From Kathryn VanArendonk, here are some thoughts on realism in TV narratives. She argues that the Uncanny Valley effect – a phenomenon in which computer rendering of humans hits a gap the closer it gets to realism – can also apply to TV shows. In essence, we accept gaps in logic in unrealistic shows, and we also accept a certain amount of unrealistic actions in procedurals, if those elements are essentially clichés of the genre. But the more realistic a show is, the less likely we are to accept implausible events.

So VanArendonk concludes the following:

In my proposed Uncanny Valley of Narrative Plausibility, a movement toward reality maps onto the increasing role of chance in narrative, and the closer one moves toward the valley, the higher the likelihood that meetings between characters or important turning points in the plot appear to happen by accident. The idea is the same as that of the visual uncanny valley: there comes a point where we find plausibility in narrative less persuasive (and maybe just less interesting) than circumstances more patently contrived.

In her post, she’s focusing on the coincidence of two characters running into each other at the most opportune moment, but this theory could be extended to other implausible actions.

As an example of this, the terrific FX show Louie seemed to bother some initially, because Louis CK (who writes, directs, edits, and stars in the show) mixes a highly realistic portrayal of his actual life with elements that are fantastical in nature (e.g., in Louie’s pilot a fleet of limos is summoned to rescue a school field trip; his blind date flees to a waiting helicopter). We’re used to stories being either realism or fantasy; we like explicit code-switching. Louie breaks those rules all the time.

More directly tied to my sequential narrative analysis is this post from Cory Barker on narrative pacing in The Vampire Diaries and Nikita. Echoing Carrie Raisler’s comments on TVD, Barker says:

I’ve described Nikita season one very succinctly and clearly there were a number of fantastic twists and turns throughout, so the series did burn through a hell of a lot of plot in just 22 episodes. And you know what? I think that’s super-smart and actually kind of impressive. Just as I think the way The Vampire Diaries handles plot development in a very similar and probably even more rapid fashion is super-smart and impressive.

I’ve just finished reading Grant Morrison’s book Supergods and this seems similar to his approach. Morrison’s best comic book writing blows through mind-blowing concepts like crazy. He does superhero adventures that take place on a cosmic scale, spanning the entire physical universe and all of time.

The key element here is imagination. This seems so simple, but creative use of imagination is in short supply. If you want an implausible coincidence to take place, you can either construct a clever way to make it seem less implausible or you can construct a world where that coincidence seems normal. You can take one or two stories and stretch them out over three seasons or you can burn through those three seasons’ worth of story in one and then do it again the next season.

The writer is God. The writer controls the universe and can do anything. Instead, writers seem to often do the same thing that was done last time, only not as well.

UPDATE: Another way of describing this failure of imagination is as “intellectual laziness.” See Alyssa Rosenberg:

We often treat tropes like the Girl Who Takes Off Her Glasses and is Suddenly Miraculous as if they’re the product of bad writing, which frequently, they are. But they’re also a product of exceedingly lazy casting (and sometimes, bad wardrobing).

It is a product of the entire process of producing television, which lives in constant horror of doing something that has been done a million times before. It is sometimes ineptitude and sometimes laziness and sometimes fear. It is sometimes nothing more than the inability to fight a difficult creative battle for the one millionth time.

Towards the tail end of this year’s TV season, I read a fair amount of commentary on Twitter about the balance between shows with standalone episodes and those that heavily leaned on a serialized approach.

It struck me that there was some confusion about terms, so I thought I’d take a little time to lay out how I see the distinctions.

When I think back on the TV of my youth, drawn from the Sixties and Seventies, it was entirely made up of programming that never asked you to know what happened previously in order to watch an episode for the first time. The networks believed that TV must appeal to the widest possible audience (at a time when TV depended on mass audiences for profit), which meant that a show’s producers should never alienate people with things like complexity.

But the result of this was TV shows that would show extraordinary things happening to characters and then by the next episode, it was as if they’d all been struck by amnesia. Even if major changes took place (On I Love Lucy, the characters moved to Hollywood and spent a season living in Connecticut), nobody ever talked about those changes. On Bonanza, it became a joke that if a woman ever entered the Cartwrights’ lives, she was sure to die a tragic death. But those women were never mourned beyond the length of that episode.

But from the beginning of television, there were also soap operas, where dramatic change happened all the time and it would be acknowledged for a time. Weddings, babies, kidnappings – the stories were in constant motion. But the events would only last for a while, and then they would be forgotten. And all that drama would never add up to anything.

So, when TV writers today talk about standalone versus serialized, I always think of the third category of soap opera. Shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost were telling a large story, made up of seasons and episodes, functioning like chapters in a novel. I think shows like Grey’s Anatomy or ER are in the soap category, since they’re likely to just keep reeling out story until they decide to stop producing the show.

On the other hand, I think shows like FX’s Terriers and Justified, seem to be telling a larger narrative, over the course of seasons. That’s why I’m a little wary of complaints of an absence of standalone episodes, since I regard that as complaining that a chapter in a novel doesn’t stand on its own. I recognize that this isn’t a perfect metaphor, since TV is always produced one episode at a time, grouped by seasons. No novelist has to grind out 12 to 24 chapters of a novel on schedules, and then take a forced break.

But we live in an age when people are increasing consuming TV shows all-at-once, whether on DVD or Hulu or VOD. People are more likely to consume shows in chunks or even all at once.

Actually, the better comparison is probably comic books. When I started reading in the mid Seventies, they also tended to be standalone. Maybe, you might see a story spread out over three issues, but the characters never looked back when things concluded.

(I should mention that one notable exception was Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck, a brilliant satirical work.)

But by the Eighties, we started to see graphic novels, in which a larger narrative was told in a limited series of issues (Obvious examples, include Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Watchmen). Then came even longer works like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (75 issues over seven years) and Garth Ennis’ Preacher (75 issues over five years).

But in addition to that, there were standard issue comic books, whether the superhero books of DC and Marvel or the fantasy of DC’s Vertigo line, in which a particular writer would take on a book for a period of time. He or she might choose to tell a longer story that might take a few years, which could further broken down into smaller arcs or standalone issues (At this point, I believe I’m thinking of Hellblazer as a classic example).

(I should also point out Grant Morrison’s astonishing runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, which are longstanding characters that Morrison treated in a unique isolated fashion.)

Comic books, coming out once a month, are a classic example of a serialized narrative, harking back to Charles Dickens publishing his novels on chapter at a time in Monthly Magazine.

With these sorts of comics (and not all comic books are written in this fashion), it can be pretty standard for a long self-contained story to take a hundred separate issues to tell. That overall story might be broken into smaller narratives, which might take a dozen issues to tell. In between, the comic might feature a standalone story that might be an interlude or otherwise not connected to the larger narrative.

More recent examples include Lucifer, written by Mike Carey, and Y: The Last Man, from Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra.

At the same time, there are other types of comic books. The stories might be told in a single issue, or they might stretch out over a few. Things happen, but does anything ever really change? Villains are fought, girlfriends come and go, sidekicks might strike off on their own. The issues come out very month, year after year. The thing gets published as long as it sells. Maybe it gets cancelled one day; maybe it runs for more than 70 years.

When any sequential narrative, which I think of as a story told in units, whether issues of a comic book or episodes of a TV series, doesn’t look back, when details don’t accumulate and add up to something, when it all proceeds along until the creators get tired, then I tend to think of that as soap opera.

And I tend to prefer serialization to soap.

He argues that 30 years ago, when he was a young nerd (which is roughly the same timeframe in which I was a young nerd), people really had to work to indulge their “obsessive, minute interests,” such as collecting Japanese anime. Now, it’s all too easy to access the formerly obscure.

Problem numero uno is that Oswalt describes geekery in a way that’s so broad as to be meaningless.

Secondly, a lot of this is the typical complaint of those who get upset when their own private obsessions become mainstream fodder.

Finally, he’s not completely correct. Everything is not available.

This is a common error. Everybody assumes that everything’s on the Internet now. But it’s not.

Music is pretty widely available. But, for example, the Tubes released nine albums between 1975 and 1985. Of those, four are available on iTunes.

Most books aren’t on the Internet and it’s pretty difficult to take an out-of-print paperback and put it online.

Oswalt mentions Steve Ditko’s 8-issue run on Shade the Changing Man. I happen to own the series, having bought it when it came out in 1977. I don’t believe it’s ever been re-issued.

There are many items from the pop culture pantheon that are more widely available than they’ve ever been. But not everything.

A good geek will always seek out the new and the obscure. There’s just more competition now.

The setting of The Boys is a world very similar to this one. Except in that world, there are superheroes. They are not a force for good, or even a benign presence; they are a mixture of violent incompetence and outright malevolence, working on behalf of dark corporate forces.

Our main characters, The Boys, are a super squad, sort of backed by the CIA, whose mission is to oppose superheroes and keeps them in check. (See this video of Ennis and this video interview of Robertson and Ennis.)

This is not the first anti-superhero comic book, obviously. It was back in 1986 when Watchmen questioned the idea of superheroes as a positive force. In fact, more than just suggesting that superheroes might be little more than costumed vigilantes or that civilians might fear or resent super-powered beings, Watchmen proposed that such figures would invariably be co-opted by the authorities or face extinction.

In The Boys, it turns out that the superheroes have secretly been manufactured by a giant military contractor (Vought-American) as the ultimate weapon; the “hero” thing is just a front and their comic book tales are a PR stunt and a revenue source.

The big thing that will keep you from reading this book (published since 2006 and currently up to 45 issues) is the violence and sex. And the foul language. It’s really graphic in terms of sex and violence. Worse than that, it takes a very dim view of humanity.

Although, at the same time, through the characters Hughie and Annie, it’s a bit like Candide, with innocents facing a world of horrors.

Ennis is known for being anti-superhero, although he’s said he finds them simply to be silly. If you look at the way Ennis portrays superheroes in his series Hitman (as seen here) or his one-shot comic The Pro (animated version here), he seems to find them to be either irrelevant to the real issues that mankind faces or a destructive force.

More broadly, Ennis is anti-authoritarian, taking shots at corporations, the government, organized religion. He celebrates the little guy, the common man. He’s best known for his long runs on Hellblazer and Punisher and for his 66-issue epic Preacher.

And yet, despite his feelings on superheroes, The Boys also shows us two competing sides, neither of which is very nice. Just in the last few issues, an air of real danger has been introduced and we can genuinely fear for the lives of Hughie and Annie. While not specifically laid out, the comic (especially the beginning of #45) is presenting the question: “Is everything justifiable in the pursuit of fighting evil?”

For example, the leader of the group, Billy Butcher, hates all “supes” equally. Hughie encounters a C-list team called “Super Duper,” made up of literally childlike innocents. This storyline is referenced in a recent interview:

Newsarama: We’re doing this interview as the SuperDuper/Malchemical storyline is just about to wrap.   After many teams filled with, as you might say, right bastards, here’s a team that’s not so bad.  Why include the seemingly more optimistic SuperDuper?

Ennis: I’d been thinking about the notion of real superheroes, or perhaps more accurately standard superheroes – the kind you find in 99% of superhero comic books. Develop powers, put on outfit, set out to battle evil. I was wondering where people like that would end up in the real world, and of course the answer is that they’d all be shot to death by criminals or police, or locked up in lunatic asylums. But what if they weren’t? What would a corporation like Vought-American do with such innocents, how would they make money off them?

But the comic also asks if the Butcher is justified in his single-minded violent vendetta against the supes, especially when it’s made clear that many of them are victims (For example, in the storyline “We Gotta Go Now,” the group G-Wiz is made entirely of people who were forcibly abducted as young children.). The Boys are up against horrible people, but does that mean that all their actions are honorable?

Ennis has said that the comic will run 70 issues in total, so by now we’ve past the halfway point and we should shortly be headed into the conclusion in about a year. I’ll be quite interested to see how it all resolves.

(Adam McKay, director of Anchorman, Talladega Nights and The Other Guys, has been signed to direct a film adaptation of The Boys. See coverage here and here. I can’t imagine it won’t suck, but that’s what books are for, right?)

“Cons” have been a part of the science fiction/fantasy scene for a long time (like 70 years). It’s an opportunity for the fans to get together and celebrate the stuff they love. In my time, I can’t even remember attending these events. I remember spending a day at Comic-Con in 1976. I have a photo of me with some guy in a Star Trek convention; that must be from about 1981.

And that’s it. I’m a big geek and I love the content, but I’ve always tended to avoid cons as being too nerdy for me.

But I know better. Back in 2007, Larry was attending Star Wars Celebration IV (on the 30th anniversary of the original film) and I spoke to him by telephone from the event. I probably had in mind writing some piece about the crazy fans and their hi-jinks, but instead I ending up writing a column about being your authentic self.

When I attended the 2nd annual Monsterpalooza convention on April 10, that’s the same experience I had. The con was focused on science fiction, fantasy and horror, with the emphasis on monsters of all shapes and sizes. The crowd was quite diverse, with a larger percentage of female attendees than I had anticipated. There were a few people in costume, but only a handful. There were parents with little kids.

I spent the day largely standing at Larry’s booth, talking to people. Looking at a stuffed Gizmo (one that sang and danced), I had two different parents tell me that Gremlins was their two-year-olds’ favorite movie. A top activity was checking out people’s printed tees and saying, “Cool shirt!”

And it was all cool. We all shared common interests. We could talk about our favorite movies or TV shows or comic books for hours. Instead of being the lone-man-out – the nerd – you could be accepted for what you are.

I specialize in lower-level celebrities. No superstars for me; give me that second-billed comic relief. I was introduced to Daniel Roebuck, who has had a long acting career, but who I now think of as Dr. Leslie Arzt from Lost. As you can see from the photo above, there’s writer Steve Niles (who I’ve met before) sitting next to legendary comic book artist Bernie Wrightson. They had done a graphic novel together, so I had to buy a copy and have them both sign it.

So, I had a great time and I decided I need to go to more cons. And I scored this great t-shirt.

I decided I would only ask one question and that’s the one I really wanted to hear the answer to. There have references like this defense of comic book readers or this NY Times profile that mentioned that she reads comics & graphic novels. But that could mean anything, from “Oh, I read Maus” to “I’m very big on Betty and Veronica.”

Since it was quite noisy, here are the titles that she mentions. It’s a good list and I’m going to have to pick up the ones I haven’t read yet.

• Ex Machina, created by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris
• Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
• Alan’s War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope, by Emmanuel Guibert
• Identity Crisis, written by Brad Meltzer
• Fables, written by Bill Willingham
• Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
• Shooting War, by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman

My two favorite moments are when she makes the “bunny ears” behind my head (which I didn’t know she was doing at the time) and when she shakes her fist vehemently at me to express her urgent desire for me to read Shooting War.

Tags: Rachel Maddow, comic books, graphic novels, MSNBC

Back in October, I was in Hong Kong. On a trip to the top of Victoria Peak, I found this display with Astro Boy advertising a store. I went nuts. This video documents the results.

Tags: Astro Boy, anime

In July, Zune Arts ( a division of Microsoft) announced the release of The Lost Ones, “a graphic novel written by celebrated writer Steve Niles” and illustrated by “visual artists Dr. Revolt, Gary Panter, Kime Buzzelli and Morning Breath.”

Niles is best known for writing the graphic novel 30 Days of Night, that was also turned into a motion picture. He chiefly specializes in the horror genre.

My friend Larry owns a store in Burbank, CA that sells collectibles from comics books, movies and television. Earlier this year, on the occasion of the release of the 30 Days of Night DVD, Steve Niles was at this store Blast from the Past to do a signing. I happened to be in town, so I stopped by. Niles turned out to be very gracious and smart and well-versed in the horror genre.

In July, I read that Niles was going to be doing a signing of The Lost Ones in Maryland — along with Gary Panter! Panter is best known for his comic Jimbo and his production design for the TV show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

So, I knew I had to go. There are some photos of the event at the Big Planet Comics website. Niles was again quite gracious when I met him for the second time. Panter was drawing pictures in copies of the book; he drew a surfer, inspired by the shirt I was wearing.

I must mention that aside from Panter’s work, I was really impressed by the section in the book illustrated by Morning Breath, a design studio. And here’s an interview with Niles about The Lost Ones project.

Tags: Steve Niles, Gary Panter, The Lost Ones

It’s a look at the superhero movies that have come out lately, complete with an attempt to define the limits of the genre. Let me start by saying that it’s a shame that superheroes dominate comic books. The format has been around for 70 years. There have been romance comics, private eye comics, kids comics, porn comics, war comics, autobiographical comics, and on and on. But superheros have long dominated and continue to do so.

However, Scott asks if superheroes are “basking in an endless summer of triumph, or is the sun already starting to set?” Gee whiz. This is the time when Hollywood finally gets comic book adaptations right and Scott is already calling the game over. He gives this summer’s best films credit for trying harder, but then says that they also “discover the limits built into the superhero genre as it currently exists. ”

“‘The Dark Knight’ has rules, and they are the conventions that no movie of this kind can escape,” Scott writes. Why can’t they do so? He says: “Of course every movie genre is governed by conventions, and every decent genre movie explores the zones of freedom within those iron parameters.” No kidding! Almost every mainstream Hollywood movie follows the conventions of its form, whether it’s an action movie, a romantic comedy, or whatever. Think of Top Gun, Rocky, Star Wars, and so on. Each follows movie conventions.

In contrast, Scott says that there were Westerns in the Fifties that were able to go beyond the expected, films like The Searchers and Rio Bravo that were able to find “ambiguities and tensions buried in their own rigid paradigms. ” He thinks that superheroes will never be able to do this, because such films need to make big profits and be successful worldwide.

I don’t think he’s right. Yes, most superhero films will need big budgets and studio backing. But not all. There have been some great comic books that really stretched the conventions of superhero movies. These stories don’t necessarily feature big explosions and massive physical conflict. If the superhero genre can get a toehold in the American consciousness again, then there’s no artistic reason why we couldn’t see such films in the future.

(And isn’t it ironic that Scott calls for ambiguities, when both Hancock and The Dark Knight find those ambiguities in their heroes?)

Tags: A.O. Scott, superhero, The Dark Knight, Batman