META: City of the Faceless
Andrew Perron
people is usually a bad storytelling tactic.
The ne plus ultra of this technique in comic books is _Crisis on
Infinite Earths_. A literally infinite number of people are killed,
which serves two storytelling purposes: To build up the threat of the
Anti-Monitor and to "clear the decks" of DC's multiverse.
(Incidentally, the supposed infiniteness of this has always bothered
me. If it takes a finite amount of time to destroy a universe, and the
Anti-Monitor's been doing it for a finite amount of time, doesn't that
mean only a finite number of universes could've been destroyed?)
The thing is, those lost this way don't really affect us, even though
there are trillions of them. There's little attempt to establish
empathy; only a few characters represent the actually-sacrificed
Earths, and they each get only a few lines.
The issue is similar to killing off obscure characters to achieve
impact, except instead of killing one D-lister, it's killing a
thousand J-listers or a million Q-listers. Either way, it runs smack
into the fact that death doesn't automatically provoke an emotional
reaction; you have to care about those who have died, and it's far
more difficult to make us care about a million people than about one,
especially if it's obvious that the writer doesn't care.
Of course, there's a way to overcome this, and that's to actually
evoke empathy. If you make the city or country or world feel real,
then we can achieve some emotional connection to them, and if
something happens to them, we feel it.
However, this runs into the opposite problem, one that the death of a
D-lister has as well - if you care about the character, surely you're
not going to be happy if they die! This was (one of) the problem(s)
people had with Countdown to Infinite Crisis; it was shown how
intelligent, resourceful and heroic Ted Kord was... right before the
got a bullet through the head. (Indeed, the feedback from this may
have been what sank the otherwise-excellent Jamie Reyes Blue Beetle
series.)
Therefore, you have to put the death and destruction in a story where
it's dramatically appropriate. This is a difficult line to walk, and
far more so when you're talking about a place or a people than when
you're talking about an individual character. Having a mentor die so
that a hero can both move out of his shadow and have a purpose driving
him is a standard storytelling element, but how do you extend that to
a city, a country or a planet without having it feel like you're
shooting mosquitoes with a bazooka?
Thus, while killing off a group *can* be used well, it's very, very
difficult, and, in my opinion, should be avoided in all except the
most appropriate circumstances.
Note: This post wasn't inspired by any recent story on RACC; rather, I
was reading posts from back in early 2008 and Tom Russell tossed off a
statement in the middle of a review: "The whole Entire City/Country
Destroyed By Great Evil trope is another one I'm not too found of, but
I think I'll save that discussion for another time." Since he hadn't
and it was something I had Opinions on, I decided I would.
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, Opinions(tm)!
Martin Phipps
victim for no reason whatsoever. It took me out of the story when in
Robocop 2 the villain killed an old woman when he carjacked her. It
was completely unnecessary. (He could have just told her to get
out.) The purpose of that murder was 1) to show him and cold and
ruthless and 2) to get the viewer to hate him so you wouldn't feel bad
-or even feel good- when he meets his demise in the end.
In all fairness, making a villain the object of hatred usually works
very well for me: I often feel a sense of satisfaction when the bad
guy gets offed at the end of a movie, usually because I feel he had it
coming. The difference in Robocop 2 is that the villain didn't get a
lot of screen time before his brain was harvested and used for the
Robocop program. In that case, you hadn't had a whole movie to get to
dislike him: you just had a few random killings that were meant to
manipulate the viewer into hating him.
Martin
Tom Russell
Interesting thoughts, Andrew. I don't have much to add to them. The
only time I've really seen the tactic work is when it's in service to
an exploration of a moral question-- for example, the ending of
WATCHMEN, in which the enormity of the act is what's so terrifying.
If said act had happened just to show how "bad ass" the villain was,
it would have been bad storytelling. But because it's about the
character's moral choice and HIS RESPONSIBILITY for that choice, and
the (implied) responsibility of the the characters who failed to stop
him, and thus failed to be "heroic", I think it works.
When I danced with the trope in my own JOLT CITY # 18, it was for that
very reason that I consciously aped the moral choice angle and tried
to emphasize the responsibility that Derek has for his actions. The
enormity of the act-- genocide on an absolute scale-- makes it
difficult to comprehend, and thus more difficult, I hope, for Derek to
set aside/deal with than if he had just killed one creature. I wasn't
trying to do it for shock/empathy effect, where-- as you've so
elegantly explained-- such a trope falls flat, but to explore the
character/a moral issue. I don't think myself the equal of Mr. Moore,
of course, but I think I did alright with it.
> was reading posts from back in early 2008 and Tom Russell tossed off a
> statement in the middle of a review: "The whole Entire City/Country
> Destroyed By Great Evil trope is another one I'm not too found of, but
> I think I'll save that discussion for another time." Since he hadn't
> and it was something I had Opinions on, I decided I would.
Do you remember what review it was? Ever since Google hobbled its
Groups search, I've had a hard time finding such things without going
through all the posts in the List-serv.
==Tom
Andrew Perron
> The same effect is achieved by having a villain kill a poor helpless
> victim for no reason whatsoever.
Very true, and I think that case is closer to this than killing a D-
lister. Of course, it's still easier to create sympathy for an
individual's death than it is for a group's.
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, ba-pa-da-pa
Andrew Perron
> (FAIRLY MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BOTH WATCHMEN AND JOLT CITY # 18 BELOW.)
>
> Interesting thoughts, Andrew. I don't have much to add to them. The
> only time I've really seen the tactic work is when it's in service to
> an exploration of a moral question-- for example, the ending of
> WATCHMEN, in which the enormity of the act is what's so terrifying.
> If said act had happened just to show how "bad ass" the villain was,
> it would have been bad storytelling. But because it's about the
> character's moral choice and HIS RESPONSIBILITY for that choice, and
> the (implied) responsibility of the the characters who failed to stop
> him, and thus failed to be "heroic", I think it works.
Oh, definitely. Really, Watchmen works for the same reason Crisis on
Infinite Earths doesn't. Here, you're *supposed* to feel like the
heroes have failed, whereas in CoIE, despite the fact that even though
a billion worlds have been destroyed, it'll all be okay if the heroes
save these *specific* worlds.
(Admittedly, "I did it 35 minutes ago" is pretty badass.)
> When I danced with the trope in my own JOLT CITY # 18, it was for that
> very reason that I consciously aped the moral choice angle and tried
> to emphasize the responsibility that Derek has for his actions. The
> enormity of the act-- genocide on an absolute scale-- makes it
> difficult to comprehend, and thus more difficult, I hope, for Derek to
> set aside/deal with than if he had just killed one creature. I wasn't
> trying to do it for shock/empathy effect, where-- as you've so
> elegantly explained-- such a trope falls flat, but to explore the
> character/a moral issue. I don't think myself the equal of Mr. Moore,
> of course, but I think I did alright with it.
IMHO, yours works because of the ambiguity. Was it really killing?
Was it the right thing to do, even if it was? The emotion here is
less shock and more a sort of frustrated melancholy.
> > was reading posts from back in early 2008 and Tom Russell tossed off a
> > statement in the middle of a review: "The whole Entire City/Country
> > Destroyed By Great Evil trope is another one I'm not too found of, but
> > I think I'll save that discussion for another time." Since he hadn't
> > and it was something I had Opinions on, I decided I would.
>
> Do you remember what review it was? Ever since Google hobbled its
> Groups search, I've had a hard time finding such things without going
> through all the posts in the List-serv.
I believe it was a pre-Russell's Reviews thing... let's see...
Aha: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.creative/msg/2e86b2e4f7e0e1c8
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, digestible!