Deep Sequencing Black Magick Colours and Letters

Or a look at the use of colour and a lesson in lettering from Black Magick Vol. 1
by Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott, Chiara Arena, and Jodi Wynne; Image Comics

Black Magick is a supernatural detective noir story from Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott, Chiara Arena, and Jodi Wynne. In it, Rowan Black, is a Portsmouth police detective and secretly a real life witch. The comic opens with Black, being called away from a ritual with her coven when a hostage taker requests her by name. Black confronts the madman to find he is magically controlled and that some sort of powerful enemy is hunting witches. It's a well constructed, atmospheric read that uses a muted take on the supernatural and a sense of mundane realism to construct a compelling story world. Black Magick Vol. 1 is a promising introduction more than a standalone story, but is worth a look for the quality of the artwork and for getting in on the story to come. Hopefully, there will be more soon.

Black Magick is also worth talking about because of how it uses spot colouring to signify magic and because it contains a pretty cool little lesson in lettering. I'll try and explore both below.

There will, as always, be *SPOILERS*

Black Magick is another comic that uses colour as a visual signifier of magic and the supernatural. I've written about this before in Dr. Strange and Phonogram, but I think it's worth briefly touching on how colour is used in Black Magick. Unlike the aforementioned comics, which use bright, eye popping colours on sparse black-and-white compositions to represent the mystical world only Dr. Strange sees or to show the magical, pop-music fuelled battle between self-loathing Phonomancers, Black Magick uses colour to subtly layer magical elements and artifacts into its world. The comic, while largely black and white is sumptuously shaded to create a textured, realistic world that has a kind of noir seriousness. Against this greyscale palette, the muted, judicious bursts of colour stand out as visual oddities, violations of the baseline comic world. Basically, a visual metaphor for magic. At the same time the subtly of the application of colour makes this magic feel humble and well grounded. It's a choice that sets the magic of Black Magick up as a supernatural but serious in an otherwise realistic world. It's a judicious and effective choice.

 

The other thing about Black Magick that I think is worth unpacking is lettering. Specifically I want to look at a really, great example of lettering as storytelling guide and contrast that with a place where lettering breaks down where the same trick would have been useful. Mostly, because it's a great lesson in lettering. But before I throw I delve into that, I would like to just take a second to point out that the lettering in Black Magic is largely invisible, which is to say, quite good. It is clear to read, doesn't infringe unnecessarily with the underlying artwork, and occasionally helps steer the reader through the page. It does it's job seamlessly. 

I really like the lettering in the middle section of this page. The cool feature of the lettering here is that one of the speech balloons is positioned so that it overlaps the panel gutter and breaks into the preceding panel. This means that this chunk of lettering is the first thing the reader encounters in this panel as they carriage return into the panel along a nice clear path of speech balloons. This allows the reader to instantly parse an unorthodox reading order of speech balloons in the panel without any ambiguity. It also... there is this thing in visual storytelling, mainly film, called the 180 rule. The 180 rule posits that it the perspective of a scene shouldn't flip between cuts. Or put another way, characters on the left side of the screen or panel should typically stay on the left and characters on the right should keep to the right. The idea being that rotating the perspective is a little confusing and requires the reader or viewer to expend mental energy keeping track of characters instead of just absorbing the story. (There are obvious caveats and limitations to this, like in Pretty Deadly where the perspective is spun to create a sense of chaos and confusion.) Anyway, what's cool about the lettering here is that the attention carrying speech bubble helps execute a 180 perspective change that is absolutely seamless to read. It's carried off so well that unless a reader is a nutbar like me, they probably just breezed right through this page. Which is pretty excellent storytelling.

Okay, if you are still with me on this deep dive into lettering, Black Magick also has an example where the same lettering trick isn't used and where storytelling breaks down slightly. In the above page the transition from the large central panel (which has great lettering BTW) into the lower panels creates a moment of ambiguity. It isn't immediately clear if the reader should treat the speech bubbles from left-to-right as per the normal sequence, or if they are meant to read the first panel they encounter on the carriage return entering the panel like in the above sequence. It's a moment where the reader has to spend time figuring out the correct reading order instead of just absorbing the story, which is not optimal. The correct order is to read the panels in reverse order, going right-to-left, and I think this could have been made instantly clearer by having the speech bubble break into the preceding panel like above. If this was done the correct speech bubble would gain instant visual primacy and inform the reader on the right order. Which all goes to show how just how finicky a craft lettering must be to get right.

So there you have it, a great little lesson on the power of lettering using a great example and a missed opportunity in Black Magick Vol. 1

So I Read Stumptown: The Case Of The King Of Clubs

A 250 word (or less) review of Stumptown Volume 3
by Greg Rucka, Justin Greenwood, and Ryan Hill; Oni Press

Stumptown: The Case Of The King Of Clubs is yet another instalment of the adventures of Dexedrine Parios, a down-on-her-luck private investigator living in Portland. The current chapter focuses on The Portland Timbres Football Club (which are rubbish compared to my Vancouver Whitecaps). In the comic Dex and her brother Ansel are fans of the team, belonging to a supporter club, and regularly attending games. Tragically Mercury, their friend and fellow supporter, is found badly beaten following a game along with evidence implicating fans of the Seattle Sounders. Dex and her Seattle-fan friend CK are driven to find out what really happened to their friend to avenge him and to stop their fan rivalry from boiling over to tribal violence. Stumptown Vol. 3 is another great instalment in a really enjoyable comic: it delivers another interesting mystery with the charming rumples of an unlucky detective. This chapter features a serious change to Stumptown as artists Justin Greenwood and Ryan Hill replace original series artist Mathew Southworth. While there is certainly a noticeable change in the style of the comic, Greenwood and Hill are skilled storytellers and manage to provide a suitably stylish and gritty looking comic. That said, whether from the intense storyline or Greenwood's very angular characters, Stumptown Volume 3 is lacking a bit of the series trademark Rockfordian smirk. It's not a huge problem, but it’s noticeable. Overall though, Stumptown Volume 3 is an excellent comic in a great series you really ought to be reading. 

word count: 248

Previously:

Stumptown: The Case of the Baby in the Velvet Case
Stumptown: The Case of The Girl Who Took Her Shampoo (But Left Her Mini)
A Fistful of Rain

Deep Sequencing: Making an entrance in Stumptown

Deep Sequencing: Widescreen Action in Stumptown Vol. 2

Deep Sequencing: Head Of The Family

Or a look at how narration and captioning empower a character in Lazarus Volume 3
by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, Santi Arcas, and Jodi Wynne; Image Comics

In the comic Lazarus, the world is ruled by plutocrat families which function essentially as corporate royalty. Forever, the protagonist of the comic, is a genetically engineered supersoldier who exists both as an enforcer and a junior member of the Carlyle plutocrat family which rules much of western North America. An important aspect of Forever's life are the complicated family dynamics of the Carlyle family, particularly her relationship to her father, the head of the family and business, and de facto ruler of the Carlyle domain. It is a strange relationship and Malcolm, her father is an interesting and intimidating character.

Malcolm Carlyle is portrayed as an authoritative character. He is white, apparently middle-aged, and has a generally stern baring. He dresses in a grown up, all business way usually wearing suits or dress shirts. He is always seen in command of the room he is in with his family members, and even members of other plutocrat families deferring to him. Malcolm Carlyle is obviously a big deal in a very consistent, systemic way.

The thing is, Malcolm Carlyle is also portrayed as a big deal using a really cool comic trick in Lazarus Vol. 3.

Which of course, involves some *SPOILERS*

The story of this page is that Forever, acting in her capacity of Family Lazarus is sent to deliver a message to her counterpart from a rival family. The goal of her trip is to negotiate a Conclave, a gathering of the plutocrat families, to settle a dispute. What is so remarkable about this sequence is that the actual negotiations depicted occur silently, and are instead narrated in the instructions Malcolm Carlyle gives Forever. This choice depicts Malcolm as being a deeply cunning and prescient strategist that can accurately predict the shape of the negotiations ahead of time. It is also a choice that lends Malcolm an authorial voice: this page reads less like conventional narration than as a literal script dictating how the scene and artwork should look. This script-iness is built into the structure of the narration captions as they, unlike normal narration in Lazarus, blend into the gutters of the page and appear to somewhat outside the bounds of the panels and comic world. Collectively this lends suggests Malcolm exerts a great deal of power and control to the point that it can seem that he is writing the comic world he inhabits. Which is really, really smart and interesting comics.

And why I totally accept Malcolm Carlyle as a truly intelligent and formidable leader. 

Previously:
Lazarus Vol. 1
Lazarus Vol. 2
Lazarus Vol. 3

Deep Sequencing: Repetition and acting

So I Read Lazarus: Conclave

A 250 word (or less) review of Lazarus Volume 3
by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, and Santi Arcas; Image Comics

Lazarus is part of an ongoing series. To read a review of Volume One, go here.

The first chapter of Lazarus focused on introducing us to Forever, the superhuman bioengineered enforcer of the Carlyle family, and the second chapter constructed the dystopian world of life inside the Carlyle family holdings. Lazarus: Conclave shifts the focus from establishing internal conflicts to the international world of Lazarus and the complicated framework of warring plutocratic families which control the globe. In this chapter wayward Carlyle son Jonah seeks sanctuary with rival family Hock and instead finds himself held hostage. This leads to a Conclave where leaders from the ruling families and their Lazarus enforcers meet to settle the dispute between Carlyle and Hock. This gives us a much deeper look into the ruling class of Lazarus and a fitting stage for a great story of intrigue, romance, drama, and betrayal and maybe the impetus for the central conflict of the series. Lazarus: Conclave also represents a tonal shift for me: while still very smart, very well made Sci-fi, Volume 3 feels less obviously horrific and focused on examining sociopolitical trends and more interested in telling a compelling story and character development. Which is a welcome change in that it gives the creative team a chance to show their great ear for dialogue and eye for acting to really breathe extra life into the comic's characters. Lazarus was always good, but now it feels inhabited by real people. Which has transformed Lazarus from a smart, scary Sci-fi comic, to a smart, scary Sci-fi comic that I’m deeply emotionally invested in. 

Word count: 250

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:
Lazarus Vol. 1
Lazarus Vol. 2

Deep Sequencing: Repetition and acting

BRAVO Is A Good Book

Or why you should read Bravo
by Greg Rucka

BRAVO, a thriller novel about covert black ops commandos, is a direct sequel to the novel Alpha also by Greg Rucka (To read a *SPOILER* free review of ALPHA go here.) In ALPHA, a terrorist plot to detonate a dirty bomb in Wilsonville, a California themepark bearing a remarkable similarity to Disneyland, is barely foiled by Jad Bell and his team of Shooters. In the process Jad's ex-wife and daughter are caught in the park and traumatized, Bell and his team are beaten and bloodied, and Shoshona Nuri, another American agent, is killed saving Bell's daughter. Bell and his team also learn that the attack was funded by a cabal of wealthy Americans and that it was perpetrated by a group performing terrorism for hire. BRAVO opens with Bell and his team leading an assault in Tashkent that captures Vosil Tohrir, the terrorist lieutenant responsible for the events in ALPHA. This event brings Bell into contact with Elisabetta Villanova, the lover of Tohrir who is secretly a longterm deep cover agent named Petra Nessuno, AKA Blackfriars. Bell, Nessuno, and his team must protect and interrogate Tohrir to stop the contingency plan of the American cabal and to capture The Architect, the mastermind of the terrorism-for-hire organization.

As always BRAVO is a properly exciting novel that showcases Rucka's ability for constructing these meticulously engineered thriller novels. The prose in BRAVO is a machine, a well maintained rifle for storytelling where every component has been selected, lubricated, and lovingly assembled into an efficient device for unloading high velocity action sequences with intellectual accuracy and devastating emotional impact. When the trigger is pulled in this novel, it's deadly. 

That said, BRAVO is also a novel that delivers a nuanced and deeply effecting meditation on love: love between a man and his family, love between a General and his mistress, love between a terrorist mastermind revolutionary and his agent, and love between a deep cover agent and her target. BRAVO explores the many ways love can work in the arena of espionage and power and violence. How love can be a source of strength and joy, but how it can also be the critical weakness that destroys the strongest soldier or most careful planner. How love can be a weapon. And it is this thematic portion of the book that provides the absolutely eviscerating blade at the core of the novel. As is the case for a Rucka novel, the flawlessly paced action is a vessel for a deeper emotional payload.

I really enjoyed this book!

(Incidentally, there is a fairly small reference to a French town called Narbonne in BRAVO. In a profoundly outlandish coincidence, I read this reference to Narbonne, while sitting on a train platform in Narbonne. I had never been to Narbonne before this or after, and hadn't heard of the town until that morning when my wife and I were working out the logistics of our journey. So, on the day that I first learn Narbonne is a place, and while actually briefly visiting Narbonne, I read a reference to Narbonne in an American thriller novel. What the fuck are the odds of that!? When I eventually have a paranoid break with reality, this is going to be one of the reasons why.)

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read an exciting and well written book. I would not recommend this book to a young reader as there is a lot of violence, shocking even by todays standards, and some pretty transgressive and problematic sexual content that I think is better suited to a mature reader. But, if you are a mature reader and looking for a book to read on an airplane or train platform in Narbonne, BRAVO is an engrossing page turner that I really enjoyed.

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:
Alpha
Finder, Keeper, and Smoker
Shooting At Midnight
Critical Space, Patriot Acts, Walking Dead 
A Fistful of Rain
Queen and Country: A Gentleman's Game, Private Wars, and The Last Run

Deep Sequencing: Twisting The Knife

Or a look at how extra panel beats are used to guttering effect in Lazarus Vol. 2
By Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, and Santi Arcas

Lazarus is the Dystopian Science Fiction comic that feels too realistic to be fun. It tells the story of Forever Carlyle, the enhanced Lazarus enforcer for her family, in a future where obscenely wealthy families have carved up the world and rule over humanity. It's a comic about the logical extension of todays most worrisome trends. It's very good, and very horrific.

It is also a comic that has some great examples of the use of repetitive panels.

I am fascinated by the use of repetitive panels in comics. The practice of placing a series of panels with only slight differences in composition or action can lead to some pretty interesting storytelling mechanisms. It's really a unique and discrete comics tool. And Lazarus Vol. 2 does some really interesting things with repetitive panels worth taking a closer look at.

There will be *SPOILERS* for Lazarus Vol. 2 below.

The simplest, most obvious example of repetitive panels is all about reaction and emphasis. A panel shows a character in one position, and then something happens, and we see the character react. The similarity in panel composition let's the reader focus on the differences between panels, which in a character reaction shot really enhances the emotion of the moment. This works great in the above selection from Lazarus, where we really see Forever react to the awful, awful experience of being woken by an alarm. Because the panel repetition drives home the contrast between the peaceful sleeping Forever and the stunned, suddenly alert Forever we absolutely experience that blade of shock that comes with sudden wakefulness. It's an awful, awful feeling, but great comics.

Repetition in panels also has the effect of drawing out moments. Often, each panel in a comic is kind of like a unit of time; the more panels you see, the more time is being depicted. It's somewhat analogous to individual frames of film in a movie reel. So one of the things that can happen when several highly similar panels are used in a row, is that moments can stretch and feel longer than they might otherwise. This meditation scene is a great example of this: we get an establishing shot panel and then four, very similar panels in a row that make the scene feel especially long and especially still. Which is a great visual tag for meditation, which is really the act of spending long spans of time as still as possible as a way to quiet and focus the mind. It's a really smart page layout.

The time displacing effects of repetitive panels can really make moments feel heavier, more significant too. The woman being interrogated here is essentially powerless and in the hands of people who can, and will, do whatever they want with her. And yet, she takes the time to build herself up and tell them to fuck off. It's a powerful moment that I think works as well as it does because the use of repetitive panels creates a sense of time. And this sense of time shows that the woman had to work up to the moment, that it was a conscious utterance and not just a reckless, emotional reaction. It's a really masterful use of panel allocation for emotional effect.

One of my favourite things about Greg Rucka as a prose author is that he has this wonderful tendency to build up these emotional gut punch moments that are like knife blows to the soul. Just these perfectly delivered moments of awful that make you step back from the novel and chew on for a moment. With Michael Lark and Santi Arcas in Lazarus, we get that same soul-stabbing knife twist moments in comics form.

And these knife-twisting moments seem to rely on repetitive panel constructions to work. It seems like the combination of contrast and time stretching create this perfect storm for significant character moments. Like, take the above sequence. Forever has a weird relationship with her father; she has been conditioned to love him deeply, and yet she is also being taught that she is property, a weapon of the family. In the above sequence we see this entirely encapsulated in three repetitive panels. We see kind of a lovely moment of Forever embracing her father and then that moment ruined in this slow, awful way that emphasizes the grosser parts of her role in the family. This sequence absolutely guts me, and I think it comes down to how stretched out it is, how we get to see the entire arc of glee and rejection play out, and the sharp obvious contrast between the happy embracing Forever and the disappointed formal Forever. It's this perfect, significant moment, that uses repetitive panels to twist the knife in your soul.

Lazarus Vol. 2 is a great comic with some great use of repetitive panels which will give you feelings. You should check it out.

Previously:
Lazarus Vol. 1
Lazarus Vol. 2

So I Read Lazarus: Lift

A 250 word (or less) review of Lift Volume 2
by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, and Santi Arcas

Lazarus is a comic about a dysopian future where North America has been carved up between plutocrat families and where humanity has been divided between powerful Family, a privileged group of Serf specialists, and hordes of wretched, impoverished Waste. The protagonist of the comic is Forever Carlyle, the genetically engineered super solider "Lazarus" for her powerful family. In Lazarus: Lift we see Forever work to foil a terrorist plot and get glimpses into her terrifying childhood spent training and conditioning to be her family's loyal enforcer. We are also introduced to the Barrets, a Waste family, on a desperate pilgrimage to be made Serfs and lifted out of squalor. Lazarus is a really good comic: the story is solid and the art is endlessly atmospheric. Lazarus is also not a very fun comic. I find it far too prescient, far too much the logical extrapolation of the worst trends of hyper-capitalism, economic inequality, environmental disaster, and authoritarianism for it to be a good time. It is hard to look at a cautionary tale of impending doom and find it full of laughs and awesome moments. But Lazarus is interesting, gripping, and probably one of the most uncomfortably engrossing reads I've had in recent memory. From a series structure Lazarus: Lift feels like the first real act in what promises to be a challenging and worthwhile story. Just be ready to be terrified.

Word count: 232

Previously:
Lazarus Vol. 1