Greg Gildersleeve

Mike Sullivan and I will be at Raytown Middle School this Saturday, April 29, to lead a workshop on writing and drawing comics. The event is part of Raytown School District's Young Author's Day; other presenters will include a poet, a novelist, a newspaper columnist, and a cartoonist (technically, Mike and I are cartoonists, as well, so that makes three presenters from the comics end of things!)

I don't think the event is open to the public -- it's geered toward Raytown middle school students -- but I'm told that 38 kids have signed up for our two sessions. That's a lot of potential future comics creators!

I'm excited about doing this. Any time I get to share my love of comics with others is a good thing, but to be asked to discuss writing comics to school children is a very special honor. Most comics creators today started out loving comics as kids, but these days comics compete with video games and so many other forms of entertainment that it's no wonder our beloved artform is often regarded as a marginalized if not dying. But the high enrollment (20 students is about the size of the college courses I teach) in these sessions is encouraging: It means that comics are still in the game.

By the way, if anybody still wonders if these blogs serve any purpose beyond shameless self-promotion and meaningless musings, you can rest easy. It was through this very blog that the Raytown School District's library services coordinator contacted me!

I've been wanting for some time to say something about Sentry, Marvel's eight-issue series about a mentally ill super-hero and his alter ego (or egos, apparently), but I haven't found the right angle. For example, I was so taken with the complicated-but-not-confusing flashbacks in issues # 4-5, that I wanted to discuss them in terms of story structure. But I just spent three posts discussing structure, so I don't want to beat that equine to death.

I also wanted to compare the economical writing of Sentry to a certain other comic which is overwritten, but that approach seemed high-handed and judgmental. The other comic in question isn't necessarily bad, but it reads more like a blockbuster film -- something going on in every frame, and usually more than one thing happening at the same time -- than a comic book. While comics and film share much in common (not the least of which is that certain well-known writers -- Bruce Jones, J. Michael Straczynski, and Kevin Smith, to name a few -- have done both), one must remember that comics and movies are distinctly different media. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and the best writers understand the difference.

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