Darkness is too easy

Back when I was working in games I saw a lot of concept pitches. If you’re picturing the likes of Pikmin or Ico or LittleBigPlanet – well, that would’ve been a job to get in early for. Instead, what actually seemed the most common effusion of the collective unconscious was a succession of dark, edgy takes on something like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz.

In these pitches, Alice/Dorothy had usually gone psycho, confined to a mental asylum, her family dead or abducted by stark horrors that had pursued her from Wonderland/Oz. And from there it’s a paint-by-numbers to decide what had become of the Tin Man (cyborg), Cowardly Lion (serial killer), Scarecrow (cyborg serial killer) and so on. Those same writers would even have pitched Dark Pooh if Disney weren’t standing guard over Hundred Acre Wood with a very big stick indeed.

The reason why that’s such a heart-sink is not because I don’t like stories with a bit of darkness. More than a bit, in fact. My fave comic of all time is Sandman. No wait, it’s Watchmen. No, maybe it’s Swamp Thing. Whatever – all of those had darkness but they had light, beauty and humanity too. And, in the case of Sandman, real sweetness.

But plain unadorned darkness is just too facile. My wife Roz used to ghostwrite a middle-grade action-adventure series for a brand name author. The heroes were mid-teen crime fighters but the readership was centered on 10-12 year olds, meaning that sex and violence were mostly just hinted at. Over dinner one evening, for fun, Roz and I envisaged a YA version of the series, revisiting the characters a couple of years on and going right into the abyss with them. The kid whose obsession with computer hacking had given him a dangerously detached view of justice. The one who achieved his dream of joining the army but quickly became traumatized by the realities of modern warfare. The rich one, who had hardened and become arrogant working for her father…

In a dark pit struggling to reach the light. It almost writes itself. Trouble is, that’s so easy to do. And nothing good in writing is accomplished with ease.

As well as being the lazy writer’s option, a story of unremitting darkness is tonally boring. It’s way harder to write hope and humor and humanity alongside the horrors – which is why I value TV shows like Buffy, Fringe and Doctor Who. Yet in comics these days we so often see the stories copying the least original videogames, with heroes constantly being maimed or disfigured or driven mad. And, trust me, relentless twentysomething angst is not the way for comics to tap back into a broad market.

The best of the horror comics have heroes who are surrounded by darkness but who haven’t got darkness in their souls: Hellboy, B.P.R.D., even (believe it or not) John Constantine. And the authors of those books don’t gratuitously wallow in the darkness of their stories; they remember they are telling underworld myths that must lead the heroes back to the surface world. Like Alice, emerging from the rabbit hole disturbed, enchanted, altered – a far more interesting fate than simply being forever scarred.

The jewel in the crown

I'm just back from a week on the continent, where I sipped cocktails and watched polo matches and slept in the bed of a member of the British royal family. But never mind all that; it's another story. What made the homecoming a pleasure, despite the water torture of an English summer after the dazzling blue skies of France, was the waiting parcel of Dark Horse titles from Avalon Comics, formerly my local comics store on Lavender Hill but now a mail order business with a difference. (Try them, you won't be disappointed.)

Any visit to the Mignolaverse is a treat, but this package of titles really stood out. "Being Human" in Hellboy 54 is another quantum of perfection from the team of Mike Mignola and Richard Corben. We previously had "The Crooked Man", which must be one of the spookiest stories ever. And "Hellboy in Mexico", in which the big red boy took on a masked wrestler who was the avatar of an Aztec bat-god, followed by the deliriously Weird Tales-y "Sullivan's Reward". Mignola's writing seems to inspire Corben to attain the very pinnacle of his art; having Corben there to realize his imaginings spurs Mignola to create stories that really matter. And when you have those two guys working at the top of their game, it really doesn't get any better than that.

Another treat in the package was the latest outing for Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder. The story itself in this case isn't anything special. Sir Edward himself is unconvincing as a character and, perhaps recognizing that, Mignola uses the story as a showcase for a bunch of new cowboy characters. It's like that old episode of Star Trek where Roddenberry was trying to set up a spy series spin-off. But any tiredness in the storytelling is more than redeemed by the art of comics legend John Severin, now pushing ninety and still able to conjure up atmosphere and drama with the best of them. It's actually the simpler touches that I like in Severin's art, like this:

But there's no denying that his action drawings have extraordinary power too:

The genius of Ditko

There is no greater comic art luminary than Steve Ditko. Leaving aside the brilliance of his draughtsmanship, any page of his work is like a masterclass by the world’s greatest storyteller, director and cinematographer all in one.

Take a look at this excerpt from “The Shrieking Man”, which originally appeared in Eerie #4. The first page introduces us the set-up, hero, villain, dramatizes the whole thing with some vibrant Ditko drawing and atmospheric Dutch tilt, and incidentally slips in quite a bit of vital exposition without us even noticing. (To be fair, writer Archie Goodwin deserves his share of the credit for that.)

Now see what Ditko pulls off on the second page. In three panels he moves us from the set-up scene to a passage-of-time montage by way of a shot explaining the nearby graveyard. Three freakin’ panels, dude! Most modern comic artists wouldn’t be able to pull that off if you gave them three whole pages.

Then look at how Ditko kicks the story action into gear. A camera prowls to the window. See those tangled trees, the contrast of light and shade, the angles he picks, the care with which he locates the asylum relative to the graveyard so that we always know where we are. Again, many of today’s artists would miss this. They’d eschew the long shot to avoid having to draw too much detail, and a string of close-ups would leave us disorientated. Ditko never needs to clutter his frame with detail. It’s all there, but he carries it off with deft economy.

Yep, I’m kind of a fan if you couldn’t tell.