Name: David Gallaher Birthdate:
06/05/1975 Birthplace:
Honolulu, Hawaii Occupation:
Freelance writer and marketing
consultant. Base of Operations:
Baltimore. Detroit. New York.
Pittsburgh. Political
Stance: Liberal Socialist Favorite
Films: Vertigo, Memento,
Citizen Kane, Rope, Superman Influences:
Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Tom
Waits, Alfred Hitchcock
Current
Works: YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY
DOLLAR, 2003, Moonstone Books MOONSTONE
MONSTERS: GHOSTS, 2003, Moonstone
Books VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE:
TREMERE, 2003, Moonstone Books MORE
FUND COMICS, 2003, Sky-Dog Press
Additional
Works: In addition to his
work in the field of comics
and marketing, David has developed
advertising for print, television,
and new media for companies
such as Marvel Comics, Verizon,
Saturn, Miller Brewing Company,
and Sylvan Learning Center,
has taught for the Maryland
Public School System, and is
currently on the Board of Directors
for Education Innovations in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
While Expressionism and Baroque did not create emotionalism in art, the movement certainly established a foundation upon which other forms of art could build upon. Both periods used the common human experience to draw the viewer into a different world. It was cultural context that helped give these forms of art ‘life’, as reflected by Wil Eisner:
Comprehension of an image requires a commonality of experience. This demands of the … artist an understanding of the reader’s life experience if his message is to be understood. An interaction has to develop because the artist is evoking images stored in the minds of both parties. The success or failure of this method of communicating depends upon the ease with which the reader recognizes the meaning and emotional impact of the image. Therefore, the skill of the rendering and the universality of form chosen is critical. The style and the appropriateness of technique become part of the image and what it is trying to say.1
Eisner illustrates his point in the following example:
2
As Eisner explains, “The ‘meaning’ of this title is conveyed by the employment of a commonly recognized configuration of a tablet. A stone is employed – rather than parchment or paper, for example, to imply permanence and evoke the universal recognition of Moses’ Ten Commandments on a stone tablet. Even the mix of the lettering style – Hebraic vs. a condensed Roman letter – is designed to buttress this feeling.” 3
“If pictures can,” as McCloud notes, “represent invisible concerns such as emotions and the other senses – then the distinction between pictures and other types of icons like language which specialize in the invisible may seems a bit blurry …[but, within] the living lines of these pictures is the primordial stuff from which a formalized language evolved.” 4
Following that logic, one may note that the purest form of illustration is the ‘line.’ The line in and of itself is an expression and an extension of ourselves. Our minds decipher lines as images decipher those images as linguistic symbols corresponding them to particular moods and feelings based on our cultural backgrounds – thus we make the invisible visible. We transform the abstract into something concrete, imbuing the lines with meanings where none exist at all.
“The longer any form of art or communication exists,” McCloud adds, “The more symbols it accumulates … the visual vocabulary has an unlimited potential for growth. Within a given culture these symbols will spread quickly until everybody knows them at a glance.” 5
To create the visual vocabulary that is needed in comics, writers and creators have developed scripting methods that mirror other visual genres. As Shulevitz contends:
By telling a story visually, instead of through verbal description, a picture book becomes a dramatic experience: immediate, vivid, moving. A picture book is closer to theater and film, silent films in particular, than any other kinds of books. 6
Given that comparison, consider the following analogy: The page is to the stage as the line is to the actor. Keeping the line within the proscenium arch of the page allows a creator to direct it wherever and however the story needs to be told.
When I came to the end of doing The Spirit, I realized that I was telling a story to an audience who's attention span had been affected by film, so I began to employ aspects of film into my stories. Later on, when I started A Contract with God, I went back and decided to look at the elements of live theatre so as to get closer to the characters and closer to their reality…The theatre presents an intimacy that I am constantly trying to pursue. Everything I write is done with that in mind. That, by the way, is the difference between comics and film. 7
Not unlike filmmakers and playwrights, comic writers are required to think visually about their projects, acting as not only as a just a mere writer but also as a director of the ‘paper film,’ as seen in this example of a comics page from Marvels: 8
Page Seven - 4 panels
[7.1] Big panel, showing a flaming “4” symbol over Manhattan. This is from Strange Tales 123 (page 8), and is actually created by the Torch out of his flame-trail, not one of those flare-guns the FF have.
No copy
[7.2] Street-level scene, showing pedestrians goggling upward, cars stopped and people craning to see, etc. Not the same intensity of reaction that Captain America got, but they’re not blasé yet, either -- New Yorkers haven’t yet come to see this sort of stuff as ordinary.
1 Guy in crowd: The Human Torch!
2 Cabbie: No kiddin’, mallet-head! Didja think it was the Hulk, maybe?
3 Woman: A Fantastic Four Alert Signal!
4 Woman: I wonder what mission they’re off on now?
[7.3] Phil and Schwed at the window of Schwed’s office, looking down at the people in the street, not up at the flaming 4. Phil is holding camera; he is just taken a picture.
5 Phil: Let me just point out that those people down there are New Yorkers, Mr. Schwed.
6 Phil: They see this kind of thing all the time.
7 Phil: Think about how they’d react in Chicago, San Diego, Peoria --
[7.4] Schwed grins, admitting defeat.
8 Publisher: All right, all right. I don’t need to have a house fall on me.
9 Publisher: I’ll give your agent a call. We’ll talk terms.
10 Phil: Great!
The above sequence of events is action oriented and though they scenes are carried mostly by dialogue, the scene descriptions give the reader a general idea of how the background is an important part of the story. The reference to Strange Tales is a visual reference to cue the artist onto how the visuals for will set the tone of the scene, while phrases like ‘Big Panel’ and ‘Street Level Scene’ further illustrates how expansive the scene is. Not unlike the film, the utilization of various camera shots and angles [Zoom In, Pan Left, Cut To, etc…] allows for smooth transitions and a greater sense of movement. While stylistically, comic-book scripting varies from writer to writer, the methodology of ‘writing in pictures’ is a practice that is shared in other medium such as film, as seen in the following script excerpt from the Shawshank Redemption: 9
TWO SHORT SIREN BLASTS issue from the main tower, drawing everybody’s attention to the loading dock. The outer gate swings open … revealing a gray prison bus outside.
CON Fresh fish! Fresh fish today!
Red is joined by Heywood, Skeet, Floyd, Jigger, Ernie Snooze. Most cons crowd to the fence to gawk and jeer, but /red and his group mount the bleachers and settle in comfortably.
INT. – PRISON BUS – DUSK
Andy sits in back, wearing steel collar and chains.
RED (VO) Andy came to Shawshank Prison in early 1947 for murdering his wife and the fella she was bangin’
The bus lurches forward, RUMBLES through the gates. Andy gazes around, swallowed by prison walls.
RED (VO) On the outside he’d been vice-president of a large Portland bank. Good work for a man as young as he was, when you consider how conservative banks were back then.
Both script examples make use of what literary scholar, Henry James, called the ‘Theory of Illumination’10. James’ theory states that whenever the main character of a story [in the above examples, Phil and Andrew, respectively] comes in contact with other character, those characters must shed light upon some previously unknown section of their life. What is so interesting about the above examples is that, while they are structured in a very contrasting manner, these scenes still manage to add richness and texture to the main characters. In the Marvels example, although we never see the Fantastic Four in the scene, the mere mention of their name reveals Phil’s unending enthusiasm over the debut of these new super-powered beings; while in the second example, although the main character, Andrew, remains silent during the scene, Red through ‘voice over’ enlightens the reader as to his plight and his motivations. In one scene the main character is illuminated by the obfuscated supporting cast, while in the other, it is the supporting cast that reveals elements of the main character while he remains silent.
In visual media, images are used to ‘throw light on words’ in an effort to ‘show not tell’ what the reader is going to see next. [The term ‘reader’ still retains its validity, for instead of reading just the text, once can also ‘read’ the image.] Pictures also seek to ‘clarify the words because they make the subject matter concrete, closer to the way we perceive the world. This clarification comes from accurately representing the literal meaning and then going beyond that by representing the mood and feelings of the words.”>11 Images have the ability to burn into our unconscious memory regardless of presentation [be it film, comics, a slideshow or a chalkboard] and are used to reinforce ideas and principles. To assist in the retention of the images, the presenter must try to abide the simple bromide of ‘less is more’, which means that in order to convey more information visually, the information should be presented with greater reductionism; as Uri Shulevitz adds:
Although details can enhance a pictures’ readability, an overemphasis on details may overwhelm readability. In a good picture, all of the details are well integrated so that does not interfere with the unity of the whole. It is the artist’s job to find a balance between detail and readability of the illustration.12
The artist codifies the words, placing them into cultural context. Whether it is in the form of ‘bullet items’, figures, mnemonic devices or even just simplistic stick figures,’ these images help reinforce the message that is being conveyed. When more details are added to these images, they begin to take on greater meaning, but in the converse, have a greater probability of losing universal ‘reader-identification’.
In order to preserve accessibility, the visual storyteller must find a way to make the invisible visible, a process that Richard Krevolin, author of Screenwriting from the Soul, calls ‘concretizing the abstract.’13 In order to convey tonal, emotional, or mental states, the storyteller must utilize different techniques to add to texture to the story. Some of these techniques include dream sequences, objective correlative, internal monologues, voiceovers and/or thought balloons. [While it is possible that a character just exclaim something like, ‘starting up a magazine is hard work’, that only tells the reader that the work is hard. In order to convey the message, a storyteller must show the difficulties of starting up a magazine. Not only does it serve the purpose of advancing the story but it also aids in ‘reader-identification’. If we understand the character’s struggles we are better able to make his journey our own]; as Krevolin points out:
You want your audience to enter what Joseph Campbell called a state of aesthetic arrest – a temporary state of being in which one loses all sense of time and place and becomes lost in a world of the text; there is only the shared moment of wonder. The audience surrenders all rational thought and allows the power of the moment to overwhelm them, to transport them from their aching joints, complaining spouses, financial problems, and drop them into the magical world of the story.14
A strong visual storyteller scripts in images and writes in pictures. By illuminating the text of the story with strong visual imagery, the storyteller creates a portal, with which the reader can use to escape his/her reality, moving from spectator to participant.
Given the similarities of cinema and sequential art, one might presuppose both forms of visual communication utilize similar methods of developing ‘aesthetic arrest’ in the viewer. While accurate to a certain degree, one should not dismiss comics as merely ‘paper cinema.’ As Eisner indicates:
Something happens to popular reading habits when it is impacted by a medium like film or radio or television. It affects the reading rhythm of the audience and those working in communication must be conscious of the reading rhythm of their reader. If you lose contact with the reader you are doing a disservice to them. It is much like trying to tell a story to a man running on a treadmill. If you adjust the way you tell the story, to his kind of rhythm you communicate more effectively.15
As our civilization evolved, we have developed a plethora of visual metaphors that have effectively gained universal recognition through cultural encoding. Clarifying the theory, Poet Thomas Merton, writes that a true symbol is more complex than just a mere transformation from the abstract or three-dimensional image to the two-dimensional, “The true symbol does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and reality itself … It is by symbolism that [a person] enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest self, with other [people], and with God.”16
As noted psychologist, C.G. Jung wrote in his work, Aion, “Images are found, empirically, to be expression for the unified wholeness of man. The fact that the goal goes by the name of ‘God’ proves that it has a numinous character … Whenever, therefore, we find symbols indicative of psychic wholeness, we encounter the naïve idea that they stand for God.”17
It is Jung’s belief that while these images do not represent ‘God’ per se, they do share an element of primordial divinity that resides deep within the collective imagination of society. These ‘archetypes,’ as he refers to them, are expressed within the form of myths, legends and stories, which are representative of the collective psychological and social concerns of a culture. By slaying the metaphorical dragons and casting out the demonic manifestations, the heroes in these stories maintain the status quo of the culture – through tragedy or triumph.
NEXT WEEK: PART THREE: CHARLIE BROWN
1 Excerpted from: Comics and Sequential Art. Will Eisner. New York. Poorhouse Press. 1985. Page 13.
2 Excerpted from: Comics and Sequential Art. Will Eisner. New York. Poorhouse Press. 1985. Page 10.
3 Excerpted from: Comics and Sequential Art. Will Eisner. New York. Poorhouse Press. 1985. Page 10.
4 Excerpted from: Understanding Comics. New York: Kitchen Sink Press. 1993. Page 127.
5 Excerpted from: Understanding Comics. New York: Kitchen Sink Press. 1993. Page 131.
6 Excerpted from: Writing With Pictures. Uri Shulevitz. Watson-Guptill. 1985. Page 16.
7 Personal interview. Will Eisner and David Gallaher. Conducted March 24th 2000.
8 Excerpted from: Marvels: Book Two. Script provided by Kurt Busiek. Page 7.
9 Excerpted from: The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver. Syd Field. DTP Paperbacks. 1997. Page 207.
10 Excerpted from: Screenwriting from The Soul. Richard Krevolin. Renaissance Books. 1999. Page 37.
11 Excerpted from: Writing With Pictures. Uri Shulevitz. Watson-Guptill. 1985. Page 15
12 Excerpted from: Writing With Pictures. Uri Shulevitz. Watson-Guptill. 1985. Page 121.
13 Excerpted from: Screenwriting from The Soul. Richard Krevolin. Renaissance Books. 1999. Page 65.
14 Excerpted from: Screenwriting from The Soul. Richard Krevolin. Renaissance Books. 1999. Page 66.
15 Personal interview. Will Eisner and David Gallaher. Conducted March 24th 2000.
16 Excerpted from: Myths to Live By. Joseph Campbell. Princeton. New Jersey. Bollingen. 1976. Page 237.
17 Excerpted from: Aion. Carl Jung. New Jersey. Bollingen. 1978. Page 195.
Has David gotten it right? Have your say on this column at the Golem's Grotto forum.
