"Can a story, however simple or mundane, be separated from the manner in which it is told?" (Matt Madden)
I often teach a short Intercession (2 week) course on Comics/Graphic Novels at ECU, and in that class I try to stress the limitless possibilities of the comic medium. A simple story, with a slight shift in words, perspective, shading, sound effects, color, or frames, can gain hidden depth and purpose. Or it can simply become another simple story. We always do an exercise early on lifted from Scott McCloud's seminal book, Understanding Comics, where I ask students to fill in dialogue and narration for a basic 5-frame story. Depending on what words the students add, the story either sticks close to the visual narration or becomes hilarious, tragic, or disturbing. Matt Madden takes this exercise to a whole new level in his amazing book, 99 Ways to Tell A Story: Exercises In Style (2005), where he tells the same story 99 Ways. These "ways" include everything from changing the style, the genre, the order, and even questioning what story is being told in the first place. It's a clever, but surprisingly captivating read inspired by Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style which does much the same thing in words. Yet the sheer range of Madden's technique and his profound imagination make this book more than a mere exercise; it's a story in its own right, and one that changes from page to page, even if you think you know the outcome.
