumes, but a stick figure is really limited to some sort of torso emblem and
headgear. When I deviate from that the figures become less sticky, and that's not what
I'm trying for. But I also worry that the characters will begin looking too much like each other with
just a mask and a torso jag to distinguish between them. I guess that's why they invented color.
Thinking of stick-figures, I've been thinking about the kinds of stories that I can tell with
them. In his book Understanding Comics,
Scott McCloud posits that as drawn figure becomes less realistic and more abstract, the reader
becomes better able to identify with the figure. To me, it seems he's saying that as the
drawing becomes less specific the reader is better able to insert themselves into the picture.
And that seems true, up to a point. Bone is a fairly
simply drawn comic, and I am able to strongly identify with the title characters, but I feel
that it's because the characters are distinctive, not generic. One of my favorite artists is
John Cassday,
who tends to the more realistic end of the scale and I still identify with Elijah Snow.
This came up while pondering whether stick-figures have to be funny, or if one could tell
serious dramatic stories with them. My instinct is that no, stick-figures are not well-suited
for tales of heavy drama, that a more serious sort of story requires a more realistic-looking
set of characters. And then there's something like
Maus, which serves as
a sort of counter-example.
Let's say I tried to tell a story of a man's last days fighting a terminal illness, wouldn't
the stick-figure style undercut the story? I can imagine good writing overcoming the art,
but I have difficulty believing the sticks would do much to contribute to the whole. Unless
the absurdity of the figures could be used as some sort of counter-point to the rest of the
story?
These are the things I think about when I'm deep into Photoshop, scritching away at the tablet.
Deep thoughts by Jem Lewis.
-Jem
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