Broken Frontier

Interested in submitting your own questions to Greg Pak, writer of Marvel’s “World War Hulk” and Dynamite’s “Battlestar Galactica”? Click here for the guidelines! And now on to this week’s brilliant musings...

On Exposition

One of the biggest challenges for me in making the transition from writing films to writing comics was figuring out fresh ways to recap the story at the beginning of each issue.  In a typical feature film, recapping is unnecessary -- the story’s self-contained and consumed in a single sitting. But when the equivalent amount of story is told in comic book form, critical information may have to be repeated a half-dozen times or more as each new issue hits the stands.

Many times I’ve given up on reading a comic book within a few pages when the recap material felt too dense or clunky.  So as a writer, I’m always trying to find ways to incorporate the exposition into the drama to make it as seamless and painless and even exciting to read as possible.  Below are a few examples of different techniques I’ve used during my “Battlestar Galactica” run (the first trade paperback of which just hit comic book stores on Wednesday, funnily enough, and can be bought through the Dynamite website).

WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!

Issue Zero - The News Report

The “Battlestar Galactica” television pilot opened with a press liaison leading reporters through the Galactica -- a neat way to build a scene in which massive amounts of exposition can be delivered in a natural way.  I riffed on the idea by opening Issue #0 of the comic book with a news report in which President Laura Roslin delivers a nice chunk of helpful information for readers while talking to a group of children in a newly established school.

The bonus of this kind of scene is that it allows for actual interaction and drama amidst the exposition -- we get a sense of the human cost of the events described by hearing from the little girl and get a hint of Roslin’s complex relationship with the Commander when the girl asks her if Adama is her boyfriend.

Issue Two - The Big Speech

Issue Two opens with Commander Adama addressing the entire fleet, delivering an ultimatum to a group of people known as the Returners.  The average civilian listening to the broadcast knows as little about the Returners as a new reader, so all of the exposition feels completely natural within the scene.  In the effort to make the page even more compelling, I got right into the action by showing a smuggler bringing a Returner on board a ship -- in direct violation of Adama’s order.

Issue Five - Voiceover

Voiceover may be one of the most efficient meth ods of conveying exposition, but it’s risky. Voiceover is already artificial and stylized -- we don’t generally hear voices speaking our thoughts out loud -- which means that when it includes heavy exposition, it can feel particularly clunky.  In this case, I tried to create an emotional and dramatic context for all the exposition -- Sharon’s explaining the process of her consciousness uploading to a new Cylon body, but the emotional hook is that she’s agonizing over leaving behind her human lover Helo.  And again, we quickly get into the action when she awakens in a new body floating in a Raptor in open space and under attack by space pirates.

Issue Nine - The Ceremony

Like news reports and speeches, public ceremonies of any kind provide nifty ways to convey exposition efficiently and dramatically.  Here a priestess conducts a secret religious ceremony for the dead Returners, handily recapping critical events while providing emotional context for the tragedies.  And once again, I made sure to plunge us right into the action on the first page, this time by having Colonial Marines arriving to break up the illegal gathering.

Thanks for reading -- we’ll be back next week with more.  Please click here to submit your questions for our Reader Q&A section and see ya next time!

Editor’s note: and for those among you who want to get an early look at World War Hulk #2, read our spoiler-free advance review here.

© 2007 Greg Pak.  All rights reserved.  For more about Greg Pak’s comics and films, visit www.pakbuzz.com.