Month: March 2011

If I haven’t outed myself as an RPG nerd in my writings yet, well, here we go with no more room for wrigglin’. I’m not just talking the computer RPGs (though I do like those), I’m talking the old school pen & paper, grab the Cheetos & Mountain Dew and hang out in the parents’ basement style of roleplaying games. Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu… I’ve played ’em all, and more besides. Heck, one of the less well known offerings is responsible for my first ever professional writing credit.

Why do I bring this up? Well, Zombie Ranch owes many debts of inspiration, and one of them is to an imaginative bit of genre mashing that debuted as an award winning RPG way back in 1996. Deadlands.

Now sadly, for all the praise I’m about to lavish on this game, I’ll have to admit I never actually have had the chance to play it. This phenomenon isn’t uncommon amongst pen & paper gamers–we’ll see something intriguing, buy the book, read and love it–but then, for one reason or another, it just never gels into a game session, much less a campaign. Sometimes it’s just a matter of not having enough other people that are interested. Sometimes it’s a matter of a setting you love, but a game system you never quite wrap your brain around. Deadlands may have been a little of column A and a little of column B for me and my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a system that eschews the generic and helps enhance the experience of the genre being represented–I even wrote a whole Satellite Show entry on the subject–but despite the on-the-drawing-board awesomeness of having a game in an Old West setting where everyone playing has a poker hand and poker chips that help affect their characters’ fates, in reality it does make things a lot more complicated when you’re already juggling stat sheets, pencils and dice, and probably have a lot of the table taken up with a map and miniature figures as well. Certainly it’s not a system I’d spring on a first-time pen & paper gamer who is still trying to figure out the difference between the d8 and d10.

That’s enough about that, though, because even if you never play it and never intend to, the Deadlands book is worth buying just for the setting alone. It’s a fascinating, well done combination of retro-futurism with the Western and Horror genres, written by people who both know their history and know how to warp it. It’s a world, for instance, where the American Civil War never ended, because things somewhat literally went to Hell right in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg, with the dead soldiers of both sides rising up to murder the living regardless of whether they wore the blue or the gray. Why? That’s a whole other story in itself, tying in to Native American legend and a proto-“Ghost Dance” movement, which, unlike in our world, actually worked–sadly, with a powerfully bad result.

I could go on and on, but the short version is that a lot of the Old West still happens as we know it, but it’s gotten a lot weirder and darker than even the tallest of the tall tales that might have been spun around a dark and lonely campfire on the prairie. There’s even a “steampunk” aspect on top of everything, though I hesitate to call it that because I think to do so does a disservice to the whole horribly eerie idea behind the mystery substance known as Ghost Rock that has enabled such strange new leaps in technology.

Now over the years the game has been re-released several times, including the obligatory d20 version. Should you buy those? Having not read them, I can’t tell you for sure since I don’t know how much of the setting material is preserved in them, and the setting is the goldmine for me. My original 1996 copy is still sitting in a prominent place on my gaming shelf, so I’m set, but if you see a copy on E-bay, for instance, I reckon you could do a lot worse than to pick it up.

As a final exciting development, I’ve learned that this year’s going to see a new series of comics set in the Deadlands world! The news came out of Emerald City Comic-Con earlier this month, and names like Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (of Jonah Hex fame) are attached. Everything old is comin’ ’round new again, and they couldn’t have picked a richer property to mine for tales of the Weird West.

In this blog I’m partially going to tread onto Dawn’s turf, but hey, comics are a continual mix of words and pictures (even if sometimes you can toss words completely out of the mix, which is why comics writers are such an insecure bunch). She’s talked about writing before, and now I wanna talk about art.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about how important it is to keep a sense of distinction between your characters that an audience can instantly grasp. This isn’t just limited to comics, as this trope entry shows, but because comics often tend to abstract the human face and form, I think it becomes that much more vitally important.

Now, if you’re good enough and have enough time, you could not only create very distinctive faces but distinctive mannerisms for your whole cast, to the point where they would still be identifiable even in nude silhouette. Tracy Butler worked really hard at this with Lackadaisy,  and for the most part succeeded. But plenty of professional, well-regarded artists in comics have fallen prey to the “Only Six Faces” syndrome, whether that comes from complacency, need to meet deadlines, or both.

Does it make them bad comics artists? Not in my book… as long as I can tell who I’m looking at. That’s the key point. The audience should never have to spend any time figuring that out (with an exception of course for when identity confusion is an intentional plot point).

That’s where the “accessories” come in. An iconic costume. A unique hairstyle. An unusual body type. Maybe even a certain way of speaking. Anything and everything that you can scrounge up to eliminate confusion and keep the flow of story as intact and transparent as possible. And when you’ve made your primary choices, it’s important to always keep them in mind as your tale progresses.

For example, the Only Six Faces trope linked above singled out the second artist of The Walking Dead comic as having some troubles with this, which was unsurprising to me after I checked out a free issue (#8 I think?) and became totally lost on who was who as the narrative kept jumping from place to place. I believe I recall one particular instance where a blond woman is just getting out of a shower, but is a completely different blond woman than the one on a previous page. I did have the thought that maybe I just was lost for not having kept up with things for awhile, but still, it’s a monthly comic, right? And if “most of the women… are only identifiable by their hair and/or hats”, then you can see the immediate problem when one is stepping out of the shower and hasn’t bound up her signature ponytail yet.

Now think about Batman and Superman. In their superhero costumes, you’d never mistake them for one another–but take them out of the costumes and you’ve got two big, muscular, black haired, square-jawed dudes. Writers have even played with this down the decades by having Clark and Bruce pretend to be each other, the same way there’s not a few Archie comics where Betty and Veronica have done switcheroos by simple expedient of some dye and a hairstyle switch. South Park’s superhero spoof episode had Mysterion reveal his identity at the end by showing his face… the same face that 99% of the kids on South Park share.

The closer to each other your characters look, the more you have to work at the accessories. One thing that makes offerings like The Walking Dead comic more complex is not only the fact that everyone tends to be dressed and presented in a realistic fashion, but that the comic itself is in black and white. Can you imagine trying to read a Power Rangers comic in black and white? If you can manage it, color is quite the powerful accessory. Color allows you to have two girls with ponytails, one with light brown hair and one with blond hair. Maybe. But what if you end up having a scene in a poorly lit room, or a moonwashed moor? Now you need to change it up. Garishly distinctive costumes, but similar faces? Be cautious when zooming in to catch the glint in their eye.

A lot of iconic characters have a range of accessories accumulated–possibly just because they looked good, but also possibly because the artist was giving themselves some options. Superman’s signature forelock? Well, now you can switch between close-up headshots of him and Bruce Wayne conversing. Crystal of The Inhumans and Susan Storm having a cup of coffee in street clothes? You can bet Crystal’s still going to have those funky ties in her hair (it’s like Jack Kirby foresaw that someday Marvel would be releasing colorless versions of their comics in the “Essential” collections).

And when all else fails, there’s words. Let’s face it, these are all cheats in some form or other, quick and dirty ways to connect… but there ain’t nothing wrong with that if the alternative is loss of clarity. This is where, if you’re a writer, you can really help your artist… or if you’re both writer and artist, you can help yourself. If you’ve got two dark-haired white women in your comic with similar faces and bodies, and you’re showing a long shot of one emerging naked (or towel-wrapped) from a shower in some neutral area (perhaps a police station both work at?), this might be the time to shove in some words so we know we’re following Laura and not Audrey.

– A passing co-worker asks, “Shift over, Laura?”

– Laura has a thought bubble: “Man, I hope Audrey isn’t still sore about this morning.”

– A caption: “After a long day, Laura washes her body clean, but her mind remains troubled…”

Words can serve as an accessory even when all the visual options are exhausted. Whatever you do, just give me something to go on, and give it to me right away. Don’t keep me waiting and keep me guessing unless its supposed to be a mystery where gloved hands and shifty silhouettes are the order of the day.

You don’t have to be an incredible artist who crafts each character into their own multi-layered snowflake… just keep asking yourself, if you were reading for the first time, “Would I know who this is?” It’s even worth asking this from a pure writing perspective as well… if you’re doing an O.P. (off panel) word bubble, someone speaking that we can’t see, is it clear who’s speaking? For instance, in this week’s comic, I inserted a “ma’am” in Frank’s word bubble in the last panel. Did I need to? Maybe, maybe not, since I don’t think Frank and Rosa sound much alike… but for the sake of clarity, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Before I sign off, I thought I’d leave you all with a venerable example of character clarity where the designs are much less complicated than Lackadaisy’s. I hadn’t even considered it much until I started thinking about all this, but it’s been staring us in the face for decades:

Oh, sure, snicker about how lazy and formulaic the animated adventures of the Mystery Machine crew may have been… but take a good look at these characters. Scooby obviously doesn’t need help, but the rest?

– Different hairstyles. Check

– Different colored hair. Check.

– Iconic outfits. Check.

– Distinctive color palettes on those outfits. Check.

– Differently shaped bodies. Check.

– Differently shaped faces. Check.

Even those very, very simply done faces have subtle differences. Shaggy has that big nose. Daphne has those upswept eyes. You will never, ever worry about mistaking one member of the Scooby Gang for another. Heck, they even all had a specific way that they ran.

The supporting cast? Yeah, a pretty interchangeable mix of shady butlers and matronly widows, but as far as the main kids went, well, you almost know what they’re about before they ever open their mouths, and you know they’re all about different things… except, of course, solving the mystery. Now that’s accessorizing.

I’m gonna get this out of the way right now, so there’s no suspense. Rango. Loved it, and not just because the title character has great taste in shirts. Kinda wanna have its little gecko babies.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, not to mention scientifically impossible in a whole lot of ways… but there’s a lot of the impossible going on in this movie, and it washes over you with the frenetic energy of the best classic Warner Bros. cartoons while somehow still remaining grounded in the earthy sensibilities of the Western.

If that seems like a paradox, consider the trope of the vision quest and its place in the mythology of the American Southwest. The idea of wandering out in the desert to find yourself could be said to be old as Moses, but this is our modern incarnation, so powerful that it even draws the imaginations of those across the pond to wander among the Joshua Trees or write scenes of peyote-induced madness. If you have any doubts that Rango is going to be more than just a run-of-the-mill animated Spaghetti Western, they should be dust in the wind by the 5 minute mark, if not before. At least by the time the titular chameleon, shortly following an accident that leaves his city slicker self stranded on the desert highways, has a conversation about destiny with a partially tire-flattened armadillo channeling Don Quixote, you ought to figure there’s a bit of a head trip a-comin’. And I’m not even counting the brief Johnny-Depp-meets-Johnny-Depp moment prior to that. If you watch, you’ll understand.

Rango is at once intensely self-aware, and gleefully chaotic. The characters are fantastically realized from a cross-section of Old West stereotypes poured into dusty, craggy animal form, in some of the best anthropomorphic achievements I’ve had the pleasure to witness. When the black hat rattlesnake makes his way into town, and you notice in the midst of his literally venomous monologue that a discoloration above his mouth bespeaks a Lee Van Cleef style moustache? That ain’t an accident. If you think a plot about lack of water has certain resemblances to Chinatown, there are scenes that occur where the filmmakers tip their hats to you and cheerfully admit, “Yup”. And while you might not be surprised to hear the obligatory Clint Eastwood Man-With-No-Name makes an appearance, the details of how he does are at once mundane, sublime, and deeply bizarre.

Rango is funny, and exciting, and brilliantly animated, and has a great theme song, but what I love most about it is that it recognizes the mythic power behind the Western and the wide open spaces where it makes its home, a frontier not just of body but of mind and soul. The story might be a familiar one at its core, but the dedication to that story and the realization of it are to be praised.

And all of that done without feeling a need to release the movie in 3-D. Lord bless ya for coming along, Rango… you were a cool, trippy drink of agua for a thirsty soul.

There’s horror, and then there’s horror. Sometimes it’s the little things that bring the apocalypse home, as Douglas Adams knew when he wrote in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about Arthur Dent trying to wrap his brain around the destruction of the entire Earth:

England no longer existed. He’d got that — somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger. Arthur passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother.

Comical? Yes. But also a recognition that horror and loss can be as subjective in their own way as art. Shortly after starting this comic, I posted a blog detailing some previous concepts of zombie ranching I had run across, like the game Zombie Rancher, and I mentioned how their idea of people eating the zombies as a delicacy made me look elsewhere for wrangling motivation. While there’s a fantastic dose of irony in the idea of people consuming zombies, out of respect for those who came before I chose from the beginning to move in a different direction, subverting the assumption that the “greenies” were being gathered for food. Admittedly I may have been too subtle about it, since at least one review of the comic proclaimed they were being gathered for food, and I remember on our first convention outing that Dawn was repeatedly stating to passerby “No meat like aged meat!” until I had to ‘splain to her that might give people the wrong idea (writers are such a buzzkill for artists).

I’ve already said as much in my World FAQ a long time ago, but with this week’s comic, here it is at last out in the open. Zombies, whether they were once people, cattle, or prairie dogs, taste like utter crap… and the more I thought about that second part, the more I realized I’d created a rancher’s worst nightmare.

Hell, it even kind of gives me the willies. Dawn and I both like our steak, and the idea that the last one I had might suddenly end up being the last one I ever had? Oh, sure, it wouldn’t kill me to go without, and for you vegetarians out there you’d give a collective shrug, at best, but that’s when we get back to the subjective horror thing, and you think about the impact on people whose livelihood for as long as they can remember has revolved around cattle. Not just them, but generations before them. That’s pretty damn personal. That’s the kind of thing that might have you sobbing for your mother.

So yeah, civilization as we knew it went to hell, people died, people didn’t stay dead, and humanity pulled through only after some very, very bad years. But the crashing realization of a Texas without beef? Submitted for your approval, that for one Chuck W. Zane, that was horror, indeed.

Even a genius can be wrong. And I’m not even a genius. Case in point, Stephen Thor found my review of Gone Zombie from last week and proceeded to prove me to be the opposite of prophetic on the subject of never seeing Zombie Ranch mentioned in his blog.

Seems I underestimated the amount of referrals I was actually able to toss his way, at least enough to be noticeable on a log. Seems I also forgot that even if you don’t actually read any other zombie comics, that doesn’t prevent you from mentioning other zombie comics. You win this time, Thor…

Seriously, even in defeat that’s just cool to type. Who can be faulted for losing to a namesake of the favored son of All-Father Odin? On that subject, I’m really looking forwards to the Thor movie after the latest trailer. I always try not to get my expectations high to avoid disappointment, but… I can’t help it. It’s just too awesome. He fights THE DESTROYER! When it blows up that car with its eyebeams I had a Kirbygasm, even if there was no krackle to be seen.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the Captain America movie, as well. I do like the choice they made to keep it set in WWII, getting right to the roots of both Marvel Comics and Cap himself. WWII seems like the last war America ever had where the country as a whole still feels like we were unquestionably on the right side, doing the right thing. Steve Rogers is a good, honest believer in the American Dream, given the chance to have his physicality match his strength of heart. Despite all my cynicism, to this day a well-written Captain America lets me set aside all the irony and detachment and other bullcrap and just root for an ideal. Cap might be a blond white guy, but he has room in his heart for all races, colors, and creeds. He won’t stand for tyranny, whether from a foreign government or from his own (and I’m not talking “OMG they raised my taxes!”, but actual infringement of liberties). Based on that, his attitude in the Marvel Civil War was no real surprise, although the details of his actions were hit and miss for me.

Anyhow, Captain America is one of my favorite Marvel characters there is, and the continuation of his popularity into modern times makes me feel good. Because he’s a good guy, and represents America as the Good Guy, in that strong, by-example way where he doesn’t have to constantly keep ranting to everyone around him that he’s the greatest. John Wayne used to pop braggarts like that in the mouth.

Just sayin’.