Confession: My Envy – Sequential Art & Serial Storytelling (comics)

I’m not much for envy, I think it’s a self-depreciating emotion and state of mind. But I’m also human, so I’ve got my weaknesses like everyone else. As a writer, there are three major reasons why I envy guys like Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Brian Azzarello, and Brian Michael Bendis who write serialized stories that get drawn by talented, visionary artists — some of the best in the entire sequential storytelling industry of comic books:

• The collaborative aspect 
• The visual realization of their characters and settings
• The serialization of their stories

• “We’re working in realtime on this one. We agreed on the general concepts just a couple of hours ago, and will spend the next few days in development on it, to see what we’ve actually got.”
• “This is all still as rough as a bear’s arse, on my end. There are other details to the above in other emails, I haven’t yet combined it all into a clear document or a handy logline. But this is the point where we know where we are, where we’re going, and the parameters for what we’re going to do.”
• “Sometimes it works like this. You can’t choose what part of a story comes to you first. Sometimes you think of a setting first. Sometimes an interesting plot progression drops into your head and you find yourself looking for somewhere to put it, instead. Sometimes it’s the title first, or a character name, or even a line of dialogue from nowhere that kickstarts the whole thing. There’s no hard and fast method, no laws about how this works. Every job is different. Mike and I are just showing you how this one starts.”

And then, of course, seeing Mike Oeming’s visualizations…ah, synergy!