Deep Sequencing: Nick Falling

Or a look at action construction in Civil War II: Choosing Sides: Nick Fury pt. 1
by Declan Shavley, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles; Marvel Comics

A thing I am always curious about is how much of a particular comics storytelling approach is driven by the writer in their script and how much are choices made by the illustrator. It clearly differs from creator to creator and from project to project, but it's always fun to see artists I admire write and draw comics. So when I heard Declan Shavley was writing and illustrating a comic in the Civil War II: Choosing Sides anthology I picked the comic up despite not caring at all about Civil War II, being generally opposed to tie-ins on principle, and having very little interest in the other stories (although the one with demon excavator was pleasant enough if very, very silly.) And it's a pretty well executed comic with some flashy storytelling that I'd like to pick apart.

There will be *SPOILERS* below.

I really like how this fall sequence is constructed. The story of the scene is quite straightforward: Agent Fury jumps out of a flying transport taking an adversary with him, falls and lands on top of the adversary thus dispatching them. That said, the execution here, despite it's apparent simplicity involves many smart underlying choices. The first panel has the falling action start right from the top-left corner of the page, bringing the reader right into the fall. This maximizes the distance the fall can travel through the page and also gets the readers attention immediately. The action plays out along a very clear reading path that guides the readers eye cleanly down the fall, through the impact and into the dead adversary before following the motion of Fury crawling for his gun. This eye tracking is key to making the fall read and feel quick and kinetic. Another important aspect of the fall is how space is allotted. The distance between the first two images, the start of the fall and the first impact, is substantially larger than the distance between the second and final images. Since the reader is tracking through this sequence with a clean, quick pace this means that the final two images create the feeling of an abrupt stop. Put all together this creates a kinetic fall ending in a jarring, impactful stop. 

Another important aspect of this fall is a sense of height and the use of the blank background. I would argue that the first panel here has two key pieces of information to convey: that a fall is occurring and that it is from a significant height. The image of the fall satisfies this first storytelling requirement, and the huge white space satisfies the second. A large white space on the page feels very large, and having a large white space under the falling figures tells the reader the fall is happening from a great height. Including a background adds visual information that distracts from just conveying the idea of height. It's unnecessary visual noise that doesn't scream "there is a large space here" as clearly or dramatically as white space. So omitting the background, then, increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the storytelling in this panel. 

I also quite like this sequence here and how it uses horizontal space to create a visually interesting gun battle. Again the secret to making this page work is providing cues to push and pull the reader through the storyspace in the best possible way. The reader enters the page somewhere in the top-left and is drawn to the first speech bubble right at the top of the page. This sets the first panel up as a vertical storyspace where the reader has to look down, in the motion of the repellers, to take in Fury and the lower speech caption. This sells the feeling of the adversaries dropping into the panel and also conveys that the vertical direction is important for the following sequence. This is enhanced by the way the platform in the first panel hangs over the following panels, which really cements that this conflict is happening suspended on the side of a cliff. The reader then moves into the next panel in a right-to-left carriage return where they encounter Fury, highlighted by the colour and his active pose, and then follow the direction of his kick across the panel to the guy knocked off the platform.  This lends the kick a visceral sense of motion. The reader naturally wants to follow the arc of the kicked guy down, so they move into the third panel on the right side and immediately see a new adversary getting his head shot off. They move back to the left, see Fury whose arms create a guide line to steer the reader to the text box where they will notice the goons on the left. The reader moves down into the next panel, and if they are like me, they are immediately attracted to the speech balloon and the big black shape of Fury. The reader then moves left along the blast of the sonic-gun-thing and sees the two adversaries get blasted. The final panel is a simple left-to-right, but one where the colouring of Fury makes him the central, primary figure as he shoots the adversaries. It's a great, easy reading sequence that really constructs evocative, kinetic action.

While we are talking about great gun battle sequences that utilize horizontal story space well, this sequence from Scarlet Witch #7 by James Robinson, Annie Wu, Muntsa Vicente, and Cory Petit, is also pretty great. This sequence does take advantage of eye guiding, in part by using shapes and actions like the above sequence, but it also relies heavily on sound effects to manage where readers look. The reader enters the page in the usual place where they immediately have the character, the Wu, positioned such that their arms pull the reader across the page towards the shot up goons. The yellow KRAK sound effects help pull the reader this way, and critically to this sequence, they work to keep the reader focused on the right side of the page as they move into the second panel. This is important because it deemphasizes the goon sneaking around the dumpster in the second panel so that the reader notices them peripherally. This makes the final panel where, with a THUNK to draw attention, the Wu belts the goon in the face surprising and impactful. (It's also great how this breaks the border of the panel for extra pain points.) The reader then moves along the outstretched arms of the Wu to the next KRAK and into the next page. It's another great gun battle that feels dynamic because of how it manages the readers focus.

Previously:

Injection Volume 1
Moon Knight #5
Moon Knight #2

Hawkeye #16
Scarlet Witch #2

Staring At Scarlet Witch #2

Or a look at layout motif in Scarlet Witch #2
by James Robinson, Marco Rudy, and Cory Petit; Marvel Comics

Scarlet Witch is a comic about a Marvel character who I have middling affinity for, but which is showcasing a rotating group of exciting artists, so I'm reading it anyway. The most recent issue features artwork by Marco Rudy who continues to combine his gorgeous painting with innovative comics layout to create really interesting pages of comics. And here are some of my favourite pages.

There will be *SPOILERS* below.

An aspect of Marco Rudy's comics that I really enjoy is how layout is used to build theme motifs into the page. On the left, Greecian-urn style interlocking panels carry the conversational aspects, which creates space to show the gorgeous hillside town,  but also helps give the artwork a foreign, Greek aspect to help establish a sense of place. Meanwhile, the pages featuring the Minotaur often feature twisting, labyrinthine panels that both tie the artwork to the idea of the monster and which also create a tortured, uncomfortable aspect to the page. When compared, the two layout are remarkably different and help differentiate sections of the comics to create distinct, emotionally charged moments. It's always remarkable how effective layout can be as a storytelling element.

This is probably my favourite layout from the issue. For one, it is absolutely gorgeous from a pure picture-type perspective; there is something to be said about things just looking nice. This layout also does a great job catching the feeling of the moment: the fluid panels capture the sense of ocean waves and breezes and help build a tactile sense of place into the comic. The layout is also quite adept in that the wavey elements of the comic boil out of The Scarlet Witch's head, helping to convey that this  is a conversation occurring on a mental/mystical plane and not in the physical world. It is always pretty great when a layout encodes important narrative information into its fabric. This is just a really, remarkably nuanced sequence that is visually interesting and clear to read.

It is also a pretty interesting sequence of comics due to the very active role that lettering plays in increasing readability. The underlying artwork, to me, is somewhat open to reading multiple ways. To my eye, it generally originates in the lower left corner and vectors outward across the page in a sort of explosion of panels. Meanwhile the lettering provides a clear path from panel-to-panel through the fluid panels which keys the reader into a logical order. Taken together, you get the grand vistas of the page but also a roadmap for navigating it. It's great comics.

Deep Sequencing: Colourful Magic

Or a look at the use of colour as magic in Phonogram #4 and Doctor Strange #1
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles/Jason Aaron, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Cory Petit

An aspect of comics that I've found pretty fascinating lately is how different creators find ways to convey magic in their artwork. Making impossible, natural rule-breaking phenomena feel interesting and weird and significant can really help make a story work so finding a way to make magic visually cool is pretty important. I have seen all kinds of tricks used, including some endlessly cool compositions that violate the rules of comics storytelling in fourth-wall-breaking, disbelief stretching ways. Which, of course, works really well! But the thing is, sometimes simpler storytelling tricks work really well too, and one of the most effective ways of making magic feel significant is a really straightforward use of colours.

There will be *SPOILERS* for Phonogram #4 and Doctor Strange #1

 One of the central conceits of Phonogram is that music literally is magic. Which, as someone who enjoys music, but isn't really transcended by it, is a cool metaphor for a metaphor for being really into something. But even I have to admit that magic has an ability to recontextualize a moment: I have definitely caught myself strutting to the badass tones of Tomoyasu Hotei's Battle Without Honour of Humanity while walking to the bus first thing in the morning. Which is an experience of music involuntarily changing my motion and attitude in a way that is beyond casual explanation; that is basically magical. Or put another way: the music coloured my experience. And Phonogram uses literal colour to show the magic of music in it's pages. It's a choice that does a brilliant job demarcating the bleak mundanity of normal, music-less life, and the way music can cut through the mundanity to generate magical, new experiences. Even strutting to the bus first thing in the morning.

Part of the first issue of Doctor Strange is the idea that the Sorcerer Supreme is lives in a supernatural, unseen world that straddles our own, doing weird doctor things to benefit we mundane folk. The comic uses a similar trick to Phonogram, where colour is used to highlight magical events. In this case though, the magical-colour shares space with a black-and-white mundane word. The brilliance of this is it showcases how vibrant and, well, strange the supernatural world is when compared to the everyday world of regular people. It also does a great job at highlighting the super position of the two worlds: the magical world is layered over the mundane world in a way that is completely distinct and separate, yet still inhabiting a common storytelling space. This is how this magical world exists here, and this is how Dr. Strange is able to move between them as a magician in a very simple, understandable comic composition. Which is really effective storytelling.