Here Comes the Rap Break

"Everybody's sayin' that the scatman stutters
But doesn't ever stutter when he sings
But what you don't know I'm gonna tell you right now
That the stutter and the scat is the same thing"

 

Scatman John - (I'm A) Scatman

 

 

Last time I talked about comics, I praised What Birds Know's well-plotted drama with light, in-character comic relief. So this time, let's instead talk about poor pacing.

Out-Of-Placers will definitely draw further comments from me, as (politically correct premise and strained backronym aside) it's not only laudably creative and thoughtfully developed, but also a prime example of integrating some evolutionary precepts into a fantasy (or more likely science fantasy) setting. For now, it was page 100 that caught my attention for one of the best executed comic relief moments I've seen. The last panels' absurdity would be enough in itself, but it also hit precisely just past the peak of the story's most dramatic moment thus far. However, the same comic also interposes expository pages in the middle of scenes. They're invariably good reading, but their placement tends to wreck the flow of any scene because unlike a tension-breaking one-liner, each "field guide" page provides half a chapter's worth of prose.*

 

For a more classic case of derailment, see Tamuran, a decent high fantasy comic which after packing its main cast off to high adventure with shapeshifting, monster swarms, hungry dragons, liches, nature spirits and heirs to this-and-that, has spent the past few years increasingly on "how're things back at home?" and palace intrigue. If curious as to how audiences will appreciate dumping almost all the core cast and laboriously developed set-up to swerve to a couple of new viewpoints from characters whose best features seem knock-offs of that core cast's, well, just ask George R.R. Martin.

 

I also read through another fantasy comic, Kaspall, recently. Not bad, less lively or inspired but nevertheless following through on its premises far better than most. Unfortunately its ending toed the Disney line too much with its tragic backstory excuse, karmic comeupins and keeping the heroes' hands clean... and then it keeps on ending... and ending... 50 pages of 460 resolving various plot threads through confessions and declarations.

 

While on the topic of bad endings, I had praised the follow-up to Dominic Deegan, The Legacy, three times over the past three years. In this case the ending does not drag... but everything up to the end does. The author did admit in a blog post that it had originally been intended as a far shorter story, and it certainly shows. The longer it rambled on, the less of the original idea was visible, from Snout getting increasingly redesigned for cuteness to losing the importance of the written word in favor of schmaltzy codependence, to losing the original central gimmick of filtering the action through Snout's deafness in favor of characters verbosely, tritely and repetitively declaring their pwecious fee-fees at each other.

 

I had compared The Legacy favorably to the newer stuff by Christopher Baldwin, whose work has been quite poor these past few years, but even his best stuff tended to be over before it was over. When he did arrange a poignant limbic oomph for a denouement, in his theater play in webcomic form One Way, it instead felt rushed to fit into a one-year posting schedule, and he got no end of undeserved grief for prodding emotions in the opposite direction from what his audience, addicted to Hollywood sap, demanded.

 

On the other hand, the ending to Spacetrawler's original run (the one worth reading) was arguably just as downbeat, with the main difference being the forewarning to the audience. And it worked. It fit. Sacrifice should be unsatisfying.

So much as I do enjoy pointing out such imperfections, writing all this out has reminded me they've contributed much to my interest in webcomics for the past twenty years. I don't want the same damn heroic face-off, focus-grouped to death to maximize appeal, reiterated every episode. "The state of the condition insults my intuition" after all. Hell, Mookie was always prone to cheesy, hand-wringing drah-mah and it worked well enough for him. If they are not allowed to dominate a work, flaws can frequently add to its charm. Baldwin was at his best when he didn't even try to neatly tie off loose ends, even stating at the end of Bruno that he imagines her life continuing, and he has simply stopped illustrating it. Lucy Lyall's expository ending to Kaspall was repurposed more successfully into a shorter episodic fantasy detective format in Spare Keys for Strange Doors. And really, if the first story in that series isn't illustrative of the search for perfection...

Well, I guess I can tough out Tamuran's slithering asides or OOPs' didactic ones as well.

___________________________________________________

* I'm betting it doesn't feel that way to the writer, since if you already know the contents, it's still "one page" to you.