Category: Blog

“You’d have to be here to believe it!”

January 22nd, 2016. For most Penguins fans, just another home game against the Philadelphia Flyers- obviously important for bragging rights and playoff positioning, but nothing out of the ordinary. For me, it was the first time I’d stepped into Consol Energy Center, the house that Mario and Sid built; the first time I’d seen in person the ice that had long been almost mythical, on the other side of the computer screen. After almost 6 years of dreaming and supporting them from afar, I was in Pittsburgh, watching a Penguins game. I’m not ashamed to say that as I turned a corner and saw the ice from up on the concourse, I teared up.

I started watching hockey back in 2010, thanks to the efforts of my very good friend Ellie who convinced me to come and see our adopted hometown’s professional team, the Sheffield Steelers. I’d been to games as a child, back in Manchester (in the UK, not New Hampshire!) when the Manchester Storm were drawing big crowds to the Nynex Arena, but hadn’t really taken in the game- I was a small kid, I just liked the atmosphere and the music. When I first saw Sheffield at the age of 22, something clicked- it was the perfect combination of elegance and brutality, skill and determination. This was the sport for me.

I watched a few NHL games, mostly picking random teams to try and find one that I liked. I still remember the first Penguins game I watched, against Tampa Bay- I vaguely knew the Lightning’s name, but I hadn’t heard of the Penguins. I was entranced. It was 2010, the year after the cup win but still firmly in the Bylsma era- this was an up-tempo, high-offense team with a core of incredibly dynamic players. They played the game beautifully, and I remember them completely out-skating Tampa Bay. I flirted with a few other teams for a while (including Vancouver- thankfully I didn’t go any further down that road, given how badly mismanaged that franchise has been) but by the time Jaroslav Halak and the Canadiens had stonewalled the Crosby and Malkin-less Penguins in the 2010 playoffs, I was a committed fan.

During that offseason I spent a lot of time researching the team. I had been attracted to the Penguins because of the way they played- after spending some time on Wikipedia, I became entranced with the city and the team’s history. The towering legacy of Le Magnifique; Mario’s incredible return from cancer; how he saved the club and kept it in Pittsburgh; the back-to-back Cup wins; and of course, Sid the Kid and his impact on the city. The story of the Penguins was, to my eyes, one of determination, triumph in the face of adversity and a passionate love affair between the team and the city.

As the next season rolled on, including Crosby’s incredible 25-game point streak and of course, the Winter Classic, I continued to read about Pittsburgh. The opening shots of every home broadcast showed me how beautiful the city was, and HBO’s 24/7 documentary leading up to that fateful evening at Heinz Field convinced me that this was my team. The similarities between my own adopted hometown of Sheffield and Pittsburgh began to mount up- both are ex-steel towns, both have coped with the decline of the steel industry by moving into higher education (Sheffield has two universities, Pittsburgh has four) and technological innovation; our hockey team (established in 1991) is called the Steelers. Even my university’s team colours are black and gold (the only thing spoiling this is that my Steelers’ team colours are, annoyingly, orange and black!) I dreamed of visiting the city, of watching a Penguins game, eating at Primanti Bros’, seeing the view from Mount Washington.

As the Penguins sputtered through that horrific 2012 series against the Flyers I was up until 3am watching every game; the same the next year when Fleury ceded the net to Thomas Vokoun and the Pens advanced all the way to the Conference Finals before being stoned by Boston. I watched Crosby’s struggles with concussion and his effervescent return against the Islanders on November 21st 2011 (that backhand goal, and Sid’s passionate celebration!) I couldn’t hope to count the hours I’ve spent (usually in the small hours of the morning, huddled in front of my computer with headphones on) watching games online, following along on Twitter and going to bed either joyful and animated or sullen and angry (depending on the result), before waking up for work the next morning.

Late last year, I decided to take the plunge- to make my pilgrimage to Pittsburgh and finally watch a Penguins game in person. I went via Austin, spending a few days with a friend there, before taking an afternoon flight to Pittsburgh through Dallas. I was staying with some AirBnB hosts up in Grandview, who’d arranged to pick me up at the airport; as we drove back, late at night, they graciously agreed to take a detour through the Fort Pitt tunnel. The city unfolded in front of me, covered in a light dusting of snow, and I had to pinch myself- I was really there.

I left the house quite early the next day, eager to tick some things off my bucket list. I marvelled at the sight of the city from Grandview; I rode the Monongahela Incline down to Station Square; I convinced myself that I was sitting just behind Dejan Kovacevic as I took the T across the river into downtown. I wandered up to Consol and bought a Pittsburgh Gold jersey at PensGear, ate lunch at Primanti Bros’, had a brief skate on the temporary rink in PPG Plaza.

By the time the Flyers game rolled round, I had fallen deeply in love with Pittsburgh, and the incredible atmosphere and result that night only cemented it for me. My neighbours on either side at the game were friendly, polite and passionate- I felt immediately at ease. As I walked back up Grandview that night, the city twinkling with a million and one golden lights on the other side of the river and my face slowly going numb from the freezing cold, I couldn’t have described the feeling of travelling thousands of miles, across half the world, only to feel like you’d never left home.

Pittsburgh is a very special city. I know I’m probably reading a lot into the relationship between the city and my own home of Sheffield, but the connection between the two (for me, at least) grows stronger by the day. Sheffield is built on and around seven hills; Pittsburgh might not have seven, but it certainly has a lot of ups and downs. Sheffield is the fourth-largest city in the UK, but feels like a small town where you know everyone; Pittsburgh has exactly the same feeling, and several Uber drivers told me they always see someone they know in Downtown while they’re there. Sheffield has a blue-collar, working-class ethos (it’s often jokingly dubbed ‘The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire’) which is mirrored in Pittsburgh. We have slightly more rivers (five in total) but they’re smaller, and we have fewer bridges. And of course, there are the people- everybody I spoke to was friendly and welcoming, more than happy to share their love for their city with me. My AirBnB hosts made me feel instantly at home, and I couldn’t have asked for better people to stay with. I know from personal experience how friendly Sheffield people are- it’s often called the biggest village in the UK, since it’s developed such a reputation for friendliness, and it was wonderful to see that Yinzers have the same approach.

And above all, both Pittsburgh and Sheffield have hockey. We have one professional team, a few semi-professional teams, a slew of recreational teams and a veritable army of passionate fans at all levels. Lord Stanley’s Cup was even forged by a Sheffield silversmith and sold from a London shop, so in a sense, the NHL and the most iconic trophy in sports was born in my city. The Steelers have gone through their own hard times and their own struggles, not helped by the collapse of the British IHL in the late 90s, but since the birth of the current Elite Ice Hockey League in 2003 they have won five championships and a slew of other trophies, including back-to-back championships this season and last. As Pittsburgh and Sheffield reflect each other in so many other ways, my hope is that this year’s Penguins will reflect Sheffield’s success- and bring the Stanley Cup back to the Steel City where it belongs. I’ll be watching from the other side of the Atlantic and rooting for the team, as I have done for the past 6 years. Pittsburgh is as much my home as Sheffield, in the emotional sense if not the physical, and I’ll be there in spirit as the Cup is paraded down the Boulevard this year.

Let’s go Pens!

Writing small press comics involves a lot of waiting and a lot of patience- it takes you a few minutes to write down some words describing an epic battle scene, but it’s often several months before you see how that scene looks on a page, after the artist has reached the right bit of their to-do list and spent hours/days/weeks drawing it. It makes it important to keep busy- rather than finishing a script, sending it off and then sitting by your inbox twiddling your thumbs until you see some pages, it’s good practice to start working on something else, keeping yourself busy.

Sometimes, though, everything comes back at once and you have several things to shout about- which I found out was the case this morning, when I realised that not only was the final part of Hadopelagic (my story in Aces Weekly with Neil McClements and Nigel Dobbyn) now available, but that a short story I wrote for Futurequake #27 (drawn by artist Joe Palmer) is also out and available now from the Futurequake webshop.

And as well as seeing finished work come to life, this morning also saw the next step in the journey for Brigantia, my project with the wonderful Melissa Trender- we’ve been hard at work putting a pitch document together, complete with 5 (gorgeous) sequential art pages, and have this morning sent that off to Image Comics to see whether it’s something they’re interested in. Now to cross absolutely every digit that I possess and hope that they like it! #TeamBrigantia

So, that’s the life of a small press comics writer (at least in my experience)- long periods of calm and relative quiet, interspersed with manic bursts of activity. The trick is to try and shorten the quiet periods by getting as many stories out as you possibly can!

All the best,
Chris

Part two! In this post (following on from my previous entry about writing comics dialogue), I’m going to have a quick look at pacing, or how a story flows from panel to panel. This is another important part of building a story- if you’re writing a chase scene, with your heroine escaping from a mob of angry villains, you want to ensure that the pace of the scene is quick and exciting in order to reflect the subject matter. It seems like a simple thing, but it’s often overlooked in a lot of comics, meaning that the pace of the scene jars with the content.

Pacing is largely a subjective thing, since everybody will read a comic at their own speed and the beauty of the medium is that the reader can linger on a panel for as much or as little time as they want to, but knowing how to arrange your panels to achieve the desired effect can go a long way towards drawing the reader into the story. The best comics (in my opinion) are like a dynamic symphony- they slow down and speed up when it’s appropriate, pulling the reader along with them. Pacing is also very important in the kind of short 4-6 page stories that I’ve written a lot of for the Psychedelic Journal of Time Travel and Professor Elemental- when you only have a small number of pages, pretty much every panel has to move the story forwards and finding space to pause for breath is integral. Getting the pacing right can make or break the flow of the story, so it’s important to practice.

Let’s begin with an example of a slow-paced scene. The atmosphere for this meeting between two rivals is tense and electric- if this were a film, we’d expect lots of slow, long camera shots looking around the room and giving the two characters time to converse. However, we also want to pick up the pace towards the bottom of the page, to keep the story moving.

—

Page
Panel 1
Wide-angle; the NEMESIS is standing with his back to the reader, looking out of a large plate glass window. The room is lushly adorned in a sleek, contemporary style. There is a wisp of smoke drifting upwards from the cigarette the NEMESIS is holding in one hand.

NEMESIS: I knew you’d come.

Panel 2
Another wide-angle panel, side-on; we see the HERO walking across the room towards the NEMESIS, looking bruised and battle-scarred. The NEMESIS is turning to face her.

HERO: Where is he?

NEMESIS: Not so fast, hero- relax, have a drink. We have much to talk about.

Panel 3
Wide-angle again; our view is now behind the NEMESIS. We can see the HERO in the background of the panel; the NEMESIS is slowly drawing a pistol out of a holster underneath his suit jacket.

HERO: Don’t try and distract me, Nemesis- I know what you’re up to!

NEMESIS: On the contrary, Hero… you have no idea.

Panel 4
Small, inset panel- close in on the NEMESIS as he takes a drag from his cigarette.

Panel 5
Another small panel- the NEMESIS raising his pistol to fire at the HERO.

—

As we’ve used three large, wide-angle panels on this page, we’ve been able to really slow down the pace of the story- it’s a break, a brief section of quiet and calm that gives the reader time to really digest both the surroundings and background of the panels and to sense the build up of tension between the two characters. If we hadn’t used these wide-angle panels (and panel 4, the close-up with the cigarette) the scene would have felt a lot more rushed and a lot more frenetic- which could also work, but not for the atmosphere that we wanted to achieve. We also used an inset panel for panel 4- these are very useful when trying to get the pacing right, since an inset panel (a small panel which is overlaid on top of a larger panel, often used to draw attention to something within the larger scene) can either reveal details about the scene or it can act as a sort of ‘quick cut’ between actions. In this case the larger scene (panel 3) was the Nemesis slowly drawing his pistol; we then built up the tension with an inset panel of him smoking his cigarette, to prolong the reader’s eye on panel 3. Finally, the small panel 5 acts as a clean break and shows a change in the status of the scene- the Nemesis raising his gun to shoot at the Hero.

I like to think of it as being the editor on a film- as the writer, you have the choice of whether to make quick cuts (smaller panels focussing on action), quickly switching from shot to shot to keep the tempo of a scene high, or slow cuts (larger panels focussing on atmosphere), to allow the build-up of tension. Study the work of some directors that you admire to see how they’ve approached the editing- Akira Kurosawa, for example (one of my favourite directors), is a master of using movement (and the lack thereof) to build tension and his films balance slow scenes with quick action masterfully. Here’s a great Youtube video about some of Kurosawa’s techniques, especially his use of movement (which isn’t something that can be directly shown in comics, but can be alluded to):

Pacing is definitely something worth studying if you want to improve the dynamism of your scripts- a lot of it will eventually begin to come naturally, and you’ll have a feel for how large or small or numerous the panels on a page need to be for the scene that you’re telling. Even if you’re constricted by a page count, think about the pacing and try your hardest to include breaks and panels that pause for breath, rather than action after action after action. Think about how great directors structure a movie scene and construct your scripts similarly.

Thanks for reading!

Chris