How Do You Give a Comics Reading?
As graphic novels and comic books become more entrenched in the high-minded literature scene, comics creators likely will begin entering into the world of the author.
That could mean holding book signings at Barnes & Noble as well as Comic Con. It could mean facing the scrutiny of self-important book critics as well as snarky Internet fanboys. In the case of Exit Wounds creator Rutu Modan, it meant holding a reading.
For literature, readings are easy enough. You step in front of an audience, crack open your book and read. But because comics are so image intensive, a reading becomes much more difficult.
I’ll never forget hearing John Ridley on NPR discussing his comic series The American Way, and how awkward it was when he tried to not only read the dialogue and captions but also describe everything. Luckily, I’d already read the book and could follow along.
Speaking at Jewish Book Week, Modan tried another tack by showing a projection of the pages as she read. However, even that wasn’t ideal. Here’s how the Guardian writer described it:
Modan’s presence raised the interesting technical question of how to conduct a reading of a graphic novel. The answer was via a PowerPoint presentation and a lot of advice from a tech-savvy audience shouting: "Now go to ‘Slide Show’, now click ‘View Show’."
I’ve presented readings from both Stuck Rubber Baby and Wendel All Together with no accompanying visuals and generally gotten positive audience reactions. The key has been selecting scenes that are largely dialogue-driven and then adding just enough newly-written narration to convey any important visual aspects that listeners need to know about while the characters are talking. When digital projection equipment is available, of course, I often use PowerPoint or Keynote to show the comics as I read them, but I have adapted the art so that one panel fills the screen at a time. Showing full pages at one time makes the images too small and tempts viewers to read ahead of me. Controlling the moment-to-moment pacing as I read lets surprises be surprising and allows me to spin out the story’s twists and turns more dramatically or humorously, whichever is appropriate.
Fiorello LaGuardia had no problems reading comics, and that was sixty years ago. And he used the radio, so he couldn't even physically act them out.
That’s a few decades before my time, but I’m wondering if LaGuardia did the reading as if it were a radio play, i.e. doing voices, sound effects, etc. Because it could be that the art of acting out a story with audio alone has fallen almost entirely out of the cultural consciousness, with only a few remnants remaining on programs like Prairie Home Companion.