cwisnia

COMMENTARY:

Inked by Dick Ayers!

LAZY VAGUENESS

If you look at the page 035 – Script, you’ll notice that page four, panel 2 coincides with panel four of this page – but that there’s no mention of “mutated mongoloid midgets.” There’s just a vague suggestion that something is going on, to “entice the reader.”

I hated writings like that, but the ideas weren’t yet developed in my head. I didn’t know what “the truth” was yet, I just had the general idea that there SHOULD be a “truth” that everybody knows or doesn’t know except the reader, so I had no choice except for the story to “keep you in suspense”. So I jotted down “the truth is more horrifying than anyone expects!” It’s a cop-out. It’s easy for something to be more horrifying than anyone expects, if you don’t know what it is.

I overheard an artist I very much admire talking with one of his fans. He said, “At home, I have created the most amazing, most touching painting of this superhero you will ever see. It will bring tears to your eyes! But I will never publish it!” Well, that may be or it may not be. It actually doesn’t MATTER if it is or not, if you look at it that way. That’s kind of how I felt the writing of my panel was. Why even say it.

OFFENSIVE AGAIN

(NOTE: I spoke more about offensive material on page 033 – Commentary.)

So by the time I drew the page and lettered it, I decided, there needed to be at least SOME HINT of what “the truth” was. And “mutated mongoloid midgets” was my solution.

However, I knew that it’s considered a derogatory term, and that didn’t sit well with me to use the term in my comic. Alliteration be damned!

Here is what the Little People of America have to say about the use of the word, midget.  It’s a really succinct, important, article.  “…created as a label used to refer to people of short stature who were on public display for curiosity and sport.”

While we’re on the subject, HERE is a great article on the derogatory use of the words, “Mongoloid” and “Mongol.”

While creating this story, my friend Wayne Jones was helping me with the post-production of the comic. I would scan the pages, and we’d go over the files, then size and clean them, get them in order and ready for the printer, get the text pages lain out, that kind of stuff that I didn’t know how to do yet. Actually, Wayne did the bulk of the work, but I would go over to his house toward the end, and we’d just print stuff out and look it over together. And we were discussing how it isn’t a good idea to use the word “midget.” So that’s when we decided we should have a cautionary paragraph explaining the use of the derogatory word, “midget.”

WARNING LABEL

I was thinking about how old cartoons or comics or movies often have an apologetic explanation of how times were different when the movie or whatever was made, and it’s not okay to be racist, for example, but people just … well, who knows what? How can you excuse it, you know? They just didn’t know better? Were all racists? It was an alternate reality with different standards? Everyone from that era just thought it was funny and acceptable to be racists? You know? I know, it’s REALLY complicated and none of these are entirely it, but these cautionary excuses that you hear at the beginnings of stuff sometimes just got me thinking – so I decided I’d just do a cautionary excuse too, NOT to make everything all right to be offensive, but to comment on the whole subject of it.

Here’s an introduction to the Tom and Jerry DVD set, by Whoopi Goldberg, addressing racism.  She did a similar one for a Looney Tunes DVD set.

With all these ideas in mind, we wrote our cautionary explanation.  We decided, No, we should start out as an apology for this thoroughly offensive idea, and THEN get even more offensive, like the editors just REALLY don’t get it. And that’s how the footnoted paragraph came about. It’s a technique Ricky Gervais used as his boss character in the original Office, and for much of his humor.  It is absolutely offensive and incorrect, with the intention NOT of belittling little people, but of pointing out the hurtful, uncaring, ignorant tone so many people still have toward ethnic groups.  How we don’t understand or want to try to understand, or care about the feelings of anyone if they’re not like us.

That was my intent.  All that said, it was still a portrayal I don’t feel entirely comfortable about, because it means PORTRAYING BEING hurtful and uncaring and ignorant.

INTERVIEW ON THE SUBJECT OF OFFENSIVENESS

Tim O’Shea interviewed me about the SLG Doris Danger book, back on January 4, 2010. For some reason, of the 96 pages of absurdity in the comic, he singled out this panel, and asked about it. The interview is HERE, at his “Robot 6” column on Comic Book Resources. Here’s the question and my response:

O’Shea: OK, in terms of your comedic sense, why on page 35, go to the trouble of setting up a tale “as written in 1955, republished in 1981″ and using a footnote that explains the use of the derogatory term “midget”? Are you trying to ridicule the politically correct nature of some folks when it comes to historical fiction?

Wisnia: Layers of layers. I find I’ll come up with a joke, then realize I can take it a step farther for another bad pun, and I just think stuff out way too obsessive-compulsively, to the point (I fear) it could very easily make my work inaccessible, and alienate the readers. But to me, it’s funny, heh heh…

The way this particular gag developed, I came up with the joke, and I used the word “midgets” in it for insensitivity. And then I felt guilty, so I decided I should affirm that I recognize the insensitivity. And by doing so, I could historically add layers by explaining the change in the use of the term from time period to time period.

I was thinking of when you read older books, history documents or whatever, that use the word “Negro,” or “mentally retarded,” or things like that, that were acceptable at the time but are now offensive. And how then historians always have to spend a paragraph apologizing for it. I’ve got a Loony Tunes box set where Whoopi Goldberg apologizes for some of the horrible racial stereotype gags in some of the cartoons.

And then I thought, well it would be even worse to acknowledge the insensitivity, and then ignorantly be even MORE insensitive. And you didn’t even mention how I made it a running gag, and the subject matter returned in the letters pages (page 43)!

MY IDEA OF USING LITTLE PEOPLE

Over the previous issues (and into future ones), I had been coming up with ideas of all these giant monsters being a hoax – they’re robots, they’re movie projections, they’re puppets on strings (see panel 5).  And I was developing the idea that EACH giant monster could be an attempt at experimenting with a different hoaxing technique.  So the story concept on this page is that “someone” is hiring actors with dwarfism, having them dress in masks or costumes or makeup to look like monsters, and then projecting them in some way or using visual sleight-of-hand, so that they appear to be humongous-sized, instead of little-people-sized. If you look at the proportion of many of Jack Kirby’s giant monsters, they often have shorter limbs and larger heads, which was his way of conveying power and strength:

I chose for my monsters in Doris Danger to have these proportions, way back when I was creating them in 2002.

Perhaps someone thought it was a funny joke, to play on size, or perhaps someone else agreed with my thoughts in regard to body proportions, because in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Peter Dinklage plays Eitri the Dwarf, a fifteen foot tall master forger:

A NEW LAUGH

Notice also, in panel four, that there is a new laugh! “Guffaw guffaw!” So we first saw “tee hee“, then the chilling laugh, “hardy har!”

In panel five, the idea was that all this time they thought they were in the open air, but then it turns out they were in a building, or like a movie set, where the sky is just painted onto the walls. As if people wouldn’t know the difference between the actual sky in the open air, and being in a room with the ceiling painted to look like the sky. But then they suddenly realize it IS a room and not the sky, because these UFO’s blast through the wall that had all this time looked like sky, and NOW the truth is revealed! What an ingenious deception! Why someone would go to these lengths to do this kind of deception?? You know, like, Why don’t they just deceive Doris and Steve out in the actual jungle? Who knows? We don’t know, but that is just ONE of the mysteries we ponder in our attempt to discover … “The Truth!”

COMMENTARY:

Inked by Dick Ayers!

BREAKING OUT OF NON-STOP FOUR-PAGE STORIES

This was the fourth story I’d written. By this time, I had pages of little notes and ideas for Doris Danger stories, jotted down on a stack of loose papers, one at a time as I came up with them. And as I mulled them over for days or months, I’d come up with new ideas to fill in the blanks of the initial ideas or stories. To write the stories, I would just go through the notes and pick a few story ideas that I thought were funniest, or that I felt would be good ones to try and begin filling in holes between previous stories.

So I wanted to show the MLA in a different setting than just attacking the army over and over. Also, I hadn’t shown the zwee UFO’s since the first story. And I wanted to give more clues about the giant monsters. But I had written a note about a traitor in the MLA codenamed Chokey (see page 033 – Script). And I’d jotted down a sequence of Steve watched by villains, who were watched by Doris, who was watched by a special agent. (See next page’s commentary.) So you can see that at this time, the stories began to become more compartmentalized and isolated page sequences, each from a different scrap of paper.  This is kind of the beginning of the whole Doris Danger story structure – LOTS of one or two page sequences jumping abetween A LOT of different storylines, ALL of them jumping in out of order and never from the start, and ALL OF THEM slowly getting filled in and connecting.

THE SCRIPT/PLOT/BRAINSTORM

On November 5, 2003, a month after writing the main bulk of story which makes up this chapter (pages 34-36), I jotted down the idea for THIS PAGE (page 033 – Published).  So I was writing out of order, since this page would precede the others in delivery.  The small, simple plot (because I didn’t break down details of exactly what you see, I just get an idea of the dialogue), you can read on page 033 – Script.

TABLOIA COMICS ARE RELEASED

I began drawing this page on November 18, but didn’t complete it until March 22, 2004. During that time, I was also applying for a Xeric Grant (which I was not so lucky as to be awarded), and busy getting the first issue of Tabloia ready to apply for distribution through Diamond (which I received), clean and post-produce the book to send it to the printer, designing t-shirts and advertisements, and basically beginning the launch of my comic books.  The process of publishing a comic is about four months, not including the time they take to write and draw.  You have to submit the book to the distributor for distribution, and if they accept, you are listed in a catalog, and then stores have a month to submit their orders, and then when you get your order numbers, you have a month to print the books and ship them to the distributor, which THEY then send to the stores. So I was readying issue one to see it’s release, while writing and drawing issue four.

I WAS PLEASED WITH THIS PAGE

I felt panel one was a strong beginning for a serial story. What a shock! What’s going on! I’m hooked! I’ve GOT to read more!

TELL DON’T SHOW – THE ART OF “EXPOSITORY DIALOGUE”

Panel two is one of my favorite ways to write for Doris Danger. People in the story describing everything that has happened so far in previous issues, so that readers now know and won’t be lost as they continue reading. As if anyone in real life would shout out at the friend next to them, “I can’t believe an evil assassin and expert in the deadly art of strangulation, who carries lengths of rope with him at all times and is known in the underworld only as “Chokey” …” etc. It rolls off the tongue, and it’s so natural to shout out in a conversation between people who have just lived this event and so therefore they already know, and would have no reason to talk like this.

COMPUTERS

I had a lot of fun drawing all the computers. It was an interesting exercise trying to draw Jack Kirby-style computers. He’s done computers different ways over the years. His later work had computers with all these crazy curves and amorphous, loose, non-linear, non-geometrical shapes. His early work had fairly straight computers. His mid-sixties work, it was somewhere in-between, where you can see in retrospect he was heading for some strange, “cosmic” computery stuff.

Fantastic Four #85 (Marvel Comics, 1969) by Jack Kirby

Omac, One Man Army Corps #8 (DC Comics, 1975) by Jack Kirby

I opted for Kirby’s earlier, more straight style, but I tried to make them fairly flat and uninteresting and generic. Like a set from a low-budget tv show from the 1960’s, or B-picture from the 1940’s. (Photo from Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster 1955)

M.L.A. MEMBERS!

Every time I showed the MLA, I was trying to show what a vast and varied array of members they had. I made a brainstorm list (see page 007 – Script). It includes the following, most of the first on the list having appeared in stories:

Leader,

girl with bow and arrow,
cowboy w/lasso “y’all”,
girl or guy (w/mustache) w/whip,
guy w/metal hand w/mustache,
Frenchie poof w/umbrella (please see “OFFENSIVE” below)
Mr. T,
kung fu Asian,
sailor w/cap,
guy with bird,
dog trainer,
ninja with sword,
huge strongman – bald w/dumbell,
knife thrower w/knife in mouth,
sumo [wrestler],
bull fighter – Once Upon a Time in Mexico,
Scuba Diver,
Race Car Driver,
Motorcycler,
Ice Skater,
Skiier,
Samuraii,
Horse Jockey!

So we open with the usual sun-glasses-and-cap-wearing “leader,” and then panel three we see someone with a knife in his mouth, panel four a cowboy AND an offensively stereotyped “injun”, and panel five a guy wearing a scuba mask and snorkel. That last outfit I find utterly practical while hanging out on dry land in their base.

OFFENSIVE

Why include an offensively stereotyped “injun”? Why use the word “injun”, when it’s so offensive? Why say “You speak slowly and wisely”? Maybe there’s no excuse for any of it. Old comics were full of what has come to be viewed in time as very offensive portrayals of ethnic minorities. I find it offensive. I find my portrayal here offensive – that’s the point. Referencing the past, critiquing it, questioning it, using it to explore how we view the present. Examine people’s offensive behaviors or perspectives or viewpoints. Blah blah blah, all that.

I’m becoming horribly aware of the unacceptable quality of this in 2018 with President Trump stirring so much anger on both sides.  My attempt in these comics – which were written in 2003 and published in 2004 – with an “Injun,” with French stereotypes, “Eskimos”, “midgets,” or with (unknown ancestry) “Fezzies,” is NOT that they’re just a bunch of annoying unreasonable cry babies screaming for justice about a bunch of fabricated nonsense, because they just like to make trouble when there shouldn’t have to be any.  This is forever the complaint of the racist and sexist, that you’re taking it way too seriously and you need to just get a sense of humor and stop being so uptight, because it’s all just innocent and funny to be a despicable racist or sexist.  My attempt is to point out that it’s racist and sexist, and that these racists and sexists don’t get it.  I am trying to portray a magazine (Tabloia) that is from the “old school era,” and as they reprint this old, racist, sexist material, they don’t get it, or are trying to justify its validity.  My concern is that in trying to show and portray this sexism and racism, and create a dialogue about racism and sexism, I’m being racist and sexist – which I am.  What does it mean to have characters like this in comics, or “art”?  What does it mean that our society (for the most part) doesn’t seem ok with racism regarding African Americans, Asians, or homosexuals, but it’s okay against the French, little people, or Inuits?  Racism and sexism and other isms exist.  Do we portray them as they exist, to create a space to talk about them, or is it better to exclude them from the conversation because they’re bad and setting a bad example?  When I created these offensive images, I felt the former, but I get concerned as time goes by.  I don’t think there are easy answers, and it’s uncomfortable to talk about, and I feel conflicted.

HOW TO FIX BAD WRITING

Panel five, I truly felt I was out of my element. I was trying to come up with something that SOUNDED interesting, without knowing or necessarily caring exactly what is ACTUALLY going on. The vague mention of a dangerous scouting mission, and being the one who unwittingly allowed “the back-stabbing traitor” into the equation. It was all very unsettling to me … UNTIL August 16, 2009, when I sat down and figured out the entire Chokey saga, which (as I wrote this section in January 2011) I plan to release as the third volume of Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures. [NOTE: As of October 2018, volume 3 had too much material, so Chokey will hopefully go to volume 4.  It’s an epic one, fans!]

This is what I wrote on that fateful day (I was writing down my concerns, and as I did so, I began to piece the story together in my head, and then jot THAT down too!):

NEED:
Tabloia 208 (India – fifth story) – MLA worried about Doris attacked by Chokey – CHIEF goes to save her. 

These questions answered below:

WHO is CHOKEY?

WHY is he the only one who could succeed at such a dangerous scouting mission?

HOW did he unwittingly allow Chokey into the equation?

And then I proceeded to vomit out, stream of conscious style, EIGHT DENSELY COMPACTED, THOROUGH PAGES OF PLOT that answer every question I could think of as to the explanation of the above questions, and more.

Panel six and seven particularly nagged at me. Who will repair the surprise-o-copters when they need them most? Why do they need them? Why can’t someone else repair them? If they need an alternate surprise scheme, what was their original surprise scheme? I was just throwing vague, uncared-for ideas out on this page, and then publishing it! – without regard for where they could possibly lead. I guess I’m just the kind of person that it doesn’t sit well with me for it all to just be unknown and unknowable. I want it all to fit. I want answers. I’ve got to figure it all out or nothing is okay.

And that’s why all the care and time spent trying to make it “work.” To make it “okay.”  And that’s why I keep slowly trying to fill in all the story holes, all the “issues.”  And as you read deeper and deeper into Doris Danger’s Giant Monster Adventures, the answers will all fill in tighter and tighter.

TIMELINE

I was trying to suggest that this sequence may have come before the first story, since they’re talking about the Caribbean, and the first story is at the Cayman Islands. And I was trying to suggest they DID come up with a scheme, and the scheme was to pop out of the ground like in the film “Red Dawn” and attack (Please see bottom of page 005 – Commentary), which is what the M.L.A. DID in the first story. And this would then cause an unnatural loop in continuity, because in this story, they obviously know Doris and are hanging out with her, but in the first story, they haven’t yet met.

I wish I’d come up with a better line at the end than “I fear it’s a race against time … that we can’t dare lose!” I was trying to be corny. I wish I’d just come up with a good joke instead. That’s how I’d write it now.

Chpt. 4   CHPT. 5   Chpt. 6

FOOTNOTES: See issue 203!

CAYMAN ISLANDS  
CHOKEY  
INDIA
M.L.A.