The Meek: An Interview with Der-Shing Helmer

Anyone who’s bothered to talk to me beyond to know who I am and what I’m doing in their house knows I enjoy webcomics.  Anyone who’s ever read my Links page knows there is a comic out there that I absolutely adore.

The Meek

by Der-Shing Helmer

Above is the strip that essentially solidified the comic to me.  It’s the character that made this story one of humans trying to overcome themselves, it’s the part of the story that so eloquently illustrates a conflict with no clear resolution and it’s the moment that I said to myself: “You know, webcomics might actually be worth talking about.“

And from a writer’s perspective, they certainly are.  The challenges facing a writer of webcomics is not too unlike the challenges facing a novelist, save for one important fact: comic readers tend to be a lot less patient.  Every thing in a comic must catch the eye, must seize the attention and must work just so with the artwork.  It’s undoubtedly a very difficult process, but one worth reading about.  And to talk more about it, I asked Helmer if she might consider being interviewed.

…she said yes, by the way.

So, I thought about dancing around the subject, but I think I might just have to get it out of the way right now: I adore the character of Luca.  One usually doesn’t see such a complex character in true literature, let alone a fantasy comic.  And while none of your characters are what I might call ‘simple,’ I think he’s definitely one of the more difficult to understand.  Did you go into his character knowing he’d be difficult?  Or does his character just come naturally to you?

Luca isn’t as difficult for me to understand as some of my other characters. His role in the comic is to be a “bad guy,” but one that is still very relatable and human.  To get to the honest motivations behind his actions I decided to base a lot of the negative aspects of his personality on my own. The side effect of that is that it is sometimes difficult for me to hold him accountable for his actions… I care for the character very much, and there is a temptation to make the reader like him (and by extension, me), but some of the things he does and will do are inexcusable.  So yes, his character comes naturally, but he can be depressing to write for.

That question provides a nice segue into my next one: characterization can be a difficult thing to achieve in comics.  I think we novelists often take for granted the ability to go into a character’s head and sift about in them for a bit.  Comics tend to not have that advantage, as too much thought-bubbling usually leads to telegraphing a character’s motives.  How do you avoid this over-explaining?  How much is expression and physical portrayal through art and how much is dialogue?

 

In my head, I think of comics as art first and writing second. Not in terms of how well each carries the story, but in how the reader experiences it. With a book you are first sucked in by the language, but in comics you see the art and the acting of the characters on the page in that millisecond before you start to read. So I try to write my pages the same way; by having a general idea for the scene, acting it out (in real life and then via thumbnails), and then getting the dialogue to synch naturally with the expression. This usually also leads to an economy of explanation, since I’m naturally communicating on both the art level and the writing level. I’ve tried it the other way around, doing the writing first and then matching it to art, but it always loses something.

I try to avoid explicit “internal voice/ thinking” panels as well. I think of my comic almost as a real life experience, where you can pick up on cues and make assumptions, but have to read between the lines or explicitly ask if you want to know what a person is thinking.

 

I didn’t even think to ask if you prefer your comic to be labeled fantasy or not.  I certainly wouldn’t call it conventional fantasy; you’ve got elements of magic, spiritualism, otherworldly things riding side-by-side with guns, empire and national politics.  We occasionally talk about world-building on this blog and the question has come up of just how much of it should be available?  How much of your world do you make available through the comic and how much of a good world do you feel should be shown?

 

Again, I use a real world model for my world. Right now I bet you couldn’t tell me a great deal about the newest trends in women’s shoes. Or about the internal politics in the Vatican. Or the voting record of the senator from a state you don’t live in. There’s a lot of stuff in real life that you just don’t have to know unless you actively seek that information. I’m presenting my world that way as well, there is a lot of background development on my end, but I don’t think it’s necessary to give it to the reader all at once for no reason. If it comes up naturally in a conversation I don’t mind, but you won’t be seeing any exposition from me. And it has a bonus of creating a sense of anticipation, knowing that new clues to the world can be dropped in any panel.

But as you know I’m a nice guy, so I did make some non-spoiler information available in my “Meekipedia” for my most curious readers. Seems only fair, seeing how much I use Google to search for background information on my own environment.

 

 

On the subject of magic (which is also something we’ve talked about here), The Meek features, as I said, an element of magic that isn’t quite overwhelming and seems to have its own set of rules, yet retains its mystic quality.  How much thought went into the spirituality and mystical elements of the story?  Do you tend to know what you’re doing when it comes to them or is it more of a shoot-from-the-hip situation?

 

I have a few rules for the magic, though I’ll be honest and say that not every point is worked out. My main difficulty has been to figure out where to stop. If I solve some difficult situation with “magic,” will it be met with disbelief? Is there a point where it just becomes too much? I don’t really know the answers to these questions yet, since I haven’t tested them on readers. Time’s on my side though, after a few years of thinking about some of these things they still ring true to me. And I have a few more years to go before I even address those points in the comic, in case I change my mind.

 

Occasionally, amongst the webcomics crowd, there are murmurings of the difference between comedy and drama.  Some say you need to choose one and forsake the other, others say that’s disingenuous to the nature of a story.  Where do you fall?  Is it is as big a deal as people say?  Which do you find lends itself more to characterization?

 

I hate to be boring and get back to my party line, but I’m grounding my story in reality. My life is mostly boring, but there is also drama. And comedy. And horror (I found an ant crawling yesterday in a place no ant should be). It’s all part of living, and my story is about some people living and doing their thing. I think in a strip comic where the expectation is for humor this might be a harder question, but for a graphic novel like mine the answer is that they’re both important parts to the story.

 

Finally, are there any comic strips, graphic novels or (cough) regular novels that you’d attribute as inspiration to yourself or valuable knowledge for others?

 

My high school English teacher once told me “You sure do read a lot of crap,” and it’s sort of true, haha. My most favorite novels are genre works: Lawrence Block’s Scudder novels for crime and mystery, The Song of Ice and Fire series by Martin for that reality-based fantasy that I love, Zelazny for my sci-fi kick (which is actually relevant to the comic), and Stephen King for horror. They might not be high literature, but they are interesting! And my main goal is to make an interesting comic that can hold the reader’s attention, so I guess it works out.

And I’m a big fan of Bone by Jeff Smith, and Skydoll by Barbucci and Canepa. I think I learned 90% of what I know about comics from these two works alone.

As a parting shot, I really want to stress that you can’t write without reading, and you can’t make comics without reading comics. In that respect, everything I’ve ever read has taught me how to make a comic- either by teaching me examples of what to do or by teaching me what to avoid like the plague (I’m looking at you, Dean Koontz).  The themes from all my reading and observation that spoke to me the most are the ones that made it into my own work eventually. You have to really pay attention to what it is that you like though. I don’t think there’s a “right” way to do things, but there certainly is an honest one.

Thanks, Der-Shing!  And I wholeheartedly advise anyone interested in writing, novels or otherwise, to check out The Meek!