I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about first impressions lately. For a lot of reasons. Which is to say that this is going to be one of my more scatterbrained columns, but at least I’ll be imposing an arbitrary unifying theme.

Hurray for arbitrary unifying themes!

But before I get to that, I guess I should explain where I’ve been for the last month:

My last column was back in December, before I decided to take an impromptu four week vacation. December 17^th is Double Steak Day, so there was obviously never going to be a column that week. Then came Christmas and New Year’s, and I was obviously too busy with all that to be writing columns.

And then last week, I was lazy. Or, um, sick. Sick is a better excuse.

Anyway, I’m back now, and let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve been up to.

First off, I’ve been planning for the release of the ArchEnemies trade paperback. Unless something strange happens, it should be in stores on January 31^st. And, going with the theme, this is one of those rare second chances to make a first impression.

The original mini-series sold about as well as I figured it would, though – to be honest – not as well as I’d hoped. As we’ve discussed previously, marketing and selling superhero comics outside the Big Two is an uphill battle.

DC and Marvel already put out a lot of great superhero comics, so if you’re creating something new, it better be (1) different enough that it stands apart from all those other titles and (2) similar enough that it’s still appealing to fans who love all those other titles.

It’s a hair’s edge proposition, and it’s 99% down to marketing. A fan looks at an ad or an interview or a comic book cover and thinks, Should I or shouldn’t I? And if they don’t see that ad or that interview or that comic book cover, you’re done before you ever got started.

So you’ve just got to promote, promote, promote. You try everything, and when you’re done trying everything, you invent new things to try out of whole cloth.

For instance, for those who haven’t seen it, here’s the official ArchEnemies trailer:

If you’ve got a blog, and you’re inclined to post links to these sorts of things, here are the direct links on YouTube and Revver:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81_TAXmzSfs
• http://one.revver.com/watch/135637

I’m pretty sure that if that trailer was my first exposure to ArchEnemies, I’d be stoked. Of course, seeing as how I’m the creator of both the comic and the trailer, I’m probably not the best judge.

One of the interesting things about the ArchEnemies trade paperback is that I was able to go in and tweak a few things (“remaster” I say, to seem important) from how they originally appeared in the mini-series. Why tweak?

Here’s yet another lesson I learned from writing ArchEnemies:

There’s a razor thin line between being clever and being confusing. There’s a lot of elliptical storytelling in ArchEnemies. A number of plot twists are never explicitly spelled out for the reader. They just happen. And if you miss the fact that So-and-So is really So-and-So and that he did Such-and-Such to So-and-So #2 then the story isn’t going to slow down to explain it all to you.

And if it’s all there for the reader to figure out, and you’ve told a compelling enough story that they want to figure it all out, then that’s great. But if it’s not all there?

As the writer, you already know all of your characters’ deep dark secrets, and you know all of the shocking plot twists that are on their way. You know why each character says each line of dialogue. You know why every little thing in the story happens. But the readers don’t. They’re not in your head with you.

So there’s always that risk, even when you think you’re making things clear, that you’re not giving your readers enough information to work with. And when you’re trying to be clever?

So here’s my rule of thumb:

Always try to be 5% to 10% more obvious than feels natural.

Towards the end of ArchEnemies #1, a distraught Vincent stammers that, from here on out, his mortal enemy isn’t Star Fighter anymore, it’s…

And then you flip the page, and you see a full page splash of Ethan, brooding. You don’t hear Vincent saying it, but you’re meant to assume Ethan is his new mortal enemy.

So, in the trade, I decided to let Vincent finish his sentence.

There are a few more examples like that. Places where I let a character complete a thought or added a nameplate to a desk so that readers could be 100% certain who a character was.

 
Of course, it never confused me, because I knew exactly where the scene break fell. So in the trade it’s 10% more obvious what’s going on.

And sometimes the problem isn’t that you did anything wrong. You just ran out of time. For instance:

I like to rework my dialogue after seeing Yvel’s art. Sometimes, I need to add a line to make something clearer. Sometimes, I can take away a line that feels superfluous with the finished art.

Unfortunately, when we were working on #3, we were up against deadlines, and I didn’t get to include rewrites on five or so pages of dialogue towards the end of the issue. Again, no major changes. Just enough to make everything a little bit clearer.

Since we’re talking about first impressions today, it occurs to me that anyone who’s reading this - and who hasn’t read ArchEnemies yet - may walk away from today’s column with the first impression that AE is an inept, amateurish, confusing mess.

In the spirit of being 10% more obvious than usual:

I dwell on (and frequently exaggerate) these issues for your benefit. For instance, I was never in any serious danger of getting sued by Kurt Busiek.

This column is about learning to be a better writer, so naturally I’m going to focus on these “life lessons” as opposed to, say, my fan mail from three continents.

(I am huge in Antarctica.)

I had a whole other section of this column planned out, where I was going to talk about pitching and about the first five pages of a comic, and how you introduce yourself to your editor and your audience, but I wound up writing more about ArchEnemies than I intended to, so I’m going to hold off on the rest till next week.

BUT before I go, I just want to talk about some new columnists at Scryptic who will be making their first impressions later this week. Hopefully you guys are already reading Caleb and Elton’s columns on Tuesday and Thursday. This week we’re adding two more new columnists to the fold: