Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: chris claremont, comic scripting, Comics, Dan Green, entertainment, marc silvestri, uncanny x-men

From Strip To Script – Uncanny X-Men #255

Published Tue, 23 Jun 2015 17:00:00 -0500

by Hannah Means Shannon

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By Josh Hechinger

Welcome to From Strip to Script, where I take a page of finished comic art and try to derive a script from it, to see what I can learn from the exercise.

I've tried to avoid doing the same series twice in this column, just because there's eighty-million-gajillion-and-five comic books out there, and that would seem to be a sufficient ward against repeats.

That said, one could make the argument that different creative teams on a single ongoing comic should count as different comics; in fact, it's probably altogether healthier, from a critical perspective, to accentuate the creators and not the title, to come at comics not for the franchise but for what the artists and writers are doing within the confines of it.

Or I just really want to justify doing this page where the Blob drops a senton on Wolverine after the Ol' Canucklehead's been all chewed up by lasers.

Either way, we're looking at Uncanny X-Men # 225, by Chris Claremont (writer), Dan Green (inker), Tom Orzechowski (letterer), Glynis Oliver (colorist), and Mark Silvestri (penciller).

PAGE SEVENTEEN (EIGHT PANELS)

P1. It's THE BLOB, his face lit up with bully glee.

– BLOB An' he ain't here all by his lonesome, X-Chumps!

– BLOB (emphasis bub) You in big trouble now!

P2. PSYLOCKE, HAVOK, and DAZZLER watch THE BLOB surf a sea of rubble at them.

– DAZZLER The Plaza, sweeping towards us like a wave!

– PSYLOCKE Avalanche's doing!

– BLOB Gold star for you, sweetcakes!

– HAVOK And riding the crest—

– HAVOK (electric) Blob!

– BLOB Another for you, Havok, for rememberin' my name!

P3. WOLVERINE, helpless, down there…BLOB, taking flight, up here.

– BLOB Watch closely, ya bums, you'll learn somethin'!

– BLOB Toss me high, Avalanche—

– BLOB An' we'll see if the short psycho's bones—

– BLOB –really are unbreakable!

– BLOB (big, electric) Geronimo!

Okay, let's try something weird. The SFX is THOOM; the next five panels take place in the letters of THOOM.

P4. T. WOLVERINE'S face, very much aware that BLOB is about to sit on it. Oh god.

P5. H. There's the BLOB up there; he's not hanging in the air, he's dropping.

P6. O. Gravity brings BLOB closer, he's grinning, insofar as we can see it past his incoming lard.

P7. O. The expanse of the man fills the panel.

P8. M. The BLOB has landed. Arms crossed, he's satisfied.

So, What'd We Learn?

Well…it's Blob's page, and we're all just reading it?

It hangs together as a single-page story, insofar as a big man surfs in on a pile of rubble, leaps off, and lands on a guy. There's a clean arc there, both narratively and physically. There's even some visual flash, with the T-H-O-O-M panels.

But.

Who's that big man? Who's that guy he lands on? Who are those people watching it? Who's anyone who anyone refers to once you lay dialogue in?

What bits of story do you need to follow the overall plot, and what bits do you need to follow the page?

The dialogue here creates character motivation and (some) inferred context for why the action on the page is taking place. But the action is still clear, if fantastic: big man appears, goes up, comes down on another character.

So, the action is clear, but…the thing about comics is that they're sequential narratives. I can highlight a page, and if it's a "good" page, that's a sequential narrative in and of itself, but the sequential narrative can also be the pages around it, and the issues before and after the issue containing those pages. I think, ideally, every page bears the weight of the entire narrative, while also standing as an individual unit.

Philly-based comic writer Josh Hechinger [joshhechinger.tumblr.com] is a Cancer, and his blood type is A+. You can find him being a loquacious dope on Twitter, and read his comic collaborations on Comixology.

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