Hello, world!

Hello, world!
Thu, 09/09/2010 - 17:55 — Jason announcements comics ideology Making Of
Hi everyone! I'm Jason, editor-in-chief and writer-on-occasion for Carpe Chaos. I'm excited because Carpe Chaos has a blog now. We're gonna update it on the 10th of each month with a decent-sized post about the making of Carpe Chaos. The goal is to share a little more about what's happening "behind the scenes", which is why we named the blog Creating Carpe Chaos. In this post I'm going to talk about what I think about comics in general, and why Carpe Chaos is what it is. I was never really into comics growing up, save the immortal Calvin and Hobbes. My grandparents would buy me a superhero comic book every now and then, and I remember reading them and thinking they were kind of lame. With only one issue in the middle of a longer storyline I was lost, and as I recall the writing was nowhere near the level of the books I was reading at the time. I never paid much attention to long-form comics, so when I came across Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, I was blown away. To me, this book accomplished more than a written version ever could, with its flawed ethnicities-as-animals metaphor and diagrams of secret rooms in World War II Poland. Since then I've discovered dozens of great comics and lamented that so few of them were mainstream. I had to go searching to find them. Because of this, I have come to believe that comics as a medium has been severely undervalued and underutilized in the United States, which is why one of our goals is to expand the general perception of what comics can be by telling stories that are, in my opinion, better than the majority of superhero-based comics that flood the shelves of comic book stores and bookstores that have begun carrying comics. More generally, I think all comics fall between poetry and prose, depending on how they're drawn and written. IKEA and LEGO assembly instructions aren't very poetic, but at the other end of the spectrum you could pick any two images at random, juxtapose them, call it a comic, and force your friends to interpret what you might mean by it. In the case of the instructional booklets, the reader has to do very little mental work to reconcile each pair of adjacent images, and in the random comic the reader is left so helpless that any associations they come up with are completely their own. The rest of comics fall in between these two extremes, and it's up to the reader to mentally fill in the gutters between the panels to form their version of the story. When reading text, a reader conjures up mental images all on his or her own, while with comics the mental journey is punctuated along the way, asking the reader to play a sort of mental connect-the-dots. Oddly, I find reading comics more exhausting than when I read a story in prose, and I think it's because when I read my mind can go wherever it pleases (and even selectively ignore bits of the descriptive writing) while with comics I must be more disciplined about how I animate things in my head to align with the (sometimes confusing) ordering and contents of the panels. But it's because readers form a much more specific movie in their heads that I think comics resonate so well with people. It's more precise (and the images more memorable) than when reading a book, and it's more intimate than watching a motion picture where the animation is done for you. More than a few people have complimented us on the "good animation" of our comics, even Moments of Elation which has a small percentage of moment-to-moment and action-to-action panel sequences. It took me a little while to understand why they worded their compliments that way, because our comics, like most comics, are not animated. Then I realized, optimistically, that it could be because our comics are easy enough to follow, and the art flows well enough, that the "mental animation" of our readers comes naturally. One reader may add a few extra stabs between two of the panels portraying the raid in the first chapter of Rising Up where another reader may not, but the unlucky character still gets stabbed in the side with the same memorable expression. And it's that sort of resonance that we're aiming for. Comics emphasize "living in the moment" because every panel is worthy of appreciation, and readers can only handle each transition on its own. Moreso than books and motion pictures, they force readers to slow down and process only one thing at a time. And with this simple, linear progression, comics create time with space and control the timing with their design. What this means is that comics completely capture your attention without overloading your senses, and this fascinates me. I think, by and large, readers enjoy unplugging from the millions of simultaneous stimuli in the world around us and focusing only on each individual panel and transition as they come in comics. I see comics, philosophically, as a form of guided meditation where you can spend as long as you like savoring the artwork of each panel and the many little journeys that carry you between them. Unlike many (personally frustrating) franchises, we're figuring everything out in advance so that when readers become charmed enough by our stories to try extrapolating our universe from them, the various hints in our different stories will actually add up to a right answer. For example, did you notice the painting in the living room of the Kaean family in Worst Case Scenario? It's of their homeworld, because Kaeans are from the ring of a gas giant (Moments of Elation gives you a good tour) and they are colonists living on the surface of another planet in a manner we might describe as more conventional. But the universe behind the stories (hopefully) acts not as the focus but as a bonus, enriching our stories with a setting that has depth and changes over time. So while on the one hand the Carpe Chaos universe itself is a complex, developing character with thousands of years of history, we are striving to tell stories that stand on their own as amazingly great even when isolated from the others. As I see it, comics isn't our genre, it's our medium, and likewise science fiction is merely our setting. Comics can tell stories in any genre, and invent new ones, and so it goes with Carpe Chaos. We're experimenting with horror, action, drama, suspense, and comedy, to start with, and Moments of Elation is basically a poem in comics form. I think the best comics have the potential to be better than the best literature because when done well they become more than the sum of their visual artwork and written words. And while we're trying to do a lot with this project (you can read our comprehensive mission statement here), our highest goal is to make comics that attempt this challenge, and that we can be proud of. We don't want our comics to be experienced piecemeal, so we're trying to help you remember us by sticking to our first-of-the-month release schedule (and updating our RSS Feeds, Twitter account, Facebook account, DeviantArt account, and Google Buzz account when each new comic is published). But if you want to come back to the site more often, Carpe Chaos has a blog now! With big updates on the 10th of every month, and probably more smaller ones! I'm so excited. -Jason

Comments

Jason, I am really impressed

Fri, 09/10/2010 - 13:30 — Visitor (not verified)

Jason,
I am really impressed with the unique and rich universe that is Carpe Chaos. Though I have neither collected nor read comics avidly for well over a decade now, I do agree with your statement about the comic (web) book medium for storytelling. The still images are like a window into each significant scene of a story, which I feel are more engaging than words on paper, or screen.
The example you provided about the picture in the Kaean's home is a good example of this. When reading a text description of a room the author will describe in loose detail to give the reader a general idea of where the scene is taking place, while providing in greater detail things the author wants to draw the reader's attention to. Comics circumvent this corralling method of storytelling as pictures provide the detail, allowing the reader to discover the detail on their own, while the text merely provides the dialog and brief narration. I’ve never been able to read a novel twice because I always know what’s going to happen next, but I still go back to read my comics because even thought the dialog is the same I discover new details in the images that were previously unnoticed.
Bravo, Jason, to you and your team. I’m eager to read on and see how this story develops and unfolds.
John

It is really a pleasure to

Wed, 09/15/2010 - 02:06 — Gun (not verified)

It is really a pleasure to read this blog post. It is fun, informative, and thought-provoking. As I read through the comics and the website, I can feel that this project is definitely a labor of love. With these initial comics, you have started threads of seemingly disparate stories from unrelated corners of the Carpe Chaos universe. I am really interested to see how you will weave all the threads and bring all the stories together down the road.The reading so far reminds me of my first encounter with William Gibson's Neuromancer. I was instantly plunged into his futuristic Tokyo with gray skies without any warning or preamble. I had to work hard to chart the course as I read through the book. Even though I was confused at first, confusion gave way to appreciation as I slowly started to use and understand Neuromancer's strange language and parameters. So far, in reading Carpe Chaos, I am still at the threshold of a dark forest trying to figure out how I would negotiate a path through it. I am really excited about it with one caveat. The house that the Kaeans live in in Worse Case Scenario looks so much like human houses. I can't help but think that this one fell through the cracks. With all the effort and collective experience of the creators of the Carpe Chaos universe, they landed on a housing project for the Kaeans not unlike the one I would see if I look out from my windows. With that, I still have a lot more expectation and anticipation for the upcoming episodes of the Carpe Chaos universe.

Think of it more as "pre-fab

Mon, 09/20/2010 - 10:24 — Eric

Think of it more as "pre-fab housing doesn't really look like it belongs to anyone", regardles of whether you find it on Earth or Enjadti Prime. :)

You'll see some of the more unique housing features of some of our races on the first of October, and more in the coming months. Wait until you see the Xotron. :D

I appreciate the depth of

Mon, 09/20/2010 - 04:13 — Ellen (not verified)

I appreciate the depth of these comics. There is a lot of beauty in the scenes. You have created three very distinct races with the Porgs, the Kaeans, and the Turikasuul. It will be very interesting to see how these races interact with each other and how they deal with challenges in their own cultures.

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