As a reader of graphic novels, it always bugs me that most long form comics read like they are the first draft of the material, when in fact they often are. And for good reason. As a creator of graphic novels, I am exhausted by my selfish reader tendencies by having to redraw page after page to smooth out the reading experience. I can see why, over the years, creators often compromised their stories under the pressures of deadlines and satiating the public's thirst for the material. For the large amounts of time and energy a creator must spend to create the work, the reader only gets a small handful of information to chew on. Sometimes, working out the details are not an option.
This is the pickle that the readers and creators of comics seem to always find themselves in. Readers are very forgiving of the story elements in a comic book. This is unlike other media, like films or novels, where audiences often criticize stories with sharpened talons, and only the very best and most appealing works make their way through the gauntlet. Is it because comics readers understand how difficult the process is and are simply happy to have reading material? Or is it simply that we have low expectations of the medium, as opposed to extremely high ones for films and novels?
Amulet has been an experiment in treating the graphic novel with the standards of filmwatching and novel reading in mind, and I have to admit that it's been an incredibly exhausting project. I'm currently in the middle of redrafting and redrawing nearly half the book to bring it up to snuff. The book already reads well, but I think Scholastic's incredibly high expectations and my own (possibly foolish) ambitions want the book to work like a very well-oiled machine.
I've actually burnt myself out several times now, and I just took a much needed break from the extreme deadline pressures to refocus the narrative and build up enough energy to go back at it. I've already drawn well over 300 pages (penciled, some inked) to produce a book that will be about 200 pages in length, and I'm about to draw at least 70 more. One thing that I am realizing is that I am not naturally a good writer. I have to work hard at it. But I do know good writing when I see it, so I just have to keep throwing stuff at the wall and hope I see something that sticks.
For those of you aspiring graphic novelists out there that are likewise not naturally gifted, I highly recommend scheduling enough time to do about twice the amount of work you would need for the final product (something I should have already learned from working on films), otherwise it's likely that you can end up with a case of first-draftitis or a stream-of-consciousness project , neither of which are necessarily bad things. In any case, we'll have to figure out how we can get the comics medium, a vessel akin to a ridiculously slow typewriter, to sing at the level of the brightest media available to the public.
Much of the problem can be solved with more disciplined work methods, but with more structured systems comes heavy pros and cons, something I'll talk about in a later entry. Back to work for now...
