On Twitter, I like to follow a number of comics creators and personalities in an attempt to keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on.  Often, this leads me to discovering some titles I would not have otherwise encountered on my own.  One such comic was Becky Cloonan’s one-issue short from 2011, “Wolves,” followed by her second one-shot comic published in 2012, “The Mire.”  That’s right: Single-issue, non-mainstream story.  For academics, that’s the equivalent of having to write a one-page critical analysis.  It’s a Herculean task if you ask me.  But to understand why this is the case, it’s important to understand what goes into telling a “good” story through the comics medium.

First, in order for a comic to be compelling, it needs to provide a complete narrative.  Although this is fairly straightforward, it’s not all that uncommon to think back upon loose ends from various storylines that were never resolved.  Or perhaps, the writer made use of the much-dreaded “Deus Ex-Machina” device where an all-too-convenient plot resolution is introduced without sufficient grounding in the plot beforehand where heroes just happen to have the right device in their back pockets to save the day, or readers are suddenly informed the narrative was just a dream sequence in order to prevent the protagonist from truly dying.  These flaws often lead to readers rarely feeling that sense of connection; instead, they can often lead to feeling cheated out of one’s time at the very least and worse yet, feeling emotionally cheated at the end of the reading experience.  This final response can often be seen in fan reactions to unpopular directions taken within the corporate mythologies of superheroes today.  Joe Quesada & J. Michael Straczynski were lambasted in online website and message boards for their respective parts in the Spider-Man story line “One More Day,” which saw the ending of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s marriage—a relationship that many felts felt nearly as vested an interest in as the characters themselves.  And while creators may take argument with fans for this type of reaction and brush aside their concerns as reactionary, incidents of failing to provide satisfactory closure can certainly create a sense of disengagement within readers.

Compelling stories also need to engage the reader on an emotional level.  The creative team needs to present characters to the reading audience whom they will identify with, or at the very least, find some value in seeing this individual or group of persons succeed in whatever conflict they face.  Or perhaps it is simply the overall story arc, which draws upon a shared human experience to which readers will relate on some level.  In doing keeping this concern in mind as they flesh out their story, the creative team is better able to craft the type of story to hook and keep their readers that they set out to tell.

A final point about comics that are successful at drawing in and captivating readers relates directly to the quality of the graphic elements of the story.  Let’s face facts:  If we’re talking about a visual medium, then we simply cannot ignore the work of the artist/s involved.  For my part, I am guilty—for good or bad—of relying largely on Scott McCloud’s framework as established in his seminal Understanding Comics (1993).  While I deviate from some of his points, overall, I find his approach to laying out the various visual elements of comics to be an extremely useful lens to review other works.  And so, the extent to which I see an artist using the form to further drive the narrative will have a direct impact on the level of emotional connection a reader experiences.  It also provides the writer with the ability to make use of an economy of words, which in turn, forces the reader to connect with the world of the protagonist in order to further explore the world in between the panels and behind and around those images presented on the page.  Static, unimaginative art will likely create a roadblock to such imaginative ventures.

I mentioned Becky Cloonan’s creator-owned, one-shot comics because I find them to impressive examples of where a creator is able to accomplish all of the marks mentioned earlier.  Other creators have done this as well, and while that is still an impressive task, what makes these two issues worthy of being singled out is the fact she was able to accomplish this not once, but twice completely on her own (she serves as both writer and artist) and all within the confines of a single issue.  Readers of Batman rarely need reminders about his backstory—they already know it and carry this information with them as they encounter each new story.  Many readers already possess the emotional connection to the characters involved, and so, less groundwork needs to be laid and the plot can be more readily experienced.  Not so for the protagonist whom the reader has never met before.  Context must be provided and rationale for emotional investment must be presented immediately.  And so, it must have been both an unenviable amount of work and an enviable accomplishment to achieve for Cloonan to have done so in only one issue for each of these comics.  So let’s take a look at why these two issues work so well.

Normally, I talk story first and art second when I review a book—it’s just the approach I typically prefer.  In this instance, however, I want to focus on the art.  Perhaps one of the highest compliments I can pay an artist after reading his or her work is that I never even needed the dialogue or textbooks to truly grasp the narrative.  This is one of the reasons why Steve Ditko is—in my mind—an absolute artistic genius.  If you don’t believe me, read (or reread) The Amazing Spider-Man #33 as it is a superb example of the artist as storyteller.  While Cloonan makes use of text boxes and limited dialogue to convey elements of the narrative, it is the gray tone art that carries the lion’s share of the storyline.  Yet, she avoid simply telling readers how her characters feel; instead, the simple expression conveyed in the glance of a warrior’s eye shows readers of the remorse and worn soul housed within them.  This is what graphic storytelling is all about.  Further, it is a smart and calculating artist who thinks about panel shape and size to convey emotion to readers, and one set of examples can be seen when Cloonan adapts soft, rounded panels to frame the lovers while sharp, angular panels fittingly portray the warrior’s battle with the wolf.  The sad truth is that I’ve read some comics where the artist is clearly dialing it in when I’ve paid four times more than I did for this single issue; but, Cloonan makes a hauntingly beautiful comic for so much less while containing so much more.  Love, loss, warriors, and werewolves—what more could possibly be included in this single issue?  All the same, I found myself lingering over each page, soaking up the details Cloonan painstakingly shares with her readers and asking myself questions about the warrior’s true motivations behind his hunt, particularly towards the end of the issue1.

So on to “The Mire.”  Since I previously focused on her artistic approach in “Wolves,” I will keep this portion centered on the storyline, which is fair considering many of the same artistic strengths from “Wolves” surface in “The Mire” as well.  The story, set in a medieval realm of fantasy, centers on a young squire sent away from a pending battle with a message for aid from a nearby lord.  Reluctant to lose the opportunity to earn honors with the sword, he carries out the knight’s wishes and begins his travels through the haunted Mire.  I don’t want to ruin the story, so I will simply say that I found myself guilty of not keeping the events and characters as straight as I thought I was.  In particular, there is one point about this second story that stood out most.  Where it’s typically not difficult to keep all of the details in mind for one issue, the plot twist made me go back and reread the story a second time even more slowly and carefully than the first read-through.  Although I found myself at first a bit lost and looking for some clue as to what would happen next, especially after the young squire’s ghostly encounters, I found at the end of the story the strangely laid pieces all fell into place.  Combined with the beautiful, fluid, and haunting art that is characteristic of Cloonan’s style, “The Mire” was a thorough success in comics storytelling from all angles.  And “Wolves” was no different in leaving me at the end of a satisfying—if somewhat bitter—conclusion.

Overall, I enjoyed Becky Cloonan’s work on Conan with writer, Brian Wood; further, she demonstrated her ability to operate under the cape and cowl with her one-time collaboration with Scott Snyder on Batman #12.  But I think, perhaps, her strongest efforts shine brightest in her stand-alone work on these two achievements in comics.  It’s not often a creator demonstrates the double-threat of carrying both writer and artist roles so successfully; but to do so with such a limited span of time and space truly marks her as an up and coming name to watched.

And if you haven’t read these books, they are being nearly given away digitally on Amazon, so do yourself the favor and ring in 2013 with either (or both) of these two top-notch examples of what creator-owned work has to offer. 

 

1 Portions of my discussion of “Wolves” originally appeared in an older review posted on Kabooooom! in early 2012. 

 

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