#11 – Do You Know What Really Hard Is? (pt. 1)

File Under: Tough stuff

Pounded out to the silent screams of:
My co-workers’ banter.

I’ve got a webcomic running over at DC’s Zuda competition right now about one of the hardest hardcases in history: Hannibal Barca, who led elephants over the Alps to strike at Rome.  There was a man ready to do anything to win, and up against a city of incompetents and inconstants.  No, not Rome, his hometown of Carthage.  Hannibal’s plan, unlike Rome’s response, was not to wipe his opponents’ city off the map, but to break their spirit.  And Rome, having just made a reputation in Europe, was not known for breaking.  You’re talking about people who made a workable social model out of fascism, and raised a symbol for it out of a bundle of reeds.

Hannibal was hard, but he was one man with a (big) army against a city that raised as many opposing (bigger) armies as it needed to trench in and fend him off.

Hannibal was hard, and vicious, and even a dirty fighter, but still noble. He was capable of mercy, and despite what the Romans said about him, there’s no evidence that he was cruel when he could afford not to be.

Perhaps that’s why he failed.

There’s an episode of the TV show Extras in which the main character, Andy, is subjected to the posturing of actor Ross Kemp (playing actor Ross Kemp).  Kemp is known for tough guy roles, and seeks to impress that image on Andy, but it’s really a transparent need to be admired.  He follows Andy around, treating him like a tolerated, eager sidekick without regard for his obvious disinterest.

All of Kemp’s bluster and swagger is brought down when he opens his mouth too wide about Vinnie Jones, who before Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, was most famous as a vicious, ball-booting son of a bitch on the field.  Jones corners the terrified Kemp about who’s the harder character, spitting the phrase at him “Do you know what really hard is?” and threatening to show him.

A very good question.  What is a “hard” character?  What does it mean? (Besides beating Ross Kemp up and all that.)  We should be able to qualify and enact it in our dramatic writing, because drama is about conflict, and conflict is about tension, and tension lives between a rock and a hard place.

Me, I’m a scrawny kid from a Connecticut suburb full of retirees, where we keep up with the Joneses rather than fistfight them.  I have a difficult time writing characters who wish to physically pulp other people against all reason or common sense (And yet I love superheroes).

Vindictive types?  Sadists, sure, I can write those.  But someone whose brain is on a brief circuit between TAKE and SMASH, that’s a difficult character for me to humanize into a believable character.  It’s a simple mindset, and it’s a lot harder to mold into a three-dimensional persona than someone who’s morally conflicted or daunted.

Still, I know it when I read it.  Some behavior is naturally recognizable.  I don’t need to visit the many sordid locales of 100 Bullets for its stories to ring true. I know it’s just right the way Brian Azzarello’s personalities talk, the way Eduardo Risso’s figures pose.

All it really takes to be a vicious fiend is innate human cruelty, but to properly write that out, along with its effects -- ah, that’s the tougher job.  Hardness can be either a universally recognizable trait -- say, cutting off one’s own leg to escape a bear trap -- or a subjective one.  The bully’s the toughest kid on the playground until a bigger, meaner kid comes along, and while the bully may still be tough, he’s no Vinnie Jones, is he?

Not only are there different levels, there are different spheres.  After all, in many tales, the hero must be tougher than the villain to win, but with a healthy morality to keep his actions heroic.  So it’s sometimes not just what you’re willing to do, but what you are willing to do as an alternative to what you’re not.

The nearest definition I can come up with that encompasses a hard character is determined by what you do to achieve your goal when reason dictates it’s not worth the effort.  So you can be hard and also be a fool.

Villains have to be hard, or the heroes’ victory will be meaningless.  Heroes can be hard, even harder than the villains, but…well, there’s always exceptions. The Punisher mows down some fairly non-threatening thugs in Garth Ennis’ first, humorous take on the character, but he’s still tough because inevitably, he’s faced with difficult decisions or overwhelming challenges, and he chooses to survive no matter what.  In Ennis’ second pass on the character under Marvel’s mature Max imprint, Punisher is so hardcore, so ruthless, so relentless, it’s about the limit of believability.  That Ennis stays just on the side of credibility while pushing the line forward is a testament to his talent.

Which brings us to DC Comics.

DC’s shtick these last couple years is about how unbearably dark and cynical their superhero universe has become.  In the book Countdown, a few murders are the catalyst for all-powerful cosmic beings, The Monitors, to wax endlessly about how horrifyingly dark the universe now is.  Reading this, I can’t help but think of the tiny fellow at the end of the bar who takes any excuse to tell you how dangerous he truly is.

If you want to be tough, shut up and be tough.

I mean, DC gave us the Vertigo line, Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke…a number of dark and hard titles (or, if you prefer, grim ‘n’ gritty). They really gave American superhero comics what darkness this medium can lay claim to. Vertigo remains hard, though no longer superheroic.

And that’s not to dig on the hard work that the people at DC do.  I just think they’re making a common mistake: it’s not the levels of violence atrocity. It’s the relation of the horrors they impart to the conflict at hand, the stakes at play.  It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.  So stop talking about it, and shut up and do.  To borrow a phrase from comedy and magic and writing: it’s all in the delivery.

If you want to write somebody tough, don’t write somebody posturing as tough. Write somebody you’d be scared to meet.  Titus Pullo in HBO’s Rome is charming, funny, affable, and the first person you’d want at your back in a fight, and yet…frighteningly uncontrollable, even to himself. Neither side of his nature is untrue to the other.

Hard characters are more likely to be nasty people, but the more complex ones vary cruel or kind behavior from one relationship to another, regardless of how they deserve it.  The messier human nature gets, the more realistic your characters generally become (don’t overdo it – pick which “random” moments round out your character).  A tough personality can pick on one person and be kind to another, regardless in either instance of whether they deserve it.  Personal appeal, memories of someone similar, these shape character interaction.

Star Wars fans gripe at George Lucas for revising Han Solo’s shootout with Greedo, and they have a point.  Originally, Solo fried Greedo without the latter getting off a shot.  This made Han one tough, cheating jerk.  That was OK, because he’s the far more capable (and morally unhindered) sidekick to protagonist Luke Skywalker, who is trying to prove he has the kind of fighting prowess Solo already has.  Solo’s arc, then, is to become a hero by proving himself morally capable of winning a battle, staying and fighting at a risk to himself when he has no cause to do so. Taking Greedo’s life makes Solo a bad-ass, but a selfish one.  Saving Skywalker with a sneak attack on Vader makes him a hero, but a roguish one.  If Skywalker had cold-bloodedly murdered another character like that, he’d just be a cowardly little shit.

In the film’s re-release, Greedo shoots first, but Solo acts quickly and shoots in self-defense.  Greedo misses, probably owing to his guts getting microwaved. Fans argued this weakens Solo’s character, and for reasons pertaining to the character arc above, they’re right.

So what is hard?  It’s both internal and external.  It’s not simply violence; murder is very often an act of weakness rather than strength.  Maybe hard character is simply something relative, something we know when we see it.

Let me tell you about one of the 10 greatest endings in comics: Judd Winick’s final chapter of Barry Ween.  Barry, the smartest human being ever, is a mostly benevolent kid, until something he cares about is taken from him, he becomes the most ruthless son of a bitch to grace comics for a good couple years in either direction.  
And it works, because we’ve seen him inflict devastating attacks on lesser foes, but nothing like this; always appropriate to the threat and transgressions they present.  Previously, it was understood that even when things went pear-shaped, Barry had a plan.  So the slaughter he’s just committed is surprisingly vicious, but in character and acceptable given what’s happened and what almost happened.  But where Winick really delivers in full is when victory is retrieved from impossible odds, and he gives us a typical return to normality.  Barry jokes with his friends, who have no idea anything was wrong, and ventures into the kitchen.  And for the first time in three volumes, Winick shows us Barry vulnerable.

In fact, the kid starts hyperventilating.  Once the ordeal is finished, he bursts into tears, even though he made everything right, because he almost didn’t.  The tough little guy stowed his apprehensions in some corner of his brain until he’d finished what had to be done.  Barry’s not hard because he wiped out an army. Barry’s hard because he did it when he’d lost something he loved and was absolutely TERRIFIED he wasn’t going to get it back. Suffering the only loss that could ever really affect him, Barry sucks it up and gets the job done. Then he ensures his very formidable foes will never again trouble him. He shows that he’s been merciful as long as he could afford to, but if you threaten his values, he will lay your cities unto dust and salt the earth so that nothing grows for a thousand, thousand years.  I’ve got tears in my eyes just recounting it.

And when your drama’s that good…that’s hard.

I’d appreciate it if you’d head over to http://www.zudacomics.com/node/376 and vote for Hannibal, list it as a favorite and leave an honest assessment of it on our comments page. If you don’t have a Zuda account, it’s easy enough to register; just remember that the Captcha code is case-sensitive, so “A” does not equal “a”.