Scott King

Scott: See you are starting with the hot water stuff. If I do go to hell it will be for this. I just want to preface this by saying at one point they called SPX “camp McCloud” but so much more has always been going on. I do think that at SPX we have the most concentrated amount of people that had to out grow me. They went through their McCloud phase and then later came out on the other end and discovered a whole new universe.

Bill: sounds familiar.

Scott: The thing that Bill has me starting with, I’m almost afraid to lead off with. I let myself get into this theory a long time again and it says that there are different tribes that transcend generations and story telling tradition. Those that have always seen comics as a window into characters and story are the traditional storytellers. I call these people the Animists. Those that work on the pure art in terms of craft and beauty are the Classicists. Then bellow them is the Formalist. These are Spiegelman’s kids. These are guys like me that go about tinkering and are all about the spirit and innovation. These guys care about the forms. Finally under the Animist we have the Iconoclast class. These are people who are interested in comics as a raw honest form of expression. They are Crumb’s kids who want comics to be raw and about expression with few patterns.
            So then if you look at this from left to right I noticed there was a pattern. These guys over here (on the left) were really interested in art. While ultimately those over here (on the right) were interested in life. So in other words there was this art-life dictum where those on the left cared bout perfecting their craft and form. For those people art was life. But over on the right are people who just wanted to tell stories about characters or the Iconoclasts who were too obsessed and honest to about life to worry about form. If you were to ask your average Iconoclasts about form they would go “Shut up and get out of my face. I just want to get drunk or whatever.”
            So then I noticed there was another trend. If you go to the top there is this very strong tradition of craft and the tradition of storytelling. So on this side (left) there is a tradition of art and on this side (right) there was a tradition of life. But down here on the bottom you have a revolution. This was the part of the chart that I was interested in. People like me are interested in overturning tradition. We are about revolution. The Formalists get bored if someone has already done it.
            Do you all remember a few years ago when James Kochalka said craft was the enemy and people were like “no young man you have to learn your skills!” That was an argument between Classicist and Iconoclasts. Or what about Frank Cho saying underground comics can’t draw? Same thing. But this is a horrible theory and potentially dangerous. It becomes a bad thing once I get an email saying “Oh he wouldn’t understand because he’s an Animists.”  But it’s a good for one thing. I kept seeing all these people that would break comics into two camps but just maybe four is a little more productive. There are of course other composites or ways you can classify but this one builds on the back bone of tradition and revolution. Without a formal theory like this we wouldn’t’ have any innovation and would just be collecting newspapers. Without the guys on the top of the grid we would have no conscious and mindless storytelling.
            I don’t know. I came up with this about fifteen years and just sat on it. I knew I would eventually come back to this. And if any of you are asked “What did Scott McCloud talk about SPX” and you say “Oh he said there are only four kind of artist.” At that point I’m dead. But you see SPX through out the 90’s was down here (bottom of the grid) but it slowly moved up here (top of the grid) and that’s because there is always a balance and there has to be a balance between the two.

[[Note: a little girl was crying and acting up very bad. Her dad kept yelling at her and grabbing her whenever she approached McCloud. The impressive thing was that McCloud was able to ignore the child and move forward without being distracted]]

Bill: My reaction to this was it reminded me a lot of people picking a carpet. Some people just like red or green while others want to know the floor boards and the things that lay beneath a carpet.

Scott: One of the things I want to make clear is that no cartoonist is only about truth, traditions, or beauty. Cartoonists float back and forth between all the classes. Most people have a major class and then a minor one. No one is trapped in this chart and god help us if there is a day when that happens.

Bill: Your focus is the formal elements of the Animists comics and I’ve seen you beign accused of being an Animists.

Scott: That’s just it. The greatest achievement of a Formalists is to impersonate an Animists. If we can take something apart and break it down so that we see how it works and develop all these theories and then POOF! It’s buried and you don’t know where the pieces are, then I’ve done my job. If a person is too caught up in the story they completely forget they are reading a comic or graphic novel as opposed to a something by the guy who created the 16 directional cube, which makes them stop reading. Look at Spiegelman. He was a Formalists impersonating an Animists.

Bill: Reader response and critical response seems to be different to Spiegelman. One of the reasons “Maus” is a classic is it is something that pulls you through the book nonstop. That’s the reason it won a Pulitzer. It’s because of those complicated Formalists elements that underlie its structure.

Scott: That and that its message about life and history keeps it cannon. He was a Formalists doing an Animists story.

Bill: When people talk about underground comics most see it as kids who got their DC comics taken away or sometimes it is broken down to the Sci-fi people or those who liked Harvey Pekar. What’s interesting is that it is subdivided by people like Paul Auster’s who was great at laying out a page that wasn’t just about gags. There was this masterful intelligence and he understood how to use the structure of the page layout for meaning.

Scott: I agree. Go get “The City of Glass” now if you’ve not read it.

[Below: the panel was standing room only]


Bill: Why don’t you outline your other major theory in your new book.Scott: This one isn’t interesting.

Bill: Well I just figured we’ve spent 20 minutes talking about seven pages in your book and we should move on.

Scott: Well I figured out... Actually I invented this cockingmammy theory that there are five choices every artist makes, no matter what their class. They are “Choice of Moment” “Choice of Frame” “Choice of Image” “Choice of Word” and “Choice of Flow.”
            Choice of Moment is basically about panels to use in a narrative and what to leave out. Do I show a feather falling and going click, click, click, click, click [Scott slowly moved his hand downward pausing every time he said “click”]? A lot of times these are about the moments that nobody sees. I mean you never read a comic and think to yourself, “Wow that part where he didn’t draw the character walking up the stairs was really great.”  Choice of moment is something that people don’t normally think about and most people don’t’ talk about it.
            Choice of Frame has to do what what angles you use and at how far away people things are. Also what size and shape the panels are. Choice of Image is about image and rendering images. You know all those “how to draw books?” They are mostly written about the choice of frame. Choice of Word is how pictures work with words. Choice of Flow is how the eye is guided between the panels. This whole framework of the “five choices” is just more useful than labling with words like “pencils” or “inking.”
            Oh did you know that the sable brushes are used from fur that’s… errr my wife is shaking her head saying I shouldn't talk about this. I just get so exicited about stuff like that.

Ivy McCloud (from the audience): It’s in the book.

Scott: Right. If you want to read more about how sable brushers are made only from the winter coat of male sables then its in the book.
            Anyway, the frame work and the five choices apply to all comics, whether print or on the web. The only difference is that choice of flow is different when talking about the internet and I’m fascinated by that.

Bill: I always wished for more books about these kinds of things for page structure and layout. I had hoped “Reinventing Comics” would get into that and have always wondered why you are so obsessed with cyber space as being something that doesn’t bind you.

Scot: I feel trapped by the page. I have this page impose on me. In my mind I may vision five long panels with 17 beats. Then right afterwards there are 12 big blocky double wide panels. With a word processors, if I were writing prose and after writing a sentence, if I didn’t like a word I could take it out and everything re-flows properly. But if you create this long comic and decide that two panels need to be removed it doesn’t happen on the fucking page. Because you have this rectangle and we are stuck by it. It restricts us to where we would be. When you go to the web it’s like that limitation is gone, but if you talk to people they will say “no its still there.” And if you ask why they will say “just because.” And I’m like no no no no!  ---needless to say my next project is going to be a graphic novel.

Bill: I’m less bothered by the limitations. It’s a bounding structure and its why I value the structure of comics. The thing about he page, to me, is that it functions the same way a monitor would, but I think that is unavoidable. It’s the same way we see things. As humans, we have a limited field of vision. We can never see something way over there (points to his right) while also seeing something over there (points to his left.

Scott: Unless you turn your head.

Bill: Unless you turn the page.

Scott: The thing about the monitor is that I see it as a window as opposed to a screen or a page. That’s probably why strip guys do well. Comic strips fit perfectly on a screen. I won’t make the reference comparing web comic strips to cockroaches but needless to say until the end of days there will always be web comic strips. Meanwhile there are fewer and fewer graphic novels published online. I think this has to do with the fact that as soon as you have someone look for that next button or have to scroll down, they are pulled out of the story. So even though I’m a Formalist I want to work like an Animists and I don’t want the story to be interrupted by anything.

---From there the panel went into the Audience Q&A, but some of the audience members were talking too fast for me to accurately transcribe it. One of the most noticeable things that came up in this section of the Q&A was Scott McCloud impersonating himself and exactly quoting his whole speil from “Understanding Comics” when he talks about when comics were first created.

---Another important point mentioned later on was that his 4 classes of artist should maybe be seen as camp fires…

Scott: The classes are more like tribes that hang around four big camp fires. But the tribe you are born into isn’t always where you stay. Maybe you have a teacher or mentor who tells you comics are only about beauty and mastering life like art. The teacher tells you that maybe if you work hard for the next 20 years you may finally be good enough to make it as an artist. Maybe that is your nature and that’s what you do. Maybe you are happy doing it. But what if you are an Iconoclasts, but never knew?
            Maybe you were hanging around the camp fire of the Classicists and in the distances you see the Iconoclasts partying and getting drunk. They are just having a good time and you are compelled to wonder over there. You get there and someone says to you “I’m not full of shit like everyone else.” And you say back “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I want to stay and sit with you guys.”
            So this ((Scott points at his “grid”)) all of this, is all I’m good for. I’m usful for drawing a big square, but the importance of it is that if you are here (points at the classicists) maybe you’ll realize that you can move over there (points to the iconoclasts). The best compliment I can get form someone after reading my theory is “Gee, I didn’t even know there was an over there.” And that’s all I’m trying to do here. I’m not trying to classify people because classifying people is annoying. I’m just trying show people that there is an over there.

---Also, at least part of Scott’s graphic novel, if not the whole thing, takes place in NYC. He’s writing lots of notes and thinking about it during the 50-state-tour, but won’t actually begin it until it’s over.