Kurt Busiek Profile picture
Sep 13, 2020 12 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Comics aren’t movies.

If you try to eliminate everything you can’t do in movies — captions, thought balloons — in writing comics, that’s a legitimate choice, but it’s not an inherent virtue.

Comics are words and pictures together, not pictures with words as a necessary evil.
Comics are an artwork. They’re not movies, they’re not novels, they’re not stage drama, they’re not poetry, they’re not fine art or illustration. They’re their own thing with their own strengths.

Movies are cool too, but they’ve got motion and sound and tone of voice and all...
…they do things comics can’t.

But comics can do things movies can’t. Eliminating techniques from comics because other forms don’t (or can’t) use them makes comics less than they can be.

Comics use words and pictures together. The words are not an intrusion.
“Artwork” should have been “artform,” there. Thank you, autocorrect.
Comics can be text-heavy and still good. They can be text-light and still good.

But the graphic juxtaposition of words and pictures is one of the things that comics have as a strength that few other forms have — print advertising has it, too.

It doesn’t just matter what...
…the words are, it matters _where_ they are.

A caption in the upper left and a caption in the lower right have different effects. A sound effect in the foreground and a sound effect in the background have different effects.

Comics are graphics as well as drawing, and words...
…as well as pictures.

The images can carry the narrative, with the text adding to it. The text can carry the narrative with the images adding to it. Between text and art you can have two (or more!) narratives happening in a single panel.

Comics are their own artform.
I broke in in the 1980s, so I learned a lot from comics of the 70-80s, but a couple of my go-to examples for varied use of text narratives in comics are DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, where Miller & Mazzucchelli tell their story using first-person and third-person narration, shifting...
…the spine of the storytelling from visual to verbal and back again as needed. And ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN, where multiple narratives, visual and textual, braid together in ordered chaos.
But Jaime Hernandez’s “Locas” in LOVE & ROCKETS used text and graphics well — there’s one bit where Hopey is screaming so loudly the panel can’t contain it and the words are cropped by the borders.

And Simonson’s THOR. Chaykin’s AMERICAN FLAGG. Sound effects as design elements.
Comics can be as deceptively simple as DENNIS THE MENACE, or as narratively varied as THE SPIRIT or as controlled as ON STAGE or as florid as the Moore/Bissette SWAMP THING.

There’s such a wide range of techniques.
Some people use the techniques well and others use them badly, but it doesn’t make the techniques good or bad.

Craft tools are only as good as the craftsmen weilding them.

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More from @KurtBusiek

Jun 9, 2023
I saw a couple people arguing that if you raise the age for gun ownership you have to raise the age for all other legal markers of adulthood, or it's not fair.

I say thee nay,
As we've worked it out, it's very helpful that people can be licensed to drive years before they're licensed to drink; it's very helpful that way.

There also seems to be (don't ask me to cite it) evidence that a later age for gun ownership results in fewer killing sprees.
Whereas being able to vote at 18 doesn't result in crazed voting sprees. And starting military service three years before you could privately own a gun might also be helpful.

A staggered introduction of adulthood seems to be a good idea.
Read 5 tweets
Jun 9, 2023
On scientific grounds, we writers don't need to be as smart as Reed; we just need to say, "Look, he designed this cool machine!"

On tactical grounds, we don't have to think as fast as Reed, because we can take four hours coming up with a plan he comes up with in a split-second.*
*plus, we're the writers, so we can make sure his great plan actually works; we run the world and the laws of chance and all that kind of stuff.

And on interpersonal stuff, well, Reed and Tony are both pretty dumb on that front. Geniuses can do real dumb things.
So if we're writing someone charming (like Tony often is), we can see to it that the other characters are charmed by him.

And if we're writing someone witty, like Spider-Man, we can take the time to think up the witty remarks.

I wrote a whole issue of UNTOLD TALES where...
Read 8 tweets
Nov 10, 2022
AVENGERS FOREVER exists because of Carlos Pacheco.

He was up for a contract renewal, and he told Bob Harras that he wanted two things: He wanted to do an Avengers project and he wanted me to write it.

At this point, we'd never worked together, and had barely met.
Bob called me, and asked me if I was up for the project. I was hugely flattered, and told Bob that I had no time (this was very true), but for the chance to work with Carlos, I would make time.

Then we had to actually come up with a story!
We originally started with a different concept, and wound up shifting over to the Avengers Forever idea (which was originally set to be a subplot in the main Avengers book, and was retooled into its own story with the helpful advice of Mark Waid).

And it was while were were...
Read 16 tweets
Nov 9, 2022
Today in the mail we got a large black envelope from Amazon…
…and in the large black envelope was a fancy little black box…
…and inside the fancy little black box (with a Velcro-sequel clasp)…
Read 11 tweets
Nov 8, 2022
Zis is ze Scarlet Witch — who ‘ad always wished to be une actresse — faking out Luke and Danny. Naturally, D.W. recognized her pseudonym.
Secrets of the Comics Revealed, Maybe: After this issue came out, the editor, Denny O'Neil told me that it had seen a nice bump in sales, that we'd gotten considerably more mail on it than other issues in recent memory, that the mail was extremely positive, and I should never...
...do anything like it again. He said this with a sort of reserved smirk, and it confused me enormously.

For a long time I thought what he meant was that despite it doing well, he didn't like it because it was funny, and that's not what he wanted for the book. This may have...
Read 6 tweets
Mar 7, 2022
Just saw, on another social-media site, a comics creator who was venting about the character in KING CONAN getting a different name. He was absolutely furious that Marvel would “buckle” to the forces of “cancel culture.”

And I’m thinking, wait, what the hell difference does...
…it make if the character has a different name? Does it alter the character in any significant way? Does it change the concept, the story? Does it do anything except not accidentally offend some of the audience?

No. So what’s the problem?
Why would anyone get _that_ mad about a simple fix to something that barely affects the story or character?

One of the people fervently agreeing with him said comics should come with labels saying that if you’re going to complain, don’t buy it.

Wha-a-at?
Read 11 tweets

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