Un-Mentionable Dialogue

By Martijn Form

Well, we got a nice Vertigo Monday for you. Today my dear colleague and editor Keith Dallas steps in do a guest "Vertigo Spotlight" for this week, which gives me the opportunity to read even more Vertigo comics.

Keith interviewed the illustrious John Whalen about the Vertigo series The Un-Men. Of course as an Vertigo addict, I have all the individual issues, but I'm also buying the trade to give as a present to any non-Vertigo believer.

So for now allow me to leave the stage to make room for Keith…





Vertigo's Un-Men Vol. 1: Get Your Freak On TPB arrives in stores this week. It collects the first five issues of Un-Men presenting a story that can be best described as part Swamp Thing tie-in, part religious cult murder mystery, part reality television show satire, part In-group/Out-group case study, and--of course--part freak show. You're not likely to find a more multi-faceted comic book in the current marketplace.

What doesn't get enough mention though is the brilliant dialogue writer John Whalen crafts for The Un-Men. On nearly every page of every issue is a witty one-liner, a hysterical non-sequitur, or a bizarre exchange. It's fantastic, off the wall dialogue that befits a story involving fantastic, off the wall characters.

Recently, I contacted Whalen to discuss the The Un-Men dialogue… and we also got the opportunity to have a bit of fun.



Keith Dallas (KD): I have to tell you that as fascinating as the Un-Men story is, what's really getting me to read every new issue is the dialogue. There's nary a cliché or hackneyed or stale line. I can't even imagine that amount of time you must put into writing each page. Can you elaborate on your approach to writing The Un-Men dialogue?

John Whalen (JW): Like you said, with a premise this outrageous and a cast of characters this bizarre, the dialog ought to have a pretty high freak factor, too. Freaks say the darndest things. And -- hopefully, sometimes -- funny things. I've always been a fan of comedic dialog that's character-driven, as opposed the kind of wiseacre dialog you get in most TV sitcoms… you know, those jokey, knowing quips that all sound like the writer's voice, no matter which character is speaking them. It's a lot harder to write funny lines that seem to come naturally from a character's established personality. Not that I always succeed, but I do try to get into the heads of the characters--scary as that sounds--and write dialog that they might actually say, rather than a snarky line that some punk writer thought was clever. Although I admit to writing a few of those, too.

It definitely helps to have a great artist, as the The Un-Men does in Mike Hawthorne, who can draw a whole range of subtle expressions and essentially make the characters "act" on the page. That reduces the amount of expository dialog I have to write, and frees up balloon space for those weird character moments.

I'm an anal retentive perfectionist, so I sometimes keep revising dialog all the way up to handing off the script to the lettering department. But some characters just seem to write themselves in one pass. For some reason that probably shouldn't be analyzed too closely, I find it easy to write dialog for asshole characters.

KD: HA! Okay, I'll let that comment stand on its own.
Let's try this instead: I'd like to spotlight specific lines of dialogue from each chapter of "Get Your Freak On." I'll pick my favorite lines of dialogue while you select the lines that stand out to you. Perhaps they are the lines you're most proud to have written or ones that you had to revise extensively or ones that your readers have complimented most. I'll let you determine the criteria for selection.
You up for that?

JW: Sure.

KD: I'll go first. Chapter One of "Get Your Freak On" is just chock full of wonderful lines of dialogue. They come at the reader fast and furious and from the mouth of just about every character. I'm fond of several lines from this chapter ("He's one for the record books: Half Human, Half-Crappie, Half Shit-Knows-What"; "Is that a third arm... or are you just happy to see me?"; "I gotta admit, the doctor's got TVQ. The Creepy Kind, like Trump"), but ultimately, I'm going to go with Toddson's warning to Janus that the "American Freak" reality television show isn't a done deal: "I can tell you at the first whiff of Bad P.R., the network will pull out of this deal faster than an Irish-Catholic on Father's Day."
I love it because the sexual analogy was so unexpected that it forced me to stop reading, visualize the analogy and chuckle at the ethnic humor. Well done!
Your turn.

JW: I'm partial to Janus Jr.'s summation of the gory rehearsal for the reality TV show. Setting the scene: Dr. Von Schadel – which is the "stage name" of the Un-Men leader, Cranius – has just sewn and stapled together a new Un-Man who is half horse and half human. This bloody preview of the upcoming series causes the network TV producer, Todd T. Toddson, to lose his lunch, and Janus Jr. to sneer, "You can't make an omelet without hack-sawin' a few torsos!" There's no punch line there, but I wanted the dialog to highlight Janus Jr.'s various personality flaws: He's a crude, insecure fuckup who is literally conjoined to his more refined, competent father, Janus Sr. To compensate for his lack of stature and talent, Junior tries to talk tough, but usually fucks even that up, as he does here with this awful malapropism.

KD: True, true.
Here's my next choice: in Chapter Two of "Get Your Freak On" Cranius prepares his un-anaesthetized "patient" for brain surgery by warning him that "I'm afraid this will be invasive."

Yeah! It's going to be just A BIT invasive. The juxtaposition of Cranius' declaration and the action he's about to perform is perfect.

JW: Again, I’ll go with Janus Jr., who gives a pathetic little speech just after slipping Niko, the unattainable object of his lust, a roofie: "I'll tell you what's funny: Livin' your whole life in a fuckin' MEAT papoose…. Havin' to DRUG your old man, just so you can JERK OFF in private…. And havin' to borrow his plumbing to do it." Ew. Sorry for the schematic detail there. But I do like that sad little soliloquy because it shows exactly why the little creep has gone so wrong in life. And I have to admit, I felt a bit sorry for him after writing that scene.

KD: And just before that, Janus Jr. has that great line about "A toast to… er… MOUNTING the future" as he leers at Niko's breasts.
My selection for Chapter Three might be a bit juvenile, but I cannot stop laughing at Cranius' shouting "Tell it to Der Metacarpals!"
This might be because I have two daughters who watch Nickelodeon religiously, and as a result, they're now constantly saying these non-vulgar (yet still insufferably obnoxious) verbal dismissals like "Whatever!" and "Talk to the Hand!" So some time after I read Un-Men Chapter 3, I was arguing with one of my daughters, and before she could deliver her counter-point, I held up my hand and yelled, "Tell it to Der Metacarpals!" The statement confused her so completely that she immediately gave up the argument. So for one night at least I was victorious, and I thank you for aiding that.

JW: Happy to help. I'll go with an obvious one, too. It's one of those punchline gags that I just got finished dissing. So sue me. I'm a hypocrite. Anyway, I'm talking about the panel in which Kilcrop, the government agent and our protagonist, first meets Cranius (a brain on a hand) and his headless, telepathically controlled body, Otto ("my personal ottoman"). Cranius has just introduced himself as a doctor, and Kilcrop, looking at them sitting side by side, quips just as cleverly as a punk writer, "Let me guess: You're ear, nose, and throat… And he's all kinds of malpractice."

Thank you, I’ll be here in all week!

KD: At the beginning of Chapter Four Cranius smacks Janus Jr. to stop his crying, which provokes Janus Jr. to say, "Ow, doc. No need to go all HMO on me."

Of course, for most anyone the term "HMO" has a negative connotation, but I love how you made it into pejorative adjective here. And again, it's Janus Jr.'s non-sequitur delivery that turns the whole page into amusing magic.

JW: I love writing crazy "stage business" for Mike Hawthorne to illustrate – incidental action that visually explains some of the bigger absurdities inherent in these characters. Like, for instance, how does Cranius, a face/brain grafted to a hand, eat when he has no apparent digestive system? In this issue, we did a short sequence showing Cranius jumping into and luxuriating in a nasty bowl of fish guts and squid tentacles (SPLORSH). It's Mike's art that really sells the scene and makes me laugh, but Cranius's dialog explains what's going on: "I would offer you an osmotic soak in a protein-rich bisque of chum and offal, Mr.Toddson, but I do not think it would be to your taste. Ahhhhh. You see, when one lack a digestive tract, one must adapt."

So there, all you Internet wiseguys: Stop asking how the hell a brain on a hand manages to eat.

KD: For Chapter Five I'm going to select Toddson's gleeful shout about the debut of the "American Freak" reality television show: "The Instant Ratings are in. Screw you, Mark Burnett! We're a Smash Hit!"

The direct mention of one of reality television show's architects re-emphasizes one of Un-Men's themes. I love how the studio audience reacts to the horrific bedlam on stage with desensitized approval. It's all so surreally demented, yet at the same time an accurate presentation of the American culture's acceptance of "reality programming" as "unreal entertainment."

JW: Okay. This one isn't actually dialog—it's a sound effect. But sound effects are really hard to write. It's a thin line between onomatopoeia and run-on consonants. The big action scene on the TV set is so over the top I wanted to end it with an appropriately ridiculous bang. When Cranius, who is riding on Otto's shoulders, has Otto pull a gun from his pocket, it's quite naturally a German Luger (Cranius speaks in a Teutonic accent). A standard "BLAM" didn't seem right, so when Cranius fires the pistol into the air, it goes "KER-BLÜFT!," complete with umlaut.
Okay, that wasn't really a dialog bit, so here's one more: Surveying the wreckage of his television set after disaster strikes, Cranius mutters, "Got im Himmel!" Toddson, who has just seen his hit series literally crash and burn, answers, "No! Not God in Himmel! Me back in freakin' Modesto, thanks to you, you sawed-off deviant bastard!"

See, jokes about Modesto are always funny. Fresno works too.

KD: I'll make sure to remember that.
And that was the final chapter of "Get Your Freak On." That was fun! Thanks for playing along! You up for doing this again for the second Un-Men trade paperback?

JW: Absolutely!

KD: Fantastic! Until then, keep up the great work on Un-Men!



Martijn here, again, to thank Keith for filling in with such a cool and interesting interview.

Next week I’m back with my own interesting interview with Northlanders colorist Dave McCaig who can make any landscape covered with snow into a massacre filled with gallons of blood. Hehe, can’t wait.

So folks, you may thank Keith and John for their efforts and till next week. Same channel different nightmare.

And remember. Countdown is Final, but Vertigo is Forever.