DENSITY=EXCESS

 This essay exists for the most part to draw a line between both 2013's THE NARRATIVE RULE OF EXCESS and its corollary from 2017, EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, and the more recent LOVE, DENSITY AND CONCRESCENCE from 2025. In the last of these, I wrote:

because density has a stronger association than does concrescence with the quality of some physical substance, it also proves somewhat better for describing the finished product. I might say, using my most recent emendations of my potentiality terminology, that "Dave Sim's work excels at dealing with didactic cogitations, while Grant Morrison's work excels at dealing with mythopoeic correlations." That quality of excellence can be metaphorically expressed as a given work's density, in that such density shows how thoroughly the author was invested in a given set of fictional representations (sometimes, though not usually, on a subconscious level).

In contrast to my meager usage of the term "density," I probably have many references to "excess" scattered throughout this blog, since that philosophical concept was thoroughly explored by one of my major influences, Georges Bataille, particularly in the first of his works I ever read, VISIONS OF EXCESS.  In the two linked essays above, my main concern was to apply Bataille's concept to my own concepts of the two forms of sublimity. I won't get into those formulations here, for I'm concerned that excess is a general rule, like density, for judging the presence or absence of excellence in fictional works.   

The difference between the two concepts relates to authorial motive. The author who achieves excellence in one or more of the four potentialities does so because he/she becomes engaged enough with the material to DESIRE to give it a density, a thoroughness, that seems to be like that of lived experience. The creator of a poor work, within whichever potentiality one judges the work by, has no desire, or next to none, to convey investment in the material to his audience. The creator of a fair work has some desire, but only up to a point. It's only the creator of a good work who's totally invested with respect to at least one potentiality.

One example of authors investing "excess effort" in various potentialities can be seen in a comparison I floated between the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR and the Drake-Premiani DOOM PATROL. I still believe that the Lee-Kirby work shows an excess of the mythopoeic imagination and that the Drake-Premiani work does not. However, I now realize that the later issues of DOOM PATROL put forth a density of specification with respect to the dramatic potentiality. More simply put, even though the Lee-Kirby FF set the early standard for using soap-opera dramatics, one might argue that Drake was, over time, better at finding interesting ways to exploit the dramatic conflicts of the team and its opponents, at creating the illusion of character progress. In contrast, though Stan Lee was the boss in the collaboration with Kirby, he often let Kirby "have his head"-- and Kirby was not really a "details man." On close study the sixties FANTASTIC FOUR has a rather herky-jerky progress with respect to its characters' serial development, even if Lee's dialogue usually managed to paper over any perceived discontinuities. I said that I doubted that artist Premiani contributed much original material to the collaboration; he probably just drew whatever Drake related in his full scripts. Drake wasn't often capable of mythopoeic imagination, unlike Kirby. But he conveyed a sense of density in the interrelations of the Patrol members, because that was the part of his inspiration to which he best related.