IDW Publishing Forums

[Veritas]

I am loving, loving, LOVING Smoke and Mirrors - but for one thing. The language, folks, the language... can we PLEASE cut back on the profanity?

I'm not a prig or prude. I'm a writer and teacher, and I know that strong language is often used to accentuate character traits. We're getting it that our protagonist is one angry, troubled kid. Some scattered profanity, okay. But... have mercy, please. I'm trying to do my comic-loving part to hook the next generation on good graphic narrative, so I bring my loose issues into my classroom. I really can't do that with this title, though in all other respects, it is PERFECT for my middle-schoolers.

I teach my students that good writers don't throw in profanity for no good reason. When a character in To Kill a Mockingbird uses the n-word, it's saying more about the society at the time, and about that character's level of development, than about the writer. It's the same, I tell them, in the books THEY read. We spend a good bit of time discussing how, when you're faced with profanity in text or dialogue, you need to ask yourself - "What is the author trying to tell me about this character? Why are they using this word, in this part of the book?" Unfortunately, I can't always answer that question in this case... the profanity seems, at times, gratuitous. We get it. Real kids swear. But your readers don't necessarily need to SEE that to know that.
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[MikeCosta]

First off, I want to thank you for your kind words and your thoughtful, considerate letter here. It deserves an equally considerate response, and I'll do my best to provide one for you.

As much as any writer can speak to his own craft (always a treacherous, slippery and ill-advised path for a writer to take) I consider myself one who is particularly (perhaps overly) concerned with technical and formalistic aspects of the work. I don't know if you're particularly familiar with my other titles, but I believe this is clear in everything I've worked on, from Transformers to Blackhawks.

I fixate on structural patterns, particular aesthetic choices, narrative lietmotif and symmetry. (Within Smoke and Mirrors in particular this is most obvious in the continuing pattern of each issue beginning on a black panel, pages 4 & 5 always being a double-page spread featuring the title, and each title being taken from a different piece of technical jargon in magic performance which then serves as a narrative pun.)

This is to say - not much in Smoke and Mirrors is done without a great deal of consideration. Except, of course, for all the blind-spots, ridiculously obvious upon reflection, that every work of art must contain that belie calculation.

But, I assure you, the issue of vulgar language is not one of those.

Smoke and Mirrors is the most difficult thing I've ever had to write. As one of the co-creators, I have an unprecedented freedom to write about whatever I please. This creates a great deal of self-imposed pressure to make sure that I don't go totally off the rails and create an incoherent mess (something I fear that this response might be turning into.)

It also means that I have a freedom from censorship - but I am just as suspicious of that freedom as the other. As the writer, it's my duty to let the story dictate its own terms and content, not the contract under which the story was created.

And it was clear to me very early on that Smoke and Mirrors is not a story about sex nor violence - so I can assure you that you will see none of the former and very, very little of the latter. It's a story about feelings, as any good story must be, but specifically about feelings of anger, and longing, and what it is to seek out and learn a secret that makes you special. And specifically it's about how those feelings are filtered through a middle-school-aged boy, and how isolating those feelings can be.

I felt I had to be true to that. So while there is much that Ethan is shielded from - like most boys of his age in the developed world, his world is still childlike and mercifully free of the adult concerns of sex and violence - he has no protection from his own anger, nor the anger of other children.

It's been a long time since I was a child, but if I had to chose the one thing that's most often forgotten in popular deceptions of youth, it's anger. The burning anger of the helpless and the overlooked. And if I was going to write a story about anger, I couldn't shy away from angry language.

You'll notice when Ethan curses, there is an affectation in the lettering. This was a deliberate choice I made - no doubt to the consternation of my letterer, whom I don't think has ever had to work with a writer so uncommonly demanding as to insist he obscure is own work in such a way. Whether or not the effect is successful is up to you, but my intent was to try to visualize the ineffable experience of a boy who knows the violence in the words he's saying, and is almost afraid of it. I personally remember, as a boy, the talismanic power of swear words, and how using them made me feel cool and smart and powerful, and also a little guilty. It's a complicated articulation adults forget, but I am doing my best to respect it in the way children do, before its subversive power leaves their lives.

I found it impossible to get this feeling across without using the actual language itself. Similarly, the threat and humiliation of the bully that shoves Ethan and beats him up in anger after Ethan "attacks" him with the card spring; something the bully doesn't understand.

You'll find while reading Smoke and Mirrors that the swears and curses are only used in instances where characters feel frightened or angry. In this story it is very much the language of the confused and the helpless, which is a position that children often find themselves in (and Terry, the magician, finds himself in the upcoming issue #3.)

But all of that basically amounts to one blow-hard's lengthy excuse. The fact is, Smoke and Mirrors contains language unsuitable for children. Even children who are Ethan's age and probably use that language often. I understand and endorse the theory that adults handing children material that casually reflects their bad behavior is, in a way, a tacit acceptance of that behavior, and that is not constructive. It is not a tautology to acknowledge that some boundaries exist for their own sake when it comes to children. Specifically regarding language.

It honestly aggrieves me that that children can't read this book, since I feel there is a tragic lack of comics on the stands for that audience. That may seem disingenuous, since after all it's within my power to make this book as accessible and appealing as possible... but I must needs answer to some mysterious muse within myself as to the content of each of my works, and that inscrutable judge has made his ruling, which I am unwilling to over-rule lest I lose his favor and become utterly lost.

I hope you accept my apologies, and my sincere gratitude that you felt there was enough value in this book to make your complaint. And perhaps you'd be so kind as to forgive me this as well... but I have a hope. I hope that some of your students - the artists, the dreamers, the ones searching for understanding - I hope they find this book on their own. And I hope they love it not only for its art and its craft, but for its apparent transgression, in all its radioactive power. And I hope, maybe, they even hide it from their parents, or even from you, as we all hid things we thought adults might not approve of or understand. And it becomes some small rite of passage into a wider world.

Because, at the bottom, my true hope is that this book contains more good than bad... even if, as a responsible adult, you can't endorse it.

But, really. For the isolated, the uncool and the angry, adult endorsement is sometimes the last thing they're looking for.
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