People like listening to secrets. It makes them feel included and special, especially if the secrets are true.

The first dirty little secret about comics is that anyone can do them. The second part of that secret is that almost no one, myself included, seems to be able to do it right.

We all have our own definitions for things and look to the world to corroborate our notions and make us feel more certain we've got it right. You won't find that reassurance here, because you are all wrong. I'm wrong, too.

The first way we're wrong is in thinking that doing comics has any connection with being able to draw. I've spent literally decades trying to learn how. While it's been very rewarding, it was completely unnecessary for doing effective comics. Personally, I have a hard time reading comics I don't like looking at. This is one way in which I am wrong too.

Though my years of labour bemoan me saying it, don't let anyone tell you comics are about drawing. The mechanics of the medium hardly require that you be able to draw at all. The essential motor that runs this mechanism is in the human mind. Given a series of images, we try to make that series into a sequence and determine relative value. The mind simply automatically tries to make sense of it, even if the series has no sense at all.

'Comics are a dramatic form. They are about telling stories.' We have been known to infer meaning out of whole cloth from completely random events. When there is no flood after a human sacrifice, we infer that the gods are pleased. Fifteen red lights in a row and we call it bad karma. Stare at the night sky long enough, you'll see lions and tigers and bears. And, oh my, don't even get me started on numerology or tarot cards.

When the series isn't random, when it is in fact an intentional sequence, we eat it up. It's the juxtaposition that makes comics work. The way light reflects off the fold of a leather jacket sleeve isn't important to an effective comic, only that it be recognisable as the same jacket that the butler slipped the money into.

Stick figures and crayons can make this device function very efficiently. Some of the most brilliant comics have been done with the simplest and most rudimentary drawing technique. They were successful because the authors didn't need to be convinced of what they were doing. They knew.

But what did they know? You have the mechanics of the thing down, but now what?

Mark Tansey once wrote about a painting that it's, "[L]ike a vehicle. One can either sit in the driveway and take it apart, or one can get in it and go somewhere". If you're not going to sit around and tinker with the mechanics, where can comics take you? What is this trip to be about?

Comics are not about heroes and they're not about porn, and they aren't about narcissistic self-absorption. No. And as often as I use them for it, they aren't about escapism, obsessive distraction, or stealing visual techniques from other artists. Comics are a dramatic form. They are about telling stories.

David Mamet, in his book ON DIRECTING FILM (which is really more about comics than about movies, though I doubt he knows it) says:

'Given a series of images, we try to make that series into a sequence.' "[T]he nature of the dramatic art [is] to tell a story. That's all it's good for. People have tried for centuries to use drama to change people's lives, to influence, to comment, to express themselves. It doesn't work. It might be nice if it worked for those things, but it doesn't. The only thing the dramatic form is good for is telling a story."

It behoves us then to determine why to write one story over another. What makes one story worth telling and another a waste of the readers' time, not to mention our own? Which are the most satisfying to read? 'Stories about Klingons'. Spare me. 'I like lightsabers'. Too obviously phallic, get therapy. 'A duel at high noon'. Why do you care?

'I like seeing somebody face death and win'. Ah, art as a protest against death. Okay, that's a start.

What makes a story compelling is that it applies to us personally. This is why math is so unbearably boring - it may yield power, but it has no immediate bearing on the life of the mind. A story can be set in ancient Greece, post-apocalyptic Europe, or Starbase 14, but it has to be about human truth. Order from disorder, sense from senselessness, meaning from an empty August night.

GB Shaw, in his play (another of the dramatic arts) MAN AND SUPERMAN writes:

"[T]he artist's work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men."

Truth, the holy grail of the arts and sciences and the first quality of the noble and the valiant.

"But what about the funnybooks", you say? "They're just supposed to be funny and make us laugh. Why does it have to be all high-falutin' and snobby?"

Well...

"To attract and keep an audience, art must entertain, but the significance of any art lies in its ability to express truths - to reveal and help us understand our world." - Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

'Comics will not fulfil its potential until it realises what it's good for.' Methinks Master Watterson has been reading his Shaw. Funny can be meaningful. Not everything we laugh at is funny. Not everything that makes us cry is truly upsetting. Not everything that makes us jump will keep us up at night. Not all beauty is compelling.

"Surprise is the essence of humor," said Watterson, "and nothing is more surprising than the truth." This can spoil your entertainment, taking it seriously. This is why many playwrights read mostly non-fiction, and many directors never go to the movies.

We won't be convincing if we give them what they expect. We have to surprise them. If comics are ever going to be considered of value to the culture at large, they have to be seen differently.

Give them something new. Not just the shock of the new but the shock of the truth. Comics about people. Comics about dreams and fears, hopes and family, tragedy and epiphany. The readers need to be convinced as well. Comics are about telling stories worth reading. That's all. We shouldn't try to make it anything more and we should never, ever allow that it be anything less.

Comics will not fulfil its potential, in the culture or in the marketplace, as well as the other dramatic arts until it realises what it's good for. The purpose of comics, like all the dramatic arts, is to tell stories that matter to people, to all people. Any act of creation is a volley against entropy, but an effort to drama is the search for order in human experience and meaning through our interactions with one another. People are the only measure of value, because they are the only ones who can assign it. Whatever meaning is in the stars is what we place there by seeing them.

As comics become more and more indicative of real human truth, they will become more complex, multi-faceted, and compelling. They will be read by a wider audience because truth is universal. Unlike painting or sculpture or music, comics are a dramatic art and so need to approach that truth investigating the ways we interact with one another.

The real purpose, the prime cause for human storytelling, is the same sword that comics on the whole have yet to pull from the stone. But we will. Surprise, that's the secret.

Leland Purvis is the creator of VOX and PUBO.

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