originally written for and posted on Comicsnob.com
Scott McCloud is just now clearing the first third (maybe five-twelveths, to be more precise) of his 50 State tour in support of Making Comics.
Last night, he happened to be here in Atlanta, talking and signing at the Georgia Tech College Bookstore, and I happened to be in the audience. Let me just say that Scott (I’m going to call him Scott for the rest of this field report; it’s an un-earned familiarity, but as anyone who has read his books will tell you, it seems like we know him well already) is as funny and as real in person as he appears on the page.
If you haven’t read his books (shame on you. go buy them) then you might not know what I’m talking about: in addition to his other work, Scott writes comics about comics, and inserts himself–or his avatar–into the book as narrator. It’s a good gimmick that works exceedingly well. That’s what I mean when I tell you that the actual, in-person Scott is a pretty fair facsimile of the character we know from the books.
Scott actually showed up a half hour early, and took a few minutes to talk with other early responders before checking in on his family, who were hanging out in the coffee shop. The tour is an all-McCloud Road Trip, which has to be a neat experience for the kids. Check out their Tour Blog.
We in the audience had the benefit of not one McCloud, but two. Daughter Winter spent most of the hour at the author’s table, offering her authoritative opinion on which book is better (she went with Reinventing Comics, followed by the new book, and then the first book– based strictly on art, mind you) and also asking pertinent questions like “Hey, here’s Naruto, why didn’t you show Inu Yasha as well?”, to which Pops McCloud managed to not only respond, but to show that Inu Yasha had three references to Naruto’s one. …I’m guessing that the McCloud kids (at least 50%) are manga fans.
It was a rambling, relaxed event, where Scott covered things like his tour, and his friends (Neil Gaiman. name-dropper…), and his comic cameos. He’s been in Beavis & Butthead comics, appeared as a defrosted head in Futurama comics, and has a special love for Tycho and Gabe. And Scott Kurtz. Since I was there in my capacity as a journalist, I didn’t dare mention my familiarity with Vulcan duelling conventions, or with the comic strip in question; though a number of fanboys&girls chimed in (Tech, remember?) no one came up with the name of the q-tip-blade in question. I chuckled quietly. (It’s a lirpa. Though I had to reference the internet after the fact to recall that.)
Let me see if I can summarize some of his major points from the evening–
The new book, art, & procedures: Even when he’s showing “pencils” in the new book, it’s all faked. Scott is a big fan and avid user of Cintiq Tablets and in fact the art in question was done digitally with the tablet in Photoshop. All I have to say is… damn. The guy who asked the question was equally surprised, I think he was expecting some sort of defence of analog artwork from Scott, and he got the opposite. In fact, Scott mentioned that even as far back as the 70s, he was describing something very much like the new tablets as his “perfect tool”. Back then, he thought it would be the size of a steamer trunk, so he’s as surprised as the rest of us how far technology has come. In 5 years, I bet he’ll have his Wacom tablet on a laptop.
What’s next? — Scott is going to start a graphic novel just as soon as he finishes the book tour. (that’s also something he mentions in Making Comics.) This is good news. He’s envisioning something in the 300-400 page range. That’s also good news. Perhaps not unexpectedly, a book of that scope will take him 3 or 4 years to complete. So. Heck, I’ll prepay for a copy now, but apparently it’s going to be a long while before we hear from Scott again.
Re: his style. A bright young artist (I believe she was a SCAD student) asked if Scott’s development as an artist meant that he had to hold back stylistically so that his latest book would be a match for the first two. Scott first reply was that, if anything, he was still going all out and using every tool in his arsenal just to keep up. He claims he is not a “natural” artist, the sort who draw in their sleep. For him, each book is an effort.
Re: Reinventing Comics. His second book of this series has met with, um, less than critical acclaim. I asked Scott if he felt he wrote the book 5 years, or even 10 years too soon. He split the difference: In some ways, the book was 5 years too early because the internet of 2000 was still a dial-up community, and the effect of wider bandwidth on the viewer’s experience had yet to be seen. And in other ways, he felt it was five years too late, because some of his ideas on webcomics had been knocking around his head since 1995, and were stale by the time he got them into print. His comment was “Don’t delay passion. Find some way to work on it now,” which may be good advice no matter what the creative endeavour.
He also noted that the book tour was excellent as a distraction; he has a lot of ideas for his next graphic novel, but he’s putting them off until the tour is over, after which he plans to just sit down and draw the new project as a piece. His wife, the lovely Ivy, mentioned that the Fam isn’t really looking forward to the start of the new graphic novel, because it means they lose Pops McCloud for 11 hours a day, seven days a week, when he gets involved in a project like that.
When pressed for details about the new GN, Scott demurred, and provided us with a lovely quote: “I’m not talking about the new story, because I want it to come out of my hands, not my mouth.”
As a writer myself, of course I was interested in the process. In its current phase, Scott is just taking notes, jotting down ideas when they occur to him. He plans to later colour-code all of his musings, then plot a rough outline, and then begin sketching. From his unique angle as a comic artist, he feels the work is best served if he does his first rough draft in storyboard, as opposed to written outline; with panel layout, dialogue, and rough sketches done simultaneously. His thought was why write it out, if you’ll draw it anyway? It’s a lot like narrating your morning routine, “Now I am getting out of bed. I’ve gotten out of bed. Now I will brush my teeth. The teeth have been brushed…” when it is so much simpler to conflate the action into a couple of sketched panels.
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Not surprisingly, given the Tech crowd, there were a number of questions about the web, and web comics.
Flash animation came up, and Scott pointed out that at some point, moving pictures cease to be comics. Flash has it’s place, but even with successful experiments along these lines, the standard comic format is still being used. I’m paraphrasing, but I think what Scott meant is that comics keep coming up because they are unique as a form of expression.
Another point was about how the collaborative nature of the internet might affect comics. Scott sees some potential here, with things like 24 hour comics or wiki-style joint endeavours. Scott notes that often they are more fun to make, than to read. “It was all just a dream” cop-out endings, a tendency for one creator to just negate the efforts of the previous contributor, and how changing modes and style tend to yank people out of the story were all cited as drawbacks to such joint efforts.
Scott took this as an opportunity to discuss interactive vs. narrative story-telling forms as well. I can’t quite do justice to his argument. I think he is in favour of extremes, as opposed to hybrids: tell a good story, or give the user the means to do anything, but don’t rely on, for example, a branching plot structure to give the reader the illusion choice but no real control. Seamlessness of experience is important, and when you switch from one mode to the other, it jars the reader and makes him remember it is just a story.
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Re: the State of the industry. Does the current situation help or hurt domestic comic creators? Scott went the middle route on this one, too (hm. methinks he is covering his ass bases again…)
Scott thinks that the current diversity is good for creators. The Web, manga, the graphic novel movement; all of these are signs of a healthy creative environment. He ceded, though, that the amount of manga currently on bookshelves will eventually present a problem. Manga is good in the long run, because it is bringing a younger fan base to the industry, but it is also outselling other graphic novels at such a rate that a number of booksellers may eventually decide to concentrate on what’s selling, to the detriment of domestic graphic novels. Caught between the vise grips of manga on one side and established superheroes on the other, properties like Maus, Persepolis, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home are having a hard time finding shelf space, particularly at smaller stores. (Fun Home was, of course, Time’s #1 Book of the Year. Not listed as comic of the year: book, regardless of format) .
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Towards the end of the evening, a question came up about self publishing. A number of websites offer print-on-demand services, and the question was what Scott thought about this new creative outlet. Scott had a lot of good things to say, citing the Small Press Expo and the Alternative Press Expo, and mentioning (apocryphally) that a number of aspiring artists aren’t just producing a portfolio to show to the Big Two, but are instead working on and printing their own comics. An actual printed comic makes a much better calling card, and can even produce a little income in the meantime. I couldn’t help but be reminded of some the things I’d mentioned previously about doujinshi and it left me wondering if a small scale revolution might already be underway in the seemingly intractable comic industry. Time will tell, I guess.
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and am glad I had an opportunity to see Scott in person. If he hasn’t been to your state yet, you need to set aside the date, and plan to see him. Few know our business so well, and can speak so clearly to the issues that comics face now, and will encounter in the future.
Not much more to it than that, actually: I just wanted to point you to 
Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Universe
The book features a nifty electronic gadget, affixed to one side of the over-long back cover so it is always there to the right of whichever pages you happen to be reading. The gadget allows the selection and playback of any one of 68 audio clips, where Stan the Man can tell you himself what they were thinking when first writing and drawing the comics in question.
