Or a look at the use of style motifs in Shutter: Volume 4
by Joe Keatinge, Leila Del Duca, Owen Gieni, John Workman; Image Comics
Shutter is a comic I'm always looking forward to reading the next trade of. Its a solidly engrossing story built around the collision between Saturday-Morning-Cartoon fantasy adventure and a mature approach to consequences. It's also a comic filled with a delightfully mad mashup of well, everything: anthropomorphic animals, steampunk robots, magic, mad science. It's imagination unleashed and super fun to see. Shutter is also proving to be a comic that does some really smart and compelling things with storytelling. And since that is the reason for this blog, I'm going to take a closer look at a couple of my favourite aspects of the comic.
There will be *SPOILERS* for Shutter Vol. 1-4.
One of the chapters that make up Shutter Volume 2 is split into three parallel backstories. This comic tells the origin stories of Chris Kristopher Jr, The Leopard, and Kalliyan, three secret siblings of Shutter's protagonist. The comic presents all three backstories at once, splitting each page into three panels with one devoted to each character. The comic also colour codes each of these panels, blue for Chris, yellow for The Leopard, and magenta for Kalliyan. This makes the division between stories super obvious to the reader and also gives each story it's own visual character and distinct feeling. It's an effective solution to a clarity problem and basically allows the for the simultaneous presentation of each story. Which is really important because the magic of this chapter is how the three stories play off each other. While a reader could basically read each tiered third as its own miniature comic, the real pizzaz of this part of the comic is seeing the parallels and differences between each character's circumstances. This allows for some really beautiful moments of common humanity and some pretty powerful and sharp differences, especially given what the reader already knows about each character. It's a pretty remarkable comic in its construction and experience.
The other thing about this volume of Shutter that I quite enjoyed was its use of stylized flashbacks. I've been interested for a while in how comics sometimes use different, retro styles to distinguish between contemporary and flashback sections of the comic. Shutter is interesting because rather than just use a generic 'old comic' approach to its flashbacks, it uses art and comics styles that riff on particular art style and eras. This functions to provide narrative information (contemporary/flashback) but also grounds these flashbacks in a kind of loose timeline. The story about young Chris Khristopher Sr. falling in love borrows a Eurocomic/Herge style that, along with fashion choices, sets the comic in the 1930s or 40s. The flashbacks of Kate Khristopher and her romance with Huckleberry use a kind of zine comic style that feels like the 1980s or 90s. The flashback introduction of Zohra, a past mentor to Chris Khristopher Sr., uses bright popart stylings that tie the flashback to the 1970s or early 80s. Finally, there is a brief flashback sequence of one of the magic ratguys from the comic that uses pure, sepia-toned dot colours and a cartoony style to evoke old timey comics. This choice is less about evoking an era, but more about playing off the contrast between the Saturday-Morning-Cartoon-nostalgia of Shutter's world with the realistic violence and drama that permeates the comic. All of these choices work to provide story clarity but add an extra level of context that helps make Shutter feel more like a real world with a distinct history. It's good stuff.
Previously:
Or a look at the fantastic cold open n Shutter: Vol. 1
by Joe Keatinge, Leila Del Duca, Owen Gieni, and Ed Brisson; Image Comics
First impressions are important. I mean, ultimately people and stories will be judged by their content, but before all that, they live or die by first impressions. A cover can get someone to pick up a book or comic, a well delivered opening line of prose can hook a reader, and a great opening page of a comic can instantly transport a reader to a fiction world. When first impressions are well made with fiction the reader is invested from the opening moment and bought in to the ongoing story.
Leveraging first impressions is interesting to me. I mean, it's been more than a year, but "A screaming comes across the sky", the opening sentence of Gravity's Rainbow, still has its hooks in me and captures the spirit of that Matterhorn of prose. Or the opening of Bitch Planet, which is a simple seeming intro that is really a wonderfully layered and granular machine that provides the reader with everything they need to know about the setting and themes of the comic. Or the opening to Shutter which...
...which I want to take a closer look at.
Okay. So Shutter Vol. 1. You open the comic and bam!
This is what you see. The barren, cratered desert of the moon, a field of stars, and a child in retro-sci-fi spacesuit asking to go home like it isn't a big deal on a double page spread. Bam! Pa-Zow!
It's kind of perfect.
Shutter is a comic that plays with the tropes of genre adventure stories in an imaginative, brilliantly crazy world. Ninja ghost assassins led by a steampunk robot riding a chicken-monster-thing have a fight in the middle of a city with police driving flying saucers. Minotaur business men ride the subway to work. Shutter is a comic filled with a riot of wonder that gleefully defies logical rules and begs for us to buy into the fun and mayhem. This double page spread captures the spirit of this perfectly. The cheerfully bright spacesuit, with it's impractical, exaggerated form and child proportions, casually running on the moon is a bold, crazy image. It's an absurd image and, since sending humans to the moon is one of the pinnacles of human technical achievement, a very powerful one. The huge size of the splash makes it feel huge and impressive and epic. And yet, here is this kid expressing boredom. This is amazing, yet the kid just wants to go home. Which creates the unspoken question: what else is happening in this world that makes standing on the moon seem mundane. I would argue that this doublepage spread, this single image, absolutely nails the spirit of Shutter: we have raw, unadulterated wonder mixed with fantasy, a character jaded by it, and the promise of wilder things to come. Seeing it I instantly had an impression of Shutter and knew I was going to enjoy it.
So I turned the page again.
And was pleased with what I found.
Shutter Vol. 1 has a brilliant cold open and has a story that lives up to it.
Post by Michael Bround
Previously:
So I Read Shutter
Or a 250 word or less review of Shutter: Vol. 1
by Joe Keatinge, Leila Del Duca, Owen Gieni, and Ed Brisson; Image Comics
There is a certain vein of adventure media from my youth that would pair a dashing adult explorer-type with their kid and send them on amazing quests filled with mystery, magic, horror, and generally impossible things. These stories would always be action packed, but would always turn out alright for the heroes who would learn life lessons and maybe enjoy a wholesome beverage at the end of every misadventure. Shutter is kind of like the comic that wades into this nostalgia-hazed sub-genre and applies real world rules and consequences to this hyper-fantastic world. Which, it turns out, makes for a pretty compelling read! Specifically, Shutter tells the story of Kate Christropher, the only daughter and partner of legendary explorer Chris Christopher, a decade after his death. While she still lives in a fantastic world filled with a cat-alarm clock robot, minotaurs, fairies, UFO police, and a billion other crazy things, she is trying to build a mundane and comfortable life for herself. Except on her 27th birthday Kate is ambushed at her father's grave by ninja ghosts and a steampunk robot and now finds herself the target of assassins and kidnappers working for a mysterious force. Now Kate must return to the life of danger and adventure to survive and confront whoever it is behind these attacks. Shutter is, as I've mentioned before, a compelling read.
Word count: 226
Post by Michael Bround
