Superhero stories without pictures seem less super
Filed under Writing Journal on May 5, 2009
Tagged: comic books, novels, superheroes
I’ve been reading comic books about as long as I have fantasy fiction novels. My dad bought me my first comic book, a Superman and Plastic Man team-up, when we moved from New Jersey to Iowa the summer after second grade. I spent many summer days after third grade with my face buried in a Ghost Rider comic I check out from the public library. The full-color depictions of people with cool powers defeating evil grabbed my imagination and hasn’t let go.
I became a “serious” collector and reader in junior high, but it wasn’t until I started playing the Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game that I started to develop my own superhero stories. My early forays where in the original medium, pages of penciled panels. I traced the work of my favorite artists, picking poses that reflected the scene in my head, but filling in details so they matched the superheroes I created: Sergeant Steele, Captain Galaxy, Lightning Lad, Meltdown, and others.
Eventually, I got to the point where I could recreate scenes I saw on the page by eye. I took an art class my senior year in high school, and a couple more in college, but it became apparent to me that I lacked natural talent. I could spend hours and hours honing what skills I had to become a serviceable illustrator, or I could pursue a path that took better advantage of my given abilities and inclinations. I chose the latter.
That didn’t mean I stopped thinking of superhero stories. I have notebooks of story synopses. I’ve fleshed several of those out as short story or scripts. I’ve contemplated grouping arcs together into novels, but always pull back from committing.
Capes, cowls and colored spandex in non-graphic formats are few and far between. Martin’s Wild Cards series, Soon I Will be Invincible, and the novelization of the Marvel and DC universes are recent developments. I enjoyed Soon I Will Be Invincible, but constantly found myself wishing there were illustrations of the characters in costume, and possibly a fight scene or two, interspersed among the prose.
For me, the genre–while not inseparable from the medium–lacks impact when the visual element is removed. Something is lost in the translation. Perhaps this disconnect is fueled by my strong desire to see my own superheroes in four-colors.
What about you? Can superheroes survive in a prose-only format? Do you prefer to see Superman and Spiderman stick with comic books?
