Who's Who in the CBU 2010

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Mind Your Language!

By Regie Rigby

I was watching Buffy a couple of nights ago, and I was suddenly struck by the thought that the show is utterly devoid of realism.

I don’t mind the Vampire infestations or supernatural phenomenon that seem to be common place in Sunnydale - hey I’ve never been to California, for all I know the place is teeming with blood sucking fiends. Nor do I mind the fact that all the students at Sunnydale High - even the geeks - are slim, beautiful and have perfect skin. Again, I’ve never been to California, but I’m told that six foot blonde women in bikinis and tall guys with chiselled chins and washboard stomachs come as standard over there.

No, I mean the fact that nobody in Sunnydale ever ever swears. Never. Not once. Not when huge tarantula spiders crawl out of their text books. Not when their lunch morphs into venomous snakes. Not when the Principle gets eaten by demonic hyenas. Never.

Mind you, when you think about it this is not a phenomenon which confines itself to Sunnydale. No indeed. They don’t swear in Gotham City either, and you think the good citizens of Gotham would have more reason to than most. If you believe what you read in Spider-Man the good citizens of New York are equipped with equally sedate vocabularies. Truth is, you’d be hard pressed to find any swearing in any comic that doesn’t have a “Mature Readers” label on the cover.

You certainly won’t find any at all in a comic bearing the “Approved by the Comics Code Authority” label. The comics code has three rules relating to dialogue, the first of which being:

Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings - judged and interpreted in terms of contemporary standards - are forbidden.

Hmm. Not very surprising that Warren Ellis doesn’t write many CCA approved books then, is it? Rules like this open all the usual censorship debates - What are contemporary standards? Who makes that judgement? More to the point, why do they make that judgement? Why are some words deemed to be off limits?

Now, I know that books approved by the comics code are intended for readers of all ages, which means that kids will read them. But I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be protecting them from. Apart from anything else, kids use that kind of language anyway, as anyone who lives near a school playground will happily testify. I’d go as far as to agree with the Scottish comedian Billy Connelly, who said something along the lines of “There’s no such thing as bad language, only good language used badly".

However, for once, I’m not about to launch into a two thousand word rant about the pointlessness of censorship. (Not this week anyway - it’ll probably happen sometime though)

You see, I have no problem with the use of “bad” language. I love Preacher and Sin City and Transmetropolitan and many more of the foul mouthed book currently out there. I think that as a rule the characters talk in a realistic way. People swear all the time in real life, and in novels, and movies and on TV. Why should comics be any different?

Obviously “bad” language has been around in underground and independent comics for decades, but it’s only in the last ten years or so that more mainstream books have used it. Writers such as Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison have made verbal profanity common place, although even now, there are some words they don’t seem to be able to use.

The question of profanity is of course a vexed one, and there are many classes of “bad” words. Some words are considered blasphemous by one religion or another. Other words refer to what might be described as “indelicate bodily functions” and sexual activity. Finally we have what is (for me at least) the most offensive class of all - words used to denigrate and insult.

I’m always faintly bemused by the level of offence each category seems to cause. The blasphemous words for example seem to be more acceptable than those relating to bodily functions, even amongst people of Faith. Aside from terms of racial abuse, which thankfully have also become socially unacceptable, words used as terms of abuse are also often regarded as quite mild.

Back in the 50’s the radical comedian Lenny Bruce argued that you should use offensive language as often as possible. The idea was that if you use a word often enough you rob it of it’s power and it becomes just another word. Bruce would curse and swear on stage, using racist and sexist language to the point where he was often arrested for obscenity.

I see Bruce’s point, flawed though it is, and I heartily approve of this linguistic liberalisation. But at the same time, I remain a little ambivalent on the subject because I just love the fact that the prohibition of swearing in many books makes writers think just a little bit more creatively. It’s true that nobody Swears in Gotham City, or in Mega-City One. But the citizens of these fine urban jungles are not without a rich vocabulary of expletives.

The British anthology title 2000AD probably has some of the best made up swear words of all. The title’s flagship character, Judge Dredd has words like “Grud” and “Drokk”. Elsewhere you will find words like, “Sneck”, “Zarjaz”, “Grexnix”, and my personal favourite - “Funt”. I just love the way that they made up a word that somehow manages to sound even more offensive than a “real” swear word. It’s not just British books that do this though. Alan Grant’s version of Lobo is often heard to refer to someone as a “Bastich”. I love that word!

You see, in the end, we come back to Billy Connelly’s point. The use of so called swear words is not in itself a bad thing. Words are for the most part neutral, it is the meanings we ascribe to them that make them contentious. But over use of such words is often indicative of the fact that language is being used badly.

In real life, people tend to fall back on foul and abusive language when they are losing an argument and they know they’re wrong, or when they have nothing intelligent to say. The same is true in fiction. Whilst a certain amount of swearing makes for realistic dialogue, it is also often a sign of lazy writing - or worse, of shock tactics.

Getting certain swear words into print can even become an end in itself. I remember talking to Grant Morrison at the UK Comic Art Convention just after the first issue of The Invisibles came out. He was pleased by the critical acclaim the book was getting, but somehow seemed even happier that he’d managed to get away with having the word “Fuck” in large letters in the opening pages. I have since heard other Vertigo writers bemoaning the fact that they can’t use a certain word beginning with “C” (which I am also not going to use - if it’s too offensive for Vertigo readers I’m not risking alienating anyone either), and describing the use of that particular word as being the next “big challenge”.

I can’t help thinking that this is not a good way to go about writing comics - or anything else. Ticking profanities off a check list as you manage to sneak them past you editor is a little like carving notches on your bedpost to mark your one night stands. Satisfying in the short term, but ultimately sad and unfulfilling.

Like I said, it’s not about “bad words” it’s about bad writing. The likes of Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis get away with the prolific use of profanity because their work is (usually) well written, thoughtful, entertaining and funny. They use their language well. It’s not the swearing that make these books “Adult”, but the content. If only everyone would use language so well...