The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal

The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - Fanbukkake

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July 28th, 2008

10:39 am

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Fanbukkake
I've been blogging about Neil Gaiman a lot, because he's given me permission to. But I have yet to tell you the absolute best thing about Neil Gaiman: His wonderful friends.

For example, on Friday he asked, "Would you folks like to have Dave McKean over for dinner?" And of course we said yes. But the finest hour was on Tuesday, when he uttered the words that would put me in touch with one of my all-time favorite comic book creators:

"Do you want me to ask Scott McCloud over? He's got some fascinating theories."

Now, Scott is one of the most underrated comics creators in existence. He's most famous for "Understanding Comics," but before that he created Zot! - a whacky story about a boy superhero in a parallel universe and his semi-girlfriend in this one. Zot! started out as a silly adventure, just something to hang a bunch of cool villains on - and then, as Scott got bored with that and learned about manga, it suddenly took a twist and deepened. Before you knew it, Zot! was using its villains to explore universal themes... And then, in "Earth Stories," Scott finally dropped the superheroes altogether to do the best character studies ever put to paper, devoting an issue each to minor characters and making them so real my heart broke each and every month.

Neil was amused, because I think he surmised - correctly - that while I like Sandman, my adoration for Zot! and Understanding Comics far surpassed my love for Neil Gaiman. He joked that his best usage here was as a conduit for Scott.

So Scott came over to talk to us about plotting.

He's working on a new theory - it's what he does - and the best part was that he was clearly still thinking it over, trying to figure out what elements link all plots, and wanted us to share our ideas with him. He's a man who loves toying with ideas, and his current idea was that every plot was just following the thread of someone's desire to the end, and he shared his current working theory that there were three things that could happen to that desire by the end of the story.

"I'm suspicious of the three-act story," he said. "I think it's all about desire." But you could see his mind working, trying to find other layers.

He used movies a lot to make his points, and asked us for examples of other movies, and was absolutely thrilled when we provided examples of things that didn't fit his theories. He'd then try to create new frameworks on the fly or come up with even better ideas of things that didn't work, because his enthusiasm for exploration is infectious. We were all pitching ideas, trying to help out, fascinated by the way his mind works.

Yet the second-best thing about having Scott McCloud was that his wife and children came with him, and they were just as much a part of the lecture as we were. He's obviously very enamored of his wife and daughters, and they kept raising their hand to ask questions, interacting with us - he's got two adorable nerds for daughters who love Princess Mononoke and Dr. Horrible with equal affection, and it felt for a moment as though we'd been asked to be, for however short, a part of his tribe.

They love what their dad does, and I can only hope that one day I can sit around the table with them and hear what must be the most fascinating dinner table discussions ever.

And the look in Scott's eyes every time he looks at his wife? Well, I can only hope I look at Gini like that. Kismet.

Scott was oddly shy, not wanting to blather on without audience participation, so Neil had to encourage him to share his ideas of the tribes of creators. Bolstered, he then drew a chart on white paper, explaining that artists tend to fall into one or two of four rough camps:

Animists, who want to replicate the vibrance of life itself;
Classisicts, who love working with classic forms and structures;
Iconoclasts, who want to show the truth of life as it is, and;
Formalists, who like constantly pushing barriers to explore the limits of the medium.

(I'm summarizing, so don't criticize my short-hand interpretation of someone else's ideas. Pick up Making Comics if you want to see how it really works, where he goes into more detail.)

We then spent an hour figuring out where people fell on the continuum ("Harvey Pekar? Animist/Formalist! Neil Gaiman? Animist/Classicist!"), which led to a lot of fun talks about how the camps interact. And best of all, I have the sheet still as a lovely trinket of our time together, and I've asked everyone here to write down where they fall on the chart, so when they all become famous I have this huge sheet full of famous authors' signatures on a Scott McCloud chart. Helloooooo, eBay.

"But what was the best thing, Ferrett?" you ask. Well, it wasn't that Scott had a fresh copy of his latest Zot! reprint collection, and it wasn't that he gave it to me for free and then signed it for me. I thanked Neil a thousand times for giving me that opportunity to not just have a signed book, but a gift from Scott McCloud.

No, the best thing was that my wife called at the beginning of the lecture, and I hit the phone to mute the incoming call. But I hit the wrong button, I accidentally picked up. So Gini listened to most of Scott McCloud's lecture, so fascinated she was willing to deal with the poor sound she could hear from inside my pants pocket. (She later pinged me on GChat to tell me what she was doing, and I put the phone in a better location.)

"Is Clarion like that?" she asked later. She'd just been given a little window into our world, and was amazed.

"Yeah, pretty much," I said.

"Wow," she said, and for a moment, thanks to a magical coincidence, we had shared worlds. And it felt like I was not just a part of Scott McCloud's family, but he'd brought mine to me as well.

Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Neil.

Y'all are both great.

(Tell me I'm full of it)

Comments

From:	badlittlemonkey
Date:	July 28th, 2008 02:48 pm (UTC)

(Link)

To this point, reading your posts on Clarion made me think "Hey, that's really neat! How cool that Ferrett's got the opportunity to be part of this amazing learning experience." But I was never jealous.

Now... now I'm jealous. Wow.

love your Profound Wise Proverb

Re: love your Profound Wise Proverb

Re: love your Profound Wise Proverb

Squee!

We will test this theory.

Re: We will test this theory.

Thanks so much ferrett!