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09 August 2006 @ 09:03 am
comic book storytelling  
The ideal of a comic book is to tell a story so well wedded between words and pictures that it's incomplete without one of those aspects. More or less any comic book does that as a run of the mill storytelling aspect, with occasional forays into all-silent issues or, in Terry Moore's case, periodic breaks into actual prose when there's too much story to tell in a short period of time through art and limited wordspace. More, perhaps, than many storytelling formats, it's rare to see the genre used to its full effect. This may be of particular difficulty to accomplish with me as a reader, because while bad art can make me not read a comic book, my method of reading one tends to be words first, art, unless it's exceptionally beautiful, a distant second.

JLA #0 is easily the best comic book, in terms of not only telling a story whose impact is equally powerful in both visuals and in language, but also in terms of combining those elements so incredibly well that the idea of telling this story any way than how they did it is actually causing me physical pain, that I've ever read.

It's an issue about the relationship between Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, which has been badly strained by events in the DC universe over the last year. It moves back and forward through time, from the first inception of the JLA to the most current incarnation, and it uses the art styles of the appropriate eras: the first pages are in 1950s style art, one frame even being in stippled four-color print.

Almost every turn of the page puts you in the right era with the barest glance at the artwork: you don't have to read the words to know you're looking at "Yesterday", as the script tells you. You see that this is a story told originally in the 70s, in the 90s, in the 80s; when the story flashes forward to "Tomorrow", the styles aren't quite what we see in comic art today, the costumes are a little modified from how the holy triumverate wear them today. The older eras are, of course, easier to pick out in terms of art style, but even someone as casually interested in the DC universe as I am can almost instantly recognize that the Tomorrow scenes aren't stories that've been told in our world yet.

There are four points of view in the comic: each of the main characters, and an omniscient narrator who tells us that it's tomorrow, yesterday, today, and offers a little context for the story as it flows through time.

And it flows beautifully. Each transition is carried by the text and even as you're brought forward half a century or more in real years, what you're reading is so well written and so well connected to the characters that it's incredibly easy to accept and follow their memories as they think about one another and their own context in relation to each other. There's power and pain and friendship and regret and love interwoven into how the story is told, into each point of view and each conflict and each frustration and into each character's fear and alienation and hope. It is beautifully, beautifully done.

I have, in the past, read comics which had great power and great social commentary and which I've considered to be the best comic book I'd ever read. Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan #5, the Mary story, is a particular case. It was a brilliant story, the best individual comic book I'd ever read, but JLA #0 as an art form blows it out of the water. I've never seen anything use the comic book structure so incredibly well before. I'm genuinely in awe, not only of the writer, Brad Meltzer, but also of the more than fifteen artists who turned their hand to helping tell this story and who did so with absolutely phenomenal skill. Now *that* was a comic book.
Current Mood: goodgood
Current Music: ray of sunshine
Harold Zablehzatz on August 9th, 2006 01:04 pm (UTC)
I agree. JLA #0 was a fine comic book.

I'm not quite as much of a JLA fanatic as a Superman fanatic; I only own about 400 JLA's as opposed to about 1600 Superman books. But I appreciated that every small section got the characterization right, even in sync with what the characters' attitudes towards each other were or would be at the time.

Now, if you're looking for another fine comic book, go out and get the latest Astro City special. Busiek, as always, does a fine job of capturing the best elements of the medium.
kit: comicsmizkit on August 9th, 2006 02:45 pm (UTC)
I'm not a fantatic of either, but wow, they did a nice job of characterization through all of that. I thought the ... what, 4th to last or so page, where they're all converging, was just heartbreakingly beautiful.

I haven't read any Astro City. I take it I should?
Harold Zablehzatz on August 9th, 2006 02:53 pm (UTC)
Probably. As I've said, they're very well executed.

I'd loan you a copy, but the handoff would be a bit tricky.
kitmizkit on August 10th, 2006 08:13 am (UTC)
*laugh* I could probably borrow it more locally, or even stand around in a bookstore and read it. :)
das_uberdas_uber on August 10th, 2006 10:34 pm (UTC)

Heck yes. Based on your comics-related posts, I suspect you'd like them.