Or a look at the interaction of speech and sound in Black Widow #5, Island: Habitat, and Cerebus: High Society
by Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, Matt Wilson, and Joe Caramagna; Simon Roy; and Dave Sim, respectively.
I've been thinking about word balloons lately. Specifically how they represent sound, and how sound is experienced by an audience. Listening to speech is an active process by an audience, they have to like, actually listen. I've been keeping my eye out for comics that play with this fact to create some interesting comics moments. And I have some examples for you!
There will be *SPOILERS* for Black Widow 5, Cerebus: High Society, and Island: Habitat.
The first example is from Black Widow #5. In this case the third panel in the bottom row has a cut off repeat of the speech bubble from the second panel. It is recognizably the same bubble of text, but it isn't actually fully legible in the panel. On the one hand, this little snippet of half seen text acts as a time stamp and makes sure the reader recognizes that panels 2 and 3 happen simultaneously. But, I think it's more than that. I think the fact the text is cutoff makes it... out of focus. It's like sound that is happening but not actually being listened to. I think is meant to show that the guy with the gun to his head isn't paying attention to what is being said and is instead thinking about something else. Which given the his following words and actions, makes me believe that this character is centring himself for what is about to happen in this panel. If you buy into this theory, the way this speech bubble is used here is very smart.
The next example is from Habitat, a comic that I originally read as part of the Island anthology. This comic portrays a damaged spaceship where the crew and interior has gone feral. So like, instead of a futuristic crew there are people wearing loin clothes and throwing spears organized into tribes based on their ancestors (I think) section specialization (security, engineering, etc). It's a comic that works because it creates a fully realized tactile world of human desperation in a huge, thoughtfully constructed world of wilderness and technology. I think this example of how speech is used is a great example of the kind of suspension of disbelief that makes this comic effective. In the above scene, one of the feral crewmen boards a battlemech type thing and is sealed in a cockpit. Outside the cockpit, overlaid by the green of the cockpit's glass is another feral crewman barking orders. This choice conveys the separation between in the cockpit and out, but it also really sells a sense of realism: there is muffled, tertiary sound. Which is a fascinating choice. Many comics make an effort to streamline narrative information and to use the readers focus. This is unrealistic, since in real life out of context people, events, and noises are always happening. So creating out of focus sound like this helps build a sense of a busy, populated world. And the use of glass here to create clarity and separation in this example is cleverly simple solution to making this work.
I think my favourite example of the interaction between speech narration and an audience is this one from Cerebus: High Society. In this example a man is giving a speech to a crowd announcing who the next Prime Minister would be, but as soon as the crowd hears Cerebus' name announced they go bananas and sound of their celebration drowns out the rest of the speech. This is represented visually by the jubilant crowd's silhouette actually overlapping and blocking out the speech bubble. Which is just a wonderful graphical approach to this: it captures the emotion and action of the crowd and creates a clear, visual symbol of an audience over powering a speaker. It is a moment of very accomplished comics.
Or a look at some of my favourite storytelling in Black Widow #4
by Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, Matt Wilson, and Joe Caramagna; Marvel Comics
Black Widow remains a very exciting comic to analyze from a comics wonk perspective. With issue #4 the creative team delivers another instalment filled with skillful and interesting storytelling. Unlike previous issues where I could find a worthwhile throughline to frame an analysis, Black Widow #4 showcases a pretty varied mix of techniques. So, I guess in honour of this being issue #4, I'm going to discuss four sequences that I find fascinating.
There will be *SPOILERS* beyond this point.
1. I've talked about this before but Team Widow is really, really good at creating dynamic sequences that use eye tracking to focus the reader and create a sense of motion. This sequence is another great example to this approach. The page opens with a panel that has the black silhouetted Widow in the bottom left corner, then uses the tank-things to create a guide to Widow in the top right panel. This gets the reader efficiently across the page and sets the stakes of the sequence: one covert agent against a place with sci-fi tanks. From the top right panel, the reader drops to the next panel where Black Widow tosses a stone, which guides the reader back to the left, across the page in a carriage-return, and into the next panel where the stone hits the guard. Action, movement, consequence. The reader then moves onto the following panel where distracted-guard is hauled bodily out of frame in a way that synchs the readers eye path to the motion. The following panel, with the guard running, uses the angle of the guards body (and implied motion) to create an arc to the alarm box and inset circular panel. We see the SHNK effect in the round panel, and then carry across the page, creating the down-and-to-the-left motion of the guard yanking the alarm lever. This brings the reader to the bottom left panel where the heavy black of Widow creates an initial focus point. The reader then moves down and through the knife thrust, using eyes and the blade as a guide, and smoothly into the final panel where the long blood smear takes the reader to the end of the page where Widow is dragging the corpses. It is also significant that this final panel's motion seems to carry right out of the panel and into the next page which helps keep the motion going (something that was pointed out in this great video breakdown). It's a great, efficient, and exciting page constructed out very fluid eye tracking.
2. Another aspect of Black Widow I've talked about previously was the use of misdirection in panels to hide story elements in the periphery of panels. This page here has another pretty remarkable example of this. In this case the page opens with Black Widow and two corpses she dragged out of the previous page. Widow is looking up toward the next panel which gives a great guide to focus the reader on where to go next. The reader enters the next page and sees that the guard in the middle of the panel has a brighter colouring and is the most visually emphasized part of the panel. If you are a reader like me, you then move onto the next panel and see Widow breaking into a room and go, wait, what? And then you maybe loop back to the previous panel and find Widow hidden in the top right corner of the panel. She is drawn as a black silhouette blended into the shadow of the wall/turret. This makes widow another black area in a part of the page rich with identical heavy blacks and very easy, I think, to miss. Especially since the one guard is emphasized so prominently by the colours. This is a fantastic choice since it has Black Widow literally sneaking through the panel! Which is awesome!
3. Black Widow #4 also has a tremendous quiet section where a wounded Natasha speaks with Iosef, apparently a former teacher who rescued her. The entire sequence is a feat of acting and atmosphere and how to make exposition interesting, but this sequence here I think is superbly executed.
One of the key aspects of Black Widow for me, is that we do not get direct thought narration from Widow. Black Widow for me is defined as being supremely competent and vaguely mysterious. Making this work in a comic where she is the central character requires a certain degree of inaccessibility to the protagonist: we can't see her literal thoughts without losing that critical ambiguity. At the same time, for the story to be compelling the reader needs to have some glimpse of the protagonists inner life. Which puts a huge burden on character acting and colouring to provide enough emotional queues that the reader can engage with the protagonist. Black Widow absolutely nails this.
The other challenge of this kind of storytelling is conveying critical story information in visual, organic ways. This above sequence functions to show that Iosef and Widow know each other from the past. In a thought narration comic this would be accomplished, probably, by a caption like: "Ah, Iosef, my old teacher. I haven't seen him in years..." In Black Widow it is all about visual information. We see a flashback, made obvious by the sepia colouring of a faded photograph. In this flashback we see a recognizable Widow, although a younger version of her, with an unknown man. We then see an older man, haggard but still recognizably the same man probably. Which, is actually a pretty remarkable feat of figure drawing. The thing that removes any ambiguity, though, is how the two characters relate to each other. Iosef and Widow have the same spatial relationship throughout the page with Widow prone and to the left of Iosef throughout the page. This is especially true of the top right and bottom right panels where the poses are nearly identical and create an obvious parallel. By the time we leave the page we understand the relationship between Iosef and Widow without it ever being explicitly stated and that is really, really smart storytelling.
4. From a purely comics wonk perspective I think this page, though, is my favourite in the issue.
The top half of the page provides a sequence of Black Widow sneaking into a secure facility in a series of inset panels on a maze-motif background. This is a great choice because it uses the symbology of a maze to convey to the reader that Widow is forced to navigate a convoluted route to reach her objectives. This allows the reader to appreciate the time and complexity of Widow's implied movement without having to depict every step, which reduces the space needed for this chunk of story. The use of the maze motif is also pretty interesting because, for me at least, it calls to mind the wire lines of circuitry. This along with the perspective, I think, makes the round panel in the top left feel like a shot taken by a nearby security camera. Which implies, along with the earlier pulled alarm lever, that Black Widow has been observed by the masters of the base she is infiltrating. To me this is part of the comic telling the reader, without making it explicit, that Widow is sneaking into a trap of sorts. It's pretty cool stuff.
The bottom half of the page is where I think some really nifty, if easily overlooked choices are being made. The sequence here is pretty straightforward: Black Widow, having snuck her way to her goal stands behind a dramatically opening door. The execution here, the way the story is constructed, is perfect. The most obvious aspect of this is that as the door opens, the amount of open space in the panel increases. This is enhanced by the shape of the panels which are not square, but fall into a shape with a angled top. This means that as the doorway opens, the panels themselves become taller and more "open" to the reader. In addition the angled top line helps sell a sense of upward motion to pull the readers attention from bottom left to top right. (To get a sense of why this is effective, compare it to the diagram that does the same shot using static square panels.) This sequence uses yet another trick as well: the perspective of the panels ascends with the door. By this I mean each subsequent image is aimed a little higher along Widow's body (which I breakdown in the bottom diagram). What this does is create a sense of upward momentum to the sequence since the door and the perspective are both ascending at the same time to create the feeling of motion. (Again, comparison to the static square diagram will show just how much more dynamic the ascending perspective is.) This choice also has the additional advantage of letting the final panel focus on Widows determined/angry eyes. Which all combined makes this three panel sequence have a tremendous amount of momentum that all focuses on the Widow in an important, solid emotional beat before the next part of the story is unveiled. It's a fairly effortless reading chunk of story constructed out of some very smart, complicated storytelling and why I think Black Widow is such an exciting comic to read and analyze.
As an aside, the maze motif also recently popped up in Bitch Planet #8 by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro, Cris Peter, and Clayton Cowles. In this sequence the characters are sneaking through a prison during a blackout to find a secret, isolated prison cell. Again the use of the maze motif is used to efficiently sell the idea of movement through a convoluted story space without investing a large amount of space to it. In this case, the maze motif is particularly apt because the characters are navigating in the dark from a hastily memorized map. It's a great choice that shows how convergent solutions to similar story challenges can exist.
Or a look at out of focus storytelling in Black Widow #3
by Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Caramagna; Marvel Comics
Something that I've really enjoyed about the current iteration of Black Widow is how the creative team uses eye guiding to enhance storytelling. You might be tired of hearing me bang on about this, but I think it's really cool how eye guiding can be used to highlight key features of a page, pace the story, and to create a tangible sense of motion to make action feel more kinetic. When done well, like it so often is in Black Widow, it's amazing. Black Widow #3 puts an interesting twist on this kind of storytelling by not only calling the reader's attention to key elements of the composition, but by also bypassing other important moments in the page to create earned surprises. It is a really cool twist on eye guiding and I want to unpack a couple examples from the issue here.
There will be *SPOILERS* below.
The first use of subterfuge-guiding in Black Widow #3 is this sequence of Black Widow being pursued through a crowd by a SHIELD agent. First of all it's a great example of eye guiding in comics. The page uses sight lines and speech bubbles to bring the reader across the top row, and uses the held wire in the top-right panel to orient the carriage return. The reader then encounters Black widow observing her tail which transitions into a crowd scene that uses colour and inset panels to show the agent, Black Widow, and her actions. This row is particularly interesting because it uses the tangents of the wire to nudge the reader to Black Widow and to swing the reader into the next panel where the character is tripped! The final panel uses the crowd to push the reader to the agent and his dialogue before the reader leaves the page. It's a pretty great composition.
On the next page Black Widow is wearing a disguise that she got from somewhere... Or maybe you noticed the one-armed naked mannikin at the very end of the page. Regardless, the key story snippet, the disguise itself, is buried in the composition in plain sight. The reader can see it, but because it isn't emphasized by the eye guiding, perhaps even hidden behind the emphasized Black Widow, it initially appears like background set dressing. It isn't until the nude mannikin or the disguise at the airport that the outfit in the window becomes important. Which is a neat trick because it allows the comic to deploy a little surprise that is constructed out of information available to the reader.
A simpler, and maybe more directly relevant of subterfuge-guiding is this sequence. On this page, Black Widow garrotes a guard, sees a child or maybe memory of her childhood through a window, and then is surprisingly struck by the guard she was in the process of subduing. The eye guiding on this page is relatively straight forward, with clear east-to-west moves before a carriage return that heavily emphasizes the bright window with the girl in it. The page then takes a clear turn into the motion of the guard striking black widow using the shape of their arms and the onomatopoeia to pull the reader through the motion. What's cool about this sequence is that the girl-in-the-window panel is highlighted so much that it distracted me from the more peripheral elements of that panel. This meant that I didn't notice that the guard is depicted getting his hand under the garrotte wire and is escaping from the distracted Widow. As a result, when the guard strikes Black Widow in the final panel it was surprising and, because I could double back to the preceding panel, it felt earned and satisfying. Which is really fantastic storytelling: in the same way Widow is distracted from noticing the guard escape because of what she is seeing, the reader is also distracted from seeing the guard escape. It's using emphasis and slight-of-hand to generate the experience of the protagonist in the reader.
Or a breakdown of a really great page in Black Widow #2
by Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, Matt Wilson, and Joe Caramagna; Marvel Comics
Black Widow #1 was one of the most satisfying single issues of comics I've ever read. It made tremendous use of mystery and silent-running comics to drive an engrossing, amazing action sequence that perfectly establishes the stakes and tone of the series. Black Widow #2 has the unenviable job of providing the context and underlying details to make the series work. Fortunately, Team Widow is up to the task and created a compelling comic filled with atmosphere, style, and fantastic storytelling. One page of which I want to take a closer look at, because it pulls off a really cool trick.
There will be *SPOILERS* for Black Widow #2
One of the aspects of comics storytelling that I find really interesting is the interplay between artwork and the readers path through a page. And this page is a fantastic example of why I find this stuff so compelling. The story here is that Black Widow is quietly dispatching a group of soldier/assassins set to attack a secret SHIELD funeral. The reader enters the page in the top panel, reads some dialogue, and then carriage returns across the page to meet the silhouette of a running Black Widow in the second panel. This primes an action where Widow tackles the goon in the foreground of the second panel, through the third panel, and leaving him sprawled in the fourth. This action feels heavy and significant as it carries through multiple panels. It also feels quick and fluid since the motion carries along a tangent line created by an underlying triangle formed by the standing-goon, motion blur, and sprawled goon. This provides a clear reading path for the reader and increases the speed of the reader. This triangle/reading path also deposits the reader in the bottom right corner of the fourth panel, which means the reader looks back at the next-goon and sees Black Widow swinging around his neck. This means the reader moves along the path of Widow jumping onto next-goon in a quick, kinetic way. The position of Widow on next-goon also provides a shape that pulls the reader up and around the pair and then down along the cross page carriage return to the final panel where Widow has broken next-goons neck. When you put this entire sequence together the reader follows Widow's motion as she carries out the entire takedown: jumping onto the goon, swinging around him, and then throwing him down to a violent neck-snapping crash. This is the reading path that is established and provides the reader with an evocative sequence that animates the static artwork into a kinetic experience. And given the sheer complexity of the motion this effortless seeming reading path is a remarkable and bonkers bit of comics magic.
Black Widow continues to be a really, really great comic.
Previously:
Black Widow #1
Or my ten favourite things about Black Widow #1
by Chris Samnee, Mark Waid, Matt Wilson, Joe Caramagna; Marvel Comics
Usually when I write about a comic, I try to find a particularly interesting sequence or an aspect of the comic that created a better reading experience. The thing about Black Widow #1 is that the entire comic is a remarkable sequence that is filled with interesting devices and I can't figure out a cohesive way to talk about everything I want to. So, for lack of a better way to do this, here is a round up of my ten favourite things about Black Widow #1.
There will be *SPOILERS* for Black Widow #1 below. It's a really, really good comic so you ought to seek it out before reading on.
1. This is the moment, I think, that it became obvious how good this comic was going to be. This is the first panel of the second page, and shows all of the office workers attacking Black Widow. The thing I love about this page is the fist of the central attacker: it looks to me like it is slightly too large to be anatomically correct in a way that commands a lot of attention. Even if this is just me being crazy or reading too much into things, this fist is perfectly placed to nab attention coming off the lettering before the reader's eyes are captured by the commanding black/red presence of Black Widow. This fist more than anything else on this page states the violent intentions of the office workers and clearly, efficiently establishes Black Widow and the workers as antagonists. It's such a great bit of comics.
(And also, dat tie tho. I'm a firm believer that solid black ties are the best ties, but I would wear the hell out of that Kirby-circuit-esque necktie.)
2. I really like this headbutt sequence. I think it encapsulates the strong storytelling approach of the Black Widow Team, and showcases why this comic is so great to read. The basic engine of these sequence is the down-up-down-up motion of Black Widow butting her assailant in the face. This effect is sets up by the narrow panels, which establish a mostly vertical storytelling space and helps direct the reader to the correct reading paths. The lettering also plays an important role since the narration balloons occur in panels with a top-down paths, and make sure the reader starts at the top of those panels and lingers there for a moment. The upswing, face-smashing panels, in contrast lack complex captioning, allowing the reader to quickly parse them in violent, kinetic moment. And then you layer in the RED! colouring of the impact panels, which adds a dramatic burst and helps queue the reader to the violence of those panels. (Like, take a look at the grey-scaled sequence... it's striking how much less energy the impact panels have in the absence of the red colour.) Which, combined creates a short, effective sequence that takes advantage of multiple aspects of the page to create the best reading experience. It's this dedication to storytelling and collaboration that makes Black Widow so effective.
3. I like Black Widows new character design a lot. I appreciate how the new costume incorporates touches of practical combat apparel (knee pads, body armour, Parkour-ish shoes), while still maintaining the sleek silhouette and visual identity of Black Widow's core look. I also like the redesign from a storytelling standpoint: the concentrated black costume with its red highlight and Natasha's red hair can really a command a panel. It will be interesting how these elements are used going forward in the series...
4. I love this panel. The composition, colours, level of detail, and storybeat create this great moment of awkward, restive suspense for me. It's funny and captivating and I would buy a print of it.
(This is also, incidentally a good example of how the black/red of Black Widow can pop on the page.)
5. I love how the story escalates. The comic opens with Black Widow mysteriously fighting an office full of drably dressed ordinary looking people. Then she smashes through a wall and finds herself in a room full of SHIELD agents and the stakes and parameters of the story shift from maybe a mundane espionage mission to a comic book one. And then Black Widow explodes an exit and jumps out of the building... except the building is a helicarrier and things ratchet up to full-on superheroic scale. One of my favourite aspects of Black Widow #1 is how, as a reader, I was kind of chasing the story. What is happening? Why is Black Widow fighting these people? These agents? Is everything what it seems? By changing the scope of the story it helps unfold the mystery in an interesting way and keep the reader off balance. Great stuff.
6. There is something about sections of Black Widow #1 that remind me of Bandette (by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover). This is especially true of the falling section: with the ejection button kick, quips, pantomime, trickery, and playful kiss the entire section is kind of fantastic and fun in a way that makes me think Bandette. I really like how playful the early section of this comic reads: it helps maintain the mystery of the comic (maybe it's all an exercise?) and it helps set up a contrast that makes the last sequence of the comic more impactful and significant. I am not sure whether the comparison with Bandette is intentional, but I really like Bandette and like, if you elevator pitched me highstakes espionage Bandette for an adult audience I would read it.
(Y'all are reading Bandette right?)
Also, I love the use of an implied triangle in the top tier of panels on this page. It creates the sense of the plane of the art falling away and helps sell that Black Widow is plummeting in a simple and effective way. Black Widow is filled with examples of this kind of quietly adroit storytelling.
7. I love this sequence of Black Widow crashing. One reason is the wonderful motion tangent that moves across the page merging Black Widows motion path with the readers eyepath to create a quick, fast feeling moment of comics. Woosh! I also really like this sequence because of the baby/toddler pointing at Black Widow falling. It might just be that as a new parent I am a sucker for cute kids being cute, but I think it's more than that... The inclusion of such a natural moment in the background helps make the comic world feel more inhabited and bigger. Sure, Black Widow is having airborne combat adventures, but this mother and kid also are going about their day and have their own, barely glimpsed story. The use of such an active background extra is a small detail, but I appreciate how much more alive it makes this sequence feel.
8. I love this sequence. It is visceral and brutal and simple and filled with great storytelling. The angry red background feels furious and dangerous. When combined with the heavy shadow on the figures, this backdrop also serves to disguise the striking red-highlights on Black Widow and make the two combatants look and feel more equal which is super cool comics. I also love the top-left pistol to carriage return trigger pull: it uses the swing across the page to create a sort-of jump cut reveal, like a page turn within a page, which makes the moment feel more shocking. The carriage return also adds a certain sense of motion to the transition which also makes the moment more dramatic. It's an awesome choice. This entire brutal sequence is also interesting from a broader story perspective: it is visceral and mean when contrasted against the more playful earlier stretch and helps establish that whatever the mystery is, whatever Black Widow stole must be important and for real. And the fact that Black Widow pulled the trigger, was willing to kill the agent she playfully kissed a few pages ago, establishes how far she is willing to go, how vitally important the secret is. It's a perfect moment.
9. I love the relative silence of Black Widow #1. Reading text inevitably causes the reader to slow down and stop focusing on the artwork, so it slows progression through a page and can interrupt the flow and rhythm of action. By not having a lot of dialogue or narration captions Black Widow #1 allows the visuals to do the storytelling and maximizes the flow and interaction of panels. I recently read a pretty good comic with a great premise and nice action artwork, but which had so much narration that each panel of action essentially became disconnected and isolated, and which prevented the kind of kinetic sequences that made Black Widow so enjoyable. The impact of text on the experience of sequential art cannot be overstated, and Black Widow #1 is a great example of the kind of storytelling that can be accomplished with judicious paring down.
10. I especially love how silent Black Widow is. By not having Black Widow speak or narrate within the majority of Black Widow #1, the comic manages to be mysterious. We never find out what she took and for a huge swatch of the issue it wasn't clear if it was a training exercise, or like fake-SHIELD, or something else. It is ambiguous, which means that readers are always chasing the story, trying to figure out what is happening and why, which creates this driving impetus to move through and understand the action. It's really effective.
It's also kind of important for my conception of a Black Widow comic. I like takes on Black Widow that maintain a certain element of secrecy. Like, in an ensemble, I think Black Widow works really well as someone who is hyper-competent, kind of mysterious, and vaguely scary. I'm not sure this necessarily translates into a solo book, since a protagonist probably needs to be more complicated and accessible. But like, the Edmondson/Noto Black Widow, which while I really enjoyed the art of always bothered me because Black Widow was so unsure of herself and completely available to the reader... it felt like someone just starting out. (More Sydney Bristow less Natasha Romanov.) My favourite Black Widow comic, a run by Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna, did a great job maintaining a dramatic sense of mystery and danger around Black Widow. However, this series also featured a significant amount of time with Natasha unconscious and people talking and deciding things about her, which definitely hurt the badass and agency points of the series. This Black Widow #1, by omitting internal narration manages to create that sense of intrigue and secrecy while the silent action portrays Black Widow as a hyper-competent badass. It's only one issue so it's hard to judge how the series will be, but this might be my favourite single issue of Black Widow yet.
