Storyteller: Faith Erin Hicks
Publisher: First Second Books
Year of Publication: 2012
Page Count:  Approximately 211 pages

What I learned about Writing/Storytelling:
1.  Even in a story set in high school, you don’t need to overwhelm your reader with too many characters.  The main character, Maggie, has two friends at lunch that she sits with.  She also has three older brothers she occasionally hangs with.  There is one other character at school, a jock who is a jerk.

2.  You can do a high school story without a romance subplot.

3.  You can have quirky, somewhat geeky characters who are not picked on in a stereotypical bullied sort of way.  (Though to be fair the geekiest characters are girls, so the normal cliches may not apply, though oddly enough, there are no “mean girl” characters.)

4.  You don’t have to tie your sub-plots up in a neat fashion.  Maggie is unable to find a way to stop the ghost from haunting the town, or allow it to pass on to the next life. The ghost seems symbolically tied to her absent mother  (Thought her mother left the family, and is not dead.)  (Although I just read some Amazon reviews and some people were frustrated by the lack of resolution.)

5.  You can do the “getting the band back together” sort of thing in a non-pulp story.  In this case, Maggie needs the help of her three brothers to get something back the jock character stole.  Usually this sort of thing is used for pulp stories, I think…

6.  There’s teen angst, but its actually pretty light compared to what you see among the “decadent” comic crowd (or teen lit, I think), no sex, no heavy violence, no drug addiction. So.. that’s a storytelling option.

What I learned about Art/Storytelling:
Hicks is a writer/artist so has a good command of cartooning details. Here’s some random things I observed:
A silent reaction shot of a character watching something happening, I like that sort of imagery:

A budding friendship between two girls shown just through body language signals back and forth:

Shading to guide the reader’s eye to what’s important in each panel, and maybe provide three dimensionality to the art:

By making the third tier taller, you get a sort of mini Splash image of the boy (Zander) in profile:

But most importantly, Hicks’ female characters are just plain fun to look at as they show various expressions.

Recommendation: B

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
This is the plot: Maggie has been home schooled up to the age of 17.  Her only friends are her brothers.  As her mother has abandoned the family, she now has to go to high school for the first time.  Maggie makes friends with a brother and sister who are social outcasts. Maggie’s own brothers don’t trust her new friends, and she gradually learns about the past of her new friends and what sort of people they are. Maggie is also occasionally haunted by a nonverbal ghost.  In the climax, she asks for help from her new friends to put the ghost’s spirit to rest.

I don’t want to oversell this book, but it’s a decent story.  It’s not the sort of pulp thing I usually read.  It’s mostly realistic, except for the sub plot with the ghost.  With the depiction of the friends, brothers and sisters, it certainly has a point of view different from most comics I’ve read.

Storytellers: Ed Brubaker with Brad Rader

Publisher: DC Comics
Year of Publication: 2003
Page Count: Collects Catwoman issues 5-9.

What I learned about writing/Storytelling:
Darwyn Cooke is gone, but the motif of pages consisting of four rows remains, which suggests this might have been Ed Brubaker’s innovation, or maybe Cooke came up with it with it and Brubaker and the new team continued it.

In Catwoman #5, Brubaker does some tricky stuff with flashbacks and structure that seems worth looking at:

1.  We start in the present, on page 1, as the cops interrogate a criminal named Dexter Garcia. He begins to tell the cops his story, saying “I ain’t even sure I know where the beginning’s at…” the reader turns the page and:
2.  The text says “a week and a half ago”. We cut to Catwoman jumping on rooftops at night.  She break into a hospital and visits an unconscious boy named Brendon.  She says “Aw Brendon…You really went and did it this time, didn’t you?” This takes us to page 3. The reader turns the page and:

3. Catwoman begins to narrate, introducing an earlier scene with Brendon before he was in the hospital. She visits him as Selina Kyle, because she used to know his mom back in the day. Selina learns that Brendon is involved with drug runners, the whole backstory about how the drug runners operate is explained to her by her friend, Holly, after meeting Brendon.  This runs on pages 4-7.

4. The very last panel on page 7 takes us back to the hospital scene.  We learn the boy suffered injuries while running drugs.  The next 8 pages (pages 8-15) take place after the hospital scene, with Selina staking out the drug organization responsible for Brendon’s injuries and trying to get Dexter Garcia to turn on his boss, Mr. Dylan. Selina confronts Garcia and says “It’s time you and I had a talk” to Garcia… then:

5.  Time jump ahead, on (pages 16-18) Selina is pleased with how things turned out with Garcia, but the reader doesn’t yet know what happened. Selina is then approached by private eye Slam Bradley, who tells her Garcia did something bad.   We have an interwoven flashback of Bradley telling Selina how Dexter Garcia tortured Mr. Dylan after killing Dylan’s body guards. Dexter was then taken in by the cops.

6.  Then Selina starts explaining her conversation with Garcia to Slam Bradley (the one the reader didn’t see) and we flash back to Selina’s conversation with Dexter.  Selina was just trying to get him to turn himself into the cops, not torture his boss.  This flash back starts on page 19 and runs to page 20.

7. Page 21 and 22.  Back to the opening scene with the interrogation.  We find out the cops doing the interrogation are corrupt, and are going to kill Dexter on behalf of their boss, Mr. Dylan.   Mr. Dylan vows to go after Catwoman if she causes more trouble.  The final scene is Catwoman and Slam Bradley talking, with Catwoman mourning what happened to the boy, who is not expected to recover.

This is a really tricky structure with a lot of time jumps, but the story itself isn’t hard to follow.  I wonder if the line “I ain’t even sure I know where the beginning’s at” is a sort of meta wink wink line as Brubaker was weaving the nonlinear story.

Presumably you can only write a story that jumps around like this if you plot it out in advance.  I think Brubaker uses this structure to build drama. Why are cops interrogating this guy, we wonder, during the beginning scene,  since we’ve been thrown in the middle of the story. When  Selina breaks into hospital to visit the kid,  we wonder what happened to the kid, then later find out.  The structure allows the drama to be shown before the story’s quieter moments.

Other things learned (for the rest of the issues)
It’s the oldest trick in the book, of course, but Brubaker makes use of opening splashes (or big panels that are close to a splash), though in the following example he holds off until page 4. Here’s page 3:

Then you turn the page:

This is a cool effect, and its sensible to wait until page 4 so you can build up an opening scenario before Catwoman’s appearance.

Other writing stuff: There’s a bit where Selina and Slam Bradley come up with a plan to take down some corrupt cops. The reader doesn’t know what the plan is, and we discover it as it unfolds.  I think there’s basically two ways to do that sort of “plan” based story: You either have the audience know what the plan will be, then the plan goes wrong, or you hide the plan from the audience. In this instance, Brubaker hides it, and the reader is pleasantly surprised to see just how Selina kicks ass.

I enjoyed, in particular, that the plan revolved around Selina stealing something in a very tricky way, because it’s cool to see her villainous “gimmick” used against the bad guys.  It’s good to see her do something specific to her character, rather than just punching people.

What I learned about art/storytelling:
You get the sense the creative team is testing the boundaries of the medium.  There’s a neat sequence with Selina’s friend Holly taking an  email survey, and text appears in the background, showing the email:

This is from a sort of “day in the life” issue starring her friend. They do a montage sequence of Holly’s observations about various people. They use cursive for her narration and spread it around, which is an interesting technique:

Recommendation: B+

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
This comic is pretty good.  I appreciate the attempts to do some experimenting with the medium.  However, I do retain a few qualms.  When they did a day in the life story about  Selina’s friend, Holly, I was thinking “I hope Brubaker isn’t trying to get us to like her so he can do something horrible to her” and, well, she gets shot at the end of the issue, though it’s not a really serious gun shot wound, more like one of those wounds everyone forgets about once the storyline is over, I’m guessing.

In terms of the experimental tone, however, I’m not sure you can really have your cake and eat it too. If you want to do something experimental involving a day in the life of a character, you probably might want to “experiment” with not going with the obvious dramatic beat of putting the supporting characters in peril?  Granted, this is sort of a noir story, and maybe that’s part of the genre, but still…

This can cause the reader to be distracted during your quieter moments, waiting for the shoe to drop.  (On the other hand, I can see the counter argument that it’s fine, I guess my main issue is that I saw it coming well in advance…)

Brubaker is also once again hopelessly confused when it comes to superhero morality, having a character lecture Catwoman on needing a motive besides revenge, which she doesn’t disagree with (Err, isn’t that Batman’s motive?  I don’t think Brubaker is going for irony.)   He does have Catwoman do something more anti-heroish towards the end of the trade, so he may be smartening up.

Still, overall, this is a very fine comic.

Storytellers: Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC Comics
Year of Publication: 2002- 2003
Page Count: Collects Catwoman 1-4 (Later Collected in the bigger trade Catwoman Volume 1: Trail of the Catwoman)

What I learned about writing/storytelling:
The story begins like many Batman stories, with a mysterious serial killer serial killing someone.  The audience immediately wonders: who is this mystery killer, and will Batman/Batgirl/Batwoman/Robin/Nightwing/Batwing/Catwoman/whomever be able to stop this killer once they learn about them and fight them?
This works fine, and starts the book as a page turner. After the two earlier talking heads heavy non- Catwoman “Catwoman” stories it was certainly a breath of fresh air.

The comic has Catoman reevaluating her identity. She soon meets an old friend and is soon told about the serial killer targeting prostitutes. The police and Batman don’t care all that much about it.  (The police don’t consider prostitutes human and Batman considers them criminals).  It’s up to Catwoman to save the day because there’s nobody else!

This is good use of pulp tropes.  Give the hero something to protect, give them a villain to fight against.  Tell us why only they can save the day. The villain turns out to be powerful, it looks like Catwoman will lose but then she wins!

What I learned about art/storytelling:
I’m a little uncertain about the idea of reading comics specifically to learn storytelling tools to add to my storytelling toolbox, because I can see tools in a book, but they aren’t necessarily tools I would want to use.  I like some of my storytelling biases, is what I’m saying.That said, here’s a tool, for a two page spread, you force the reader to turn the book over to the side:

Not my thing.  But it is a “tool” and presumably one the creative team liked.

I like the art better than in the earlier two Catwoman stories. I’m not sure why that is, but it seems like Cooke is going for something a bit different, maybe more mainstream.  Or… could it be because he’s no longer inking himself?  (Mike Allfred is credited as inker here.)

Cooke uses four tiers as the basic assumption of how to build a page, which seems to work a lot better than the three tier stuff in the earlier stories.  The high panel count no longer bothers me like it did before, in part because it looks better and in part because its more of a page turner stort of story. This is from that boring, earlier detective story:

Talking heads. Boring characters talking about boring things. This is from the Catwoman story:

I like that page.  It’s whimsical, its fun. Selina is just going for a jog for the heck of it, sans costume.  It helps the artist is working with material that is more interesting than a detective walking around talking to people.  The word count is lower and not drowning the art.

I like this page layout which has two big panels on a 6 panel page:

It gives room for two bigger establishing images.

Recommendation: B

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
I already covered the plot above. It’s good. It’s fun.  Its possibly not world changing, but compared to his colleagues, I suspect Brubaker’s scripts are kicking ass.  The only part that creaks  is when there’s this “Heroes don’t kill” thing at the end, where Catwoman doesn’t kill the serial killer and Batman and his friend are all like “You’re such a good person for not killing him the serial killer.”

Uh, yeah. Do people in the real world really believe this?  Cops and soldiers are expected to kill, if circumstances arise and are considered by many to be “heroes.”  The United States still has a death penalty in some areas.  And the superhero genre isn’t exactly a place for thoughtful reflection on the use of power.

Remember when Selina killed Bane in The Dark Knight Rises?  That was badass!

Storytellers: Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC
Year of Publication: 2001
Page Count: Backup story in detective comics 759-762. (Part of a bigger Catwoman collection, not a self contained Graphic Novel, but since I read it I’m doing a write up).
What I learned about writing/Storytelling:
There is really nothing to learn from this mediocre, under performing comic.  So instead, I’m going to highlight a sequence I didn’t like a muddled fight scene with exposition that has nothing to do with what is being drawn.  Image and Text, you are supposed to be a team! You are not working together!

I just end up reading the text and ignoring the art.  It’s not like anything interesting was happening during that fight scene.

What I learned about art/storytelling:
That art above looks kind of “muddy”to me.  I’m not sure why.  I also think Cooke tends to go for a closeup rather than communicate clearly the spacial relationship between the characters.  I dunno.  I think Dave Gibbons and many classic comic creators would have done a full profile shot of both fighters when the guitar is being slammed in someone’s face. Maybe I’m just biased against the art style.

I also find Cooke’s 9 panel pages to be overwhelming.  I’m not sure if its because he can’t do a 9 panel page as well as Frank Miller or Dave Gibbons, or if I just am not digging the story pacing so more panels of it seems unappealing, or if I’m too used to decompressed comics these days to appreciate a 9 panel page.  So, there’s a word of caution in there somewhere about 9 panel pages…

Recommendation: D

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
So I’m reading Catwoman Volume 1: Trail of the Catwoman, which according to an Amazon review collects three previous DC trades:
Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score
Catwoman (Book 1): The Dark End of the Street (Issues #1-4 and backups from Detective Comics #759-762)
Catwoman (Book 2): Crooked Little Town (Issues #5-9. Issue #10 and Secret Files and Origins not included here in C:TotC)

I picked this up because I wanted to read Ed Brubaker’s take on Catwoman, but first I had to suffer through Darwyn Cooke’s take on Catwoman in “Selina’s Big Score”, then Brubaker’s take on “Slam Bradley” in a backup story that ran in Detective Comics called “Trail of the Catwoman.”   (Wikipedia indicates Bradley is a generic golden age detective, rather than a generic detective Brubaker invented for the story. )
The plot involves detective Slam Bradley, who is hired by the corrupt mayor to track down Selina Kyle.  The Italian mob also puts pressure on him to track down Selina Kyle.  (Apparently Selina pissed everyone off in some previous Batman story when she was running for public office, possibly in New York City, but this isn’t really explained.)
Anyway, turns out Slam Bradley develops a crush or pulpish infatuation with Catwoman just from reading her case file, so doesn’t turn her in to the bad guys like he’s been hired to do, even after learning she’s Catwoman.

The story ends with a real stretch in logic, as it turns out the mob and the Mayor know that Bradley dropped the case and won’t share what he knows, but these bad guys don’t seriously retaliate against him. Bradley even beats up a mobster for annoying him about Catwoman as an ending “punchline” to the story-arc, because apparently the mob is sort of evil but also too lazy to go after someone who beats up one of their own, or something.

Now I can finally go on to Catwoman #1, which I expect to be better!

Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score

Storytellers: Darwyn Cooke with Matt Hollingsworth
Publisher: DC Comics
Year of Publication: 2002
Page Count: 96 Page Graphic Novel (reprinted in Catwoman Volume 1)

What I learned about Writing/Storytelling:

I confirmed for myself two existing biases in regard to what not to do:

1)  Don’t assume changing the color for your flashbacks in any way helps identify them as flashbacks.  Colors change with scenes and may be consciously invisible to the reader.

To illustrate:

2)  When introducing the concept of narration in your story, show the character who is narrating on panel.  You would think that the narrator in a book called Catwoman would be Catwoman, but the book switched narrators with the chapter change, and this was no longer the case.  It took me a moment to figure that out:

What I learned about art/storytelling:

I’m not sure.  The art didn’t work for too well for me.  I think it’s odd that Cooke does big panel closeups, and  I think he does too many closeups in general.  There’s a big panel closeup in the flashback image above, which seemed to me like an odd storytelling choice. Later in the book, this bit had me scratching my head:

Part of the problem might be I don’t believe you can jump back on a moving train after falling off, which seems to be what is happening here.

Recommendation: C

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:

Basically, it’s a crime fiction heist story.  Catwoman does not appear in costume, except briefly in flashback.  She is poorly motivated and says she recently came back from the dead, whatever the heck that means.  It’s clearly a reference to whatever was going on in other Batman books at the time, but is not explained.

I didn’t really read this in the spirit I was supposed to.  When Selina mentions a sister, I expected a flashback or some payoff to the reference, but there is none, the only reason the sister is mentioned is because it’s a continuity reference to some previous Catwoman story.

Similarly, when Selina flashes back to the time she was a  prostitute, this isn’t because Darwyn Cooke has anything to say about prostitution, or what it’s like to be a prostitute, or the human condition in general, but because Selina was a prostitute in an 80s Frank Miller comic.

The ending pulled together a bit better, focusing on doomed love and doomed criminals.  The book began at a more leisurely pace.

Over at the Comics Experience workshop, Andy Schmidt challenged people to read 30 graphic novels in November and attempt to take from each book at least one idea about writing and art that we can use to enhance our own work. I’m going to post a few of my write ups here because a) it’s content for my new web site and b) why not?