I have a lot of respect for people that challenge the established norms in story telling to make you think more critically about what you are reading about. Sometimes it is small details like if you were to be ejected into space what would this physically do to the body. Suffocation and hypothermia (BSG) or would your eyes start to bulge out of your head (Total Recall). I like the idea too of challenging norms to make things more real. This is something Garth Ennis does exceptionally well. Crossed shows that there is no happy ending when the world ends. The Boys shows how Superheroes make more sense as giant dicks, then people with the destructive power of a nuke but with exceptional moral standards.
In "The Boys" heroes exist, but they are not the last son of a dying planet, or a person bitten by a radioactive spider but people shot up with a compound that makes them scary powerful. For the purpose of this blog though, that doesn't matter what does though is how the story is constructed. Firstly he takes the whole comic book hero lore and turns almost everything on it's head. The best part is that he has so much thought put into it, that thing that make superheroes unique he put a preversed twist on. Be it parodying the Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Batman. It is all in there and twisted around into a beast that is highly entertaining.
So we have lots of thought into detail, but we also have a lot of thought into story structure. Crossed was a one off in Garth Ennis's eyes that has spouted it's own series. He wanted to make an extreme story that would go the distance. That would disturb and provoke thought. That would challenge the norm of what you expect from your characters, from the story itself. The characters in it are challenged and challenged, and breaking down and does it ever get better for them? Well you will have to read it to find out, but in short though no. He challenges what is acceptable actions for our protagantists. How fantastic ideas of salt and garlic can stop monsters. Of how scary and intelligent crazy can be. I highly recommend Crossed. From the content it is a hard read, I mean it puts Frank Millar to shame in terms of intensity but it is good cause it will stay with you. It's almost torture porn but it has too much of a point, too much thought put into it.
Then there is the Punisher Max. Slavers in particular is an amazing story that will get you emotionally involved with the story. It is violent and merciless, but in such a context where you wish it could be more violent. It is a story about human trafficers, abducting women, raping them drugging them and forcing them into prostitution. Frank shuts them down and in a meaningful way but what makes this story so good is it feels so real. It feels like it is telling a story of something that has happened, flesh and bone in our world, which it is loosely based on, and this is how it ended. If ever they make another Punisher feature this should be the source material. For the Punisher, Ennis challenges the norm of comic story telling by telling something that feels real, makes you scared, makes you angry. It is an awesome piece.
In Preacher, we have a man forced into religion by his crazy family, who accidently acquires the voice of god when it escaped from some angels, and him and his girlfriend and vampire friend are on a quest across the US to find God (whos in hiding) and get some answers out of him... Nuff said
**Reasons aren't in any actual order. I am not that OCD.
Showing posts with label Garth Ennis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Garth Ennis. Show all posts
Monday, June 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Garth Ennis - Favourite Comic Book Author - Reason 36**
Cunt.
Garth Ennis has no problem with explicit content in his comics. In fact that is one of the things I like most about his work is that he is willing to push the boundary and break the norm with his comics. The Boys is set in a world where superheroes are power crazed super dicks. Raping and pillaging norms cause they can. Crossed is a real piece of work that is really screwed up but really hard to look away from at the same time. It is one of the few things that disturbed me enough I had trouble going to sleep. As disturbing as it was it was powerful enough that I can recall most of the book. Punisher Max pushed the idea of how violent and powerful Frank is. And Preacher, an original comic that challenged concepts of religion and tells an engrossing story.
So Cunt. It is a simple thing, but it is symbolic of how Garth Ennis is willing to push the envelope and freely put on display things that can otherwise be taboo. The language he uses is of course not just there for shock value but given the situational context is typically appropriate and adds value to the story.
** Please note that the reasons are random and not in order. I am not that OCD
Garth Ennis has no problem with explicit content in his comics. In fact that is one of the things I like most about his work is that he is willing to push the boundary and break the norm with his comics. The Boys is set in a world where superheroes are power crazed super dicks. Raping and pillaging norms cause they can. Crossed is a real piece of work that is really screwed up but really hard to look away from at the same time. It is one of the few things that disturbed me enough I had trouble going to sleep. As disturbing as it was it was powerful enough that I can recall most of the book. Punisher Max pushed the idea of how violent and powerful Frank is. And Preacher, an original comic that challenged concepts of religion and tells an engrossing story.
So Cunt. It is a simple thing, but it is symbolic of how Garth Ennis is willing to push the envelope and freely put on display things that can otherwise be taboo. The language he uses is of course not just there for shock value but given the situational context is typically appropriate and adds value to the story.
** Please note that the reasons are random and not in order. I am not that OCD
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Garth Ennis - Favourite Comic Book Author - Reason 731**
To give a small background on this I was originally going to make this one blog and over a few days I sat and wrote it out and once I hit page three I realized there are far too many reasons I like Garth Ennis to write only a single blog. So instead it will be many small ones.
Reason 731 - Using the monologue to round out scenes
This is an important one and here is why. Comic panels basically only ever capture the highlights of the action, and can't always tell the full story, it is up to the reader to fill the gap between the panels with help from the writing to give a flowing context and story. I feel that Garth Ennis does this in a way that is properly meaningful and for this I will cite Punisher Max and Crossed.
In Crossed the monologue was great to tell the audience the social commentary that Ennis was trying to achieve with such a disturbing comic. More to the point it was able to reveal certain details of what was happening on in the story either between the artwork or just out of site of the artwork. For example, a character monologuing about how an infected is raping a knife wound in a person's back who is still alive, adds to the tone. It tells the audience just how fucked up what they are about to read is, without going too overboard by graphically showing the act.
In the Punisher Max, the character was all in the monologue. That is why the Punisher movies have never really done all that well, is they never captured that same magic that the comics have. If you were to do a Punisher movie properly you would need to have it basically be set up the sane way that the TV show Dexter is. Here is what I am on about. Firstly when Frank gets hit really hard, the monologue saying how his vision is now blurry or taking an inventory of the cracked ribs adds to the overall effect in conjunction with the artwork. Makes the impacts more powerful. It also explains enemy movements and motivations, and reveals when the character is concerned which makes the audience concerned it is a good sort of comic. It is a great way to tell jokes as the audience has the third person omniscient view on the story and little quibs can be made. For the Punisher, it is almost the single thing that makes the character relatable to the audience. It is Frank's voice, sharing his reasoning, his motivations, his emotions. In the Max series it is the thing that makes a four digit mass murder seem sane in a world where so many insane villains are explored and developed.
Reason number 731 of why Garth Ennis is my favourite comic book author is how well he does to give more feeling and emotion to his comics. This is especially true given some of the content that Garth Ennis puts out is pretty intense, and to graphically show everything would be even more extreme.
As an aside think about this. The power of comics is combining images and words. In the artwork is sometimes some really intense and fantastic detail. If you were to try to take certain comic images and translate them into words, or rather novelize them, a single image could take pages to describe. And that is the narrative power of comics. It is also hard to do, as I said you are only ever capturing the highlights of the action. In between it can be easy to miss details. Or sometimes you can go from image to image so fast, constructing the sort of visual subtitled movie in your mind that you can miss small details the artists have included. A good monolgue during the action slows the eye down, making you less likely to miss something and adding more value to the action sequences. The best comics in my mind are the ones where when you combine it all, the script, the art, each panel should actually make emotion jump off of each page. If you ware reading a comic and that isn't happening the comic you are reading is not very good.
**Reasons aren't in any actual order. I am not that OCD.
Reason 731 - Using the monologue to round out scenes
This is an important one and here is why. Comic panels basically only ever capture the highlights of the action, and can't always tell the full story, it is up to the reader to fill the gap between the panels with help from the writing to give a flowing context and story. I feel that Garth Ennis does this in a way that is properly meaningful and for this I will cite Punisher Max and Crossed.
In Crossed the monologue was great to tell the audience the social commentary that Ennis was trying to achieve with such a disturbing comic. More to the point it was able to reveal certain details of what was happening on in the story either between the artwork or just out of site of the artwork. For example, a character monologuing about how an infected is raping a knife wound in a person's back who is still alive, adds to the tone. It tells the audience just how fucked up what they are about to read is, without going too overboard by graphically showing the act.
In the Punisher Max, the character was all in the monologue. That is why the Punisher movies have never really done all that well, is they never captured that same magic that the comics have. If you were to do a Punisher movie properly you would need to have it basically be set up the sane way that the TV show Dexter is. Here is what I am on about. Firstly when Frank gets hit really hard, the monologue saying how his vision is now blurry or taking an inventory of the cracked ribs adds to the overall effect in conjunction with the artwork. Makes the impacts more powerful. It also explains enemy movements and motivations, and reveals when the character is concerned which makes the audience concerned it is a good sort of comic. It is a great way to tell jokes as the audience has the third person omniscient view on the story and little quibs can be made. For the Punisher, it is almost the single thing that makes the character relatable to the audience. It is Frank's voice, sharing his reasoning, his motivations, his emotions. In the Max series it is the thing that makes a four digit mass murder seem sane in a world where so many insane villains are explored and developed.
Reason number 731 of why Garth Ennis is my favourite comic book author is how well he does to give more feeling and emotion to his comics. This is especially true given some of the content that Garth Ennis puts out is pretty intense, and to graphically show everything would be even more extreme.
As an aside think about this. The power of comics is combining images and words. In the artwork is sometimes some really intense and fantastic detail. If you were to try to take certain comic images and translate them into words, or rather novelize them, a single image could take pages to describe. And that is the narrative power of comics. It is also hard to do, as I said you are only ever capturing the highlights of the action. In between it can be easy to miss details. Or sometimes you can go from image to image so fast, constructing the sort of visual subtitled movie in your mind that you can miss small details the artists have included. A good monolgue during the action slows the eye down, making you less likely to miss something and adding more value to the action sequences. The best comics in my mind are the ones where when you combine it all, the script, the art, each panel should actually make emotion jump off of each page. If you ware reading a comic and that isn't happening the comic you are reading is not very good.
**Reasons aren't in any actual order. I am not that OCD.
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