A Sense of Doubt blog post #1370 - The Levitz Grid and Comic Book Paradigm
Still catching up. I am in full thankful mode and break mode today and not inclined to write original content. Plus, there's a thing happening that some of my students know about that is eating up time.
I have some original stuff in the works, but for now, I need to get ahead on stuff.
This is a great comic book thing. I am glad yo be able to post this for people who are interested.
Check out "the big piece of paper" that Alan Moore graphed all the story beats for BIG NUMBERS on.
Alan Moore's Levitz Grid for all 12 issues of Big Numbers, continued on the next double page spread! Illustration from "Alan Moore: Storyteller" by Gary Spencer Millidge.
While it definitely is a Levitz Grid, it doesn't use the Levitz Paradigm. In those terms, the plot progression is:
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ...
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ...
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ...
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ...
Until issue 11, where he wanted to add yet another letter.
 |
| from Big Numbers |
Serious comics writing post: how can teh Internet be so jam packed with my fellow comic geeks, but there is NO [edit: scarce] online trace of the Levitz Paradigm Grid? ComicsAlliance.com just posted a Levitz Grid that writer Jonathan Hickman used to plot out Fantastic Four issues
#570-600, and neither the journalist nor the readers had any idea what the eff it was.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/07/27/parting-shot-jonathan-hickmans-fantastic-four-ff-graph-outline/
If you ever want to write or edit any serial story with complex interweaving plotlines, track down a copy of The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O'Neil. The Levitz Paradigm gets its own short chapter. Here's a big bit of it, page 100:
This could be the situation: Your editor, the fossil, doesn't like arcs. Thinks they aren't real comics. (Did I mention that he was born before 1950?) He wants you to deliver 12 issues and he insists that many of them contain continued stories. What are your options?
You could just give him arcs without calling them arcs....[snip]
Or you might conclude a story in two and a half issues and begin another in the last few pages of the third issue....[snip]
Or you could adopt a structural procedure from our television brethren and conclude your main plot in one, two, three or more issues but let the subplots continue....[snip]
Or you could adopt the Levitz paradigm....Paul Levitz probably thought about what a comic book writer does more than any of his contemporaries, or mine, and during his dozen-plus-years stint as writer of The Legion of Super-Heroes, systematized what his predecessors did haphazardly, if at all. Then, as an aid to his own work, he created three versions of the Levitz Grid [snip].
Basically, the procedure is this: The writer has two, three, or even four plots going at once. The main plot—call it Plot A—occupies most of the pages and the characters' energies. The secondary plot—Plot B—functions as a subplot. Plot C and Plot D, if any, are given minimum space and attention—a few panels. As Plot A concludes, Plot B is "promoted"; it becomes Plot A, and Plot C becomes Plot B, and so forth. Thus, there is a constant upward plot progression; each plot develops in interest and complexity as the year's issues appear.
End quote. Now go buy the book and learn the rest!
View 25 previous comments
The Levitz era of the Legion remains one of the highest watermarks of my comics experience. I was there for all of it. It was my favorite comic (for most of it, anyway. But youth can be fickle.) it kept building and building to astounding things. And it always amazed me that Levitz could take a series with a 30+ 'regular ' cast (remember, there weren't just active Legionnaires to consider. There were characters like Yera, Zendak, Erin and even some of the villains) and not only keep everyone straight but keep us actively engaged. It was equally exciting to feel the natural organic way the plots evolved, and when they hit payoff you had the momentum of time behind them. I can't say how many times something like the sad fate of Sensor Girl would hit climax, and I'd go back and see just how we got there, and see how subtle it all was.
The way all that could happen was organization, and it didn't (just) make for monumental events -- it made literally decades of a single writer's comic book run among the best comics of all time, while making almost every issue feel self contained. Even someone picking up the run midway found themselves at the very start of a plot, and they didn't care that it was the C plot -- they had something to latch onto and understand, and a year later found themselves woven into the texture of the series.
Even something as epic as the Great Darkness Saga started as the C Plot. A tiny event here, a ship landing there,nan enigmatic figure in darkness awakening. Then, slowly, we saw it gather strength, building itself up, gathering allies to itself, draining the power of objects, then low level enemies, then things of significance. When the Legion realized something was going on, it was still a quiet realization, and a minor team sent to investigate. When Mordru -- the most powerful enemy they had ever faced -- and the Controller thought at that point to be the Time Trapper were both drained by these forces, the Legion were shocked but we weren't. We were there for the buildup. And when the entire population of Daxam became the foot soldiers of darkness, entire worlds were being destroyed, and the enemy was revealed, it had become one of the defining moments not only of its age but of comics themselves.
And in the middle of that epic, cataclysmic event... The next plots were building up.
So no, the Levitz Grid doesn't make stories feel artificial or inorganic, at least when handled right. It makes sequential stories feel organic and natural while continually drawing in interest and never feeling unnaturally over. There were always new things in the fire. In fact, the only time the Levitz arc fell flat was when something was imposed by editorial -- Laurel Kent being revealled as a Manhunter, say -- and not allowed the slow growth such a thing requires.
One of the sad things about the current Event/crossover/eternally rebooting and retconning era of comics is it doesn't permit for a single comic to develop over time in this way. Sure, company wide the Levitz grid can keep everything organized, but every individual title has to serve the needs of the overall grid, without focusing on its own. I'm not sure a single title could do the slow cook that led to an entirely self contained epic like The Great Darkness Saga any more, and a sad, inevitable fate like Sensor Girl's seems far away now. Still, as long as creators have the tool, the tool can make great stories.
Thanks for sharing this.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1811.21 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1236 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment