Deep Sequencing: Finding Panels

Or a look at the panel construction in Finder: Third World
by Carla Speed McNeil, Bill Mudron, and Jenn Manley Lee; Dark Horse Books

Finder is a pretty fantastic comic. Of all the comics I write about, I think Finder might be the closest to my perfect reading experience. The story is broadly Science Fiction, and is just filled with hundreds of high concept ideas and really insightful, and often darkly funny, critiques of contemporary culture. The characters are vivid and charming and weird. The artwork is expressive, beautifully composed, and filled with an incredible attention to detail and storytelling. I cannot recommend Finder enough.

And yet, I find it really hard to satisfactorily articulate *why* you need to read this comic.

But I think this sequence from Finder: Third World encapsulates, in a single moment, just why I am so keen on Finder:

(As always *SPOILERS*.)

The story of the sequence is that Jaeger, the half-Ascian Finder, has gone legitimate as a courier in one of the futuristic domed cities of the comic. His colleague brings back a package that is undeliverable that is addressed to the next building over from their courier office. Apparently the freight elevator is broken and the recipient's building won't allow deliveries in the main elevators. Jaeger being a crazy badass flings himself through the air, from building to building and with delightful casualness delivers the package. The dude signing for the package asks "Is this level of effort worth what they must be paying you?" and Jaeger answers: "At this point in my life, I think it's important to be happy." It's pretty much perfection.

This sequence captures Finder's spirit. We have a far-future world of holographic interfaces and neurally implatned information technology in an arcology mega-metropolis where physical delivery people are waylaid by restrictive, classist rules about lift usage. Against this pretty incisive satire about work, class, and the physical limitations of technology we get a pretty solid character building moment for Jaeger, seeing his utter disregard for safety, his bravery, and his uncanny talent for getting difficult jobs done. And then this wonderfully absurd situation ends in a profoundly resonate statement that is the crux of my approach to finding meaning in life. I kind of fucking love this comic.

As a comic wonk, I love this sequence too. The final page of the sequence in particular is this amazing showcase of how layout structure can add huge amounts of emotion to a compostion. The majority of Finder: Third World is comprised of square and rectangular panels that fit together at right angles and make for a very clean, very easily read narrative (like above left). The final page of the package delivery sequence (right) has panel shapes that are radically different. Instead of fitting together in clean blocks, these panels fit together in radical angles. This gives the page a precarious, unbalanced look that perfectly captures the drama and unusualness of the situation. Which, in turn, helps boost the danger and comedy of the sequence elevating the entire experience. It's a fundamental comics choice that really improves the page and is diagnostic of the superlative attention to detail that is characteristic of Finder.

Finder is too good a comic to not have read. 

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:

So I Read The Finder Libraries
So I Read Finder: Talisman
So I Read Finder: Third World

Deep Sequencing: Lettering in Finder

So I Read Finder: Third World

A 250 word review of Finder: Third World
by Carla Speed McNeil, Jenn Manley Lee, and Bill Mudron; Dark Horse Books

Finder is one of my favourite comics. It's a comic that manages to wed empathetic, nuanced stories to one of the most effortlessly dense Sci-fi settings I've ever read. Every moment of Finder is a curated act of discovery in a fractal construct of speculation and fantasy. If you are at all a fan of Science Fiction, Finder Third World is a must read. Finder is also one of the most masterful comics I read: this is a comic filled with wonderful character work, dynamic layouts, and exquisite flourishes of lettering, inking, and craft. Third World is even in colour! If you are a fan of well made comics, Finder Third World is a must read. Basically I cannot recommend Finder and Third World enough. The comic itself focuses on Jaeger, the half-Ascian Finder with the mysterious healing factor and a penchant for getting into trouble. In Third World Jaeger decides to go legit and take a real job becoming a courier for X-Rays. He quickly rises through the ranks, taking on increasingly demanding and outlandish jobs until a work place mishap dumps him in Third World where he might learn the secret behind his past. Finder Third World uses Jaeger's courier jobs to tell a great bunch of funny, thought provoking, heart felt, and creepy short stories that build to a dramatic climax. This chapter is a great showcase of the heady concepts, beautiful artwork, and brilliant comedy that defines Finder. Finder Third World is why I love comics.

Word count: 250

Post by Michael Bround

Previously

Finder Libraries Vol. 1 and 2

Finder: Talisman

Deep Sequencing: Finding Text

Or a great example of text box placement and eye guiding in Finder
by Carla Speed McNeil; Dark Horse Books

Finder is an absolute treasure of comics. It is simply, one of the most engrossing, quirky, and well made comics I have ever read. And there is a ton of it! Decades of these interlocking Sci-fi stories set in this imaginative, bizarre world. If I were to create a canon of comics everyone should read this series would be totally in it. Like, I can't emphasize how essential a comic Finder is.

But Finder is also quite interesting in that it is a comic with a singular creator. One person wrote the story, decided on the page layouts, drew, inked, and hand lettered all of the comics in this book. Which is a level of control that is not super common in this era of comics and streamlined publishing machinery. Now collaboration can make some really spectacular comics, where every team member is an expert at their portion of the comic making process, but some interesting comics happen when a single creator assembles the entire comic. And Finder is filled with great examples of this.

(That isn't to say that there isn't an editor involved who helped midwife the creative process, but my point here is that a single person conceived and assembled the story telling machinery of the book.)

There will be *SPOILERS* below.

Something I have really been interested in lately is the role lettering and text placement plays in adding to and controlling the flow of a comic. As a reader our eyes are drawn to the text, and as a result, text boxes can really affect how we navigate a page. When placed poorly, text becomes a distraction that takes away from the art and damages the reading experience. When done well, lettering becomes another tool that highlights key elements on the page or guides the eye through the page in certain interesting ways. Finder, which has the same person lettering (hand lettering!) the page as drawing and designing the page, has some great examples of lettering being used to do interesting and ambitious things.

This page is relatively simple but works because of the placement of the lettering. The chapter in Finder that this page is from is from Five Crazy Women, which is a dark humour story about Jaeger, the namesake Finder of the comic (and owner of the sexiest chest hair in all of comics), talks about some of his most crazy dating stories from his life as a wandering tomcat. On this page he relays his love of living in the wilderness and explains why he travels back to the city, which is for sexy women and processed baked goods. And the lettering makes the whole page work.

First the narration boxes stretch across the top of the page, which keeps your vision glued to the tree leaves on the page while Jaeger discusses his love of the wilderness, which keeps the readers mind on nature while they process the text. And then the three floating text boxes placed strategically around the woman on the page draw out eyes down the page and over the woman's body. Critically these narration captions are placed such that readers eyes pass over the nape of the woman's neck and ear, over her breasts, and along her hips and swell of her bum: these panels draw our eyes along paths that replicate the glances and experience of checking out a woman. Which helps sell Jaeger's desire for this woman and sexualizes her, which makes sense given the sexy nature of this particular story. Our eyes are then drawn to the letters surrounding the cake in the foreground. The lecherous glance of the previous narration sequence and artwork have already set the mood, so that when we arrive at the cake we understand that Jaeger has a nearly sexual desire for the cake as well. I would argue that the perfect placement of text and how it relates to the artwork in this page is a primary generator for the feelings of carnal lust and desire that arise from the page. It's really effective stuff.

Finder is more than just examples of simple, effective lettering choices. There are also all kinds of examples of much more advanced and complex uses of lettering. These pages here are both just great comics. The page on the left comes from a story about a young man whose mind is being used to generate a dream reality for hordes of escapist fans. In the page the main captions and art lead the reader through a sea of subtle text in the background which illustrate the chaos and fractured psyche of the protagonist. The page on the right uses multiple narrative streams with interspersed lettering to simultaneously portray the present story, the memories of the speaker, and his deep held guilt about the past. The chaos and collision of the different text boxes helps sell the emotional weight of the turmoil of the speaker and helps show how the guilt of the memories overrides the very reasonable rationalizations that are being provided to him. It is incredible what can be done with lettering when they are built directly into the page and when placement is used as a part of the storytelling mechanism.

So, as I said, Finder is a treasure trove of comics and is absolutely essential reading.

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:
So I Read Finder

So I Read Finder

A 250 word (or less) review of Finder Library Vol. 1 & 2 and Finder: Voice
by Carla Speed McNeil; Dark Horse Books

One of the things I love about comics is that you can find these treasure troves of fantastic stories. Finder is absolutely one of these amazing comics gems. Finder is a far future comic that mainly revolves around Jaeger Ayers, a half-Ascian Finder, a special kind of tracker, with a mysterious healing factor. The chapters of Finder flit between Jaeger's dual lives as a tomcat in the hyper-urban domed cities of the future and his life as a wandering outcast in the wilderness. The city stories also heavily feature Jaeger's adoptive family: his abusive former sergeant, the man's fey botanist wife, and their three daughters. The stories of Finder are all intense and beautiful and arresting, but fit together loosely. Finder is light on overarching plot, which is for the best because the comic is more about the fantastically realized Science Fiction world Finder creates and the deep, complicated relationships between characters. And really, as fantastic as the stories are, the magic of Finder is its Sci-fi world: it’s at once effortless and alive while also immaculately constructed, from the ruling urban doppleganger clans to the societies of lion-hybrid amazons in the wilds, Finder is just this constant act of discovery. Finder also exhibits some expert level design work and is a modern classic of storytelling. Finder is a comic that has spanned more than a decade so when you visit this world (which you absolutely should) there is so much to enjoy. Seriously, Finder is a must read comic

Word count: 250

Post by Michael Bround

The Atticus Kodiak Novels Are Good Books

Or why you should read Keeper, Finder, and Smoker by Greg Rucka.

Before he wrote comic books, Greg Rucka wrote a series of prose novels about Atticus Kodiak, a personal security agent. They are, as the thriller genre demands, some exciting, suspenseful novels. They are also a good deal more intelligent and progressive than I was expecting given my previous experiences with Thriller books (which I often find jingoistic and predictable). Rucka's thriller novels are also exceptionally well written in kind of a fascinating way.

Thrillers are designed to be exciting. Functionally this means that the books are punctuated by thrilling action sequences separated by tense, drawn out builds to these action sequences. Kind of like genre literature dub-step: a suspenseful pause before the bass of action drops. But novels can't really just be standoffs and shoot-em-ups; they require character development, stage direction, and key infodumps which add critical context and empathy driven stakes to story outcomes. All of these under the hood story mechanisms are required to make a novel work as emotionally resonate literature.

In his Atticus Kodiak novels Rucka displays an incredible knack for establishing these all important story logistics. From a broad standpoint the Kodiak novels conform to the formula of Thrillers: the novels run on a fuel of  fearsomely exciting action sequences and breathe-catching suspense sections. These parts of the novels are great, but I think part of what really makes these books remarkable is the sheer engineered efficiency of the intervening logistics. Rucka, like some kind of old world artisan, seems to effortlessly slot together story elements to simultaneously establish new status quos, reposition characters, and provide plot advancing information all while also developing the characters and the relationships which form the emotional core of his stories. All of this is accomplished with such quiet competence that I frequently lost track of all of this as it happened, the story becoming seamless, until the logistical mechanism completes itself, unexpectedly snaps into motion, and drops the floor out from underneath the current status quo to initiate the next tense build and action sequence. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Rucka's Atticus Kodiak novels are like some kind of elaborate trap which crushes even wary readers in their emotionally resonate Action jaws.

I'm also trying to say that you should read them.

Keeper: I wrote a longer thingy about this book already. So briefly, Keeper sees Atticus Kodiak trying to protect a women's health provider and her daughter from anti-choice extremists in a delightfully progressive and exciting book.

Finder: Atticus Kodiak is tasked with protecting Erika Wyatt, the runaway daughter of his former commanding officer as a gruesome custody battle unfolds between her parents and is complicated by two rival Bricks of SAS comandos. It's twisty as all hell, complicated, and emotionally nasty. I quite enjoyed it.

Smoker: Atticus Kodiak, while down on his bodyguarding luck, gets dragged into protecting a key witness in a Tobacco lawsuit from one of the Ten most deadly assassins in the world. What follows is an elaborate cat and mouse game played out in brutally tense detail. Smoker is an absolute white knuckler of a novel.