Here are some plays that are good, but they’ve been around for a while, so I’ve taken it upon myself to reboot them to keep them fresh, and maybe they’ll catch on.

Waiting for Godot

Dana and Tim are two best friends who probably used to date.  They are fresh out of college twenty something selfish jerks who land jobs waiting tables at West Virginia’s most exclusive new restaurant, Godot’s.  Tim lands in hot water with the local mob boss, Pozzo, when he can’t find the money to cover some outstanding gambling debts, so Dana comes up with a plan: Tim will invite Pozzo to a free meal at Godot’s, and Dana will poison his meal.  Matters get complicated when Pozzo’s lieutenants, after figuring out that Dana was responsible for Pozzo’s death, approach Dana to be their new boss.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Mickey Donovan (“Mickey the Don” to his friends) has the fastest hot rod in New Light City.  He’s the coolest kid in school, he’s got the super-hot Tawny Rome going steady with him, and he’s never lost a race.  When Alice MacAllister moves into town, Mickey can’t stand her.  She’s tough, rides around in her own souped up Cadillac, and unlike Mickey, she has an actual criminal record.  The two butt heads all year, and inevitably Mickey realizes that he’s fallen for Alice.  As he heads over to Alice’s apartment to tell her how he feels, he sees Alice and Tawny making out on the fire escape.  Filled with rage and regret, Mickey goes for a drive to clear his head.  He finally understands that all his macho posturing was the only way he knew how to deal with the cruelties of a life filled with hollow relationships, and he makes a vow to be true to himself.  Later at a stop-light, Alice pulls her cadillac up next to Mickey’s hot rod.  Mickey turns to see her pulling out a gun aimed at his face.  A gunshot rings through the streets as the lights quickly cut out.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Set at the funeral for two friends of a really famous celebrity, it’s basically like an episode of Entourage, but at a funeral for the fat friend and the older Dillon brother.  The two main dudes talk about how much they’ll miss their two friends, but in the process they realize that they didn’t know their friends at all.  The realization that you can spend so much time with some people and never really know them at all drives the two main dudes straight into an existential crisis wherein they understand that the only moment anyone can ever know anyone is in the now.  They cast off their expensive designer suits and they run off into the Hollywood hills where they kiss passionately as the lights fade around them.

I was going to start this post by talking about how most stories about dreams suck, but when I got around to thinking about the dreams that my friends have told me about, I realized I kind of like stories about dreams.  I guess my initial distaste toward stories about dreams stems from the fact that I rarely remember my own dreams, so I’ve always secretly resented great stories about dreams.

Anyway, that being said, this is not a great story about a dream, but it’s a dream that I actually remember, so I feel inclined to write about it.

Last night I dreamed that I was hanging out after an improv show and a bunch of strangers (who I knew were my friends) kept coming up to me and talking to me about Battlestar Galactica.  All of them were talking about how they were rewatching it and how awesome it is the second time around.  I told each of them that I hadn’t gotten around to rewatching it, but that I loved that show and that I couldn’t wait to jump on the rewatching bandwagon.

What made this unusual was that we all remembered that Batman was on the show.  The reason everyone was so pumped about Battlestar Galactica was that it was a quality show AND BATMAN WAS ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS.  But it wasn’t the always-prepared-for-anything Batman that we all know and love in the waking world.  This Batman was a little worse for wear.  Frayed costume, exhausted, constant five o’clock shadow under his cowl.  Now that I’m thinking about it, Batman took the place of Helo in this dream BSG.  I remember a shot of Batman stuck on the bombed-out Caprica looking desperately at the sky as the last ships left to join the fleet.

It’s important to note that I wasn’t directly dreaming about Batman in BSG.  I think what makes this dream extra nerdy is that I was dreaming about talking to people about how good BSG was and getting really fucking excited about watching it FOR THE SECOND TIME.

I was dreaming about a super nerdgasm.

We’ll add this to the list of reasons why no one wants to fuck me.

Every morning he wakes up and walks to the coffee shop.  Every morning he passes the same fourteen people.  “Fourteen different disasters, fourteen different faces, and not a looker in the bunch,” he thinks to himself, a superior smirk forming above his perfect chin.  None of the fourteen ever pause to take a look at him. Instead they opt to maintain their hurried pace, eyes forward, caught in an unbreakable stride.

He orders a plain black coffee and he waits.

Today Dav and I weighed the stylistic merits of giving the Queen a small sneezing problem or hooking her up to an extravagant steam-powered life support machine.  We decided on the latter.  Also, I put in a lot of thought about how to turn a neuron into a sword.

It’s script-making time.

I was lettering some pages and it got me to thinking about monologues in comics.  I can’t really think of any particular comic book artist who’s made a monologue visually interesting, and I don’t know if it’s the fault of the comic book artists I follow, or if it’s a failing of the medium.  Byan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland is supposed to be a monologue/meditation on storytelling that’s supposed to be pretty innovative, but I haven’t actually read it.  I flipped through it, though, and it looked great (of course, it was Bryan Talbot), but even then it still sort of reminded me of the basic structure of Scott McCloud’s books on comics theory.  The narrator explains/describes X, said X happens behind him, and that’s pretty much the most we get with comic book monologues.

I refuse to believe that this is a failing of the medium, as I am already convinced that comics can do most anything.  This means that the challenge falls to the storytellers.  Granted, I have no answer to this challenge, but I think now that we know this is an issue, we can start doing something about it.

So what goes on with a talking heads sort of scene or a monologue in comics?  What makes an effective monologue or conversation?  The most important thing to understand is that as long as there are words in the panel, time is progressing.  Time progresses for characters saying/thinking these words, time progresses within the panel, and time progresses for the reader reading the words.  I think the most visually effective monologues are the ones in which the lettering is done in such a way that the placement of the words compliments the inherent progression in time, both in the story and in the panel itself.  So the key to coming up with a new way to depict a monologue or narration or a conversation will probably lie with the manipulation of the concept of time in comics.

I’ve got to think on all this more, but let me know what you think.  Does anyone out there have good examples of visually compelling monologues or conversations in comics?