MattBrady
11-27-2002, 05:27 PM
Back when he was Scott (Zot!) McCloud, and before he became Scott Understanding Comics) McCloud, Scott McCloud wrote and illustrated the loudest comic book in the universe: Destroy!!. Part catharsis, part artistic exploration, the Eclipse-published, tabloid-sized book was the thematic and stylistic progeny of Jack Kirby, and the forerunner to the “widescreen” action comics of the late ‘90s.
The story itself was very simple – after his girlfriend dumps him for Captain Maximum, Red Basher goes on a rampage in New York City, forcing Maximum to stop him. The title comes from Basher’s dialogue, consisting virtually 100% obviously, of the word, “Destroy!!” The action consists of a big fight that moves throughout all of New York City (and the moon), and ultimately results (eerily by today’s standards) in the destruction of lower Manhattan.
Of course, this is comics, so no one gets hurt.
Inspired in part by Marvel’s Super Boxers graphic novel, the black and white Destroy!! was released by Eclipse in 1986 (a 3D reprint came later), and was, according to McCloud, meant to be nothing more than what it was – pure senseless violence as big and as loud as he could make it.
“I was probably making comics professionally for about ten months, and I already had a list of about 29 different projects that I wanted to draw,” McCloud said. “One of my great regrets is that I don’t draw faster, because I wanted to do so many different kinds of comics.
“I had just done the ten issues of Zot! in color, and we were going to bring it back in black and white, so I was taking a break from that and getting other work. I think I was actually moving office furniture for a few weeks to earn a living as I was thinking about Destroy!!. It was just something that I had to do to get it all out of my system.”
As for the true inspiration for the book, as he’s since chronicled in Understanding Comics, like many current comic creators and readers, McCloud came in to the medium through the superhero door built, arguably, by Jack Kirby.
“I love superhero stuff, but by the time I was in college, I was looking at other kinds of comics, but it wasn’t totally flushed out of my system yet,” McCloud said. “Even as I was reading Raw or Weirdo, or all those artsy comics, I still had that superhero bug, and I figured I should try to lance that boil in a big way.”
After he’d achieved success and earned his chops somewhat with Zot!, McCloud was able to convince Eclipse editor Cat Yronwode to allow him to scratch his superhero itch, but not a the normal-sized manner.
"I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing to the absolute highest pitch, so if I was going to do a pointless violence comic, I wanted it to be very pure, and be what it was, full-throttle,” McCloud said. “One of the important things for Destroy!! was the format – if I wanted it to be big and loud, it had to be literally big. So, I convinced Eclipse to take a chance and publish this thing that no retailer would ever know how to shelve. It was just a strange, one-shot lark, but even on my throwaway ideas, I end up spending far too much time.”
The book was, in many ways, McCloud’s answer to the work of Kirby. In the years since Kirby broke – make that shattered ground in terms of visual style and dynamism in comics, comics creators have viewed his work not as an example of good comics, but as a bar that needs to be pushed higher. In a way, it’s long been the ultimate sign of just how much a boys club comics have been – “Kirby did that? Well, I’m going to go one step farther.” Throw ‘em out on the table and measure ‘em up.
Thing is, according to McCloud, that’s not the right way to go. “The comics industry is still suffering from that Oedipus complex that I referred to in the Author’s Note of Destroy!!, this notion that Kirby is your daddy, and you have to top him any way you can – you have to create that one big punch or that one giant explosion that just knocks him away,” McCloud said. “We’re all still playing king of the hill with the King.”
With Destroy!! (one creator’s attempt of out-Kirbying Kirby), as a guide, it becomes quite easy to see how, over the years, creators have utilized the language designed by Kirby – for example, the action in Destroy!! follows a path of destruction through New York City, with landmarks and buildings crumbling under the might of the two combatants, something that was mirrored in the Death of Superman, as Superman and Doomsday battled through Metropolis. Again, it’s not a case of Death of Superman copying Destroy!!, but rather an example of how Kirby’s legacy touched that particular story.
Examples could be seen throughout all the big, senseless battles in superhero comics of the ‘90s, and culminating in the “widescreen” comics near the end of the century, such as Morrison’s JLA and Ellis’ The Authority.
“Ever since Kirby’s heyday, we’ve been playing this game, and we’re still playing it today with superhero comics – the one upsmanship,” McCloud said. “For a while, it took the form of ever-escalating story ideas: it had to be a world-scale threat, and then a solar system-scale threat, and then a galaxy scale threat, and then a universe-scale threat, and then multiple universes. It was always upping the ante, and that just gets pretty tired after a while. The truth is - a really great writer and artist or writer/artist can create that same sense of power and wonder just by showing somebody picking up a car if it’s done well. You don’t need to blow up a city to portray power in an impressive and memorable way. It’s fun to do it once in a while, but doing it every month gets very tiring.
“At the time, I guess Destroy!! seemed like the apogee of that, but people wanted to take it even further, and they have. After a while, it just gets tiring. It’s what I call ‘caption action,’ where there may be multiple universes threatened, but you can’t draw multiple universes in a 2”x 3” panel, so it just comes down to captions., We’re being told that this is an amazing, earth-shatteringly huge threat, but it doesn’t feel like one, it’s just a bunch of little words in boxes, telling us it is.”
And that’s the crux of McCloud’s argument against trying to out-Kirby the King – a copy of a masterwork is that, a copy. Re-paint Mona Lisa line-by-line perfect, but place her in front of a kicky background, and viewers are going to come away with the feeling that something’s missing – the work is inspired, but hollow.
“Kirby’s stuff, as raw as it is still has some kind of naked power that somehow, none of his descendants ever managed to top,” McCloud said acknowledging that, as Destroy!! proves, it’s a hard temptation to resist. “It was enough for me to know that I had done my best - that I had at least tried. That allowed me to get on with my life and do other things. In many ways, Destroy!! was an artistic logjam, and I decided to take a buzzsaw to it.”
Destroy!! foreshadowed McCloud’s then-upcoming works Understanding and Reinventing Comics by, in its own way, acting as a textbook of sorts. Taken as a whole, Destroy!! has a timelessness and clarity about it – it could have been published in 1986, 1996, or 2006. McCloud set out to write and draw an example of senseless violence using the language Kirby created, and pulled it off.
“I’m pretty happy with it,” McCloud said, reflecting on the work. “It’s one of the purest things I ever did. Understanding Comics is probably the purest, but it is what it is, and there aren’t a whole lot of ornaments and styling or fringes. It’s a big, raw block of destruction. The more uncompromising something is, the more timeless it tends to be. It’s the little things that date work – the mannerisms and decorations, and the stylistic flourishes. Those are things that just make something look old. If it’s just a pure, raw bundle of emotion, it tends to last through the ages a little more – things like Oedipus and Beowulf. Not that I’m comparing Destroy!! to those by any means – but the really raw stuff, without decoration is what people can respond to, regardless of the era.”
McCloud said that he’ll still see a copy or two of Destroy!! at conventions, and signs them with an appropriate flourish. “I’ll always sign it with a bunch of exclamation marks,” McCloud said. “I figure that the ‘Loudest Comic Book in the Universe’ has the loudest signature as well.”
The story itself was very simple – after his girlfriend dumps him for Captain Maximum, Red Basher goes on a rampage in New York City, forcing Maximum to stop him. The title comes from Basher’s dialogue, consisting virtually 100% obviously, of the word, “Destroy!!” The action consists of a big fight that moves throughout all of New York City (and the moon), and ultimately results (eerily by today’s standards) in the destruction of lower Manhattan.
Of course, this is comics, so no one gets hurt.
Inspired in part by Marvel’s Super Boxers graphic novel, the black and white Destroy!! was released by Eclipse in 1986 (a 3D reprint came later), and was, according to McCloud, meant to be nothing more than what it was – pure senseless violence as big and as loud as he could make it.
“I was probably making comics professionally for about ten months, and I already had a list of about 29 different projects that I wanted to draw,” McCloud said. “One of my great regrets is that I don’t draw faster, because I wanted to do so many different kinds of comics.
“I had just done the ten issues of Zot! in color, and we were going to bring it back in black and white, so I was taking a break from that and getting other work. I think I was actually moving office furniture for a few weeks to earn a living as I was thinking about Destroy!!. It was just something that I had to do to get it all out of my system.”
As for the true inspiration for the book, as he’s since chronicled in Understanding Comics, like many current comic creators and readers, McCloud came in to the medium through the superhero door built, arguably, by Jack Kirby.
“I love superhero stuff, but by the time I was in college, I was looking at other kinds of comics, but it wasn’t totally flushed out of my system yet,” McCloud said. “Even as I was reading Raw or Weirdo, or all those artsy comics, I still had that superhero bug, and I figured I should try to lance that boil in a big way.”
After he’d achieved success and earned his chops somewhat with Zot!, McCloud was able to convince Eclipse editor Cat Yronwode to allow him to scratch his superhero itch, but not a the normal-sized manner.
"I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing to the absolute highest pitch, so if I was going to do a pointless violence comic, I wanted it to be very pure, and be what it was, full-throttle,” McCloud said. “One of the important things for Destroy!! was the format – if I wanted it to be big and loud, it had to be literally big. So, I convinced Eclipse to take a chance and publish this thing that no retailer would ever know how to shelve. It was just a strange, one-shot lark, but even on my throwaway ideas, I end up spending far too much time.”
The book was, in many ways, McCloud’s answer to the work of Kirby. In the years since Kirby broke – make that shattered ground in terms of visual style and dynamism in comics, comics creators have viewed his work not as an example of good comics, but as a bar that needs to be pushed higher. In a way, it’s long been the ultimate sign of just how much a boys club comics have been – “Kirby did that? Well, I’m going to go one step farther.” Throw ‘em out on the table and measure ‘em up.
Thing is, according to McCloud, that’s not the right way to go. “The comics industry is still suffering from that Oedipus complex that I referred to in the Author’s Note of Destroy!!, this notion that Kirby is your daddy, and you have to top him any way you can – you have to create that one big punch or that one giant explosion that just knocks him away,” McCloud said. “We’re all still playing king of the hill with the King.”
With Destroy!! (one creator’s attempt of out-Kirbying Kirby), as a guide, it becomes quite easy to see how, over the years, creators have utilized the language designed by Kirby – for example, the action in Destroy!! follows a path of destruction through New York City, with landmarks and buildings crumbling under the might of the two combatants, something that was mirrored in the Death of Superman, as Superman and Doomsday battled through Metropolis. Again, it’s not a case of Death of Superman copying Destroy!!, but rather an example of how Kirby’s legacy touched that particular story.
Examples could be seen throughout all the big, senseless battles in superhero comics of the ‘90s, and culminating in the “widescreen” comics near the end of the century, such as Morrison’s JLA and Ellis’ The Authority.
“Ever since Kirby’s heyday, we’ve been playing this game, and we’re still playing it today with superhero comics – the one upsmanship,” McCloud said. “For a while, it took the form of ever-escalating story ideas: it had to be a world-scale threat, and then a solar system-scale threat, and then a galaxy scale threat, and then a universe-scale threat, and then multiple universes. It was always upping the ante, and that just gets pretty tired after a while. The truth is - a really great writer and artist or writer/artist can create that same sense of power and wonder just by showing somebody picking up a car if it’s done well. You don’t need to blow up a city to portray power in an impressive and memorable way. It’s fun to do it once in a while, but doing it every month gets very tiring.
“At the time, I guess Destroy!! seemed like the apogee of that, but people wanted to take it even further, and they have. After a while, it just gets tiring. It’s what I call ‘caption action,’ where there may be multiple universes threatened, but you can’t draw multiple universes in a 2”x 3” panel, so it just comes down to captions., We’re being told that this is an amazing, earth-shatteringly huge threat, but it doesn’t feel like one, it’s just a bunch of little words in boxes, telling us it is.”
And that’s the crux of McCloud’s argument against trying to out-Kirby the King – a copy of a masterwork is that, a copy. Re-paint Mona Lisa line-by-line perfect, but place her in front of a kicky background, and viewers are going to come away with the feeling that something’s missing – the work is inspired, but hollow.
“Kirby’s stuff, as raw as it is still has some kind of naked power that somehow, none of his descendants ever managed to top,” McCloud said acknowledging that, as Destroy!! proves, it’s a hard temptation to resist. “It was enough for me to know that I had done my best - that I had at least tried. That allowed me to get on with my life and do other things. In many ways, Destroy!! was an artistic logjam, and I decided to take a buzzsaw to it.”
Destroy!! foreshadowed McCloud’s then-upcoming works Understanding and Reinventing Comics by, in its own way, acting as a textbook of sorts. Taken as a whole, Destroy!! has a timelessness and clarity about it – it could have been published in 1986, 1996, or 2006. McCloud set out to write and draw an example of senseless violence using the language Kirby created, and pulled it off.
“I’m pretty happy with it,” McCloud said, reflecting on the work. “It’s one of the purest things I ever did. Understanding Comics is probably the purest, but it is what it is, and there aren’t a whole lot of ornaments and styling or fringes. It’s a big, raw block of destruction. The more uncompromising something is, the more timeless it tends to be. It’s the little things that date work – the mannerisms and decorations, and the stylistic flourishes. Those are things that just make something look old. If it’s just a pure, raw bundle of emotion, it tends to last through the ages a little more – things like Oedipus and Beowulf. Not that I’m comparing Destroy!! to those by any means – but the really raw stuff, without decoration is what people can respond to, regardless of the era.”
McCloud said that he’ll still see a copy or two of Destroy!! at conventions, and signs them with an appropriate flourish. “I’ll always sign it with a bunch of exclamation marks,” McCloud said. “I figure that the ‘Loudest Comic Book in the Universe’ has the loudest signature as well.”