Info Overload & Battered Notebooks
Let’s jump right into it this week.
===
So, the nominations for the 2019 Eisner Awards are now out there.
In the short comic category, Life During Interesting Times by Mike Dawson features from The Nib. The comic dwells on the conflict and disasters of the past (specifically WW2) and juxtaposes against it the very clear, and present danger of climate change.
The strip, being web based, is tailor made to be read on a screen. There are no tiers as such here as in a traditional print comic. Instead Dawson has the panels run down a central axis with plenty of white space down either side.This, of course, draws the eye straight to the content that matters, the strip itself.
Dawson toys again with some of the more traditional structures of print based media, specifically panel shape. It’s probably no accident that most of the panels being presented are shaped and orientated portrait-wise like the screen of a mobile phone. We receive the majority of our information via these portals of light nowadays so it makes sense to incorporate some of the aesthetic across to a comic strip, even if the strip itself isn’t directly referencing technology, phones, etc.
But, by choosing this shape and placing image after image beneath the previous one (and sometimes laying them over each other), Dawson produces a kind of ‘drip drip’ effect that sometimes becomes a flood, subtly evoking the way in which information and current events are presented to us in the here and now.
This is perhaps best seen in the sequence where Dawson lays panel after panel of some of the atrocities committed during World War 2 until images of dead bodies almost become overwhelming. Dawson then switches to pictures of individuals laying them all atop each other once more before, again, overwhelming the reader by inviting us to consider the person, singular, against the mass of bodies we’ve just been shown.
The idea of the human brain being unable to fathom the ‘scale’ of history until after the fact is hugely important to the piece as a whole. We are overwhelemed with information about the things that are happening to the planet right now, but are unable to comprehend any kind of plan or the enormity and complexity of the problems we face. So, instead we rely on others to provide the solution, only making sense of the disaster once it has passed.
Are we going to do the same with climate change? Or can we act now to ensure, as Dawson says, that these stories are never told?
Next up: Tom King and Jason Fabok’s short, ‘The Talk of the Saints’ from the Swamp Thing Winter Special (DC).
Links
The short fiction pick of the last two weeks goes to this tremendous tale, The Blanched Bones, the Tyrant Wind by Karen Osborne over at Fireside Fiction.
===
CrimeReads has a nice overview of one of my childhood perennials, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series.
===
They also recently featured a two part roundtable discussion on the state of the ‘mystery’ genre by a slew of Edgar Award nominated writers. Part One can be found here and Part Two is here.
===
A short, but excellent, post on the different approaches to violence in Fallout 3 and it’s sibling Fallout: New Vegas.
“Throughout the beginning of New Vegas it establishes that the familiar enemies of Fallout 3 are, here at least, not all cannon fodder for your character to mindlessly kill. Instead they belong to factions and are at the very least cared about by others.”
===
Robert Macfarlane is one of the writers when it comes to landscape and nature. A piece recently featured on the Penguin blog about working in notebooks for his new book Underland.
Be still my beating heart.
“People sometimes ask me why I don’t use a phone to take notes when I’m ‘out’ in the field. The answer is that phones smash, while notebooks bend. I also like the way that notebooks record where they’ve been not just in terms of what’s written in them, but also in terms of the wear they bear as objects.”
===
Vanity Fair challenged screenwriter Emily Carmichael to write a movie scene in 7 minutes, explaining her process along the way. She then received notes to improve/change the scene. The video is an interesting look into how a scene starts as the bare bones before being fleshed out:
===
I’m off to bask in the extra day of ‘rest’ the UK Bank Holiday affords me.
See you in two!