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Kurosawa meets Chaland: Scott Morse balances between comics and movies In a short period of time American comics artist Scott Morse has created an amazingly diverse body of work. Morse started out in the animation industry. With Soulwind he made his debut as a comic artist. He published a variety of comic series with several different publishers, started his own publishing house Crazyfish, and produced a pilot for Cartoon Network. At this moment Morse is in final negotiations for a big screen, live action adaptation of his graphic novel Volcanic Revolver. Besides the light-hearted children comic Southpaw, his graphic novel The Barefoot Serpent was published last summer; an ambitious psychological story inspired by the life and work of Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. Fellow comic artist Stefan de Groot talked to the dynamic and diverse American at the 2003 San Diego Comic Convention. Scott Morse studied from 1992 –1994 at the Californian Institute of Arts under Maurice Noble (art director of many Chuck Jones movies, ed.) Noble's influence is obvious in Morse’s art. “Maurice has taught me a lot. His main thing was to be bold and daring and just do things people don’t expect you to do and that carries over in everything I am doing right now.” Morse started his animation career at Universal Studios and Cartoon Network. “I've worked as a storyboard artist, director, producer, character designer, and art director. As an art director, I've worked on a video feature for Universal called Hercules and Xena, the Animated Movie, as well as on Cartoon Network's Cow and Chicken, I am Weasel, and various pilots. I'm currently art directing Nickelodeon's Gear for Nickelodeon. My duties in art directing usually include designing the backgrounds and color for the show (the "look"), as well as working with background painters and character designers to keep the over-all look consistent.” Debut After a few years working at animation studios, Morse felt the need to work on his own projects. He made his debut with Soulwind; an Arthurian story about the magic sword Soulwind, but seen through science-fiction glasses. In 1998 the bulky graphic novel (some 400 pages) earns him an Eisner nomination. Image also published Little Greyman (a satire on Martians and westerns) and the graphic novel Visitations. Visitations is a story about a woman taking refuge in a church. The priest, whom the woman consults, tries to convince her that god exists by showing her three random stories from the local newspaper. Morse masters, in a sublime way, to incorporate a general theme in the three different stories. He alternates between the stories by using a paint and ink style. “The setting is a church, the theme is doubting the existence of an afterlife, and the unfamiliar element in that situation is the ghost stories.” Visitations is the breaking point in Morse’s career as a storyteller and artist, he sets the tone for books that follow. However Image decides to drop the non-hero comics line and Morse has to look for another publisher. Movie Morse moves over to Oni Press, which publishes the gangster story Volcanic Revolver. Morse uses two parallel storylines. Once again, the graphic novel is divided in a painted and a black and white ink style. Morse tells his story in long panels which creates a cinematic effect. The story is situated in 1930s New York, where the principal character Vincenzo owns a bakery. Besides that he runs a secret counterfeiting operation. All goes well until a rival mob family sends a bomb into Vincenzo’s bakery. Morse keeps the principal character sympathetic, although he kills a woman. Volcanic Revolver seems like a traditional gangster story with a vendetta between the Irish and Italian. There are the occasional shootouts and the dialogue is punctuated with Italian accents. Despite all that it has not become an average gangster story. Morse fully develops the characters and creates an intimate story. According to Morse there is a reasonable chance that Volcanic Revolver will be adapted for a live action movie. Morse plans to make his directing debut and Dave McKean will most likely be consulting on the visuals. Morse cannot tell any details concerning the movie, because he is still negotiating. “It's still officially unannounced. I can say there's a new producer who's been added, and with him comes a cast of well-known actors. We just need the distribution to fall into place.” Inspiration The works of Maurice Noble and Disney art-director Mary Blair have
been a noticeable influence on Morse’s painted work. His black
and white ink work gives away European influences. “I try to
draw influence from all over the place, from whatever inspires me,
and Chaland's work ranks
in that category, definitely. His lighting and line work speak
volumes. He was able to create such wonderful atmospheres with his
staging. I've found that the European comics legends in general were
(and are) all masters of this, creating mood successfully in a rigid
panel format (as opposed to, say, American comics or manga, which
employ panel layout to help create an over-all punch on each page).” Kurosawa This Summer Top Shelf published the graphic novel The Barefoot Serpent. It is a poignant story about a little girl whose brother committed suicide. Her parents take her on a trip to Hawaii. They try to come to terms with their son’s loss. The book is a tribute to the life and works of the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. The story is divided into two different parts: the story about the little girl (black and white) and a short biography about Kurosawa (full-colour). The connection between the two stories is that Kurosawa’s brother committed suicide and that at the time Kurosawa’s career hade come to a dead end and he also attempted to kill himself. Both stories are among Morse’s best works. “The Barefoot Serpent came about, out of the love for Kurosawa’s films and just finding a story I could tell during his depression and how it affects people and characters in different ways. And to tell a story that a lot of people could relate to.” There are a lot subtle references to Kurosawa’s movies. “I did as much research as I could, so I could make references to the films as subtly as possible. I didn't want to do something everyone would expect, like direct references to Seven Samurai or anything. Instead, I chose to focus on the subtleties in Kurosawa's work: from small nods to certain character types to broad themes of optimism in the world. The research I conducted ranged from reading the various biographies and autobiographies that exist on Kurosawa, to reading books about his films and actually watching many of his films to simply try to absorb the general moods he was trying to convey. There are also some great gallery books of his paintings that I came across, that helped on a whole different level.” Morse refers to Dreams, one of Kurosawa’s last movies, where Vincent Van Gogh plays a prominent part. “The Van Gogh character in the film Dreams was played by Martin Scorsese, and in The Barefoot Serpent, the main character looks a bit like Van Gogh in his younger days. The sequence in the book details an event where people are seeing things that might not really be there, almost eluding them to a sense of insanity, something many people cite Van Gogh for. I thought it appropriate for that scene, so the "Van Gogh" character made it in. I love the works of Van Gogh, and look to all the impressionists for inspiration. I think it's an aesthetic seldom explored in sequential storytelling, and I find it fascinating to try to employ some of those techniques, even on a small scale, in my own work. I guess I like to think of myself as an impressionist, in both story and art, though I also try to be as direct as possible in my storytelling without pandering to the audience. In that way, I look to writers like Hemingway and Steinbeck. I always want to invoke a sense of wonder in the mundane, to help ground the reader in familiar territory, and use that sense of familiarity as a counterbalance to something unfamiliar. As an example, in Visitations, the setting is a church, the theme is doubting the existence of an afterlife, and the unfamiliar element in that situation is the ghost stories.” What is also striking about The Barefoot Serpent is, that the characters have no names. “It's a trick I try to use whenever possible... I did it in Visitations, as well, with most of the characters. The idea is to make the characters as relatable as possible. By leaving them nameless I'm hopefully giving the readers one more subliminal opportunity to become closer to the characters, to invest a bit of themselves in the characters. To name them would set them apart from the reader on some level. It's more intimate if the readers feel as if they know the characters on a deeper level, on a level like a friend or family member. One doesn't often address close relations by name in mundane conversation, and I wanted The Barefoot Serpent and Visitations to have this 'everyday' feel, as if these extraordinary things could plausibly happen to anyone.” Cinemascope Most part of The Barefoot Serpent is told in wide panels. Morse doesn’t use dialogue balloons, but instead places the text underneath every panel. In effect the story has a cinematic feel to it and reads more like a storyboard than a comic. “I often work in a rigid page format of horizontal panels (not just in The Barefoot Serpent and Visitations, but in Volcanic Revolver and much of Ancient Joe as well) not necessarily because it's a film ratio, but because it's a storytelling device I find challenging. If I have only one panel format to play with, it's a challenge to make every composition in the book work within that boundary. This format also helps in general pacing, in many ways like a storyboard, but comics are more tricky in that you've got to tease the reader into reading the story at a rate of speed that you want them to. Film speed is force-fed, whereas in comics you're allowed to linger. If, as a storyteller, I don't want the readers to linger on a specific panel in the flow of the story, and yet they do for some reason, I've failed on some level to keep the flow going without them realizing it. It's a simple as that, really. Comics emphatically aren't my way of making cheap movies... I try to make them something special unto themselves. I think anyone treating a comic as a movie pitch has the wrong idea. Some things are what they are... Sometimes they may translate into another medium, like film, but more often they should remain what they are: a piece of literature.” Stefan de Groot
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