hengest's blog (right here, this thread)

[hengest]

May 24, 2022 16:33:26 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

May 23, 2022 22:11:44 GMT -5 hengest said:

I'm looking forward to this.  I remember one teacher in grade school that had a reading shelf in her room.  We could all bring reading materials to put on the shelf.  We were allowed to pick up something from the shelf if all of our work was complete and just read.  A few of us stuck comic books on the shelf and she didn't notice until the next week.  She made a point to tell us taht "comic books aren't really reading" and that it was no longer allowed.  

In my high school years, one of the English teacher's required two book reports on books of our choice except we would "really have to push for a Stephen King novel" because she didn't like them.  If you don't like horror, I can respect your opinion.  What I can't respect is just blowing it off as "bad storytelling" or "bad writing" just because you don't like it.  I would think Stephen King and his character work would be ripe for study.  You discover stuff like a character's mommy issues that developed 20 years ago, their little speech quirks, and maybe even the change in their pocket.  

I agree with you; King is a "real" writer. The notion that genre fiction isn't "real" literature is just silly, and I challenge anyone who holds that opinion to do the following:

• define "real literature"
• show how works by King (or whoever) don't meet that definition
• show how every work they do want to consider real literature does meet it
• post their arguments in public and be prepared to handle pushback

But I don't really expect that to happen...

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

May 25, 2022 16:22:33 GMT -5 hengest said:

May 24, 2022 16:33:26 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

I'm looking forward to this.  I remember one teacher in grade school that had a reading shelf in her room.  We could all bring reading materials to put on the shelf.  We were allowed to pick up something from the shelf if all of our work was complete and just read.  A few of us stuck comic books on the shelf and she didn't notice until the next week.  She made a point to tell us taht "comic books aren't really reading" and that it was no longer allowed.  

In my high school years, one of the English teacher's required two book reports on books of our choice except we would "really have to push for a Stephen King novel" because she didn't like them.  If you don't like horror, I can respect your opinion.  What I can't respect is just blowing it off as "bad storytelling" or "bad writing" just because you don't like it.  I would think Stephen King and his character work would be ripe for study.  You discover stuff like a character's mommy issues that developed 20 years ago, their little speech quirks, and maybe even the change in their pocket.  

I agree with you; King is a "real" writer. The notion that genre fiction isn't "real" literature is just silly, and I challenge anyone who holds that opinion to do the following:

• define "real literature"
• show how works by King (or whoever) don't meet that definition
• show how every work they do want to consider real literature does meet it
• post their arguments in public and be prepared to handle pushback

But I don't really expect that to happen...

Yes!  That's a great list of criteria to check against.

[hengest]

By the way, The Semi-Retired Gamer, there's one substantive post above. Just pointing it out in case you had any interest and it got lost under my other reply...no pressure at all, just didn't want to lose exactly half the potentially interested audience due to carelessness!

[hengest]

May 25, 2022

Mental animation / "the gutter"

When someone who doesn't read comics (ever, not just superhero comics) looks at a page of a comic book (maybe you say "Hey, read this page"), watch their face and track their reactions. You may note some of the following

a) they don't know where to start, they kind of look around the page in confusion
b) if they read a panel (you say "start over here, then read left to right and before you move down, like reading a book"), they read the words and then look at the picture, and may struggle to understand the relationship between them.
c) (perhaps the strangest of these to a practiced reader of comics) they don't understand the relationships between panels. Usually they have some notion of sequence ("So then she...?"), but are not at all practiced at filling in the gaps.

And there are gaps. Each panel depicts an instant or a tiny span of time, and sometimes quite a lot must happen in between panels.

Part of that gap, at least in some comics, is filled in by the narrator. But most of it relies on the reader's imagination (and understanding of the conventions of comic narration, although these are not set in stone). (Scott McCloud calls the space between the panels "the gutter," and you can read some application of McCloud's ideas here.)

Example from Jack Kirby's "The Demon":



Panel One: opponent strikes Etrigan with a giant icicle. 
Panel Two: Etrigan recoils from the wound.

Etrigan is not doing anything special here, no magic or fancy fighting. All he does is get hurt. 

There is nothing "between" these panels except "the space between the panels." But in this space, the reader spins around to face in the opposite direction and feels the change in perspective. If you read comics, then even if you look at these panels in isolation from the rest of the sequence, I bet you can easily see them as the start and end of a "flipbook" effect. There is an animation that they frame but do not show: that animation takes place in your mind.

Effective, but simple. Or is it so simple? As it seems to me, this change of perspective is well-used here. First, we sympathize with Etrigan, almost seeing from his perspective, if not quite through his eyes. As he gets hurt (unusual), we whirl around almost to the position of his opponent. We retreat from his position as he gets hurt. It is as if also retreat from the injury, retreat from our immediately perspective-sympathy with Etrigan. 

So although our immediate spatial identification with Etrigan is reduced, the overlay of the change in perspective and the "paraphrasable" events increases the reader's engagement in the story. You have "felt" Etrigan's injury, in a way, not quite as if you were him, but as if you were an almost-participant.

This is one of the reason's Kirby's pencils alone can be worth examining. It is said that he sat down to draw each page with no notes or external plan, "composing" as he drew. I can believe it. When you think about his sequences, particularly but not only action sequences, you note a lot of this stuff. Techniques that add up to immersion, to "being there."

But I was supposed to talk about why these books are good for reading, right? 

If what I've said above shows how the "mental animation" increases engagement in the story, then...well, then I've already done what I set out to do. The pictures increase engagement in a way a non-reader of comics would not expect, and the reader is then more involved and pays more attention to the written language. Kirby is not as noted for his dialogue as for his art, but there is really no problem with his dialogue, and it works quite well with his art. A young reader of these two panels gets at least two noteworthy bits of information about English, just from these two panels.

Panel One
Sorcerer: But see! The staff becomes a giant icicle!---A thing of unimaginable cold! Ahaahh---! You fear the cold, don't you, demon!
Etrigan: Aaaa⁠—! It sears my flesh!

In Panel One, both characters use the simple present tense to describe what is happening at the moment in the panel ("The staff becomes..." "It sears..."). I think of this as the "epic present." No one uses it seriously in conversation ("He passes me the salt!"), but it has a well-known niche in elevated, stylized dialogue. The regular human characters with a 20th-century flavor do not talk like this in The Demon. So if a young reader didn't know about this constellation of information (the tense, its use, and the context in which that use is possible), well, now that young reader has a taste of it all. If the reader already knew, then that knowledge just got reinforced. Either way, knowledge of the English tense tense system has just been increased / solidified, all as part of an engaging action sequence. 

Panel Two:
Etrigan: Foul sorcerer! This shall be your last bid for triumph!
Sorcerer: Bold words for a demon who is about to die!

In Panel Two, the similarity is not so much grammatical as it is situational. In the previous panel, the two characters presented basically the same idea on the event that was taking place: ice burns demon. Here, their opinions part ways, and each predicts the other's immediate downfall, though in completely different words (note that not a single word is repeated in panel two). As our perspective changes (see discussion of Panel One), their perspectives change, too, going from present-focused to future-focused. 

All this is perceived extremely quickly by the experienced reader, whose conscious focus is likely on bigger chunks of the story. The less experienced reader will have to "chew" some or much of this semi-consciously (looking back and forth, reading and re-reading), which is good practice for visual skills, tracking representations of 3-space in two dimensions, tracking changes in tense, register, and mental perspective...

Summary

The pictures are not a crutch for poor readers, but are the artist's offering to the reader, a kind of fuel or challenge for the imagination. That act of imagination takes place largely (but not only) "between" the pictures. Therefore, the space between the panels, which looks like so much nothing, increases reader engagement with the story and increases attention to and learning from the dialogue. 

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

May 25, 2022 19:06:40 GMT -5 hengest said:

By the way, The Semi-Retired Gamer, there's one substantive post above. Just pointing it out in case you had any interest and it got lost under my other reply...no pressure at all, just didn't want to lose exactly half the potentially interested audience due to carelessness!

No worries. I'll check it out in detail on my laptop when I get off work. I usually wait on longer stuff like that. One finger typing on a phone is not my thing for longer replies. 😂

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

May 24, 2022 21:11:23 GMT -5 hengest said:

May 24th, 2022

"Supportive reading"

I remember back in the day when endless discussions about reading occupied a larger section of public discourse. And to this day, it seems there is at least a residual sense in some circles that comic books specifically (much more than illustrated children's books) are somehow detrimental to literacy. To me this seems to be the opposite of true. The linguistic environment 

A simple example from my own recent reading below.



(Panel from Superman #125, November 1958, "Clark Kent's College Days." Writer: Jerry Coleman. Artist: Al Plastino.)

In this story, a professor suspects that Clark Kent is Superboy / Superman and tries to get proof of it in various circumstances. He has no malicious intent, simply a scientist's curiosity. Clark, of course, tries to avoid being found out. In the sequence from which this panel is taken, Clark, a cheerleader, jumps too high by accident. At super-speed, he grabs balloons and...we see this panel. 

The speech balloon at the left gives us some person's take on what has happened. As Clark intended, a non-suspicious person thinks that Clark simply grabbed too many balloons and was lifted into the air. I need to say that, quite apart from the various fantastic powers, regular reality is often severely bent in these stories: of course fourteen helium balloons are not going to lift any adult man, or woman, into the air even an inch. Although no super-power is in visible use here, there is a fantasy element (that anyone could believe this cover). The speech balloon at the left informs us that we are to take this possibility as real for the purposes of the story.

Once we understand that the balloons could be thought to lift an adult into the air, Clark's thought bubble (placed almost like a third set of balloons) interprets this postulate within the situation: the professor knows that this is possible and must allow it as an explanation of Clark's being aloft.

At the right of the panel, the professor is silent, even in his mind, only observing (note how the professor and Clark both use "telescopic vision" to observe each other here--Clark with his natural ability, the professor by using a pair of binoculars). 

Note that without the dialogue, this panel would be difficult to interpret. Do the motion lines suggest that Clark is going up or down? It doesn't really matter, we know that he is in the air and holding balloons. One assumes that, regardless of his upward or downward motion here, he "wiggles his way" back to the ground as if he had really been lifted by the balloons. The panel is not necessarily a snapshot, but describes visually more than one instant: Clark is in the air while holding balloons. 

Clark is covering up for two audiences here: the average viewer and the suspicious professor. The speech balloon tells us what the average viewer thinks, while Clark presents the professor's difficulty in assessing what has happened (super-powers or a simple cheerleading accident?).

Note further how the speech and thought balloons lend a touch of extra interest to the affair. The story is basically a duel of wits between Clark and his professor. What matters is what each of them thinks, how Clark anticipates problems and how the professor interprets Clark's tricks. In this panel, however, the words are spoken and thought by a random person and Clark rather than by Clark and the professor. Although the professor's thoughts are integral to the plot, the writer leaves them unknown to us. We get world-necessary and plot-necessary information from the random person and Clark--but then we see the professor as he silently observes and we get to wonder, at least for an instant, what he is thinking. There is room here for the reader to do something creative as well. Maybe he thinks this, maybe he thinks that. 

So: rather than the drawing replacing the words, the words are necessary to interpret this portion of the story. Any reader knows this intuitively, including possible readers who have difficulty reading or cannot read at all. Even they will feel the necessity of getting that information out of the page (by slogging through it with interest or by asking someone to read it to read it to them). 

The words help you to understand the picture, while the picture is rarely necessary to understand the words.

Think of it this way: the script the writer produces is sufficient for the penciller to work from (of course, there may be notes for the artists), but the finished, illustrated story with the words removed would obviously be an exercise in frustration, difficult if not impossible to interpret.

In contexts concerns with language acquisition, there is a lot of chatter about "real situations" as the "best" way to learn a language. What real situations are, and how they are the best, is rarely defined. But it may reasonably be observed, on the basis of the above, that such a comic-story is rather more like "using speech in everyday circumstances" than is reading a story with no or few illustration. After all, in conversation, you can often see your interlocutor's facial expressions as well as the immediate physical environment that you share: the speech and the environment, understood through your senses, both help you to understand what is being said and what is going on.

No one advises children to go through life with their eyes closed for fear that they will reply only on their vision and not pay attention to language. A single panel from a 1958 story shows that such advice makes no more sense in the context of reading material than it does in life in general.

To summarize: skillfully produced comic-book stories, rather than making reading seem redundant, encourage careful reading (and re-reading).

I think you nailed it.  The illustrations in the panels add to the story and the reader's comprehension.  The story alone would work (in a well-crafted story) but the pictures help with visualization.  Would Superman look the same to everyone reading a story without illustrations and only a description to go by?  Of course not, but the appearance of Superman is really not important to the story.  Other details can really help with immersion and illustrations can help even further.  

On a side note, the epic fantasies that Brandon Sanderson writes often have maps, indexes, and various illustrations included in the book.  While they are not necessary for the enjoyment of the story, their inclusion does help with immersion and visualization.  Speaking of, I need to start Oathbringer soon...

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

May 25, 2022 22:12:19 GMT -5 hengest said:

May 25, 2022

Mental animation / "the gutter"

When someone who doesn't read comics (ever, not just superhero comics) looks at a page of a comic book (maybe you say "Hey, read this page"), watch their face and track their reactions. You may note some of the following

a) they don't know where to start, they kind of look around the page in confusion
b) if they read a panel (you say "start over here, then read left to right and before you move down, like reading a book"), they read the words and then look at the picture, and may struggle to understand the relationship between them.
c) (perhaps the strangest of these to a practiced reader of comics) they don't understand the relationships between panels. Usually they have some notion of sequence ("So then she...?"), but are not at all practiced at filling in the gaps.

And there are gaps. Each panel depicts an instant or a tiny span of time, and sometimes quite a lot must happen in between panels.

Part of that gap, at least in some comics, is filled in by the narrator. But most of it relies on the reader's imagination (and understanding of the conventions of comic narration, although these are not set in stone). (Scott McCloud calls the space between the panels "the gutter," and you can read some application of McCloud's ideas here.)

Example from Jack Kirby's "The Demon":



Panel One: opponent strikes Etrigan with a giant icicle. 
Panel Two: Etrigan recoils from the wound.

Etrigan is not doing anything special here, no magic or fancy fighting. All he does is get hurt. 

There is nothing "between" these panels except "the space between the panels." But in this space, the reader spins around to face in the opposite direction and feels the change in perspective. If you read comics, then even if you look at these panels in isolation from the rest of the sequence, I bet you can easily see them as the start and end of a "flipbook" effect. There is an animation that they frame but do not show: that animation takes place in your mind.

Effective, but simple. Or is it so simple? As it seems to me, this change of perspective is well-used here. First, we sympathize with Etrigan, almost seeing from his perspective, if not quite through his eyes. As he gets hurt (unusual), we whirl around almost to the position of his opponent. We retreat from his position as he gets hurt. It is as if also retreat from the injury, retreat from our immediately perspective-sympathy with Etrigan. 

So although our immediate spatial identification with Etrigan is reduced, the overlay of the change in perspective and the "paraphrasable" events increases the reader's engagement in the story. You have "felt" Etrigan's injury, in a way, not quite as if you were him, but as if you were an almost-participant.

This is one of the reason's Kirby's pencils alone can be worth examining. It is said that he sat down to draw each page with no notes or external plan, "composing" as he drew. I can believe it. When you think about his sequences, particularly but not only action sequences, you note a lot of this stuff. Techniques that add up to immersion, to "being there."

But I was supposed to talk about why these books are good for reading, right? 

If what I've said above shows how the "mental animation" increases engagement in the story, then...well, then I've already done what I set out to do. The pictures increase engagement in a way a non-reader of comics would not expect, and the reader is then more involved and pays more attention to the written language. Kirby is not as noted for his dialogue as for his art, but there is really no problem with his dialogue, and it works quite well with his art. A young reader of these two panels gets at least two noteworthy bits of information about English, just from these two panels.

Panel One
Sorcerer: But see! The staff becomes a giant icicle!---A thing of unimaginable cold! Ahaahh---! You fear the cold, don't you, demon!
Etrigan: Aaaa⁠—! It sears my flesh!

In Panel One, both characters use the simple present tense to describe what is happening at the moment in the panel ("The staff becomes..." "It sears..."). I think of this as the "epic present." No one uses it seriously in conversation ("He passes me the salt!"), but it has a well-known niche in elevated, stylized dialogue. The regular human characters with a 20th-century flavor do not talk like this in The Demon. So if a young reader didn't know about this constellation of information (the tense, its use, and the context in which that use is possible), well, now that young reader has a taste of it all. If the reader already knew, then that knowledge just got reinforced. Either way, knowledge of the English tense tense system has just been increased / solidified, all as part of an engaging action sequence. 

Panel Two:
Etrigan: Foul sorcerer! This shall be your last bid for triumph!
Sorcerer: Bold words for a demon who is about to die!

In Panel Two, the similarity is not so much grammatical as it is situational. In the previous panel, the two characters presented basically the same idea on the event that was taking place: ice burns demon. Here, their opinions part ways, and each predicts the other's immediate downfall, though in completely different words (note that not a single word is repeated in panel two). As our perspective changes (see discussion of Panel One), their perspectives change, too, going from present-focused to future-focused. 

All this is perceived extremely quickly by the experienced reader, whose conscious focus is likely on bigger chunks of the story. The less experienced reader will have to "chew" some or much of this semi-consciously (looking back and forth, reading and re-reading), which is good practice for visual skills, tracking representations of 3-space in two dimensions, tracking changes in tense, register, and mental perspective...

Summary

The pictures are not a crutch for poor readers, but are the artist's offering to the reader, a kind of fuel or challenge for the imagination. That act of imagination takes place largely (but not only) "between" the pictures. Therefore, the space between the panels, which looks like so much nothing, increases reader engagement with the story and increases attention to and learning from the dialogue. 

Panels and the flow from one scene or one perspective to another is one way I think comic books are superior to picture books.  The original artists that broke away to form Image Comics had a great grasp on the concept of using panels creatively.  Admittedly, there were times when the visuals were "better" or "more appealing" than the words or the story but that is a post for another day and something that Image alone is guilty of doing.  I remember one panel that had the main character's head in the center with an expression and some word balloons and then around the page were panels of various shapes and sizes with the other characters reacting to the words from the main character. This was done superbly because you could see everyone's response at once and it looked almost like a scene from a movie.  Others have tried similar panel use and it just looks like a cluttered mess and the word balloons weren't executed properly so you couldn't tell who was responding to what.

In short, visuals + story together can be better than the sum of the individual parts.

[hengest]

June 3, 2022

"Psychology"

I don't have a wonderful title for this, so 'm just calling it "psychology." What I mean is the presence in old Silver Age comic books (the kind everyone's mom is said to have thrown out) of an inner life of characters to which the relate can somehow relate or from which the reader can learn or reflect on something. 

Of course, there's tons of personal interest in these stories. But I pick the story below as an unusual example. 

Because of an encounter with alien tech, Superman finds his powers have vanished...to be replaced by a new power! What's the new power? Well, this is hidden from the reader for a bit, but soon enough it's revealed: Superman can now deploy a mini-Superman (about six inches tall, I think) from his hand! It has all his powers and acts at his mental command to...do the things Superman would usually do. But almost immediately, Superman comes to feel useless and resents his "mini-duplicate":



Public interest gravitates toward the "infernal imp" and Superman is no longer a topic of conversation:



Although the imp has done nothing wrong, Superman gets the idea to send it on a dangerous mission, not concerned for its safety.



At first, when the kryptonite approaches Superman, he thinks the imp is fleeing to save its own life. But in fact, it rides the dangerous meter away from Superman and is itself destroyed in the process. Superman's powers return, and he is left wondering: "Did it have a life of its own which it sacrificed for me, or was it just carrying out my thoughts...before I could put them into words? I...I'll never know!"



There's very little to this story in the way of the usual Silver Age stuff. There's little Clark and few special activities. Not much of the regular supporting cast, either. All there really is here is this basic idea: Superman resents the imp for taking attention away from him. Of course, the imp doesn't speak, and seems for most of the story to be nothing but...the mini-embodiment of Superman's powers. In effect, the sense of the plot is "Superman would like to be liked "for himself," not for his powers." 

[hengest]

I have been very quiet lately. I haven't had time and have been dealing with a lot of "stuff." But I miss this place and the exchange of ideas here.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Sept 23, 2022 9:24:59 GMT -5 hengest said:

I have been very quiet lately. I haven't had time and have been dealing with a lot of "stuff." But I miss this place and the exchange of ideas here.

We've missed you too, but we all have lives in the real world and we have to give them the priority they deserve. Great to see you.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Sept 23, 2022 9:24:59 GMT -5 hengest said:

I have been very quiet lately. I haven't had time and have been dealing with a lot of "stuff." But I miss this place and the exchange of ideas here.

Completely understandable and life gets that way sometimes.  Great to see you here right now.

[hengest]

Sep 24 2023

Oof. What a nothing this "blog" thread turned out to be. I don't know where my energy went. It's not like I'm running an international business empire.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Sept 24, 2023 22:55:44 GMT -5 hengest said:

Sep 24 2023

Oof. What a nothing this "blog" thread turned out to be. I don't know where my energy went. It's not like I'm running an international business empire.

Or ARE you running an international business empire without it being public knowledge? 

[hengest]

Sept 25, 2023 7:31:25 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

Sept 24, 2023 22:55:44 GMT -5 hengest said:

Sep 24 2023

Oof. What a nothing this "blog" thread turned out to be. I don't know where my energy went. It's not like I'm running an international business empire.

Or ARE you running an international business empire without it being public knowledge? 

Ssh! Save that for PMs!