Paul Du Noyer and Comics

For those of you who are unaware as to who Paul Du Noyer is, he is an author and a journalist and has been an editor for magazines such as NME and Q and has helped launch magazines such as MOJO, Heat and The Word. He has written books such as We All Shine On, Liverpool: Wondrous Place and his latest book In The City: A Celebration of London Music. He was at the Cornerstone Festival at Liverpool Hope University as part of Food For Thought and was in conversation with Gobshite Miscellany's Paddy Hoey last week commenting on the difference between the Liverpool and London music scene specifically how London's music scene was geared more towards a narrative while Liverpool's music scene went in the opposite direction being more surreal.

During the course of the hours conversation Paul offered ideas and theories about how the music from the cities had evolved from the positions the two cities had been in, such as the newstellers in ye olde London telling the public what was happening in the capital and how modern artists continued that trend by informing people about modern London life while Liverpool's past was linked to immigration and how they weren't able to move on and so music became the only means of escapism.

Now I know what you're thinking; "How does a conversation about the difference in two cities music scenes relate to comics?" The answer is it doesn't however after listening to the conversation last week I began thinking about other examples of two parallel scenarios and that's when I came up with the comics analogy.

Right now I would compare the two major comic book companies Marvel and DC in this scenario Marvel is like London in its storytelling, it goes from one story to the next with little or no break in between and likes to ground itself in realism while DC is like Liverpool it has a tendency to delve into the surreal and provides an escapism from reality.

Marvel has become an expanding media empire intent on making money from digital comics, motion comics and its own films. Du Noyer said that the musicians moved to London primarily to reinvent themselves and to make money from that reinvention and Marvel has set about doing that, at the beginning of this century Marvel were practically bankrupt but by launching the Ultimate comics range they retold their popular characters origins to a new audience which sparked a reintrest in the core Marvel titles and their flagship title is now New Avengers, because it features Marvel's most popular characters Spider-Man and Wolverine. Marvel also likes to constantly reinvent its status quo's giving its universe a more unified front from the registration act that came from Civil War to the mistrust in Secret Invasion and now it is a place where the Green Goblin is in charge.

While DC is notorious for its constant reinvention with it's Crisis's resetting certain status quo's, it is akin to Liverpool's music scene as it isn't widely recognised or played up, much like Liverpool's reluctance to play up the popularity of The Beatles. DC has had sleeper hits with The Sinestro Corps Wars which ran in the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps books in 2007. DC's storytelling is less decompressed than Marvel's allowing for stories to be told in an finite number of issues such as Batman and Robin's three issue story arcs. It has also led to surreal narratives such as Grant Morrison's use of channel-zapping which he explained as:

"With Final Crisis and especially with issue 7, I’ve been working towards this storytelling technique I’m calling channel-zapping comics. Why spend a page on a scene when you can press all the same buttons with a single loaded panel? Why waste readers’ time on every mind-numbing detail of story when you can blitz them with the good bits and move onto the next thing?"
Grant Morrison- talking to comic foundry http://comicfoundry.com/?p=1693

While there is no right or wrong way about writing music or creating comics, everyone has their own preferences, I admit to enjoying the sounds of Liverpool's music as the lyrics don't necessarily have to mean one thing, but I also enjoy the progressive story London musicians tell with their lyrics and music. However the same can't be said for comics, right now I find the escapist vibe DC has in it's stories much more appealing than Marvel's constant reinvention mainly because Marvel spends less time examining its status quo before moving on to it's next one, mainly because of the decompressed stories it's writers tell. But that's something for another blog.