CONSEQUENCES, or Why Game of Thrones Is The Best Show On Television

OCTOBER?  I haven't written here since OCTOBER? Yeesh.  I am sorry, Meat-Heads, you are more than over due some meaty content, so here we go!

CAUTION: There will be spoilers.

So for the last couple years, we've been in a bit of a television renaissance.  The original name of this post was actually going to be "Why Breaking Bad Is the Best Show On Television," and while I still think it is pretty heads and shoulders above the rest (the scene in the parking lot with Hank from season 3 is probably the best sequence I've ever seen in a TV show), I recently finished catching up on a show called Game of Thrones.

As I'm sure you already know Game of Thrones, the game show, where contestants compete in toilet-based skill tests in order to win great prizes,

And Clay wins the "Most Obvious Joke" section of our contest...

It is also a widely popular Medieval fantasy show from HBO that just ended its third season.  Of course you know what it is, everyone watches it, it's breaking downloading records, and it's turning everyone who thought the Lord of the Rings movies were only "kinda cool" into full fledged Fantasy nerds worthy of all twenty sides of the dice.

The next season of Fantasy Football might take an interesting turn...
...as I retain my "Most Obvious Joke" crown...

But why?  Why is it so popular, more so than other "attractive people humping and killing" shows like Spartacus: Whatever, or the modern, sexy King Arthur retelling Camelot?  While I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the dreaminess of Peter Dinklage

Correct.

What makes it different is that it's extremely well written.  More specifically, what makes it so well written is that every decision any character makes has CONSEQUENCES.

Lack of character consequences might be my least favorite thing in anything, be it movies, tv, or comics, but I feel like it especially stands out in TV shows where you more or less know that nothing the main characters do, no matter how stupid, is going to come back on them because their actor's name is in the main credits, and the status quo has to be maintained for next week's episode.  There's a certain late-night, basic-cable gore-fest which is wildly popular but drives me NUTS for this very reason.  The story drives the action, instead of the action driving the story.  Game of Thrones is the first show I've seen in a long time where the action actually drives the story. The characters make decisions, and have to live (or die) with the consequences of their choices.

**************SPOILERS BELOW******************

There are many instances of characters making a clear decision, and then having the consequences of the decision come back on them at a later point, but there is one that stands WAY out, given how unexpected the consequences were, and how it actually cut off the head of television series tropes as we know it:  The Red Wedding.

A handful of episodes before said Red Wedding, our de-facto hero, Robb Stark, made a promise to an old man that he would marry this man's daughter in exchange for aid in battle against the Lannisters, the family who had his father killed.  Later on, Robb Stark meets, and falls in love with, a different woman, in a very par-for-the-course TV relationship, marries her, and continues along with the narrative, now with a new character for Robb to play off of.  Everything is fine, everything is great, hey they're at war, but they're in love and really cute together, so whatever, right?  He's got his mom and wife around, this'll be just like Everybody Loves Raymond, but with slightly more chain mail!

Robb, his now pregnant wife, his mother, and most of his troops arrive back at the home of the old man and offer their awkward apology for Robb's hasty nuptials. Robb offers his own uncle to marry the man's daughter as recompense, the old man agrees, and they have a big wedding feast!  Great!  Wedding scenes are always good, fun TV, right?  What's the worst that could happen?

Well in any other TV show, the fact that Robb broke this more or less minor promise to the old man would probably either get forgotten, or glossed over by some expository dialogue during the wedding feast, but not in Game of Thrones.  No, no.

Robb Stark made a decision, albeit a seemingly minor one, and had to live with the consequences.  He betrayed a deal made with the old man, so the old man teamed up with the Lannisters, and used the wedding feast as an opportunity TO MURDER ROBB, HIS MOTHER, HIS PREGNANT WIFE, AND ALL OF HIS TROOPS WITH HIM AT THE MAN'S HOME.  EVERYONE. DEAD. ALL.

Do you realize how crazy that is?  That'd be like if mid-way through a later season of Cheers, Shelley Long came back and burned the bar to the ground!  It'd be like if Walker had to deal with the civil suits filed by all the people he'd kicked through windows over his years of Texas Rangering!  It'd be like if Carl had to actually deal with the fact that his foolishness got Dale eaten by a zo--wait, that actually probably would have been a good thing to do...

Robb Stark's decisions came back on him, and just like that, the story of a son seeking revenge on his father's killers, the main driving story of the series, is lopped off at the head, leaving viewers in shock, because they DO NOT know what will happen next.  Let the choices your characters make dictate what happens to them, because it will always make your story better, and leave your audience guessing.

...unless they've read the books your thing is based on.

Until Next Time,

EAT DEAD MEAT!

also, just because:

Things I Could Have Done Better Vol. II: FOCUS

Hey there Meat-Heads!

So previously on Things I Could Have Done Better I talked about the importance of thinking everything out before you put your pencil to the page, and today I'd like to talk about a related subject, namely how and when to create focus through spotting blacks.

THIS IS HOW YOU CREATE FOCUS THROUGH ROCKIN' OUT!


No not that kind of...ugh... anyway.  When I was prepping Dead Meat to be put on sale through Graphicly.com (available here, plug plug), I found myself looking at the pages for the zillionth time, and as I scrolled through issue 2, there were a number of panels that felt kind of kind of off to me.  Take a look for yourself at a couple:

Dead Meat #2 Page 4, Panel 2

Dead Meat #2 Page 23, Panel 2

For me, anyway, these panels lack focus.  It might not appear that evident when isolated, but within the context of the page, I noticed the eye doesn't really know where to go, at least without a struggle.  This is where spotting blacks comes in.

Spotting blacks is the practice of filling in areas of your image with black ink in an attempt to push the reader's eye to where you want it to go.  It's a compositional tool, and a very important one that can be easily overlooked.  When creating a comics panel, you have to do 3 things:

1. Create a dynamic composition and camera angle
2. Make sure you the reader sees what the script requires them to
3. Leave room enough for lettering.

But sometimes number two is more difficult that it should be (try more fiber, maybe?) because your panel, though dynamically composed and plenty wide open for lettering and containing all the information you need is not FOCUSED. You can draw all the pretty lines in the world, but if the reader doesn't know where to look, then you're not doing your job.  This is where dropping some sweet, sweet black can focus up your panel.

In the first panel, even though the text clearly shows where the action is happening, I still felt that it was  unfocused, so I went back and dropped some black in some choice areas like so:

As you can see, taking the wall of that building and blacking it out instantly focuses the action to the right side of the panel where all the fun stuff is taking place.  You can see the same in the changes I made to the next panel:

Here, dropping some black into the ceiling instantly stops your eye from veering right out through the top of the page, and reinforces the main point of the image, Walker looking back and spotting Cordy and Galdos.

Being relatively new to inking, concepts like these, though obvious to others, didn't come naturally to me, and I have plenty left to learn as far as this stuff goes, but that's what this is about, right? Learning and continuing to get better at this crazy thing called comics!

If you'd like to learn some more about applying copious amounts of black to a page, please watch these video demos from one of the best comic artists working today, Sean Gordon Murphy.  His work is fantastic, and watching him work is definitely watching a master.  I could watch this video every day, and probably should

Enjoy!

The Hard Sell (HEY YOU! LOOK AT MEEEEE)

Hey there, Meat-Heads!

It's been so long since I've talked to you all, my how you've grown!  I see you've changed your hair...not my favorite, but who am I to complain?

So recently I completed my third convention this year, the wonderful Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (or MICE) put on by the great Boston Comics Roundtable here in Boston.

Keep your eyes open for next year's!

  Now from what I've experienced tabling at conventions, no two are the same, and this year has been no different.  Things that didn't sell well last year did much better, and things that sold great last year sort of leveled out, and this just seems to be the way things go.

...Right?

Honestly I'm not sure.  I'd like to say "hey, your sketch cards just did better this year," or "that new print you had came out really nice, so I can see why that sold well," but the fact is, I table at these conventions for one reason really, and that's to push DEAD MEAT, and if sales are down on that I'm probably doing something wrong. 

After the convention, one interaction in particular stood out to me.  A young fellow approached my booth, and after discussing some light philosophy and waxing poetic about the victorious aspirations of the local sporting concern he was heard to remark: "I say! Wouldst you take a cherished moment to relay the delicious intricacies of your illustrated wares?"

Yes he looked like this

In other words, he asked me to tell him about my book, and I was rather dumfounded to realize that I...didn't know exactly how to respond.  One thing I hate is when people decide to take 45 minutes to tell you each plot point for the first 20 issues, so I made sure not to babble too much, but I actually found it difficult to summarize what DEAD MEAT is and is about.

This is a problem, I know.

Looking back on this interaction, something occurred to me: Every convention interaction is its own pitch meeting.  

You're there to get people to buy your work, right?  Well how is that any different than if you were infront of a publisher or a company?  It's all the same thing--you're trying to get someone unfamiliar with you to buy your work.  It's your job to get them as excited about your work as you are, to the point where they can't wait to give you their money, either to pay for your book or to get you to shut up.

In retrospect this is where I blew it--I just wasn't talking enough.  I was trying to let the material sell itself, instead of selling the material, and that's just not going to work.

...unless you have some sort of futuristic, talking sales robot, where part of its sales programming includes selling itself, the sales robot, in which case you can probably go get a sandwich or take a nap or something.

Until Next Time,

EAT DEAD MEAT!

Clay

So It's Been A Year

 

Hey there, Meat Heads! Woof, it's been a while since I've written a blog post, but here I am, ready to write you in the FACE! A little over a year ago, a year and 4 months, actually, I launched eatdeadmeat.com and started my freefall into the unknown, so what's happened? Did my chute go off? Where am I? Who are you? How'd you get in my house? Well I have to say I had a great first year, and it's all thanks to you guys. Up till now I've updated over 80 pages, 3 and a half issues, of Dead Meat, and that alone is an accomplishment I'm very proud of. I dipped my toe into the pool of comic book conventions and sold out of all my printed copies of Dead Meat, which is fantastic, and to the people who bought them I can't thank you enough.

"Well I've sold like a billion albums, so..."

  Damnit, John Mayer, let me have this! To top it off, I even won the honor of "Best Webcomic 2011" from ComicMonsters.com, which was a fantastic way to end my first year!

"AHEM"

  MAYER!!!!! So with all that's gone well, what needs to improve? Well with anyone who wants to be successful in creating an entertaining product, you have to have people who see it! All the work you're doing is for nothing if no one gets to see it, right? RIGHT. So for the next year, I have to improve on probably my weakest area right now, which is marketing and promotion. It's great to talk to people at conventions, but that will only get you so far. You have to get eyes on your work ALL THE TIME if you want to be successful. So that's my goal for this coming year--to get more eyes on my product, and hopefully get more people on this ride with me. I'll be at this year's Boston Comic Con once again (April 21-22), I've got the Daily Alphabeatdown over at EatDeadMeat.tumblr.com, and we've got some really fun new things coming to eatdeameat.com VERY soon, something I'm really proud of and think you'll all really enjoy, and as I get closer to finishing the first arc, I have the collected graphic novel printed edition to look forward to! There's going to be a lot of great stuff coming this year, and it's up to us to spread the word about it! And if that doesn't work, maybe I'll "reinvent" myself as a blues singer.

That's cold, bro.

 Until Next Time,

 EAT DEAD MEAT!!

 Clay

Easy, "Strong," Female Characters

  Hey there, Meat-Heads...oh boy...I really should have put some more thought into that headline...that's going to get me in trouble...

 BUT LET ME EXPLAIN MYSELF! 

  So you're writing your story, coming up with some great characters, but you get to a point where you say "HEY! This comic is a sausage fest! We need some chicks up in this bitch!" Well hopefully you didn't say it just like that, otherwise you have some other problems to address first, before your writing...but anyway...you want a female character, but you don't want just any female character. You don't want a damsel in distress, or some vapid eye candy, you want a confident female who can stand toe to toe with the boys!
  "YEAH!"
  You want a "strong" female character, right?
  "HECK YEAH!"
  Well she's gonna have to be tough!
  "YEAH!"
  And she's gonna have to be sexy!
  "F-YEEEEAH!"
  And she's going to have to have been raped at some point in her life!
  "YEEEEEEE--wait, what?"

  For some reason, probably because 90% of mainstream comics are written by men, rape has become sort of a storytelling shorthand when it comes to crafting "strong" female characters, or exploring the backstory and history of pre-existing ones. If you don't believe me, here's a list of female comic book characters who have rape or domestic abuse in their backstory that I can think of off the top of my head:

Catwoman - Batman
Black Cat - Spider-Man
Jessica Drew - Alias
Huntress - Batman
Wasp - Avengers
Karen Page - Daredevil
Ms. Marvel - Avengers
Elektra (metaphorical rape) - Daredevil
Batgirl (metaphorical rape) - Batman
Michonne - Walking Dead
Abigail Arcane - Swamp Thing

  Now I know you're thinking "you really like some weird crap, eh?" but the truth is, most, if not all of these characters appear in mainstream comics published by the top few publishers in the biz, and many of these characters appear in those respective companies' biggest, most widely appealing titles, some written by the best writers and in the best stories in comics' history.

  So why is it used so much? Well, rape is horrible! It's probably the most horrible thing that can happen to a woman, and it takes a great deal of strength to deal with such a tragedy, so what's a more perfect thing to throw in to a "strong" female character's backstory to show that she's tough and can overcome adversity, right?!

  Ehhhhh...not exactly. Remember this clip? I used it in my post about guns, and I think it can also apply to what I'm talking about today:


  Rape, for the most part, is another form of lazy writing. It's the "guns" of psychological trauma. Does it work? Sure. Is it necessary? No, not at all! What's worse is it's actually pretty offensive, and shows a gross lack of knowledge about women in general to assume a character can't be complex without a background of sexual abuse.

 Here's a few strong female characters from movies, comics, and tv that were crafted that way free of sexual abuse:

 Jean Grey of the X-Men
Dana Scully of the X-Files
Sarah Connor of the Terminator films
Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 These are strong female characters who have completely rounded strengths and weaknesses as legitimate and dramatic as any of the most well-written male characters out there.

  Let's look at Sarah Connor for a moment:

  Wait...that's not....ugh hold on....wrong clip.

   Ok, Let's look at Sarah Connor for a minute
**Clip contains some naughty words, beware!**
Best of Terminator: Sarah Connor

  Through the course of 2 movies, Sarah goes from just an everyday girl into someone burdened with a horrible knowledge of the future who will do anything she can to protect her son, and is so consumed with what she knows that she will sacrifice herself and kill others in order to prevent the oncoming apocalypse. Some pretty out-there stuff, but completely compelling and without a shred of cliche backstory to muck things up.

  Now does that mean you can't use rape as a backstory or subtext? No, not at all--look at the movie Alien.
 "But there's no rape in Alien!"
  No? In the original script the character of Ripley was a man, but it was later changed to a female who was famously portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, and became one of film's most powerful women. Why is this change significant? Well if you get past the space monster overtones of Alien, and think about what it is the alien is actually doing to people...I'll wait...ok, got it? Alien has a strong sexual subtext in it that just wouldn't be as effective if the protagonist was a male.

  Writing isn't easy, so when trying to craft relatable scenarios or characters, it's much simpler to throw around something that's as universal as "guns are dangerous," or "rape is horrible," as a shortcut in storytelling instead of taking the time to come up with something much more dense and unique that will make your stories all the more engaging and ultimately more entertaining for your readers/watchers/whathaveyous.

 I hope this was helpful, and I look forward to your angry letters.

 Now don't even get me started on the "he/she killed his/her parents," backstory. Yeesh.

 Until next time, EAT DEAD MEAT!

**Update on 9/14/2012**

I would just like to add that the trend of excessive violence toward females is so prevalent in the Comics world specifically that there is even a term for it: "Fridging," which references a scene from an issue of Green Lantern where GL comes home to find his girlfriend's dismembered body stuck in the refridgerator.  This term was originated by comics writer Gail Simone, who first talked about it here: Women In Refrigerators

While my post deals specifically with rape, I do think you have an entirely different discussion as far as fridging in general goes, as there are plenty of people out there who would say "there have been just as many horrible things done to male characters as well," and while I wouldn't necessarily disagree with them, I still think it's worth a look, a consideration, and even an argument!

Stay Scared!

Clay

BREAK IT DOWN!

  Welcome, Meat-Heads! If you remember, way back here, I talked about the importance of having solid breakdowns, because they are the foundation that your page is built on.  Today I'd like to come back to that a bit, and talk about a problem I ran into recently while drawing a page from Dead Meat #3, but first, let's see what the master has to say:

 

  Now...yes? You in the back with the tri-corner hat on? What does this have to do with anything? Well that's a very good question, so allow me to very roughly horn this clip into the shoe of remote relevance!

   FIRST you get the sugar, THEN you get the power, THEN you get the women. When creating comics, there are three main steps between concept and finished art: the script, the layouts (or breakdowns in this case), and the actual drawing. Each of these are used as methods of communication in a sort of "telephone game" to get the idea of the writer into the hands of the reader, and success is wholly dependent on clarity.

 -The script must clearly depict the story/action, so the artist can break it down visually.
 -The visual breakdowns must be clear so that when the finished art is drawn, there's a an idea of what the page will contain and look like.
 -The finished art must clearly get across all the story and action present in the script, combined with the visual ideas of the layout breakdowns.

  So what happens when one of those three communication avenues breakdown? Well much like the "telephone game," you end up with a confusing and incorrect end product.

   Now from here on out things get tricky because this problem I ran into was while drawing something from a later chapter of Dead Meat, so I'm gonna have to run some images by Headless Eric and see if things might have to be redacted, but I'll be as specific as I can.

  The page in question involved a lot of characters, and some pretty heavy action, and was a lot of fun to draw, and I was pretty happy with it when I finished it. I was getting prepped to start the next page, and it was then that I noticed a very sharp change in the scene between the final panel of the page I was working on, and the page that followed it. The last panel looked like this:



Clearly outside, with Mac probably saying something, with some undead Natives coming at him. No big, right? Well the next page started like this:

  Which is some characters, including Mac, running up stairs? What? Well I went back and looked at the script, and the dialogue and description very clearly has them going from outside, into a building. So where did the undead Natives come from? Well after looking back at my breakdowns, I found my problem. My breakdown for that panel looked like this:
 

 What the hell are those things in the background? People? Monsters? Englishmen looking to nick some sugar? They could be anything! I realized that given the action of the page, I just assumed they were undead Natives about to pose a threat. So as a result, I had to go back and draw a fix for it to be added later.

  Now I'm not saying your breakdowns have to be super tight, but what they do need to be is CLEAR. They may just seem like rough sketches, but you're going to have to refer to those sketches later when you're doing the finished art to let you know what's going on, and if you can't read your own layouts, you're going to make mistakes and it's going to slow you down. This is why, once again, I'd like to reinforce that the finished art is just the fun part. Breakdowns are where you do the real work. They are the foundation. They are the power.

 And without the power, you don't get the women.

 Until next time, Eat Dead Meat! **Did you like this post? Do you Like DEAD MEAT? Then like it/us on Facebook/follow us on Twitter, and please send me your comments!**

Things I Could Have Done Better Vol. 1: Think It ALL Through!

Hey there, Meat-Heads!! Looooooong time no see!

  I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've had a blog post up--sometimes things get busy and other times I just don't have a good idea of something to say that would be constructive and useful, but I think I've found something that can be helpful to everyone, including myself! With that in mind, I'd like to welcome you to the first part of an ongoing, albeit probably sporatic, series entitled "Things I Could Have Done Better." What I'll be doing here is taking a look at some of my own work, and talking about, as the title suggests, what I could have done better! Vol. 1: THINK IT ALL THROUGH



  I don't think there's anyone out there who doesn't look back on their work and say "hey--maybe I could have thought that through a little more." For me, being relatively new to producing a comic on my own, one of the things I sometimes forget is that comics are more than just drawings of people. Comics are also drawings of buildings, machines, trees, lamps, table saws, etc, and though they aren't always the most fun to draw, many times it's those drawings that can be the most important to telling the story you want the way you want. To let you in on a little secret....I HATE drawing buildings. I HAAAAAAATE it. I've never been good with a ruler (what does that even mean?), and drawing all those lines just makes for a boring day and a cramped hand. What comes in tandem with a dislike of depicting architecture, at least for me, is a decent lack of understanding as well, so when it comes to breaking down my comics in sketch-form, I'll sometimes spend all my time working out positioning of people and just sort of brush off architecture shots as something I can just work out later. However, this can really come back to saw off your thumb.

If there is one panel I would like to have the opportunity to re-visit and re-draw, it would be this one:

Dead Meat Chapter 1, Page 25, Panel 3

At this point in the story (SPOILERZZZZ), Walker, Ashley and Georgie have arrived in Stiltsville--a town which still has people in it, who get around safely by a system of bridges connecting rooftops. Here is the original description from my script:

PAGE 25

Panel 1

Establishing shot of the town as they stop at a security check point guarded by two men with rifles, at a makeshift gate made of dead cars.  This check point is the only entrance to main street which leads to the main square of a town.  All other streets have been blocked off, booby trapped or destroyed.  The bottom floors of all the buildings are boarded up, but the second floor and higher of the buildings flicker with life.  In a time where the ground has become like lava, this town lives above it, and there are bridges and paths built to easily connect roofs to each other.   Roofs are adorned with shacks and tents, some even have shoddy additions built on top of them.

There is life there.  What kind is anyone’s guess.

  As you can see....I TAAAAAAAAAAAANKED that one.  Between writing and drawing I changed the placement in the page of the establishing shot and broke some of that stuff up among a few panels I think, but as far as creating a compelling depiction of this I blew it.  HARD.  I mean where on earth would you find a town that looks like that?  It's all boxes!  Oh good, they come upon an ancient pueblo village!  No. 

  On top of the boxiness of the town, there's NOTHING there indicating life, unless you count some of the smoke lines, but that's just cheating.  There are no cars, no people, no nothing.  Now the part of my brain that rationalized this laziness probably said:

"Well that's kind of creepy, isn't it?  There's no one around--it makes it a bit more mysterious!"

  Yeeeeeeeah, no.  You obviously just didn't think this out.  Let's take a look at the ways a few other artists handle buildings and towns/cities:

From Left to Right: Bill Sienkiewicz, Paul Pope, Moebius (I THINK--please correct me if i'm wrong)

  These are three very different styles--I'm not saying you have to do it like any of these--but the one thing they have in common is that these cities are ALIVE.  They feel real.  Mine just looks like a crappy, poorly thought out drawing.

Even aesthetics aside, I screwed myself for later drawings because pretty much all the action of the next 2 issues takes place in this town that I didn't bother to spend the extra time plotting out!

I've heard a few people along the way say that "you have to learn to love drawing the things you hate to draw,"  and while I will agree with that to a certain extent, I think a better way to say that is you have to learn to draw the things you hate in a way you love to draw.  I mean look at Paul Pope's drawing--it's almost a sketch at some points!  I'm sure if he tried to draw a city the way Moebius does, he'd want to blow his brains out too!

  So the moral of this story, and something I've been trying to do myself, is to find a way to draw the tedious stuff that is fun, but MOST IMPORTANTLY, allows you to TELL THE STORY.  But hey, that's what this whole thing is about--learning as I/we go, and I hope this has been informative!

Until Next Time,

Eat Dead Meat!