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99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden Chamberlain Brothers, 2005. 208 p. (black and white with 8 color pages). $16.95. I first found Matt Madden's Exercises in Style (sample pages
through that link) online a couple years ago and now finally there is
a complete book under the title 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises
in Style. Matt has let a number of these pages trickle out on the
web and in print (his A Fine Mess (Alternative Comics) features some in both issues), but even for someone who's been following them, there are plenty of surprises. Back in 1947 French author Raymond Queneau (if you haven't read
him, go, find, read, I place him above all others in my literary
pantheon) published an unusual book called Exercises de Style
(for more go here). In this book he tells the same banal
story about two chance meetings with the same fellow in ninety-nine
different ways. Queneau's variations (as they are translated, that
is) include those such as "Abusive", "Cockney",
"Haiku","Mathematical", and "Antiphrasis." The whole book is an
amazing tour-de-force of the versatility of language and literary
expression. Matt Madden has created his own Exercises in Style in
comics form, and I'm here to say that it stands as an equal to
Queneau's linguistic masterpiece. Matt tells a simple story: Matt gets up from working at his computer. He walks into another
room of the apartment. From upstairs his wife Jessica asks for the
time, and Matt answers her. He goes to the refrigerator and opens it.
He can't recall what he was looking for. That's the story, and we read it ninety-nine times without getting
bored. The first comic in the book is the "Template," the stylistically
generic form of the story, though, as Matt points out in the
introduction, after reading the others, even this generic comic
begins to show its stylistic decisions. Though it is futile to try to categorize the 98 variations that
follow, it is also an inevitable draw to make some attempt--certainly
many of the variations work in linked groups or have similarities in
their type of variation. Early on, a group of pages vary the point of
view: Matt's first person view, third person from upstairs in the
apartment with Jessica, a view from the refrigerator, a voyeur's view
from outside the building. Matt does an extensive group of generic
(as in genre) variations: fantasy, romance, police procedural, horror
(a four-color EC Comics pastiche), superhero (one example where
Matt's mimicking skills fail him with the drawing), manga (complete
with right-to-left reading, excessive speed lines, and a gratuitous
panty shot), political cartoon, and more. Many could be considered as
variations on framing both formally and content-wise: reframing the
original drawings to all hands and punctuation marks (which is a
powerful statement on how much can be said with such a little amount
of information), shrinking the original panels and adding absurdist
images outside the borders, telling the story as a scene with actors
and a director, the story as a flashback, the story as overheard in a
bar... A number of pages fall under formal game playing (anagrams,
palindromes) or structural variation (one panel, thirty panels). My favorite group, and one where Matt really shows off his chops,
is a sequence I'll call "Matt Madden's History of Comics." Matt
pastiches a hall of fame of important historical creators: a "newly
discovered" piece of the Bayeax Tapestry, Rodolphe Toppfer, Richard
Outcault, Winsor McCay (the emulation of his Rarebit Fiend is
amazing), George Herriman, Herge', and Jack Kirby. This
sequence (sadly not all in order, because a few of these appear in
the color section of the book) alone is worth the price of the book.
As with any other art, I believe it is important to know some of the
history, and Matt kindly shows us why. I could go on and on talking about various variations, but I'll
restrain myself and let the reader find them. In the past couple
days, I've read this book twice through and browsed a good number of
the pages more times than that. So many times reading that same
story... yet, it's never the same. Narratology, the study of narrative and how it works, is an area
ripe for comics exploration, or perhaps an area ripe for comics
readers and creators to explore. Narratology, among other endeavors,
differentiates between the "story"--the "raw material" of the events
in any narrative--and the "plot"--the final arrangement, order, and
duration of the narrative as it is conveyed to the audience (I'm
simplifying a bit). At a most basic level a story can offer up
hundreds of plots; the raw material can be reworked over and over
again. The author John Gardner once said that all novels have one of
two plots (in a narratological sense he means "story"): someone goes
on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. Think about it a moment:
his two stories apply to a great number of cases. How does this all relate to the comic in front of me? Matt Madden
has materialized this concept in comics. The vast range of "plots" he
creates from the same "story" is not only fun to read and interesting
to contemplate but also a veritable textbook for the comics creator.
With this book, he has shown how far the imagination can take us from
the simplest of beginnings. Comics is an extremely versatile art
form, and there is no need to be stuck with the same old same old.
Even a simple autobiographical event doesn't have to stay a straight
realist autobiography. Looking at all these variations also exposes the choices that are
made in each comic. Compare the "Horizontal" variation (all thin
panels that stretch across the width of the page) to the "Vertical"
variation (all thin panels that stretch across the height of the
page). The latter focuses much more on the human figure, probably
because the tall thin panel more clearly fits a figure, while no
matter how you try, fitting a person into a thin wide panel is a
piece meal process. Once we have seen all the variations of viewpoint
and distance (longshot, extreme close-up) from which the story can be
told, we must reevaluate the viewpoint of the template (a mid-range
third person) and wonder: why that view? Why that distance? Each
variation in juxtaposition with the others opens a space for
questioning and learning. I'll leave off here. If there is any justice (or taste) in the
comics world this book will be both a big seller and a hot topic of
conversation. Read it, laugh, marvel, enjoy, and then put it
alongside books like McCloud's Understanding Comics and start
really thinking about comics. You'll come to the next comic you read with a keener eye and a
sharper appreciation.
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