Making a story clear

The other day I had a nice visit from Chris Ryall, the editor in chief at IDW Publishing in San Diego. He came by to bring me a complimentary stack of books of a graphic novel called Locke and Key, which has the story Freddy Wertham Goes to Hell added in the back. Both stories were written by Joe Hill, who also wrote the Spiderman Unlimited story that Seth drew. Chris, who is a fan of Seth's, wanted to see Seth's last work (even though his part of it was only the blocking out of the pages) printed in color, went to some trouble to get reprinting rights from Grave Tales, and then Seth's friend Langdon--who actually drew the pictures--did the coloring. All in all, it was a labor of love.

Interestingly, in the lead story, the first of a series, they printed not only the graphic story, but also the script that was given to the artist, Gabriel Rodriguez. Though I am not a fan of the genre (horror) I read the story, Locke and Key. The pictures are stunning, but I thought the story was hard to follow, until I read it with the script in hand, continually looking from the script to the pictures.

Now, please understand, for the most part, I am not a comic book reader. The only comic books I own are ones that Seth did. So I am not the audience for whom this book was intended. I also am SO VERY familiar with Seth's work that I see all the subtleties that probably most readers miss. HOWEVER, it seems to me that even though some of the stories that Seth illustrated--notably Willworld, and the two issues of Doom Patrol--make jumps of logic that continually befuddle the reader, the pictures give details that clarify some of the more abstruse questions. I wondered what Seth would have done with the scripts that Gabriel was given. A useless question of course, but it brings out the matter of how to make a story clear.

I'd like to talk in the next few postings about some of the issues that give clarity to a story.

Issue number one: Who are the characters?

How do you identify the various characters? Line drawings of faces can be very general, especially when they are printed small enough to put several boxes of them inside a page that is about 8" x 10".

Here is something that Seth said to an aspiring artist about making characters identifiable:
"Try to design characters so that they are identifable 360 degrees around. Ie the mohawk is a good design since you can ID the character from the back of the head so it gives you more options for angles to take in the scene and still keep things clear. You can use hats, clothes, a bird on their shoulder, whatever...."

In this page from Willworld, the cast of characters has their own peculiarities that give them instant readability: Hal of course wears the green mask. But even in black and white, his face is recognizable. His hair falls lankly down on his forehead, and he has that bewildered expression. Mu-Fon has no nose, and a beret and turtleneck sweater. Kelly has six arms. Even the people at the bar who we see only once in the story are all recognizable as individuals, both from their clothing and their facial style.

Joe Hill: Freddy and Spidey

An alert reader/friend pointed out to me that on his blog Joe Hill posted a nice story about the origins of the Freddy Wertham comic book. Here it is.
In his blog entry Joe recounts that Seth decided to help him get started in the comic book writing field. He didn't know it, but that was the way Seth in general related to other artists. He loved to encourage artists, which included artists in all fields. He believed that all people are connected together, and so when one person does what is true and real from his soul, everything in the world is made truer and more real, and thus benefits everyone.

I have posted a few pages from the Spiderman Unlimited story that Joe wrote, and here is another. I agree with Joe's assessment, Seth's art is really gorgeous. His lines are so very clean and his setting up of the story is beautiful.
Here is an example that I haven't posted before of Seth's work from Spiderman Unlimited. The setting is fully realized--down to the lights on the toy store sign, crumbling tiles on the wall, and dog poo on the street--though not entirely real; witness the sign on the signpost that Duff Memphis hurtles into. Seth gives Joe the respect of giving his story seriously elegant drawings that show that we are not to take the story seriously.

Freddy Wertham is in print!

Lest anyone be misled, the page that is pictured here is not by Seth, it is by his friend Langdon Foss, who did the final pencils and inks for this story. Seth did the roughs, and the plan was that he would do the inks, so it would be a full circle collaboration between friends who had challenged and inspired each other college. So Seth did his first part and Langdon did the pencils, but when Seth died, a sad Langdon did his own inking.

But I wanted to post an image that I hadn't posted before to celebrate that after three years of waiting, the book is finally in print. It is available here.

Freddy Wertham page 3: Seth's roughs and Langdon's finished work

I won't post the whole book in this way, but I'll show one more page. The rest of Langdon's work can be found here.

On this page Langdon stayed quite close indeed to the roughs Seth did. He used exactly the same positions for the characters: the person in the lower right corner (Lucifer) has the same old fashioned glasses and unpleasant smile; the action in the large upper panel takes place in the middle ground of the scene just as in the rough drawing. The characters are sitting or standing in very nearly the same positions.

If you make the rough drawing bigger you can see how Seth blocked in his perspective. There are perspective lines lightly drawn in all through the image of the workroom. His lines continue off the page to the vanishing points. I know from what he wrote that he did not always make perspective so precise in his pictures; some places you can fudge and it will be fine. But in a room like this, where we see a big space littered with squarish objects, if the perspective is off, the reader will have a sense that something is just not quite right.

Freddy Wertham page 1: Seth's roughs plus Langdon's finished work

Here is page 1 of the Freddy Wertham story. On top is Seth's rough drawing, which I posted a couple of days ago, and below is the finished page that Langdon Foss did from it. Langdon does gorgeous work on his own, and though he used Seth's general blocking, he did not feel the need to follow slavishly the exact positions of people and things on these pages. It must have been a little difficult so soon after Seth died not to retain as much of Seth's sensibilities as possible. But Langdon, of all people, knew that an artist must follow his own artistic muse, or what he produces will have nothing in it of value. That was one of the things Seth stressed to artists he was trying to encourage: "Don't copy me or anyone else."

Langdon used Seth's page set-up: the size, shape, and content of each of the frames. But he drew the mugging from a different angle, and in the center panel he drew Freddy falling in a quite different manner from Seth's preliminary drawing. Seth himself changed things routinely from his roughs, so there is always leeway to do so. Langdon also added all the little squares of explanations, his own humorous labels (though I don't think they are legible in these scans). And of course all the details of the scenes.

Look how Langdon curves the buildings just slightly in the center panel, where Freddy is being knocked backwards. That's no doubt how Freddy's mind would perceive it, and it gives the whole scene an out-of-whack, hit-in-the-head feel.

Freddy Wertham roughs, pages 3 and 4

The finished drawings for these are on Langdon's website

These are the third and fourth pages of it, blocked in for Langdon to draw.


Page 3 seems to take place in a comic book art studio in hell, a place where there is a can of pencils in the foreground of the upper frame, and people sitting at drawing tables working in the background. Seth has put the action in the middle ground. Then the lower two frames have close-ups of faces. The left face is Freddy, who has lost part of the top of his head. The right one is the devil, I guess, smiling unpleasantly.

In page 4 some poor sap in what looks like a monk's robe is drawing away, with Lucifer showing him to Freddy. On the top right we have a close up of their two faces, with the devil's long fingernails prominently visible. The two lower panels have increasingly closer views of Freddy and Lucifer. It is interesting to me that the bottle of ink in the center panel is in front of, and about the same size as, Freddy. Is that an indication of its relative importance?

Rough drawings for "Freddy Wertham goes to Hell"

These are pages that Seth blocked out for a story by Joe Hill, who also wrote the Spiderman Unlimited vol 2 #8 story that was published in March of 2005 (just before Big in Japan). I think this was always intended as a collaboration between Seth and his best friend Langdon Foss. The two of them had wanted to collaborate on a story ever since they roomed together in college, but the opportunity never seemed to arise. Regardless of how it was planned, Seth introduced Langdon to Joe Hill, who became a fan of Langdon's art as well as Seth's. And then, when Seth died with the pages to this story only blocked in but not completed, Joe asked Langdon to finish them. So then, it was a collaboration, but not exactly the kind they wanted. It is odd how things work out: I think we often get what we want, but it doesn't come simple and clean. It comes with baggage that we didn't anticipate.

So this story has been finished for at least a couple of years, but has not yet been published. I thought it was going to be published last year, but I think the company was having problems, and may have folded.