JL8 and What It Means To Define a Character

I don't normally feature other work, but today I found something that not only is cool enough to share with others, but ties into some overall points I've been thinking about.

 JL8 #1

JL8 is a web comic by Yale Stewart that follows children sized versions of DC's the Justice League as they navigate through the playground perils of every day youth. Most of the arcs are remniscent of most children's fare including bullies and school yard crushes, while retaining a solid foundation of humor. The real trick is in keeping the characters familiar and true to themsevles, while putting them in the bodies of children.

Yale manages to retain the characters' voices and overall personalities while putting them in new and often lighthearted situations mostly unfamiliar to how we've seen the characters previously. Yale is able to distill them down to their definitive state without turning them into cardboard cut outs.

Those who watched the Justice League animated series will remember an episode in which through magical hijinks the heroes were reduced to pre-teen age, they remembered their skills and training while losing their maturity. At first I hated the episode. I thought it was a cheap gimmick after the writers had run out of ideas. But around half way through the episode I found myself loving it, and even thinking I'd watch a full series in that style. While we may never see that, JL8 retains the idea and takes it further.

The reason for my change of heart was because the writers went beyond the gimmick to use the episode to show sides of the characters rarely seen. We got to see Batman,  Superman and Green Lantern in a more immature state, and Wonder Woman less dignified and pompous. More importantly by retaining the characters' skills the writers were able to retain the character's level of bad ass so we wouldn't lose out some of what makes these characters awesome in the first place.

In both the animated series and Yale's strip they used their setting and premise to show us sides of the characters and their relationships with their parents, mostly dead or missing in the comic, which we would have never other wise seen, outside of isolated flashbacks.

Characters

 

I've been thinking a lot about characters lately. About how you add depth and layers to a character while still making them feel true to themselves. In game of thrones Tyrion Lannister, played by the amazing Peter Dinklage in the show, is able to have a surface character that is a carefree fool and a deeper layer of incredibly intelligent and emotional conflict. This is informed by his background of his twisted family and physical conditon, but on camera comes across as natural. The writers were able to start us off with the jester, giving us hints of what lay beneath until finally showing it to us in full. This gave us a character with depth that still felt consistant, something I continue to strive for in my own writing.

In the Justice League they had the opposite problem. How do we take characters from their own histories and valued stories and remove layers of complexity while retaining their depth? Some may argue if they succeeded or not but I think they did. You have Superman as both the man of steal and  the outcast boy worried he'll break everything around him. You have Bats as both the brooding loner and the man struggeling to not only intergrate into a team but lead those following in the teams footsteps, and his complicated realtionship with Wonder Woman.

In Hawkgirl's story arc they took a character that was intially a battering ram and developed her over time, gave her conflicts, trials and triumphs. Yale does this in his comic as well. Early on there's a scene where Batman and Superman are confronting the bullies of the playground, Lex, the Joker and others. Superman gives a speech that could have come from any of his comics, you can't help but here it in the voice of Tim Daly (of Wings fame and the voice actor for superman for as long as I can remember.) It's a brilliant scene that shows the character at their finest, even when reduced to the more simplistic days of childhood.

Wrapping Up

We can learn a lot from characters by looking at them in different settings and points in their lives. The childhood Bruce of JL8 and the old man Wayne of Batman Beyond show us different sides of the character that can help us write them in their prime as Batman. We can also learn to add layers of depth to our characters while keeping a simplicity that makes them easy to understand and pick up by our readers.

Don't forget to check out JL8.

JL8 #1

1 - Gods Of Earth 09/02/12

The very first episode of our Around the Trunk Podcast.

Download:

archive.org/download/01-GodsOfEarth09-02-12/01-GodsOfEarth09-02-12.mp3 

 Show Notes:

Into 0-3:08

First Topic: 3:08- 30:00

Skyrim and Fallout, a comparison of Worlds.

Second Topic: 30:00 - 51:00

Time Travel. We had a more centralized focus for this topic, but it got away from us. As the wibbly wobbly tends to do. During this topic Chris got interrupted and didn't mute his mic, so the audio gets a little garbled. He will mute his mic in the future or we will skin him alive. We also go on a bit of a historical tangent toward the end. We will be better about that in the future.

Third Topic 51:00- 1:37:00

The Super Power Game

This was a special thing we did for the first episode. It goes pretty long and is the last topic. If you have no interest in it you can turn the podcast off here and not miss anything else.

Powers:

Mike: Flight, Immortality (G), Solar Sustenance

Chris: Time Travel (G), Earth Bending, Muscle Memory

Tyler  Brute Telekinesis, Healing Factor (G), Teleportation

Let us know in the comments which super powered God you think would in the game of world domination and which one you would rather be.

Twitter Handles & Blogs

Mike: @Madness Serenade

http://nightmaresofawriter.blogspot.com/

Chris: @TheArchetipical

http://thearchatype.wordpress.com/

CORRECTION:

Tyler texted me after recording this. Killing kids in games isn't illegal in US law, but in the industry would almost guarantee an Adults Only rating, leading to most carries to ban your games.

First episode, already getting things wrong. Off to a great start.

The Brave, The Bold, and The Brooding

I've been watching a lot of batman lately. The last of the Nolan movies left me wanting more of one of my favorite characters of all time. I decided to finally get to some of those comics gathering dust on my shelf and to re-watch the nineties animated series which I haven't seen since I was a kid. In addition I finally decided to watch the old justice league cartoon from around the same time, as I had never seen it.

As I watch, it continually surprises me how much I love the character with how little he actually seems to do. His entire character as Batman revolves around showing as little emotion as possible, and half the time as Bruce Wayne he spends falsifying emotions and pretending to be a playboy. It's really quite amazing that a character who says so little is so pervasive through our culture.

The Eternal Loner

I think I find popular culture's interest in Bats so fascinating because it's the opposite of reality. Pop culture in all forms love the quiet, introverted and borderline sociopathic lone wolves while in real life they are virtually shunned. Right now three of the most critically acclaimed properties are Batman, Doctor Who, and Sherlock. All of which are loners to a large extent (except their trusted compainon) and all hide their true emotions on a near constant basis. In real life people with their personalities would be outcast. They're quiet, smug, arrogant, and in the doctor's case, ramble to the point of annoyance. Hell whenever any of the three talk it's either to show how smart they are, how stupid you are or to show how little they care about the rest of us.


While these characters can be funny and charming at times their over all personalities are a checklist of off putting and undesirable characteristics. Why is society fascinated with arrogant loners in fiction, but ostracizes them in real life?

Under Calm Seas

Beneath the flat surface of these character lay a storm of conflicted emotions. And this is where I think the true strength in the characters lay. All of them have deep personal conflicts and tragedies that define them. Unlike in real life, we the the viewer are privy to the total knowledge of the character. We know why they hide behind the mask or the bow tie because we've seen their pain.While others see only the smug arrogance and a mask of deflection, we see the scared little boy that misses his parents underneath.

I've heard a lot of people say Batman's popularity is because of his rouges gallery, and though I think he has probably the best group of villains, I think this is untrue. Batman has managed to stay relevant for decades across multiple platforms and even extremely different styles. From the pulp detective stories to the tongue in cheek humor of the Adam West era, from the dark days of Miller to the realistic days of Nolan, Batman has remained one of the strongest and most beloved characters of our time. You couldn't do this without such a strong character to hold it together. For every Riddler or Joker in Arkham there's a Calendar Man or Cluemaster. Criminals come and go, without our hero the struggles against them wouldn't matter.

A Fine Line

As writers and storytellers we have to be careful with how we craft and display our characters. Whether it's show, don't tell, or making sure our brooding, conflicted hero doesn't look like an emo kid wearing mascara. One of the thing's I've noticed about the Bat is that even though he rarely speaks, what he has to say usually matters. You see this a lot in the Justice League cartoon.

The writers of the Justice League have their screen time split between seven heroes that all are major names in their own right. As such they often exaggerate the character's traits to ensure they stand out. The Flash becomes a constant stream of one liner's and corney jokes. Wonder Woman becomes a non stop feminst and Hawkgirl wants to smash everything in site.

For Batman this means he almost never speaks. When he does he's usually explaining something the others were too stupid to catch. Most of his emotions in the show come from his eyes by either narrowing into a squint, or widening out in surprise. And the wonderful thing is we know exactly what that means. It's all Bats needs to do for us to get everything he's thinking. It's a brilliant bit of showing and not telling. In Doctor Who the title character almost never shuts up, so it tells us how bad or difficult things are when he does.

What's more, when Batman does talk, not a single moment is wasted. He may say one line, or one joke in the entire episode but it hits home because it is placed at the precise moment it needed to. Characters such as these teach us that we don't have to put every motivation or thought on the screen. We can trust the audience to understand our characters and their emotions by giving them the minimum of what they need and letting them construct the rest.

Remember the next to time you watch the strong and silent type to watch how little speaking they do, and how much non verbal communication they use. Analyze how these characters are used at their most effective, and allow that to guide you in how you think about all your characters and how to use them at their best.

Now I'm thinking about a Batman, Doctor Who, Sherlock cross over...