It’s often said that it’s the darkest just before the dawn, and, in spite of booming sales, the post-WWII years had been ever-darkening for comics; Janet Murray (Hamlet on the Holodeck) says that “every new medium… from print to film to television, has increased the transporting power of narrative. And every new medium has aroused fear and hostility as a result.”  In 1954, that fear and hostility reached a boiling point when psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, long an advocate for underprivileged children, published Seduction of the Innocent, and laid bare the evils of comics that his research had uncovered including Batman and Robin’s blatant homosexuality and Superman’s (an “un-American” and “Fascist” character in a “crime comic,” according to Wertham) undermining of the parental unit and ability to arouse “fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again.”

Wertham’s 1954 testimony to the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and the publication of Seduction of the Innocent was a crippling blow to the comics industry; Flash artist Infantino remarked (in an interview with Ten Cent Plague author David Hadju), “The work dried up, and you had nowhere to go. You couldn’t say you were a comics artist, and you had nothing to put in your portfolio. If you said you drew comic books, it was like saying you were a child molester.”

While Wertham’s conclusions and leaps in logic have been called into question  since the publication of Seduction nearly six decades ago, it wasn’t until Carol Tilley, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana, immersed herself in Wertham’s papers (released only in 2010) that hard evidence of Wertham’s deceptions was discovered.  Tilley’s resultant article, Seducing the Innocent: Frederic Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics, was published in the November 4, 2012 issue of Information and Culture: A Journal of History.

In the following interview, Professor Tilley and I discuss her findings and look at the broader picture of censorship in American culture.

What was it about the time period, about the American psyche, particularly in the dawn of the Cold War, that made the time ripe for Wertham and his ilk to have the most impact? 

Broadly conceived, the anti-comics movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s was fueled by the same threat and suspicion that seemed to pervade much of American society and culture during these years. Communism was a big bogeyman, prompting public scrutiny, loyalty oaths, censorship campaigns, and more.  That said, it would be incorrect to link Wertham’s rhetoric against comics with anti-Communist initiatives, including either the McCarthy hearings or the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Instead Wertham’s ideas about comics derived from a couple of very different traditions.

First, his arguments against comics were informed by his psychiatric training, which had a strong emphasis in mental hygiene and social psychiatry. These are complementary fields that endeavor to situate mental health and illness within broader social and cultural contexts. For Wertham, reading comics—especially those comics that depicted or encouraged violence—was an undesirable activity that contributed initially to mental ill-health and, ultimately, to social decay.

Second, his ideas about comics bear the influence of the Frankfurt School philosophers such as Theodor Adorno. For these theorists, products of mass and popular culture such as comics served to turn consumers / readers into slaves of capitalism. Wertham was not opposed to visual and literacy arts—his wife Florence Hesketh was an artist, the pair collected art works, and Wertham often quoted from classic literature in his writings. For him, though, comics were mass-produced dreck that exploited both the laborers who created the comics as well as the young people who read them.

What were some of the most blatant and brazen fabrications in Seduction of the Innocent? 

For me some of the most compelling fabrications Wertham perpetrated in Seduction have to do with a young patient named Carlisle, a fifteen-year old truant and petty thief. Carlisle seems to have been one of Wertham’s chief sources of information about comics, as there are numerous transcripted pages of their conversations on the topic. In the book, Wertham turns Carlisle into multiple characters: in one instance he has a conversation with him as two different boys and he appears in at least two other settings as boys of different ages. Beyond this strange multiplication of Carlisles, Wertham also made numerous small changes in wording for Carlisle’s statements, sometimes changing the order of his statements, other times substituting words, and on occasion omitting key portions of statements.

To some readers, these may not seem like especially important fabrications, as seldom are they integral to the force or intent of Wertham’s argument.  Some evidence was unadulterated, but some was. It would take me years of poring over his archival materials and conducting textual analysis to determine what portion of Seduction is problematic from an evidentiary perspective. Would my conclusions differ if I were to do that? Perhaps, but only in terms of being able to quantify the extent of goodness or badness in the evidence. These changes and discrepancies I have found trouble me enough as it is. We all make mistakes, but with the instances I’ve uncovered in Wertham’s evidence, there is a deliberateness and pervasiveness that suggests these were not unintentional mistakes, but rather deliberate changes. From a generous perspective, they suggest carelessness in research and writing. Perhaps they even indicate a bit of authorial embellishment to improve the story. Viewed less charitably, they suggest scientific dishonesty combined with social and cultural imperiousness. Either way—even if the changes were made with the best of intentions—the discrepancies are disrespectful to the young people whose words and experiences Wertham drew on to make his case against comics.

Is mine a modern perspective? It’s difficult for researchers and writers to separate themselves wholly from the time in which they live (that’s true for Wertham too), but even some of Wertham’s contemporaries who had no knowledge of the falsifications I have uncovered took issue with his approach. For instance, Bertram Beck, a social worker who led the Special Juvenile Delinquency Project for the United States Children’s Bureau, wrote to Wertham a month after Seduction’s release, saying,

Your treatment of contrary evidence and, in fact, anyone who disagrees seems to me to be as unscientific as you demonstrate the defenders of the comic book have been. These lapses, inaccuracies, and misinterpretations seem more unfortunate to me since they will alienate some of the professional support which you should have [April 16, 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham papers].

While best known as the man who nearly killed comics, Wertham was also an advocate for underprivileged children, with Seduction of the Innocent being a rallying cry of overprotectiveness. With the fabrications you uncovered in your research, and your access to his personal papers, did you come across anything that spoke to a view on the part of Wertham that “the ends justify the means?”  Did Wertham truly believe that he was acting in the best interest of those whose stories he over-simplified (at best) or manipulated (at worst) to fit his thesis?  

Wertham was genuinely motivated to help people who he believed were vulnerable, whether those folks were young comics readers or children attending segregated schools or patients in psychiatric wards. Yet in his work on children and comics, he seemed early on to have gotten blinded by his dislike of and anger toward comics publishers and others who profited from the industry. As I wrote in my paper, Wertham “gave readers a clear indication that rhetoric must trump evidence: commenting about a colleague, Wertham wrote [Seduction, p. 351], “Neutrality—especially when hidden under the cloak of scientific objectivity—that is the devil’s ally” [Tilley, “Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics, Information & Culture: A Journal of History 47 (4, November 2012)].

Your research also turned up letters from kids who wrote to the Senate Subcommittee trying to save their comics. Talk about your research into how kids have related to comics over time. Is the seeming marginalization of comics (marginalized in that they are no longer the big-selling item they were during WWII or Wertham’s time?) tied to their popularity with kids? Have video games taken over the spot once held by comics? 

Comics were more popular among kids and teens during the 1940s and 1950s than video games are among today’s young people. Regardless of whether it was a marketer or a researcher conducting the survey, studies of comics readership during these decades found that more than 95% of all elementary school-aged children read comic books and comic strips regularly. There was really no difference in readership based on gender or race or intellect or socioeconomic levels. Of course, it wasn’t simply younger kids who read and purchased comics. More than 80% of teens read comics regularly and many adults did as well. The combined readership pushed sales of comics to more than one billion new issues annually in the US alone by the early 1950s and made comics in newspapers the most popular section.

And yes, young people did write both to Wertham and to the US Senate to help these adults understand the role that comics played in their lives. Many of these young writers wanted people to know that reading comics didn’t make them delinquent, that they didn’t read comics to learn to commit crimes. Instead, comics were amusement and entertainment and inspiration. One of the young people who wrote to the Senate, Phil Proctor—who went on to co-found the Firesign Theater—stated in his letter, “We don’t buy these mags because we have a thirst for blood, we buy them for the stories, the snap endings, the artwork, and because they deal with the unknown.” I think many young people might say the same today about video games.

Numerous parallels between the comics inquisition of the 1950s and the current attacks on video games are apparent, such as the pervasiveness and immersiveness of the medium, the derision of an entire medium as violent and blinders to the benefits of the medium. What warning signs should people look out for in the current debate over video game violence?

I don’t feel equipped to talk deeply about comparisons like this one. Some commentators have drawn connections between the anti-comics movement and the current fears about video game violence.

I will say that we are a nation prone to moral panics centered on media and technologies. We all should be critical readers and consumers of research and rhetoric, acknowledge our biases and presuppositions, and ask questions.

The need for critical assessment is especially acute any time children are subjects in or beneficiaries of social science research. We have too much cultural and social baggage when it comes to kids, which results in us demonizing them or protecting them.

Both comics and video games have numerous benefits that are glossed over in debates over their effect on children. What are some of those benefits, and how can we better frame the debate to shine a light on those benefits?  

Comics and video games are both examples of different forms of media. They’re not simply textual or visual or filmic; instead they innovate on these media to create wholly new categories of communicative experiences. Both comics and video games can help those who engage with them develop stronger understandings of narrative and increased ability to empathize. Reading the textual components of comics can encourage enhanced reading fluency.

Can we use comics and video games for intentional learning situations? Of course, we can, but we must remember that they are entertaining and part of the social experience of childhood and adolescence.  Kids should have opportunities to explore these story worlds without being burdened by adults’ instructional or developmental goals. Sometimes kids (and adults) just need to play.

Because comics and video games are new types of media, scholars and policymakers must find new strategies for studying them and new vocabularies for discussing them. We’re making strides here with groups such as the Learning Games Network and various academic journals that publish research on gaming or comics. I don’t know that we need to think of the process of helping comics and video games become normalized as a debate that needs to be reframed. Rather it seems we simply must continue demonstrating that comics and video games are part of our contemporary social and cultural fabric.

Like all media and art, comics and video games can be used for good as well as for evil; they have power. When Wertham was fighting against comics sixty years ago, some comics were indeed lurid, misogynistic, violent dreck. The same can be said about some video games today. And about some films and music and books. We can’t demonize whole types of media and art because we dislike how some people employ them.

Comics and video games can be used to tell important stories—serious, funny, sad, true, and imagined. When the stories trouble us for whatever reasons, let those moments be springboards for conversation with one another rather than for condemnation of the media through which those stories come to us.

Many thanks to Professor Tilley for talking with me. You can follow her on Twitter at @CarolGSLIS.

I’d like to finish out this piece with a few words about artist and former DC Publisher Carmine Infantino, who passed away on April 4, 2013. The beautiful simplicity of his artwork is as indelibly linked to the Silver Age as the bombast of Jack Kirby, the wide-eyed romanticism of John Romita, and the angular human oddities of Steve Ditko. In an era when the legends are leaving us, it is through an appreciation and love of their work and an adherence to their principles of telling entertaining stories filled with wonder that they will remain immortal.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld,  the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, and the writer of the new series, Mystery Illusion Theatre. He is presently at work on his first novel. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

The conference is co-hosted by UCLA’s Denise Mann and USC’s Henry Jenkins. My interview with Henry was an integral part of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation and he was kind enough to interview me in February for his website, Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Henry will be moderating the second panel of the day, Transmedia for a Change, focusing on the civic and societal implications of transmedia storytelling. Panelists include Katerina Cizek, Filmmaker-In-Residence at the National Film Board of Canada; Katie Elmore Mota, Producer and CEO of PRAJNA Productions; Sam Haren, Creative Director of Sandpit; and Mahyad Tousi, Founder of BoomGen Studios.

Additional panels include Revolutionary Advertising: Cultivating Cultural Movements, moderated by Denise Mann; By Any Media Necessary: Activism in a DIY Culture, moderated by Sangita Shrestova; and The eEntepreneur as the New Philanthropist, moderated by Sharon Waxman.

For a complete schedule and list of panelists, visit the Transmedia, Hollywood website. You may purchase tickets at Eventbrite. 

In my interview with Henry Jenkins for Comics, the sad, slow death of Elseworlds popped up:

That’s one of the things that concerns me a little bit, as DC and Marvel are being absorbed into the major media companies is some push-back on the experimentation side of this. Dan Didio, when he spoke to my transmedia class in the fall made it clear that, with DC renumbering and rebooting, that Elseworlds was dead as far as he was concerned. That just seems to me a fatal mistake.

I’d like the rest of the industry to pay attention to Elseworlds as a model of what I call “Multiplicity.” A lot of transmedia has been based on the concept of “continuity,” which comes from comics too, of course. But they’re all about “can we get all the pieces to line up perfectly?” In an industrial context, where these are being built by different divisions of companies, perfect alignment is never going to happen. So, instead of going in that direction, imagine playing with what comics have done and saying “we can explore these characters through multiple lenses” and get interesting things to emerge.

In Chapter 30 of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation, I conducted a thought experiment to integrate comics and other serialized media into the world of Red Dead Redemption. First, I proposed a dime novel about legendary (and lover of his own myth) gunslinger Landon Ricketts, to be read by Jack in the game. Secondly, a comic book done in the Timely/Golden Age style of 1939 featuring Jack Marston as an outlaw after avenging his father’s death in the game. And finally, a modern-era graphic novel that will retell the events of the game through the eyes of antagonist Dutch Van De Linde, revealing that he has been watching Marston throughout the events of the game.

While these theoretical expansions would deepen the world of Red Dead in the comics medium, Rockstar made practical use of the “alternate history/Elseworlds” capability of comics with their third DLC expansion game, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, exploring the characters and world through “multiple lenses,” as Jenkins said. Taking place after Marston’s return to his family but before his death, Undead Nightmare revisits the world of Great Plains, New Austin and Mexico as a zombie plague has taken over the west. Is Undead Nightmare part of the continuity? Is it a nightmare in John Martson’s head? Does it matter? It’s fun!

The Elseworlds imprint in comics and DLCs in games do something that few other media tap into: it makes the character or game a medium in and of itself. More than multiplicity, it demonstrates elasticity, the evolutionary ability of the character, the stretching ability of that character to become more. I talked about this ability in Jenkins’ interview with me:

But, in most cases – such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man – this is where the elasticity of a character – the evolutionary ability of that character – comes into play. Each creative team can build upon, pay homage to, deviate, stretch, and bring their own vision to the character…

Batman represents the most versatile character of the 20th century: he can be a vampire, a Victorian-era crime-fighter hunting Jack the Ripper, a dark gargoyle fighting the evil wizardry of a Rasputin-esque Joker. In the case of Red Dead, the landscape and vistas and gameplay and characters become tools in the creation of new stories on a canvas, stories not necessarily tied to any form of strict continuity.

This idea, this concept of DLCs combined with Elseworlds presents storytellers in any medium – can you imagine a film that integrated this style of content into the home viewing experience? – an opportunity to create more than a story, more than a storyworld. It lets them recast the original story as a new canvas on which to build different experiences and mine the original’s storytelling potential for all its deep-rooted worth, thus creating an experience that can be revisited time and again.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

Henry is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and the author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture, and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Media Consumers in a Digital Age. He is the co-author of the recently-released Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. 

This interview was conducted in January, 2012. Excerpts from this interview originally appeared in Chapter 26 of Comics for Film, Games and Animation. Henry was also kind enough to interview me at his website, Confessions of an ACA/Fan. (Part One | Part Two).

We’ve all been bitten by the comics bug at one point or another. How did it get you? 

I started reading comics – like most people my age — in the 1960s, and i think it was informed by the Batman TV show, which, I suppose as a modern comic fan, I’m supposed to repudiate, but it actually got me excited about the medium and the superhero genre in particular. And then, somewhere, mid-high school, like a lot of people, put it aside and didn’t pay any attention until grad school, early-assistant professor-hood, where I kept seeing really interesting things develop and that was the time period of Watchmen and Dark Knight [Returns] and Maus and so forth, and people kept saying “you gotta see this!” The excitement was infectious, and I got back into comics and over the last 20 years or so, have gotten deeper and deeper into comics until it’s taking over my house!

What is it about them [comics] now that’s keeping you coming back for more? 

Comics is the most compelling of contemporary media because it’s trying so much new stuff just to survive. It’s always on the cusp of collapsing on itself. It’s also the quickest “response medium” in terms of any development in the culture. We could see in comics’  response to 9/11 prototypes for the way the rest of the media were going to respond. But the comics were on the scene — literally in the case of 9/11; they weren’t very far from the World Trade Center, DC and Marvel in particular. They also had quicker turnarounds and there was an interesting moment where the lines between “independent” or “alternative” comics and mainstream comics just completely collapsed. We’ve seen such interesting work coming out there since then. But it’s just part of a larger process of just being the “testing grounds” for ideas about genre, world-building, backstory, seriality that are very much driving the entertainment industry right now. So I see it as my “early warning system” for everything else that I look at.

In terms of my own work, I have one project that’s sort of a little on the back burner right now, it’s on genre theory that’s interested in the superhero in particular and what it means for a genre to dominate a medium as much as a superhero has tended to dominate American comics. How do we think about diversity within genres and combinations within genres and experimentation within genres to account for how rich the superhero has been as a genre that storytellers have mined since the 1930s?

What fascinates me about experimentation in comics is that it really comes from a survival necessity within the medium. You don’t see that “survival instinct” in other media. 

It’s odd, because on one hand, having a readership of roughly 100,000 — 200,000 — readers means the risk is relatively low. Cost of production is low compared to other media so you can take risk. On the other hand [comics are] constantly on the edge of desperation. You have a motivation to take risk when… when you’re going to go down in flames anyway, you might as well take something big with you.

That’s one of the things that concerns me a little bit, as DC and Marvel are being absorbed into the major media companies is some push-back on the experimentation side of this. Dan Didio, when he spoke to my transmedia class in the fall made it clear that, with DC renumbering and rebooting, that Elseworlds was dead as far as he was concerned. That just seems to me a fatal mistake.

I’d like the rest of the industry to pay attention to Elseworlds as a model of what I call “Multiplicity.” A lot of transmedia has been based on the concept of “continuity,” which comes from comics too, of course. But they’re all about “can we get all the pieces to line up perfectly?” In an industrial context, where these are being built by different divisions of companies, perfect alignment is never going to happen. So, instead of going in that direction, imagine playing with what comics have done and saying “we can explore these characters through multiple lenses” and get interesting things to emerge.

An example I use is the reboot of the Star Trek series, where they spent the better first part of the movie just trying to explain something really basic: this is the same characters, just different cast, things might take a different direction. Comics solve that by putting “All-Star” or “Ultimate” in front of the title and saying “this is a different direction.” You can deal with the fact that there’s a main continuity in comics and another version that’s going to explore those stories from a new angle — go with it. Comics can go further and say “this is Superman landing in Russia and fighting for truth, justice, and the Soviet Way” in a way that no mainstream movie has done — so far.

Let’s talk a little bit about comics fandom. What really drives these fans to so passionately follow these comics? 

What I say about almost all fandoms is that they’re born from a mixture of frustration and fascination. Comics fandom is as much that way as any other, which unless you’re fascinated with something, you don’t engage with it over as long a period a time as comics fans deal with it. At the same time, if it fully satisfies you, you’re not going to engage with it as critically or creatively as comic fans deal with it, right?

If you go on the boards with comics fans, they rip everything, right? If you’re a comics artist, you’ve got to have an incredibly thick skin because they’re gonna be the most precise critical readers you can get — and it’s born from love. I think people who understand fandom just as “passion” or “fascination” but don’t understand the frustration don’t get the complexity of that dynamic. It’s because they really care that they’re being incredibly critical. And if they really care and they’re critical, they want to get information as soon as they possibly can, and they like to have input while the decisions are still being made. I think this is a push across all of the media industries right now; fans are spoiling, in part, to head off at the pass, bad decisions where they start to effect the quality of the experience. They have access to more rich sources of information. They have more capacity — collectively — to access, process and respond to information than ever before. And they want to be under the hood helping to make the decisions that effect the franchises they care about.

That’s where “spoiling” starts to come into this. Spoiling in comics in particular used to be not about just antiquating what’s going to happen before it happens, but critically responding to it before it’s printed in ink.

What role then does “the power of anonymity” have in this community? Does it make them more critical in some ways? 

In some cases, yes. I think that’s a classic frame. I’m not sure it matters. You see these guys sitting around in the comic shop or sitting in the Con, they’re every bit as bitchy about this stuff as when you can’t see who they are (laughs). Many of these guys are in the business of building a reputation in terms of their mastery and their critical skills – their access to information and decision makers. The idea that it’s based on anonymousness goes against the idea that it’s about building a reputation. I think a lot of these guys are — I think there are cases where anonymous stuff matters; but I think you could make everything “on the record,” and you wouldn’t fundamentally change the tone.

How much sway do you think that holds with the big companies or independent creators?

I think there’s a very real dialogue that takes place. Some of them are choosing to insert themselves in the middle of that dialogue and some are not. Some of them are making very strong web presences, seeking out that fan feedback, and others are trying to block it out and not interfere with their creative process. It’s where all creative industries are at right now. You suddenly have greater access to the response of  your readers than before — what do you do with that?

It’s always been there. We have stories of Dickens rewriting his serial novels as they’re unfolding based on the response of his readers. That kind of response has always been there. But the amount of it now — and all the industries struggle with “is this fan representative of something other than himself?” Or, even if its a niche of fans, how much does that represent the dominant fan market?

Comics are odd in that way because if you’ve got a hundred thousand readers, the fan forums attract a thousand of them. That’s a pretty different phenomenon than six million viewers of a television show and a thousand of them respond. You’ve got a much larger percentage of the whole participating in online conversation because the readership is so hard-core. The industry — when it gets that — sort of struggles between the response of “you’re not gonna tell me what to do, I’m the creator and I control this” and their position that they’re trying to hold onto a market that’s very precarious. They want to hear what the audience is thinking at every step along the way and if they can head off a decision that’s going to be a costly one, they probably want to do it at this point.

What is it that’s so irresistible about continuity to people? Comics is one of the few media that can really really do it well, and their fan base is so protective of that continuity.

Continuity is a place where fans can demonstrate their mastery. The continuity rewards people who read over time, who read across multiple books. As a publisher, you want to build up that loyalty, you want to make it as eclectic in what it reads as possible; get them reading all 52 books a month. That’s your ideal consumer. Odds they’re not. You’ve got to design continuity in a way that people can pick and choose and it becomes a very complex thing to manage. On the producer side, that’s the biggest hook for consumer loyalty. On the audience side where the payoff comes from being the guy who’s read this book for forty years and knows every issue by number and can tell you when you make a mistake. That mentality rewards the collector –  of the expertise — of fans in a way that few other media do.

What role do you think digital comics are going to have as “the march of time” continues?

Hard to tell. It looks like they’re going to be a sizable chunk of how people consume the mainstream titles. We’re watching the collapse of Borders, of bookstore sales. Barnes and Noble is invested heavily in the Nook, and battles with the publishers are leading to slammed doors on the Barnes and Noble side. Unless you only want to be in the specialty shops, which is a dwindling trade, you’re going to have to go to digital. They’re going to have to rely on Amazon more than they’ve done before. Amazon themselves are seeing that sales of Kindle books have gone up while sales of print books are going down. The entire publishing industry is struggling with it.

I don’t think they’ll have a choice but to reach a point where comics are available “in real time,” via digital media but the price point has to be lowered to reflect the digital publishing.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

I’m a junkie for comics that are all about having a good time, a recapturing of the wonder and escapism of eras past, especially when its filtered through a unique lens. So when Tim got in touch with me about his book, Gargoyle By Moonlight, a “smash-mouth urban fantasy,” I was immediately intrigued with the world he and his collaborators had concocted. It didn’t hurt that we had a shared passion for Hammer Horror and Universal monster movies.

In this interview, Tim and I discuss Gargoyle By Moonlight and the inspirations behind it, as well as the hurdles and perils facing the independent comics creator.

Tell me the story of Gargoyle By Moonlight. What’s it all about? 

Gargoyle By Moonlight is smash-mouth urban fantasy. Think Hellboy on Yancy Street–a loveable brute who spends his nights punching out monsters while dealing with the consequences of a supernatural curse.

Our protagonist, Gary Doyle, is coming to grips with a prophecy that says the curse of one man will be a blessing for mankind. But he doesn’t want to hear that. Doyle wants his old life back. And in the course of a night, he has just a few hours to figure out his destiny. Is he a hero or the monster the world sees him as? When faced with true horror–a demon tearing through the city, obliterating everything–Doyle comes to realize just how important he is to his city, to the world. This story is about him coming to terms with the situation he’s in–that destiny doesn’t always bring you what you want. 

Luckily for Doyle, sometimes destiny also gives you a hand. Doyle is assisted on his journey by two strong women: Chloe and Drina. Chloe is no one’s damsel in need of saving, and Drina is more than she appears to be. One of the things that was fun with these two ladies was writing against type, playing with story tropes. At first glance, Chloe might be dismissed as the “babe scientist,” while Drina may appear to be a caricature. But as the story unfolds, readers see that both women are smart and capable–capable of saving a brutish gargoyle even!

At it’s core, Gargoyle By Moonlight is a story about finding your place in the world. It’s about Doyle’s struggle to accept what he is, what he can do. Can he take up the mantle of the curse the way a hero takes up his cape? Can he accept the responsibility of doing something only he can?

But the gargoyle is not a brooding, moody guy. This comic is a big adventure story. It has a “throwbacky,” fun feel that makes classic comics comics, you know? There’s all the slam-bang action you want, but there’s also rich, real characters on the page trying to figure life out.

What were some of your inspirations for Gargoyle? 

I’ve always been a big fan of monsters and adventure stories. I love monsters, especially the old Hammer and Universal movies: Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf-Man, the Creature From the Black Lagoon. But I also love heroes. So as a writer, there’s always this tension between the darkness and the light in my work. And gargoyles are a perfect symbol of that.

Traditionally, gargoyles were posted to keep away evil, to hold the darkness at bay. But they’re also creepy and grotesque. So in Gargoyle By Moonlight, the protagonist is this monstrous thing, but we shouldn’t fear him. There’s a lot of great tension in that idea. But in the balance between light and dark, good and evil, I wanted to keep things heroic. I like a dark horror tale or a gritty noir as much as the next guy, but also, there’s fun, you know?

I’m a fan of reluctant heroes, characters who rise above their circumstance–even their better judgment–to do the right thing.

But more on influences: I think I unconsciously channeled Marvel’s great monster comics from the seventies. In the late 90s and early 00s, I wasn’t reading a lot of the then-current comic books. The so-called decompressed stories just weren’t working for me, and I didn’t find many of the characters particularly heroic or the storylines that compelling.

I found myself pouring through the back-issue bins, reading a lot of Silver and Bronze Age comics; Marvel and DC; Iron Man, Captain America, Atom and Hawkman. And of course, those monster comics: Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf By Night. A lot of those Silver Age comics can be hokey, but there’s an incredible sense of adventure in them, of possibility. And, despite the golly gee-whiz type of stuff, there’s a lot of high concept stuff to the stories.

Now, I didn’t write Gargoyle By Moonlight until recently, but when I did, I knew I wanted to strike a tone that was heroic, that had that sense of grand adventure. In recent years, I think a lot of the fun has come back to comics, which is great to see. It never left, but I think we’re seeing it more.

While I’m not putting us in the same league as Mark Waid and company, I think fans of his recent Daredevil run or his Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom mini with Chris Samnee are going to love Gargoyle By Moonlight and its street-level Hellboy-type lead working his way to hero status.

What challenges do you see facing independent comics creators? 

One of the biggest obstacles is that comics are created by a team. Yes, there are a lot of great works done by creators that do it all on their own, for example, Matt Kindt. His stuff is brilliant. But for most of us, making comics means finding talented people and working with them toward a common goal. It’s hard to do that.

As a writer, I have to find a talented penciler who shares my vision, or who can at least work with me to bring mine forward. Then there’s an inker, a colorist, a letterer. Everyone is crucial to the success of the final product. When it comes together, it’s magic. But many times…  Well, all these people have day jobs. Usually. And your book might not be their number one priority. So you have to find a balance. You have to work well with people. Even in the best of circumstances, it can be difficult to put together a team of talented people, hold them together for months, and carry things through to putting out a book.

I’ve been blessed to work with great collaborators, but I’ve also had some things fizzle out or get delayed again and again. You’ve got to keep plugging away, eyes fixed on the goal. This is indie comics, there’s no big payout waiting for the team when you’re done. If you want to make comics, you gotta love comics. You have to want to make them. Holding your book in your hand is likely to be the only reward you’re ever going to get. If that’s enough, go make comics.

What has been your greatest hurdle? 

The biggest hurdle I face is getting the word out about Gargoyle By Moonlight and my other comics. Getting exposure, getting people to notice your comic is very hard. You’re competing with everything: movies, TV, games, other comics. And just in comics, there are so many choices. That’s great for the industry, for readers, but having so many comics out there makes it hard to get people to focus on your book.

We have a great book. Gargoyle By Moonlight is a cool, fun concept. It has a great story, and an excellent art team. But how do you convince people of that? You go to Cons, you network, you advertise. But it’s still hard to break through. Even if I could afford a full-page ad in Previews, I don’t think that it would matter. People are bombarded by all kinds of ads and noise–it’s very hard to break through.

As a creator, you find yourself having to reach out in an almost 1-on-1 way. It’s like old-fashioned retail: hand selling your product–even if you’re doing it over the Internet.

I spend hours each day contacting people, reaching out. The Internet makes this easier than ever–but it takes time. A lot of time I should be writing or sending feedback to my collaborators gets spent hustling to get the word out.

Hopefully, though, somebody takes notice. They like your book, they tweet about it, post to Facebook, whatever. You break through and you make a sale.

And that sale isn’t about money. It means someone read your book. And that’s an awesome feeling. Hearing from a reader is the best reward. It keeps you moving through the tough times.

Let me just say to anyone reading this: If you like something, a comic, a movie, an app, whatever, tell people. Tweet about it–not just once but several times. Share links. Write product reviews. Tell the world. All these things are of great service to independent creators no matter what industry they’re in. We depend on you to spread the world about the cool stuff you love.

A filmmaker wants to try their hand at comics – what’s the one piece of advice you’d give them? 

Become familiar with the visual vocabulary of comics and the economical way of storytelling. Comics can look easy: it’s words and pictures, right? But it’s not film. In comics, you’re limited in many ways. It’s a much tighter format, both in action and dialogue.

Action-wise, you get one action per panel. In panel 1, you can’t have a guy open his jacket, pull out a gun, put a character in his sight, and fire. That example, that’s four panels. Do you want to take up most of a page with that sequence? Is it that important? Or can you focus on what’s important, perhaps the guy looking down the barrel of the gun at his target? When you write comics, you’re not really writing a scene, you’re writing slices of a scene. You need to be very particular about what you show the characters doing.

When it comes to dialogue, awesome monologues that might work in film as dialogue or narration won’t work in comics. You can’t fill up pages with word balloons–you’ll cover the art! So you need to learn to pair it down. Say what’s important in as few words as possible.

The other big difference is that your story pacing has to be different, at least in monthly or multi-part comics. Your screenplay probably breaks into three acts, but that doesn’t translate to three issues or even six. It’s not about dividing your story up in chunks, but about reframing how you tell that same story.

What I mean is, each issue of a comic has to contain a full story in and of itself while still being part of a larger story. It’s serialized fiction. You need to introduce characters, move them through a dilemma, and leave it so that readers are (1) satisfied with this issue but (2) want to come back for more. Issue 1 can’t just be the inciting incident (to pull out some screenplay jargon). A first issue has to introduce the world, make us care about the characters, tease what’s coming, and grab hold of our imaginations. That’s a tall order in 22 pages. But it can be done. If you learn how the medium works.

Where do you see the mainstream comics industry going? 

In a sense, Marvel and DC have never been stronger. They have corporate backing, vertical integration of everything from movies and TV to toys, toothbrushes, and theme parks. They dominate the comics industry. The super hero genre dominates the industry. But at the same time, they’ve never been more vulnerable–and that goes for all content providers, in any field. Anyone can become a publisher–a creator of content–today. There is and there continues to be upheaval in all forms of media.

In comics, specifically, I think the roles are pretty well cast. Marvel and DC will continue to market their hundreds of characters, they’ll keep attracting the best talent, and they’ll continue to do big business and tell fun stories with super heroes. Image, IDW, Dark Horse, and others, they’re going to continue to expand the market with different types of stories, taking chances, trying new things, banking on the next big thing. Whether the bigs or the smaller companies, good stories will find an audience. But with competition from games, apps, movies, and whatever, it’s just harder to find those good stories.

 

What is the main thing you want readers of Gargoyle to take from the story? 

First and foremost, I hope they’re entertained, that for a short time they get transported to a world where supernatural heroes smash monsters. But I hope they take away from it that there are situations in their own lives that they can master. Life isn’t going to take you where you want to go. Don’t go along for the ride; drive the car.

I know that sounds like something out of a motivational speech, or maybe it’s more of that Silver Age golly gee-whiz stuff, but I really think people can be heroes. Wherever you are, whatever your situation, just try to do the right thing. That’s what heroes do. It’s easy to go with the flow, to pretend you didn’t see something or to say it’s not your job. But do the right thing. Maybe life’s as simple as that, or maybe it should be.

Gargoyle By Moonlight, a 36-page one-shot, is available in hard copy at IndyPlanet for $4.99 and digitally via DriveThruComics, Graphicly, iTunes, Amazon, and more for $1.99.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

With the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, talk has turned to the next iteration of the BATMAN film series. Everything from a whole new beginning under the auspices of a new team to Batman Beyond to launching a new series with the Justice League film has been floating around the rumor ether of the Internet.

I have my own proposal: Set the next BATMAN films in the already-established and popular world of the video games Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I’m not talking about an adaptation of the video game. I’m talking about a new story told within the Arkham-verse in a film – or ongoing series of films –  that would treat the events of both games, the comic series Arkham City and the digital series Arkham Unhinged as canon.

Let’s look at a few of the benefits:

• Both games have shown that even the more fantastical elements of Batman are accepted within the confines of the Arkham Asylum world. While they all have a more realistic, street-level look, the characters are still there and recognizable – perhaps even more terrifying than their comics counterparts. From Mr. Freeze to the definitive Penguin and Killer Croc, the villains in the Arkham-verse work beautifully. Not only that, but…

.

.

.

SPOILERS for Arkham City:

… following the events of Arkham City, The Joker is dead. This would also provide a story reason for the Joker not to be included in a film, both honoring Heath Ledger’s brilliant  performance in Dark Knight and giving other villains the chance to shine on the big screen.

SPOILERS Conclude.

• The Arkham-verse is also rife with other great and believable characters – Cash, the Arkham Security Guard, Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, a pre-New52 Barbara Gordon as Oracle, Nightwing, Robin, Azrael -  making not only films, but explorations in other media possible. I for one would love to see DC follow the – the only time I’ll say this -  Marvel example of the  S.H.I.E.L.D. television show, and produce an adaptation of Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker’s brilliant Gotham Central television series that examines the street level crime within the Arkham-verse.

The possibilities are endless.

There’s one more benefit for the Arkham approach, but first I want to look at the possible other approaches should the Arkham-verse route not be taken.

 OPTION 1: A Brand New Beginning

Done to death.  Nolan’s trilogy is still fresh in the minds of audiences, and without the nasty taste of Schumacher’s Batman and Robin as the finale. By now, most audiences know the basics of Batman’s origin – parents murdered in front of him, vows to protect Gotham and ensure that no one faces the same horror that befell him.  It’s beating a dead horse and is unnecessary for today’s audiences.

OPTION 2: A Continuation of Nolan’s Trilogy

Not going to happen,except in the minds of fans, which is where it should stay. Plus, Bruce Wayne is “dead” now. There is no way Warners will release a Batman film without Bruce Wayne as Batman.

OPTION 3: Batman Beyond.

Maybe, but while it is popular with fans of the Animated series, but, like Option 2, doesn’t feature Bruce Wayne as Batman. Again, no way that’s happening.

OPTION 4: Wait for Justice League.

This is a very real possibility, and most likely what will happen. It is, after all how the New 52 introduced Batman.

But, that big incentive I was talking about?

If DC is indeed attempting to follow Marvel’s example with their own cinematic universe, they already have a popular Batman that would fit in with a Justice League-level superhero film with the Arkham-verse. They don’t need to start from the ground up and re-mine ground that has already been paved by Christopher Nolan and his team.

For Warner’s to bring the world of Arkham to theaters would show a new paradigm in storytelling, and it would be an astounding approach, while solving their own worries about being compared unfavorably to Marvel’s approach (“Me TOO!” ME TOO!”)

Would it be a storytelling challenge? Absolutely. But it would also be an amazing experiment that has the potential to one-up Marvel’s Cinematic Universe by showing audiences a means of storytelling they’ve never seen before.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

The identity of the Superior Spider-Man is still a mystery – kind of. The concluding pages of Slott’s 56-page final chapter were leaked last week much to the consternation of writer Dan Slott and Marvel Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso. I won’t provide those pages here, but they’re findable anywhere.

In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins defines “Spoiling” (in relation to television) and the evolution of spoiling as:

Initially this term referred to any revelation of material about a television series that might not be known to all of the participants of an Internet discussion list. Increasingly spoiling has come to refer to the active process of tracking down information that has not yet been aired on television.

For someone to spoil a storyline, they must first be emotionally invested in its outcome (for good or ill). How does The Dark Knight Rises end? Spoilers were up a few weeks before the official release date. Who is the Superior Spider-Man? (Incomplete) Spoilers were up a few weeks before the release date. Who is the next Batman? The act of “spoiling” comes from an emotional urge to scratch the itch of “What happens next?” while simultaneously demonstrating their expertise and ability to forage for information. But let’s make something crystal clear: just because the “what” is answered, the “How” is almost never answered via the act of spoilage. It is the X-factor. The “How” works only within the context of the experience of reading and absorbing the work as it was originally intended. The How is a display of craft and character, the What is a display of craft and plot.

Why is Marvel annoyed with the leaking of ASM 700?

First, I will operate on the assumption that this outrage on the part of Marvel is genuine and not “manufactured outrage” designed as part of a marketing campaign. The latter is a very real possibility and would show a deft understanding of fandom, much more than for which I give them credit  in the next paragraphs, thus making them crafty little bastards whom I applaud (and I wouldn’t put it past Slott and Wacker; Slott, did after all plant a (likely) fake tweet that Miguel O’Hara, the fan-favorite Spider-Man of 2099, would be the Superior Spider-Man in October). That said, the 700th – and “final” – issue of one of the defining comics of any generation will sell like hotcakes no matter what. If it were the 53rd issue of their lowest selling, I might be more open to the assumption of a marketing ploy.

Going forward with the assumption that the outrage is real…

In the eyes of large publishers, the act of spoiling is tantamount to the peeking of Christmas presents in the closet before they are wrapped and capable of being unwrapped and assembled, as is the ritual of Christmas gift-giving. It is the answer to “what happens next” with the experience controlled by fandom (fans can seek out answers if they choose), not by the creators, thus crafting a different experience than originally intended. Publishers are the parents, shaking their heads and saying “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.” The experience that they sought to control was usurped by the very parties whose experience they wanted to control.

Marvel’s response to the leak has been extreme. Dan Slott has been quoted – even before the leak of 700 – as banning people from his social media network should they leak the outcome of issue 698. The site Comic Book Resources, is now banning anyone who discusses the spoilers for two weeks— even if the spoilers are not included in the post — and forbidding all discussion until 10AM on December 26th.  CBR is also the site that ran Marvel EIC Axel Alonso’s response to the leak and hosts weekly discussions with Alonso, and a site where both Slott and Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker frequently engage fans in debate and discussion.

While this is not an investigative piece, there are two likely reasons for this outrage and banning: One, that CBR has a great relationship with Marvel and doesn’t want to lose the clout, or two, that CBR and Marvel are playing games in an attempt to drive up sales and retain the mutually beneficial relationship between the two organizations. This isn’t without precedent, nor is it particularly troublesome, except that by banning all discussion about ASM 700 spoilers until the day of release CBR is alienating their forum users by denying them the place to discuss and disseminate a story in which they are emotionally invested.

Will this or the leak of ASM 700 affect sales negatively? Not in the slightest. While fans may bitch about the answer to “what happens next” for weeks on a message board, they’re still going to buy the issue and the subsequent issues out of their emotional investment in “what happens next – and how?”.  But remember, no story answer given by the creators will be as good as the answers and theories generated by intense fan debate (look at the disappointment surrounding the endings to LOST and The Sopranos).

The outrage over spoilers is not a one-way street. Fans gets up in arms when stories are spoiled by the companies in major press releases the day of their release (the Death of Captain America, or the Death of Professor Xavier, for example) to major outlets like the New York Daily News, USA Today, MTV Geek, or other pop culture havens. Why do fans get pissed off? Simple. By sharing the answer to “what happens next” with large media companies, the publishers have negated the ability of the fanbase to show their expertise and foraging skills (Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture and I discuss the urge of fans to demonstrate expertise in our interview for Comics for Film, Games, and Animation); for fans to accept spoilers, the spoilers must come from their own abilities and expertise.

The two way street of spoiling: Companies are pissed when fans spoil and leak stories before they are released because it wasn’t the way they intended the experience to be doled out. Fans are pissed when companies give interviews the day of release that spoil the big story of the day because it takes away their ability to show off their expertise and foraging skills.  Is there a happy medium? No. But there can be acceptance on the part of both parties.

Large companies with a huge product to sell will naturally be angry when a beta version of their big launch product is released before they are ready. But, comics companies and other publishers of content must understand that spoiling does not come from a need to diminish their work. It comes from an emotional investment in “what happens next” and an urge on the part of fans to share their skills, connections, and expertise. It does not – in any way – detract from the experience of seeing how a creator spins that particular web. The reading of a comic book will always be a personal experience – the sharing of that experience, and the expertise that comes from it, will always be a communal one. To restrict that right by silencing voices creating a new comics experience is not the way forward, it is a step backwards toward irrelevance.

UPDATE 12/18/2012

While I centered most of the thrust of this piece on the behavior of Marvel in regards to this leak and plotline, I can’t ignore the absolutely ridiculous reaction of the most mentally ill and extreme fans: threatening the life of Dan Slott, the writer of Amazing Spider-Man and the upcoming Superior Spider-Man. This is disgusting behavior and takes something that should be fun and entertaining into the realm of the sick and twisted. I’m all for emotional investment in a storyline, but come on people, get a fucking grip.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

In this interview, Alison and I discuss her influences, her work as a novelist, her collaboration with author Megan Abbott on an original graphic novel for the now-defunct Vertigo Crime imprint, our shared love of 1970s conspiracy flicks and why Maus is like Miles Davis.

This interview was conducted in January of 2012, so it’s an 88.5 MPH time machine to 12 months ago and appears in abridged form in Chapter 26 of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation. 

TYLER: You went from being a journalist to being a novelist, is that correct, or am I losing my mind?

ALISON GAYLIN: I did. I got my Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia — I still am an entertainment journalist. It’s sort of my day job; health insurance and all that. I have always been interested in writing fiction — I wrote a couple of plays when I was in college that won awards. One was produced in Chicago way back when. This was always sort of a love of mine, so I got into a writing workshop in the city when I was working in magazines and I wrote a short story that eventually –  years later –  became the novel Hide Your Eyes, which ended up being my first novel.

TW: You have a new one coming out in a couple months, right?

AG: I do – yes! Beginning of March – some places say like end of February, but it’s March first basically.

TW: What’s it about?

AG: It’s called And She Was, and it’s the first in a new series about a private investigator named Brenna Spector who has hyperthymestic disorder meaning that she remembers every single day of her life in perfect visceral detail — it’s a very rare disorder, but I think CBS got to it before I did — it has nothing to do with mine, but I hope I can score some publicity of off it (laughs).

TW: Is this the first one you’ve started as part of a series, or were all of your books intended to be part of the same world?

AG: Not really. Actually, I have two standalones, which were Trashed and Heartless, but my first two books were sort of a series, but it’s only two books — Hide Your Eyes and You Kill Me; You Kill Me is the sequel to Hide Your Eyes. I’ve been asked if that’s going to be a series, but I kind of doubt it at this point. It’s an amateur sleuth character and I feel like there’s only so far you can go with those, at least personally. My sense of logic starts to take over (laughs). But I liked that character.

TW: I know the feeling. Coming from documentary filmmaking to writing, I have to kill my sense of logic every so often.

AG: Oh right – it’s very similar!

TW: Jumping to the graphic novel from Vertigo Crime… I vaguely remember reading about it, then Vertigo Crime folded. How did that come about?

AG: Megan Abbott is a really good friend of mine. We became friends because we were both nominated for the Edgar for the “Best First Novel” at the same time, and we just became great friends.  We both lost that time; she went on to win “Best Paperback Original” for Queenpin. We always wanted to do something together, and we thought about possibly writing a book together, but because we both had contracts, it seemed kind of time consuming.

Actually, Megan says it was me that suggested a graphic novel, but I’m pretty sure it was her! We wanted something that sort of combined both of our talents. I’m more of a plotter, and Megan is great with character and time period — she’s a noir expert and her books tend to be set in previous periods to our own, although her most recent was a little more indistinguishable. But we just sort of had this idea for a character, a strong female lead that you don’t see that often in graphic novels.

We both are huge fans of 1970s conspiracy movies, so we wanted to combine our love of that with a strong  — like a female Dirty Harry was what we were going for. Very laconic, doesn’t speak, she’s just all about revenge. We just started writing this thing together and we found that we worked really well together. We pitched it to Vertigo Crime before it was written. We had a very detailed proposal and they bought that. We wrote it and then Vertigo Crime folded! (laughs) So now it’s ours again!

I think it’s going to end up being a blessing in disguise. I can’t say anything about it, but things are looking good.

TW: So you’re seeking out another publisher?

AG: Yes, uh-huh.

TW: Were you always a comics fan, or was a sort of “hey, why not?” sort of deal?

AG: Well, Megan and I joked about this, “yeah we used to read Archie when we were kids!” We weren’t like huge comics fans growing up, but since working on it [the graphic novel], I’ve just developed so much respect for graphic novels.

It was funny. When we were first doing this, really early on, on a conference call — I think it was with Megan’s agent and it might have been someone from Vertigo. Our editor at Vertigo Crime was great — Will Dennis is a huge comic fan, knew everything about comics. Somebody asked what my favorite graphic novel was, and I said Maus. Megan’s agent, Dan, was like, “that’s like saying Miles Davis is your favorite jazz… that’s just so lame!’

TW: It’s my favorite too!

AG: But since we’ve started working on it, I’ve read a lot of the Vertigo Crime entries which I loved. Watchmen, I think, is one of the best books I’ve ever read – not just graphic novels — in terms of story, poetry, and it just showed me how much could be done, there’s so much more than just “comics.” It’s a wonderful art form; it’s visual and poetic — it really can be very poetic. That’s what really excited me about the genre. Now I’ve since become a fan!

TW: What were the biggest challenges you faced going from prose to comics?

AG: I actually really loved it. Coming from writing plays, the thing that trips me up in writing my novels is that inordinate amount of time you have to spend on description and creating the place with words. I love dialogue and I love showing rather than telling. As far as the graphic novel went, to me, all those restrictions were somewhat freeing.

When you think of writing, all you’re doing really is — and it’s different than a screenplay or a play too  — probably a little closer to a screenplay — because it’s not something — the script for a graphic novel isn’t something that you intend anybody to read without artwork, and what you’re doing is you’re not communicating with audience, you’re communicating with an artist. It’s like “this is exactly what we want this to look like.” You don’t need to worry so much about turning a beautiful phrase except for in the dialogue or in the captioning, you know?

You also can’t be as subtle as you can be in film. We did a lot of things with very close views because of that whole ’70s conspiracy thing, we describe a lot of close ups on somebody’s eyes or hands clutching a phone cord. But, you can’t really have somebody exchanging a subtle look. You really need to think about what’s the strongest visual statement you can make with each panel. It’s a challenge, but I think, kind of exciting.

TW: Right, it’s all about grabbing that one iconic moment.

AG: It’s also figuring out how many panels you want per page, when you want to do that really dramatic splash…

TW: How much did you leave up to the artist? Did it even get to the art stage?

AG: We ended up finding an artist and then Vertigo Crime folded! It’s interesting, I think it’s Max Allan Collins that will actually take a still from a movie and stick it in the script. “I want it to look like this.” Say we want Robert De Niro’s eyes in the rear view mirror from Taxi Driver. “This kind of feel.” We were pretty liberal as far as “we would like it to look like this.”

I would think that once you have a really great collaboration with an artist they might find things that you could never even imagine. We definitely did have a really specific look that we wanted to get across. We’ll see when – and if – we eventually work with an artist we’ll see.

But, just because this concept is so visual — we have this ’70s conspiracy movie thing in our minds –  I think if somebody else shares that same vision, it will be really helpful.

TW: Would you do it again if you had the chance?

AG: YES! Absolutely. In a heartbeat. It excites me that we’re having interest in it now — things are looking good — because this the most fun I’ve had. It’s been the most painless writing experience I’ve ever had. Probably the plays would be up there with it. First of all, collaborating with someone I can really collaborate well with, but also just the whole medium is so wonderful and freeing and exciting. I just love it.  I  like the restrictions. I find a lot of freedom within those restrictions.  It excited me in the same way that playwriting does — because there are so many restrictions, but within those restrictions you can be so powerful.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

DARE ME 

Let’s start with Dare Me and the question that’s always the hardest to answer: what’s it about?

I was always interested in stories about powerful mentor figures and their protegés and this is a little bit in that realm. It’s set on a high school cheerleading squad, and cheerleading squads have become –– it’s become quite a dangerous sport and they’re very competitive right now. [In Dare Me,] A new coach comes to town, and she’s very glamorous, very charismatic and she really upsets the power balance on the squad. She has a really complicated personal life that makes things go from dangerous to very dangerous. Things unfurl from there.

Why cheerleading? 

It was sort of unlikely to me –– though I am from the Midwest –– I was not the cheerleader type (laughs) and I knew very little about it and I had –– in my last book [The End of Everything] I had a character, a high school girl who played field hockey and I watched a lot of girls play field hockey and I saw how aggressive and terrifying they were, so I started looking into girl’s sports and I found that cheerleading was the most dangerous — second only to football! –– for all high school sports in terms of catastrophic injuries. I became fascinated by this “All-American” icon and how we think of these girls as pert and lovely and delicate in some way, sort of sunny, and yet they were participating in this increasingly frightening, death-defying sport. I thought it was really interesting, the sort of things we don’t like to talk about adolescent girls; they have a kind of nihilism, a sort of aggressive instinct and ambitions. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to explore that.

What works inspired you in this story? 

The thing I drew the most from — possibly — is Lord of the Flies. It’s sort of always there for me. Also Richard III, the Shakespeare play, particularly the Ian McKellan film version of it. I really wanted to stage it as a story about power and manipulation. In cheerleading, the symbol of the pyramid and getting to the top of it is so perfect. I really wanted it to be about maneuvering and the dangerous advisor and manipulating to knock off your rivals and get to the top. So I drew a lot from that.

Now that you mention it, I can see that ––especially from the McKellan version –– now I really want to watch it again.

Yeah! It was great to see it again. I hadn’t seen it in years and I had forgotten how dynamic it was.

What is it then, about crime fiction, that’s endured and made it such a popular storytelling genre?

In many ways I think it’s the most essential or primitive –– in a good way, sort of fundamental –– storytelling we have. I always think of Adam and Eve as sort of a crime tale in many ways; crime tales are always about temptation and surrendering to weakness –– our reckonings with our dark sides. Surviving. I think those are all really such core –– we all identify when we read crime novels. Not necessarily with a serial killer or something like that. We all identify with regular people caught up in something that’s out of their control, where they give in to an impulse or an instinct or a weakness and things sort of spin out of control. I think we all identify with that. We all feel vulnerable. It hits all these pulse points –– it never gets old because it’s timeless.

Speaking of time, when I spoke with Alison [Gaylin] about the graphic novel, she said you were sort of the expert on time period and that you had set quite a few of your works in a different time period. Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Dare Me the first present-day set one?

It is! Yeah. My last novel was set in the eighties, and that’s the closest I’ve come –– other than a few short stories –– to present day. So yeah, my wheelhouse has always been sort of mid last century. Thirties, forties, and fifties. Writing something in the present day was a big shift. I’m sort of a lover of the past by nature.

What is it about setting stories in the past that appeals to you so much?

I think it’s mostly movie-driven –– Hollywood driven. They were my first, they were my fairy tales as a kid.  And of course, the Golden Age of Hollywood was in the thirties, forties, and fifties, so I think it has that sort of magical aura to me ––that period –– and I always wanted to walk into that world. When I first started writing, writing was really –– and it still is –– a sort of fantasy exercise. It’s too hard to do otherwise –– as you probably know –– if it’s not some kind of escape. For me that time in the past, that Golden Age of Hollywood, was my escape.

It’s funny, the films that I look to as inspiration, the ones that I’m drawn to in my own storytelling, they’re all the Golden Age of Hollywood. Much like you, I was raised on those movies.

What are some of your favorites?

My big two are Sunset Boulevard and The Maltese Falcon.

Oh my gosh, we clearly come from the same dynamic!

My grandfather would rent movies he thought I should see from the time I was five.

What a gift!

Absolutely. It gets me to thinking though, all of those movies that you and I love and that we look at as the Golden Age of Hollywood were all –– at the time –– contemporary stories. But yet, we still set our things in the past. The next thing I have coming is set in 1947 ––

Yeah? It’s a really good year to pick! But yeah, they were contemporary, and were not bound to the past. And for us to go into that world, you know… sometimes I think writing in a contemporary setting with Dare Me was sort of like “I should be able to do this for my time!” I should be able to find what’s mysterious and fascinating in my time too. That was my goal.

One of things I enjoyed –– among other things –– about Dare Me was your use of cell phones and texting. I know for me, part of my – the appeal of doing stuff written in the past is that no one has a cell phone to get themselves out of trouble. In Dare Me, it got them into trouble, which I enjoyed.

Right! That was sort of my revelation –– how treacherous they could be. Especially for -– well, for anyone really –– but especially for high schoolers. I had been talking to some teenagers, the kids of people I know, and how rumors can feel so life-threatening and perilous in high school. In my day, it took a long time for a rumor to get spread, where today, with cell phones, it’s instantaneous! What must that feel like?

COMICS

Let’s talk about your work in comics. Had you always been interested in them, or was it something you just kind of fell into? 

Well,  I’m always a little embarrassed to say this: Archie was what I was raised on. I read Archie, and little bit in that Archie arena, Richie Rich and all that. I loved those Andy Hardy movies and Archie felt like those. And they were set in the time – I had a lot of the old ones that were set in the fifties. So yeah, Archie. That was my thing as a kid. And then I really did leave it behind and fell out of the comics scene until maybe five or six years ago — other than some graphic novels. It wasn’t until somebody showed me some of the Ed Brubaker stuff, the way that noir had been used in comics, that brought me back around, made me really interested.

You did a piece in the back pages of Criminal, right? 

Yeah – about In Search Of. That was really fun.

Criminal blew me away when I first saw it.

Oh gosh, yeah.

Coming from writing novels, what challenges did comics present you?

I  had –– especially in my earlier novels  ––  because they were set in the past, a wealth of atmosphere and detail that in comics, the artist provides so much of. I really had to think about it differently. I was always trying to set the scene and in comics, an artist can do that so much better and so beautifully and so succinctly. What I had to do was think of it like a screenplay.

Like a blueprint? A communications tool?

Exactly. This great opportunity – the artist I worked with for The Punisher [[Matteo Buffagni]], I sort of dropped visual references —  that he could take or leave — that I had in my head. That was so much fun, to sort of draw from old films noir, drop an image in there… “in my head, this scene looks a little like this…” so that he could sort of riff on it as he wanted to.

A chapter of the book talks about collaboration, and I’m curious as to how you and Alison found –– as novelists, used to wiling away your wares alone ––-  collaborating together on a script for the graphic novel?

It was really exciting. It could have been awful! But we turned out to be really simpatico and brought different strengths. We also really liked the same movies. That was set in the seventies. We’re both lovers of seventies movies; conspiracy movies like Parallax View and Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, Brian De Palma. We sort agreed on how it would feel. Alison is a wonderful plotter. She would develop this great spiderweb of a plot that I could never have conceived! I could bring some of this twistier character stuff. It turned out to be really exciting. Neither of us were really precious about what we had contributed, perhaps because both of us hadn’t done it before. That really helped.

Let’s talk a bit about The Punisher. You did… Untold Tales of the Punisher MAX?

Yeah, that’s right.

What was the curve for you in working on a character owned by another company?

Well, it was not the way I should have done it! I knew very little about the character. But, when they asked me to do it, they said they wanted someone who was fresh, and didn’t know the whole story of the character. I did some research, but there was a really tight timeline, so I just kind of threw myself in. But he’s so iconic, there’s so much connection to noir and even to pre-noir, American outlaw, frontier figures; older than that, kind of biblical qualities to him. That really helped. It felt very epic and eternal which sort of suits doing what I tried to do, which was a kind of bare-bones classic noir tale. He just seemed to fit.

Would you ever want to try your hand at doing a series?

Yeah, I would. I really ended up liking it. It was exciting working with the artist, Matteo, who was so wonderful. When you write a novel, you know, you’re all in your head. The collaborative aspect and seeing it come to life was really exciting. If I could imagine a world big enough, I would love to try. I’m doing a screenplay now, and I’m similarly engaged by the same idea; getting to imagine a world that could come to life in a way that. With novels, you are very intimate with the reader, but you have to kind of hope that they imagine it in a way that’s intoxicating to them. But the more collaborative work, like with comics, with film or TV –– it feels exciting to be part of a team making that come to life.

DARE ME FILM

You’re adapting Dare Me for the screen now. One of my favorite stories is the one of Raymond Chandler being asked about the adaptations of his books. He points to his books on the shelf and says, “well I’ve still got these.”  But you’re adapting your own book… how do you figure where to cut up your baby, so to speak? 

That’s what it’s felt like! I just turned in the first draft. I had to decide early on –– I did think exactly about that Chandler line ––  every time it was hard to cut something, I had to think “I’m not cutting from my novel. The novel’s still there. This is a different thing.” You have to will yourself into this other state where “this is a separate thing and you just need to leave it work on its own.” It was hard. I made the decision early on: an early bloodbath and never look back. Once I made the scene breakdowns, I didn’t look at the book again –– except to pull some dialogue. I didn’t look at what I had left out and just pushed through. I think that’s the only way — they’re just such different mediums. They don’t –– it felt to me like an ocean beach into a thimble. (laughs) The novel is so big. It only works if you can be ruthless. So I tried to force myself –– not relying too much on novelistic stuff. Not to do a heavy handed voice-over, long dialogue scenes. I really tried to conceive of it visually.

That was going to be my next question. Were there scenes from the book that you had, that you found especially difficult to translate into film?

I guess the hardest part was that the narrator is a somewhat unreliable narrator, which in film is tricky because it’s so internal. That’s the thing people always say with adaptation –– novels are very internal by nature (most of them at least). I had to find different ways of getting that across. That was challenging. But then there were all these opportunities to visually convey things with so much power that would take you pages in a novel to get across. Some of these dangerous stunts the girls do, they’re really –– they’re very challenging to describe, to get across the sense of spectacle; the girls with their “war paint” and all that sort of stuff. In a movie, that can be right there immediately. That was an opportunity.

L.A. NOIRE

I didn’t realize you had written a short story for L.A. Noire [The Girl]…

Oh yes! Yeah. That was a fascinating experience.

Could you talk about that a little bit? I didn’t even know – I hate to say it – I didn’t even know the anthology existed. I was a fan of the game, but –

Yeah, you know… it was a weird experience and yet fascinating. We didn’t get to see the game before we wrote the stories, but the stories were supposed to be in the world of the game. So they brought some of us that were able to go to see a sort of prototype version. You know, with these releases, they’re so protective. They had someone play the game for us, but they didn’t want to reveal — it was a mystery game. But it’s set in 1947 Los Angeles. And so we had to write a story set in 1947 Los Angeles that was — that sort of fit. It was fascinating to watch, because they replicated the city at that time perfectly – and it was in color! We’re so not used to seeing ’47 Los Angeles in color. They had every building — they had done meticulous research. So watching it, it was almost like being there. It was a really powerful experience, and it made it really exciting to write the story.

My story is — the game is — a little Black Dahlia influence. It was an unusual writing experience. It had to sort of fit, but I didn’t really know what I was trying to fit into.

Right, so just fitting into the world that they had ––

Right. The mood, the spirit, the sense of place. It was really fun.

WHAT’S NEXT?

I’m working on a new novel. I’m towards the end of the first draft. It’s –– I don’t know if you know this story, it’s sort of loosely based on a series of strange events in upstate New York earlier this year, about these girls who develop these strange tics.

I do remember hearing about that.

Yeah! It’s based on that. There’s this sort of mysterious outbreak in a high school and it’s from the point of view of this family, a father, a daughter, and a son. It has a little bit of a Salem Witch Trial quality to it. I became fascinated by that case — you talked about becoming sort of obsessed with something — the minute I read it, I knew I was going to write something about it. It just sort of took over.

• • •

Many thanks to Megan for the wonderful chat!

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.

For this inaugural edition, I give the floor to the inimitable Dr. Christy Dena. In this interview, Christy and I talk about the basics of transmedia storytelling and the potential for comics in a transmedia application. Everything except the final question of this interview appears in chapter five of Comics – thanks a million, Christy!

Without further pomp and circumstance… on with the interview.

Dr. Christy Dena is the director of the Director of Universe Creation 101 – a company where she develops her own creative projects and entertainment services, as well as consults on cross/transmedia projects. She has written a PhD on transmedia practice, and blogs war stories at YouSuckatTransmedia.com. In this interview, we discuss the basics of transmedia storytelling and lessons for creatives considering making the jump to a transmedia project. 

What storytelling possibilities does transmedia storytelling offer? In what ways (other than the obvious) does the storytelling differ from a mono-media approach?

What I love about transmedia is that I can combine artforms that I love through a beautiful creative challenge. It is hard to make different artforms work together in an elegant way, and I love that both digital and traditional media can work together. Another thing I love about transmedia is the ability to play with the variety of story (and game) approaches. Episodic storytelling in mono-media (a film trilogy, TV or book series for instance) enables the writer to delve deep into the characters lives. You can do this with transmedia, but you also have the restriction/opportunity of delving into those lives with different artforms. That changes what you can do and allows you to play with your world more.

To anyone considering a transmedia approach to their story, what is the one piece of advice that you’d give them?

Use artforms that you love. Painters, filmmakers, and game developers all work with the artforms they love. For some reason when people are exploring transmedia for the first time, they often choose media that is popular. I understand many projects are created to target a particular market. But if you’re serious about exploring transmedia as an artform, then create with media that you already work with, love or are genuinely curious about. These drives will give your project a starting point that comes from sincere expression, not cheap mimicry.  

How open do you recommend content creators be to allowing the audience to expand and create their own stories within a universe?

Frankly, I do not recommend creators be open if they’re not already inclined that way. Creating projects that encourage, acknowledge and utilise audience-created content have different design requirements. It is a different project, and it is hard. If you’re not interested in seriously doing it, then I don’t recommend they go there.

 But it should also be noted that you can’t stop your audience doing anything. So while your project may not be designed for audience expansion to be a part of the main project, there are other options. Acknowledgement of their self-driven efforts would be ideal!

What is the biggest mistake you see creatives making when shifting to a transmedia aesthetic? How do you recommend they fix it?

There are a few that I see happen over and over again, and so I’ll quickly mention them.

a)    As I explained earlier, creatives rarely choose media platforms according to what they have skill in, love or are curious about. Ask if the artforms you choose have a function other targeting a certain market (or perhaps even cost), if not, then choose again.

b)    I’ve seen many creatives not consider points-of-entry – the different paths through your entire project. If you have spread your narrative across different artforms, then your audience will be able to access your story in any order. Some may read the comic first, and then the webisode, and vice versa. So I always recommend creatives do a POE check. If there is a particular order they want to encourage, there are various techniques they can institute to control the direction of access. However, if you have no control over POE, then make sure the plot works no matter what order.

c)     Newcomers often create or commission content in another medium that is insubstantial. This is another symptom of not seeing the collection of artforms as being an equal part of the meaning-making process. While there is nothing wrong with having small pieces of content spread across your different artforms, there needs to be a conscious decision about the degree of depth. Consider how much effort does it take to access or use the artform? If a moderate to high amount of effort, then make sure there is enough content there to justify the activity. There are other reasons for providing substantial content, but this is one that crucial.

Is transmedia really anything new? Or has it always been around and we just now have a name for it?

I have presented and published on this topic many times, because it is an important one. If we classify transmedia as the employment of multiple media platforms (artforms, environments, whatever), then there have been artists doing this throughout time. However, if you view transmedia as the latest development in franchise practice, then it is new! I personally find the urge to combine media that have been artificially separated will always happen. It is an artistic urge that will keep inspiring generations of practitioners.

Any comments about the use of comics in transmedia?

I’m a huge fan of animation, and I see comics as being a key part of what makes these art forms work in transmedia. One of the issues with transmedia design, is the friction caused by certain elements. For instance, the jump from a narrative-based medium to a game-based medium is often too big for most audiences. It is for this reason I find animation and comics to be a compelling proposition for transmedia. 2D and 3D moving and static imagery are the only artforms that maintain across media. You can create a world on mobile, broadcast, Internet, console, print, and so on and it all can maintain the same visual appearance. This means your world has a continuity that facilitates your audience getting involved with all the media platforms. That rarely happens with other artforms.

TYLER WEAVER is the author of Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld and the writer/co-creator of Whiz!Bam!Pow!, a transmedia story experience of family, forgery, death rays, secret codes, laundry chutes, and the Golden Age of Comics. He also once saw an ocelot. You can find him on Twitter under the creative handle of @tylerweaver.