Batman: The Dark Hero

Reading comics is one of my favorite past-times. My brother used to work at a comic shop so as a kid, I was exposed to all sorts of amazing stories of super humans facing super problems. But underneath the Kapows! and super villains (which are a wonderful topic to explore as well) are some really interesting human stories and sometimes tragic themes explored by the writers. When you look at superhero origin stories, almost all of the heroes are outcasts, have suffered a horrific event or tragedy, death, mutilation, and/or abandonment by family. Superheroes have to be driven, almost pathologically, to make the sacrifices needed to fight the bad guys, so such drive can only be born from an intense trauma.

One of my favorite superheroes is Batman. His story is pretty well known after multiple re-tellings in movies, cartoons, tv shows, and of course comics. His father was a wealthy philanthropist in Gotham. After leaving a show with his parents, a mugger accosts them and shoots his mother and father in front of him. A new tv show called Gotham is set to air that takes place before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, when he’s still a young kid. The show includes a young Bruce Wayne, Commissioner Gordon, and some of Batman’s most famous foes before they became criminals.

Batman is truly a hero, but one who struggles as much with the darkness inside him as he does with the good side. I loved the line from the Chris Nolan directed, Batman Begins, when Arthur asks Bruce Wayne why he choose the name Batman. Wayne replied with: “Bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies shared my dread.”

Batman fights crime and pursues justice, but a part of him gets off on scaring the crap out of people and raining his own brand of hellfire down on the bad guys. That’s why the Joker is one of his greatest foes. They mirror each other. “You’re just a freak. Like me!” the Joker says in the Dark Knight.

What else makes Batman the perfect tortured hero?

His tragic past as explained previously.

Even though he fights for a just society, he is at odds with society. The police sometimes see him as more of a menace than a hero, and as Bruce Wayne, he often challenges the board of directors of his company and refuses to act like the good, malleable rich boy.

Darker heroes are obsessed with self-sacrifice to an almost pathological degree. Batman is pathological and obsessed. Probably too much, which is partly what makes him so interesting.

And of course, he’s irresistible to women. Women are drawn to tortured heroes like Batman. They want to be the one to touch the lost and emotionally fragile side of such a man, believing they will be the ones to heal him. Batman has had many romantic entanglements with femme fatales. I find his relationship with Catwoman particularly fascinating. While they often find themselves on opposite sides of the law, they more often than not find themselves on the same side in the bedroom J He’s also gotten together with Talia al Ghul, the daughter of his enemy, Ra’s al Ghul, and even had a son with her in one Batman incarnation.

One of Batman’s writers, Frank Miller, who wrote the seminal, Dark Knight Returns, gave what I consider one of the best interpretations of Batman: Batman is a dionysian figure, a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order. In many ways, I draw upon Batman when writing my tortured heroes, well, except for the Batsuit!

An Interesting Process...

Greetings PNR friends, peers, and (frequently) fantatics!

As many of my beloved stalkers...er, Facebook-savvy fans know, I have been hard at work creating the comic book version of my PNR urban fantasy/adventure novel, Black Dog and Rebel Rose. This dark paranormal has just about everything: sex, tattoos, motorcycles, vampyre slaying (resplendent with blood splatter and awesome horror gore), angels, demons, a headstrong Nephil huntress who likes things done HER way, and a half-demon bad boy known for rocking a woman's world (note the illustration above--;-). A story I loved writing and that I STILL love in prose...and yet one that I always felt would work BEST as a comic.

I have begun posting the fruits of my continuing labors on my Facebook page, and the response has been awesome. Lots of folks are asking: how does it work? What is the process of creating a comic book page? Even those who have no interest in comics--which, I'm sure, involves much of the PNR reading world--are still interested in the process. So...*drumroll please**...here you go! Creating a comic...in pictures!

Now, I will not be illustrating this using all the same page artwork each time...hopefully this will make things more interesting and still be easy to follow.

STEP 1: THE SKETCH

Not too impressive, I know...but this is just the beginning. :-)
To give myself an idea for how a page should be laid out, I will create a very scribbly looking sketch of where characters should be placed, how panels should work out, etc. In this case, my heroine is riding her Ducati Monster along a dirt road, where she spots a vulture eating roadkill and proceeds to have an intense flashback regarding her mother's death. Can you see that in this drawing? HELL NO! But I can, and that's all we need at this point.

STEP TWO: FINAL PENCIL SKETCH

Now, in the "old school" of comics, pencils would usually be tighter than this. Some artists still make their pencils as tight as any finished drawing for a comic page. I do not, since I am working digitally in a program called Manga Studio, a program specifically designed for comics creation and publication and allows me to create cutting-edge artwork demanded by the industry standard, and I don't need pencils to be so final. Dialogue bubbles are added as a "guide".

STEP THREE: DEFINING PENCILS/ INKING

Here you will see a definite "in process" shot. Again, not super impressive, but important nonetheless. :-) In this particular example, I have eliminated parts of the pencil art and drawn in sketchy areas in blue--these would be called "non photo blue" sketches (because if you are doing this art on paper rather than digitally, sketches would be done using a special blue pencil that would allow you to sketch parts of the drawing that won't show up when scanned/printed). You can see part of the page has already been inked a bit. The red line allows me to plot the flow of the page to make sure it will make sense before it is finalized in ink.

STEP FOUR: FINAL INKING

We're getting there! Clean inking is applied digitally, and a grey background is applied (this particular comic is being created in black, grey and white tones with eyes in color only). I have also already colored the eyes in here, and applied the final panel layouts.

STEP FIVE: FINAL COLOR

Here it is!!! The final colored page! All we need now is to add dialogue bubbles and narration and...presto!!! We have a finished page! :-D

Looks pretty different from the first example, huh? :-) 

--Danielle

TAG!! You're it! Find me online:
http://www.danielledsmith.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danielle.d.smith.10?ref=tn_tnmn
Twitter: @DaniDSmith
Check out the original Black Dog and Rebel Rose story on Amazon (also available everywhere else):
http://tinyurl.com/BD-RRKINDLE

PNR BOOKS BECOMING COMICS: POV FROM THE FULL MONTY

An example of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter graphic novel, via Marvel

As many of my fans, friends, and peers know, I have been hard at work on the first installation of what I hope will be a loooong and successful venture: the conversion of my most popular book thus far, BLACK DOG AND REBEL ROSE, an action-packed paranormal adventure pairing two unexpected companions, a Nephil (half-angel) and Halfling (half-demon), on a gore-flecked and erotica-tinged vampire hunt in an abandoned town, into the comic book medium.

The cover of the BD&RR prose novel...already in the comic book style.

Turning paranormal romance books into comics has become a trend in the last few years, as several bestselling and cult-followed PNR novels by such renowned names as Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Patricia Briggs, etc. Even Twilight (puke) has been turned into a popular Manga comics series with that distinctive Japanese flair. I have spent several hours scouring the internet for examples of how the major comics companies—including comics giant Marvel—handled the “translation” of said bestselling novels into the comics/graphic novel medium. Overall, I was impressed: the artists selected are talented, the book designs (mostly hardcovers) are beautiful. Action, gore, and, yes, even sex, seems to be properly represented with good flow. I should be ecstatic to be potentially joining the ranks, right? I mean, I might be considered the "full monty" when it comes to this sort of thing: the characters and plot of BD&RR is perfect for this medium, and unlike the bestsellers mentioned above I am an artist, and can tackle the job entirely on my own, without having to deal with another writer or artist’s ego throwing a wrench into the gears, and make sure the comic represents my story the way I would see it best. While BD&RR is not an NYC bestseller, I do have a solid cult following, and two of my books have hit the Amazon Bestseller list for erotica in the past year. I have the submission ok to submit to several of the biggest “indie” comics publishers out there, including IMAGE, publisher of the wildly popular “The Walking Dead” comics. And on top of THAT, there is the increased possibility of BD&RR being picked up for film/television, etc. when said comic hits the shelves...

I should be thrilled, and I was…until I glimpsed the reviews left by readers of said PNR comics.

Now I am, admittedly, a little scared.

To say that many of the reviews for these book-to-graphic novel translations are generally scathing is an understatement. Reviewers griped nonstop about how too much of the story was "left out", how "cartoony, stylized, and unrealistic" the characters looked, how too much dialogue and description was "missing", etc. All complaints from a bookstore audience who is buying a comic book and expecting to get...*drumroll, please*...A PROSE NOVEL.

I think the big issue we are being faced with here is that these comics are being purchased by people who DON'T READ COMICS. They have no concept of "how" comics work...how comic art is generally stylized, how plotlines generally have to be very direct and trimmed down to fit within the confines of this medium. How dialogue must be clipped and to the point to, again, hold a comic reader's attention. Comic books are visual stories--it is up to the artist more than anyone else to "tell" the story via quick action, good panel flow, and quicker-than-lightning transitions. "Descriptions" are not provided through words...it's through art.

Think about your favorite book-to-film adaptions. Movie plotlines adapted from books usually have to cut out, rearrange, or rewrite parts of the book in order for it to make it suitable for the medium of film. If that didn't happen, you would have movies with clunky plotlines and confusing dialogue/conversational situations that ran for hours and hours. That's why it's called an "adaption"...it isn't going to follow the storyline exactly, since the medium cannot possibly bear that burden with any measure of success. Same thing applies to comics...think of them as a "storyboard" of your favorite novel.

As far as the art being "stylized", that's comic books, baby. Few comics these days feature artwork that is super-realistic, and there are many reasons for that...stylized art allows for quick action, proper visual portrayal of amazing feats impossible in the "real" world, and, quite frankly, doing a hyper-realist comic would take years. (A few artists have done it, including those of titles such as "Road to Perdition", etc, and these maniacs undertook feats that took 3 to 4 years to complete, on average. Think about it, that's a LOT of drawing and finishing!) Plus, let's face it...comic readers LIKE stylized art. Comics are known for being "cartoony", at least in principle...that's part of the charm.

SKRIKER AND ROSE... the, er, "stylized" h/h from my comic 

Readers of PNR novels who are looking to try comic versions need to understand that giving bad reviews based on the medium that they are choosing to explore BASED ON what the medium is hurts someone very important: THE ARTIST. I think what a lot of romance readers don't understand is that, when an author's work is translated into comic form, the publisher of said comic lists both the author AND the artist as "creators" in this particular version of the story...after all, you cannot have a comic without the artist! The authors are already being "cushioned" by the good reviews of the prose versions of their books, i.e. the original medium. When a reader used to prose romance novels buys a comic version of their fave story and then leaves a bad review based on the fact that IT IS A COMIC VERSION leaves a bad mark on the artist's review ranking...and that just isn't fair.

It is my hope that this blog entry...my first for Paranormal Romantics...will give my wonderful readers--and that of other PNR authors, bestselling, cult followed, or brand spanking new--some food for thought on a medium that is rapidly growing in the PNR world. I hope to inspire you lovely folks out there to explore something a little different, while enjoying the characters, themes, and storylines that have allowed you to escape the mundane.

I would love to hear YOUR thoughts on this subject...and as a thank you, I am giving away the first two books in the BD&RR series--your choice of Ebook or Kindle Edition!

Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below...you MUST answer the "food for thought" question to be entered...can't wait to hear our reader's thoughts. Giveaway ends on 06/10.

Good luck...and thanks for welcoming me into the Paranormal Romantics family. :-)

Are you inspired? I know I am... 

;-)

www.danielledsmith.com 

https://www.facebook.com/danielle.d.smith.10

Danielle D. Smith is a comic book artist, illustrator, and author living in Southern California. In addition to being a writer of bestselling gritty angel-and-demon themed supernatural fantasy stories that have gained a dedicated cult following, she is an accomplished fine artist and illustrator whose visual work has appeared in various public, private, and gallery exhibitions and in national publications, and has studied everything from costuming to tattooing. Dani, as she is known by many who are close to her, lives in San Diego with a large number of books, indie flicks, and documentaries. Her novels appeal to dreamers, troublemakers, dark romantics, horn dogs, and general escapists. She is the proud owner of several beautiful tattoos and a platinum blonde mohawk, and she adores reading, creative food and drink, motorcycles, muscle cars, prison bodies, and cuddling her sweet little boy, Ryker...not necessarily in that order. She is currently hard at work creating the first installment of the Black Dog and Rebel Road Comics Series, and an as-yet-to-be-titled comic series about a WWII soldier turned into a werewolf during Battle of the Bulge, created alongside fellow artists Josh Figueroa and Alex Julian, and co-writer/historian Aaron A. A. Smith (who also happens to be her spouse).

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