What do comics do better than, er, non-comics?

I read a few comics last week, which got me thinking about how comics tell stories. Here's an old post that asks a similar question.

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I recently read a crime novel whose one distracting quirk was an occasional paragraph of dialogue or exposition that read like an editorial comment or an information dump.

I've also been reading Greg Rucka's Queen & Country, a comic set in the contemporary world of British intelligence, and it occurred to me that comics can sometimes convey information more efficiently than non-graphic books — verbal information, I mean.

Say an author decides the contents of a report about complex, high-level, multinational drug, arms and financial transactions are essential to his or her story. How is the author to convey that information without dragging the story to halt?

Queen & Country's characters spend good chunks of their time at their desks discussing intelligence and other data, but the discussion is never boring. One reason is that we can see their reactions.

A spy chief might slap a report on his desk in disgust or grit his teeth as a superior shoots down his plans. It's a lot easier on a reader to see a skilled graphic rendering of such reactions than it is to read: "He slapped the report on his desk in disgust, grinding his teeth as his superior shot down his plans."

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What else can comics do better or more efficiently than traditional novels and stories? What can traditional stories do better? Have you ever read a scene in one medium that you thought would work better in another?

Rucka himself provides an opportunity to test these questions. He has written several novels based on the graphic-novel series. Read excerpts here and here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

New York Times, you're one of us now

For some time now, the clincher in any discussion of declining standards of literacy in American newspaper and book publishing has been "I'm even seeing mistakes in the New York Times." Now I can make the same declaration.

Here at my newspaper, I used to play a little game when reading or editing stories from wire services, including the Times' service. Whenever I'd come to a bit of mangled grammar or an ugly, sloppily executed sentence, I'd think, well, this can't be from the Times, and I'd scroll to the top of my computer screen to verify this. Until recently, I was always right.

Then, a few weeks ago, I edited a story by a Times writer who did not know the difference between nominate and appoint. (Think the difference is academic? Not when the story is about presidential nominations subject to Senate confirmation.)

Today there was this, from the Times' Bill Pennington:

"Last weekend he was talked about in entirely different contexts: to note that McIlroy was almost the same age as Woods was when he won his first major..."

In fact, Rory McIllroy, who won golf’s U.S. Open on Sunday, is not almost the same age as Woods was when he won the 1997 Masters, he's 10 months older. Sure, you can figure out what the Times meant, but not so long ago that extra step would have been unnecessary. The Times' reporters knew what they meant and the right words to say it, and if they didn't, its copy editors were good enough or given enough time to fix the mistake. No longer.

The Times is still better written than many newspapers, though it's not as good as the Wall Street Journal or the Economist. It's probably also a better source of news than most, so you won't be clueless if you read it. As for me, though, I'll have to find a new game to play at work.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

When the whip came down ...

... Manish lowered his left shoulder and went for the overseer's knees.

The overseer yelled and toppled backward into the sand. Manish grabbed a rock and brought it down on his head. The overseer didn't yell this time.

Manish caught his breath behind a granite block and wiped his hands on his white linen blazer. There was a long, jagged rip up its right sleeve, where the overseer had grabbed just before he died.

He'd leave the ruined coat behind; his cover was blown, and Ramsey would want him dead. Even if Manish made it to Median City alive, he could say good-bye to the money and power he'd accumulated in Ramsey's inner circle. But he'd worry about that later. For now, Manish had work to do.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Bouchercon, Day 2: The cure for excessive drinking

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Happily married P.I.s and other mold-breakers

Patti Abbott asks "What are some overused character traits found in the typical police or private detective?" and receives a list of entertaining and largely accurate answers, everything from cynicism, marital trouble and excessive drinking to a dubious diet and contempt for authority.

But about fictional P.I.s and cops who go the other way? Who breaks the mold? And how?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

What makes a novel worth reading?

I don't mean all that stuff about a compelling story and vivid characters and giving your protagonist an obstacle to overcome. I mean the bits of verbal champagne that make you want to tell your friends or put up a blog post.

The prologue of John Lawton's A Little White Death, third of his Frederick Troy novels, offers at least two. The first is in the book's very first paragraph:

"She knew revolutionaries. Short men, serious men, men who marked their seriousness physically by being bald or mustachioed or both."

The second follows some amusing byplay between two characters, one of whom is a physician come to the United States to treat John F. Kennedy for Addison's disease who hooks up with his fellow Brit just before leaving the U.S. Here are the lines with which the physician ends the prologue:

"`Fine. I understand. Now why don't you hop in a cab. We can have one last drinkie before I dash to Idlewild.'"

(Read about John Lawton's Second Violin here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

I joined a gym today ...

... To see if I could feel
I sweated like a tap
I'll soon have abs of steel.

Actually, I joined yesterday, but that does not lend itself as easily to paraphrasing Nine Inch Nails by way of Johnny Cash. And, unlike the narrator of the song I borrowed, I did not hurt myself. The experience was rather painless; I'll push myself gently the first few times out.

The gym I joined pipes in thudding disco, in the manner of gyms everywhere in America, but good ear plugs render the music almost tolerable. I can hear just enough to feel a sense of relief and well-being that I can't hear more, and I can ponder at leisure the mystery of why, if gyms must pipe in music, they can't pipe in good music.

I'd rather exercise in silence (and that means no cell phones on the treadmills), but if gyms must inflict music on their customers, why not flamenco? Or Irish reels? Or klezmer? Or norteño? Or Gershwin? Or the Stones? Or zydeco? Or samba? Or bebop? Or música popular brasileira? Or Spike Jones? Or ...

OK, what's your favorite exercise music?

Tomorrow: Back to crime fiction.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Unconventional

I recently ran into a fellow who was in New York for BookExpo America as a fan. The man, whose professional affiliation is outside the book business, marvelled at fans' hesitation to mingle with authors outside scheduled events at book conventions. Those fans, he said, pass the evenings in their rooms among their newly acquired books, missing the chance to fraternize at the hotel bar with the people who wrote those books.

I mention this because next up on my list is a book by an author with whom I chatted while sipping dry sherry at CrimeFest 2009: Chris Ewan. Seems to me that sort of thing is part of what conventions are for.

So, here's a question for convention goers: What books have you read because you met the author or liked what he or she had to say at a convention, whether during a panel, afterward, at the bar, in the hotel lobby or otherwise?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Who is eating the Watchmen?

I've posted a few times in recent months about the comic and movie Watchmen. Those posts were the main course. Here, courtesy of the Baixa Gastronomia blog, is the dessert, a chocolate cake with yellow icing, a chocolate smile and a blood stain of strawberry sauce, in the manner of Watchmen's signature blood-streaked smiley face.

Click on the Baixa link for the recipe. It's in Catalan, but you'll figure it out. Blogger Mar Calpena provides a synopsis in English. (Hat tip to Briciole, for its continuing mix of crime fiction, food and Italian lessons.)

Now it's your turn. What foods suit your favorite crime writers?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

More Moore

I've been surprised from time to time by the popularity that crime fiction enjoys among graphic-novel readers. Based on nothing other than guesswork and prejudice, I once would have associated comics more with fantasy than with crime. But no longer.

First, cover copy on one of the Batman collections referred to the story's murder mystery. Then a staffer at my local comics shop, as slacker-like a slacker as any who ever called a customer "Dude," surprised me when he said he wished the Watchmen movie had played up the story's murder mystery more. And then there are writers like Duane Swierczynski, who write both novels and comics.

My latest eye-opener in this regard is Alan Moore's Top 10, which I discovered thanks to the comic-store dude cited above. The story has a typically fantastic Moore premise: A city called Neopolis is built after World War II to house a population that consists entirely of superheroes. Their population explodes. Unemployment and associated social problems proliferate. And a wild squad of cops with odd superpowers of their own is charged with keeping order in this messy world.

Moore, I have read, cited Hill Street Blues as an influence, which means that Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels were an influence, too. The books have extensive fantasy and science fiction trappings, but at their heart they're ensemble police stories. That an imaginative writer such as Moore finds this time-honored form fertile ground speaks well for the vitality of crime fiction.

The books are vehicles for Moore's humor and social commentary, and the fantastic setting makes a wonderful background for the stories. That setting? Think of the bar scene in Star Wars, with all those weird creatures drinking and socializing. That's a nice set piece, right? Imagine all those creatures with lives and problems of their own, inhabiting a New York-like city, trying to survive, committing crimes or trying to solve them. That's Top 10.

I expect I'll have more to say once I've read all of the books. For now, though, I'll share a snippet of dialogue from The Forty-Niners, a Top 10 prequel:

"`Uh, say, buddy, excuse me? This'll sound kinda nuts, I know, but ... are you a vampire?'

"`I'm a Hungarian-American with an inherited medical condition.'"

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Fun with giallo, plus a book worth talking about

Giallo: (pronounced IPA: ['ʤallo], plural gialli) is an Italian 20th-century genre of literature and film, which in Italian indicates crime fiction and mystery.

Courtesy of Marco, who has posted numberous illuminating and stimulating comments here, and, if memory serves, Adrian McKinty comes news of the Do-It-Yourself-Giallo Kit. Click on that link, and you'll see the title, director and plot synopsis of a bogus giallo movie. Hit refresh, and you'll see another. Do it all day and all night, if you'd like, and you'll likely hit a plot or two that will remind you of something you've read or seen. (Click here for a discussion of giallo and its various definitions.)

And then tell me about it. What real books, stories and movies do the bogus gialli remind you of?

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McKinty's novel The Bloomsday Dead, very much worth reading, is now officially one of Fifty Books to Talk About as well, and you can help make it one of ten and then the Book to Talk About in 2009. Cast your vote here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

The stupidest critical cliché ever?

I had some fun last week with a pair of posts about critical clichés, which you can find here and here. Last night, though, I found one that I think beats them all. It was reproduced on the DVD box for a movie at my local video store, and it tells us that the movie "Has to be seen to be fully fathomed."

Think about that for a moment. Don't movies generally have to be seen to fathomed, fully or otherwise?

And now, readers, your question: What is the stupidest critical cliché ever?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Owen Wilson was here

In my newsroom, that is, on Thursday, filming a movie. The crew, which included Wilson, actor Clarke Peters, camera, light and sound people, continuity girls, best boys, makeup artists, hair stylists, extras, grips, gaffers, gofers, food servers, cable layers, carpenters, electricians, technicians, and nuchschleppers with cell phones, arrived far earlier than I did. I did, however, catch the last couple of hours, including a scene that Wilson and Peters shot in the editor's office.

Now, this was all taking place during a working day in a working newsroom, with editors, reporters and office staff trying to do their jobs, and our editor-in-chief was naturally concerned about the possibility of disruption. So he sent a memo to the staff asking that we not disturb the film crew.

In fact, the crew, whose 250 members prompted one of my colleagues to remark that she now understood why movies cost so much to make, was considerate, quiet and unobtrusive considering its size. They were packing up within seconds of the final "Cut!" and were out within minutes, leaving behind only a few pieces of equipment to be retrieved the next day. It was an astonishing reminder of how efficiently an enterprise can run given a staff of adequate size.

(I'm not sure my desk is visible in this scene with Wilson and Peters, but that's my newsroom, all right.)

(Addendum: The movie crew left without removing the yellow filters they had placed over the windows, so my colleagues and I have been violating union rules by removing them ourselves.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008