Pageturners: the emotional journey

My comic characters usually make an emotional journey. That’s not necessarily a good thing for readers who prefer stasis characters.

Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories. I publish a chapter or a section per week, for free here on Iconoblast. And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!

Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.

Last week I talked about world-building.

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Illustration by David Broughton

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Spoiler alert: Later in this chapter there is an excerpt from Goodnight, John-Boy, revealing the secret of Dave Maudling’s past. I’ll flag it up just before we hit it.

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Comic characters often don’t make any kind of emotional journey and that is their strength and their weakness. We like the reassuring cosiness of characters who never change, who are the same year after year, and often don’t seem to have any kind of private life. We don’t want them to get religion, make good or bad financial investments, marry, leave their job, or fall out with friends. All the things we do ourselves in real-life. When they’re well-written and drawn like Judge Dredd, stasis stories work, but if they’re poorly executed, the character becomes boring and will probably be axed. In films and novels, however, an emotional journey is mandatory. There are exceptions – such as some TV crime series and the early James Bond films – but even there, some attempt at an emotional journey will usually be made. The protagonist has to be changed by the events that he has experienced, notably by the ending scene. It’s one reason why comic book characters often don’t work in movies or text novels. 

For the most part, my comic characters always seem to have made an emotional journey. That’s not necessarily a good thing for readers who prefer stasis characters, but here’s a run-down on some of them to show how it works.

Ro-Busters. The robots stop being a disaster squad that rescues humans every week, and escape from their barely human owner. Some go to another planet, while Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein become involved in many further adventures which explore the complexity of their characters.

Defoe. He is an ex-Leveller and feels guilty because he is now working for King Charles as a zombie hunter. Zombies are not the true enemy for Defoe. Arguably they are a metaphor for the poor: the Living Dead. He realises he should really be hunting Vizards – rich superior heroes – instead. But he is now married, has two children, and family responsibilities. But his need to kill the Vizards is too great and he eventually succumbs to it. We last see him working as a detective for the Crown, while secretly killing the Vizards.  

Savage. He hates the Volgans but in his last adventure he becomes emotionally involved with a Volgan secret policewoman. At the same time he realises the enemy he has fought all his life are not the real enemy: the Allies and Volgans have secretly colluded to create an eternal war to control their populations. This effectively concludes the series. In a future adventure he would need to find a new sense of purpose and direction. Chances are that would not work for readers who are used to the original Savage. A reset – going back to his early days – would be an option worth considering, but I think everything has been thoroughly explored.

ABC Warriors. From a series of bitter conflicts with each other, exploring their characters and weaknesses, they finally unite to face their greatest enemy who is also their creator: Howard Quartz. Once again their emotional journey is complete.

Marshal Law. In the Savage Dragon story Marshal Law still kills super heroes, but there is an upbeat ending where he realises that much of his hatred for heroes is actually self-hatred. He has finally found a hero – himself. This was breaking the stasis that fans often prefer their heroes to remain in. Accordingly, some years ago, at a Portuguese convention, a fan came up to me  and ‘I love Marshal Law, but you are a bastard for that ending,’ and promptly ran off. As that was the last Marshal Law story, arguably his emotional journey is also complete. 

Spoiler Alert

Goodnight John-boy plot spoiler comes after the following paragraph. It’s in bold type after the dividing line and liquorice pipe, so scroll quickly to get past it if you don’t know Dave’s big secret.

In novels, there has to be plot and emotional development. Things cannot remain in stasis. A good example is the evil newsagent sub-plot in Read ‘em and Weep. The series begins with  an eight-year-old Dave Maudling going into his local newsagents and asking for a Fourpenny One, his favourite comic. In response, Mr Cooper, the newsagent, punches him in the face: a typical ‘fourpenny one’.  Cooper continues to make Dave’s life a misery – punching him in the face every Saturday. Years later, when Dave is an editor at Fleetpit publications, Cooper turns up in his life again as a storeman. Aware that Dave is secretly living in the attic of the office building, he blackmails him for money. Dave is so under Cooper’s sinister spell he gives in, until one day he breaks and finally fights back. Then he discovers the newsagent may have been his mother’s murderer and decides to shoot him. This is where we join the scene:

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A trembling Cooper saw the new resolve in Dave’s face and his heart sank again. ‘No! You can’t kill me, Davey,’ he pleaded desperately. 

‘Why not?’

‘Cos I’m your dad.’

‘Yeah, right,’ jeered Dave.

‘It’s true.’

 ‘You? You?  You think I’m crazy enough to believe a low-life like you could possibly be my father?’

‘I’m not lying,’ said Cooper, ‘I am your father.’ There was real conviction in his face and in his voice.

…Dave felt sick to his stomach. He was lost for words. Maybe that was why he was drawn into going back to the shop every Saturday, because, on some deep subconscious level, he sensed the newsagent was his real dad.

‘Cheer up, Dave,’ Cooper grinned. ‘It was only a bit of “How’s your Father?” if you’ll pardon the pun. And everyone was rutting like stoats in them days. That’s why there were all you baby boomers.’

Cooper smiled triumphantly at him, aware he had the upper hand once again. ‘I told her to flush you while she had the chance.’ He grinned at his son. ‘I’d flush you now if you weren’t so big.’

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Having hit this dramatic high note, events in this sub-plot can only get worse. Not just through physical events, but emotionally. Dave has to change in response to what he has just heard.

In girls comics it is often easier to create an emotional journey for characters. Indeed female readers expect it, rather than resist it as in the Marshal Law example above. Thus in my serial Girl in a Bubble, published in Jinty, the heroine lives inside a large plastic bubble because she has no immunity to disease. Any physical contact with the outside world and she will die. She is looked after by a female scientist who feeds and punishes her through control gloves inset into the side of the bubble. Then a tearaway girl sneaks into the building and finds the girl in the bubble. She tells her there is nothing wrong with her. Gaining courage from her new friend, the heroine briefly leaves the bubble and discovers it’s true. The scientist’s treatment has cured her, but the evil woman wants her to remain in the bubble so she can continue experimenting on her.  The tearaway encourages the heroine to run away and find her mother.  But when her mother opens her front door, she rejects her own daughter and slams the door in her face. She had given up on her daughter and adopted another girl to take her place. But now the heroine has grown stronger as a person, and overcomes these latest challenges. Eventually, the mother is united with her daughter and the scientist is punished.

Once again, the situation has to get worse and worse before it is finally resolved. If that serial – and other girls comic serials like them – seem totally over the top, then consider the novels of Gillian Flynn such as Gone Girl and Sharp Objects: equally wild! In suitably toned down form, they would make for great girls comics serials. In the unlikely event that girls comics ever returned to the newsstands and I was invited to write for them again, I would study the works of Gillian Flynn and similar authors for contemporary inspiration.

It bears repeating that girls comics easily outsold boys comics and could do so again. Sadly, they are unlikely to return because the rules of girls comics are poorly understood; it’s a male dominated industry; and many of my peers dislike and sneer at girls comics as inferior to male comics. A great pity because if I had to choose, I’d write girls comics every time. Instead, I include their emotion and emotional journeys in my male-orientated stories.

Next week: writing and editing comic books