I’ve always been a huge fan of comic strips. Well, used to be. It all started when I was barely old enough to read when my father introduced me to the greatest literary work ever written: Peanuts. Charlie Brown and the gang formed the basis of a lifelong love affair with comic strips. I always joke and say Charlie Brown is my spirit animal. Visiting the Charles M Schulz Museum in California back in ’02 is one of the highlights of my life.
But it’s not just Peanuts. Dear old dad also introduced me to the hilarity of Johnny Hart’s BC. Growing up in the 80s, of course Garfield featured heavily. Sadly, Garfield kinda lost it, but the original Jim Davis cartoons were awesome (for great nihilist humour, check out Garfield Minus Garfield). Naturally, The Far Side featured quite heavily, and as I grew older, the absolute magnificence of Calvin & Hobbes. And I need to give an honourable mention to the most underrated and under-appreciated strip I’ve ever come across, Michael Jantze’s The Norm – of which I am proud to report to have a few signed books, and even had an hour-long telephonic conversation with Jantze himself.
(Side quest: I always called Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, and The Far Side the “Holy Trinity”. Peanuts is The Father, because it’s the original and the best and its eternally good. C&H is the Son, because it is relatable to the common man. And The Far Side is the Holy Spirit because nobody who is intellectually honest can ever claim to fully understand it)
I need to include MAD Magazine, Wizard of Id, and Andy Capp for the sake of completion. Just in case anyone feels left out!
I took two paragraphs to say I really, REALLY loved the comics. Why the past tense? I don’t know, but the new generation of comics just does not have the hilarity, philosophy, and acerbic wit of the older ones – with maybe the exception of Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine.
The point: a well-written three- or four-panel comic strip is a masterclass of writing, and any writer who takes themselves seriously will do themselves a huge favour by studying the funny pages.
And here’s one of the biggest lessons the comics have taught me: The action lies between the panels. The basic structure of premise-setup-punchline delivers its magic in the margin between the last and penultimate panels. To illustrate, this masterstroke by the god of absurdity himself, the late great king of onomatopoeia, Don Martin.
The action of “tear up” is not shown in the comic and left to the audience’s imagination. Another classic example of this is Calvin & Hobbes’ ‘Noodle Incident’, which is never explained, but nobody can prove Calvin did it! It’s just that much more magnificent and absurd in the mind of the audience than it can ever be on the page.
This naturally leads me to Bret Easton Ellis’ postmodern masterpiece, American Psycho – which, if it wasn’t for the profanity, I’d suggest needs to be a set work in any high school. In this book, the titular character Patrick Bateman asks a question that had me sit up and rub my beard, going “hmmmm…” for days on end:
“Is evil something you are, or something you do?”
This question is never answered in the book, but I came up with my answer by inverting the question: is good something you are, or something you do? To me, it is obvious: no matter how good your heart is, if you never do good, nobody will call you good. Thus, same for evil. Okay, philosophical conundrum solved. In order to “be” something, you need to “do” something; otherwise, it’s just blue-sky philosophy, egotistical feel-good, or cowardice masquerading as prudence.
Then we get to one of my foremost values in life: Grace, dignity, and poise – a concept beautifully encapsulated in the principle of ‘Shibumi’. The older I get, the more value I have for those three aspects. Be graceful, be dignified, carry yourself with poise. I also know the apparent hypocrisy of this coming from me, but do not confuse the ultimate aspiration with the current work in progress. And how does one “be” grace, dignity, and poise? One has to “do” grace, dignity, and poise.
Finally, I tie this rambling blog together: the “do” part happens between the panels. The action of doing is not a public spectacle. The audience reading this is not seeing me in my undignified red hoodie, furiously writing and rewriting my ungraceful first drafts in the early hours of the morning. You only see the final product – replete with the inevitable spelling error or grammar mistake. As said, it’s a work in progress.
But here’s the point – in literature, the “Between the panels” action is usually the better bits. I used this technique more than once where the formula of premise-setup-punchline is delivered — with ‘punchline’ substituted with ‘denouement’ — but the action never written. It leaves the reader with a more immersive experience than detailing exactly how the towel dispenser got torn up. And as it should be, life imitates art: you shall be known by your work, but only in the work you show, not in the work you do. What really matters in life is what happens between the panels.
When you sit down to actually do the work, learn the language, build the house, wash the car, paint the room, write the book, train the dog… whatever it is, this is where the magic happens: in the actual doing. It’s the boring bit, the messy bit, the hard slog that can kill the spirit as you stare at yet another blank page – or whatever it is that you need to do to keep the pot boiling.
Yet, this is where it all makes sense. As the song says: its not what you do, it’s the way that you do it, because once the work is done and the deliverable is there – the book written, the house painted, the dog trained, the accounts balanced – then that is all the world will see. The end result. They will never see the effort, the slog and hard graft. Or the lazy shortcuts and half-assery, as the case may be. That all happens between the panels. But the grace, dignity, and poise of your work – or lack thereof – will shine through in the end result.
Results are dependent on process. Never trust those who make a virtue of the process but never deliver – but you can take a well-executed deliverable to the bank every single time.
Now, extrapolate that away from work and how you choose to engage with life, and you’ll get the point. Do the work between the panels; make the punchline count.
