Tim Across America, part ten! The finish line of Tim’s trip is Los Angeles, home of our friend Dale Wilson, of BuyIndieComics and DWAP Productions. Dale hooks us up with Robert Roach, comics creator and Hollywood storyboarder. He fills us in on ways that storyboarding is much different from comics, and also talks about the importance of getting the details in your story right — regardless of medium.
For the Southern California edition of Ask a Retailer, a talk with Howard Chen at Legacy Comics and Cards in Glendale. Unlike most of the other Tim Across America retailers, Legacy still has plenty of manga on the shelves. But to what extent are those books flying off the shelves?
Finally, Tim and Dale are joined by Stephenny Godfrey (“Panorama”, “Two Buses”) and Richard Hamilton (“Return of the Super Pimps”, “Miserable Dastards”) to discuss the L.A. comics community and revisit a topic from the Chicago episode: should you make a comic as a step toward getting your story on film?
Also, don’t miss Griffin the Dog in his podcast debut!
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There was a lot to bite on in this episode. There was stuff I wanted to comment on in every segment.
Roach’s discussion of the 180 rule was interesting. I remember it reading about it in the late 80’s somewhere. I’m wondering if it was in Marvel Age. Anyway, the professional artist in the article thought it was very important to maintain that to keep the story moving fluidly. I think there is a value in learning rules of story telling, but ultimately, it needs to be intuitive and reached in an organic way, and those rules are very very breakable. A day spent reading Chris Ware would show us entirely new ‘rules’ to replace traditional ones, and though they’re not necessarily marketable, David Aja was able to ‘borrow’ Ware’s techniques for an Eisner nominated issue of Hawkeye this year.
Howard Chen’s piece was the most interesting, but the one I have the least to comment on. It’s fascinating to see the trends in the market. I remember reading about the manga boom years back, and it’s surprising to see how much it’s receded. I thought with the massive amount that is available, it would be easy to keep translating AAA titles for years. Hearing how down he is on Marvel and DC’s titles was interesting as well.
The last part was all over the place, but I essentially agree with the notion that writing for comics is a different beast than writing for film. Concepts may carry between the medium, but to be an elegant screenwriter is far away from elegantly writing comics. I had many more thoughts, but there were far too many topics to keep track of them all!