So I Read East of West Volume 4

A 250 word (or less) review of East of West Vol. 4
by Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta, Frank Martin, and Rus Wooton

East of West is an ongoing comic. To read the first chapter go here.

East of West is a Sci-fi Western comic about the end times. The comic is set in an alternate reality United States that is divided into a series of opposing nations, a result of an asteroid impact that occurred during the concurrent American Civil and American-Indian wars and calcified the political landscape of the time. East of West Vol. 4 is very much a logistic issue, giving the various plot threads a chance to mature and develop: we check in with each of the nations of the fractured United States, we visit with Death and the other major characters of the story, and there is even an encyclopedia about the various polities of East of West. If there is a central narrative of East of West volume four it is about Babylon, Death's son, as he is tempted into fulfilling his role as the harbinger of the apocalypse. Overall, East of West Vol. 4 is an important set up chapter that seems to be getting the pieces of the comic ready for a tremendous pay off. It isn't the best chapter of comics ever, but it contains the smart world building, relentless storytelling, and beautiful and cerebral artwork that has made East of West so enjoyable. Basically, Vol. 4 a solid chapter in a great comic you should be reading.

Previously:

East of West Vol. 1

East of West Vol. 2

East of West Vol .3 

Deep Sequencing: Odd-Y-Layouts

Or a look at the fusion of storytelling objectives and design in Ody-C Vol. 1
by Matt Fraction, Christian Ward, Chris Eliopoulus, Dee Cunniffe; Image Comics

One of the most remarkable things about comics, is just how effective square panels are. With just a few square panels in a row, a storyteller can create compelling stories that use sequence to impart time. Scaled up to a simple grid, and the storytelling potential becomes nearly endless: nine or twelve square panels on a page can tell virtually any kind of story in a clear, compelling way. All that being said, there are a limitless ways to structure a page, and by using innovative and unorthodox layouts, creators can layer additional story information and emotional impact into the fabric of their comics.

Ody-C Vol. 1 is a comic that aggressively adapts page layout to story to tell a more effective story. I think it's worth taking a look at some of my favourites.

There will be *SPOILERS* below.

This page here, while a lot simpler than most of Ody-C's innovative layouts, is a great proof of concept. The page broadly follows a normal square panel format and features a great forced perspective in the top half of the page of the Ody-C's crew falling into a pit prison in the plane of the page. The smart bit of layout here is the addition of four narrow panels that sit isometrically to the main panel in the top half of the page. What these panels do is really sell the forced perspective which really makes the reader experience that moment of plummeting to certain doom. The addition of panels here also adds complexity to this part of the composition which also increases the sense of chaos on the page. It's fairly simple, but really effective.

Here is another fun use of perspective and isometric panels to enhance storytelling. The bottom half of this double page spread shows the crew of the Ody-C using a space-battling ram to smash through a door. What's cool about this is the square grid panels get canted isometrically as the ram is deployed, so that we get to see and experience the ram physically breaking through something. But there is a lot more to like here. For one the path of the ramming is directly in the line of the reading path lending the scene extra force and a wonderful sense of momentum. And then there are also the interspersed panels of rammers which help sell the isometric panels (by providing an in-plane contrast), and which break up the ramming panels giving the sequence a quick slam-break-slam-break rhythm which is very evocative of the motion. Great stuff.

One of my favourite things about Ody-C, or really any Christian Ward comic I've read, is the use of circular layouts. This page here is a great example. The story of the page is that the Ody-C and it's crew land on a plant and meet the locals. The concentric rings of the page make the arrival itself the focal point of the page and place all of the other events under the general purview of that moment. It also focuses the readers attention along the plane of arrival down the page; the other peripheral details are present, but secondary to the cone of storytelling at the core of the page. What this does is make the moment feel bigger and grander: like the moment requires more documentation than just the core story. This page also makes me think, with it's shapes and bright colours, of a stain glass window, which is probably a me-thing, but also helps punch up the grandeur of the moment. It's pretty cool the kind of things that can happen when an artist steps away from grid based layouts.

I am also a pretty big fan of this extended composition. The page starts with a pretty basic, but smart layout: conventional looking rectangular panels squeezed between narrow, page spanning spaceship panels that sell the speed of Ody-C careening through space. What's great about this composition is that as the ships speed reaches some sort of unsafe threshold the fabric of the page begins to break down. The regular panels on the first double page spread begin to fall off the perpendicular or bleed together as the ship in motion skids dangerously along its small strip. And then you turn the page and enter a page that repeats the motif, but devoid of the original structure. The ship is going so rapidly and the situation is so fucked up that everything is warped and broken and the ship itself is skidding through the unreality of blank white space. It's a beautifully broken layout designed to convey just how uncontrolled and desperate the situation is. It is grand comics.

Previously:

So I Read Ody-C Vol. 1

Layouts in Ody-C #1

Deep Sequencing: Motion!? Comics!?

Or a quick look at the use of gifs in Three Panel Soul,
by Matthew Boyd and Ian McConville; http://www.threepanelsoul.com/

Three Panel Soul is the child/continuation of a comic I have been reading for years. When I first started reading webcomics, before I was even really reading print comics, I read Machall. Machall was a comic about a bunch of geeks living together in a dorm building. It was perfectly timed, because I was enjoying it at the moment in my life when I... would have been living in a dorm if it wasn't way too expensive and if student debt didn't terrify me. (But I was at university at least.) Anyway, Three Panel Soul is the comic by the people behind Machall and follows their adventures as grown men with families and careers, as well as telling tangential comics about Jo, the charming world of warcraft sorceress who works in HR, and Death, the Grim Reaper who enjoys tabletop gaming. It's familiar and nostalgic and fun and well made. I quite like it.

You can read it here.

Machall is also another web based comic that is starting to play with animated gifs in its sequential art storytelling. And, unlike a lot of comics that make questionable choices with their gifs, 3 Three Soul nails it.

The thing about animation in online comics for me is that when gifs are used to just jerkily animate the characters in the comic it is super tacky. It becomes this needless, distracting movement that takes away from the story or joke being conveyed. And, I mean, if a gif is being used to simply animate a character, it's probably a sign that the comic isn't doing a great job conveying motion or character. Where gifs become pretty cool (or at least more palatable) is when they don't take away from the surrounding artwork and provide some storytelling element that static comics cannot.

Which is why I really like this Three Panel Soul selection. Ceiling fans are wonderfully atmospheric things that sell a certain schlubby, backroom mystique. The thing about ceiling fans is that they don't really work in comics: their essential nature is a highly symmetrical, rapid movement that I don't think translates to static drawings. By using an animated gif Team Three Panel manages to capture the essence of the ceiling fan in a way that instantly sells the feeling of a down-at-heels nerd space. It's great.

(I'd also like to point out that the fan being below the dialogue bubbles helps ground it into the artwork and make it part of the composition. It's an important choice that helps make the panel feel cohesive. Another great thing here is the fan has a naturally looped motion, it makes sense to see the same motion over and over and over. More idiosyncratic gifs, where a character does an action, look really stupid after like, the fifth repetition you see. The use of the fan here shows great comics chops but also just, like, good taste.)

So I Read Ody-C: Off To Far Ithica

A 250 word (or less) review of Ody-C Volume 1
by Matt Fraction, Christian Ward, Chris Eliopoulos, Dee Cunniffe; Image Comics

Ody-C is a psychedelic space sojourn set in a distant future. In some ways it is familiar: Ody-C is literally a cultural/genre translation of Homer's Odyssey that sees mythic heroes transfigured into futuristic warriors who are lost in space. That said, Ody-C is also very much it's own thing too: the translational choices create a bizarre future where men are all but extinct and a culture of proud warrior women of alien custom struggle through the whims of capricious gods. It's pretty trippy stuff and a pretty unusual comics experience. The strength of Ody-C, beyond its concept, is the artwork of Christian Ward who has created a fluid, alien aesthetic married to innovative layouts which anchor the psychedelic sensibilities of the story and sells the sheer otherness of the comic. It's also gorgeous to look at. What is a bit more unclear to me is how the story of the comic interacts with the artwork: by being fairly literal in their translation of the Odyssey, Team Ody-C is melding a massive oral/prose construction to sequential art. At times, this can be a pretty cool fusion of media that makes the comic feel like an imagined version of a told story. At other times, the incomplete interface of narration and artwork makes Ody-C feel more like an illustrated story than a comic. Overall, I'd say the result is ambitious and interesting, if a little flawed at times, and that ultimately, Ody-C is a unique thing worth a look.

Word count: 247

Visiting The Island #4: Multiple Warheads

Or a look at active speech bubbles in Island Comics #4 presents Multiple Warheads: Ghostown #2
by Brandon Graham; Image Comics

What's cool about Multiple Warheads is just how little this comic cares about conventional wisdom and how much its willing to play with storytelling elements in unorthodox ways to make interesting comics. In Island #4, Multiple Warheads shirks convention and does some pretty interesting and fun things with dialogue boxes.

There will be *SPOILERS* below.

I think the common wisdom behind dialogue boxes and lettering is to be as unobtrusive as possible. The dialogue boxes should avoid covering artwork and while they should do their job of conveying what the depicted characters say to each other, they shouldn't be overly each catching and distract from the artwork. I feel like this metric maybe lacks some nuance: lettering is often a powerful storytelling tool that uses its ability to draw reader's eyes as a subtle guide to how to read a page. Where this perspective and the common wisdom intersect though, is that the dialogue boxes are best when they are seamless, semi-invisible page components that work their magic without being the focus of the page.

What this instalment of Multiple Warheads does is make the dialogue boxes an active, obvious part of the page in a variety of ways that are pretty cool.

One of the realities of vocal dialogue is that it kind of has two parts: the words being spoken and the emotional tenor of the speaker. In Real Life, these two elements interact to create context and meaning. Someone saying "the dog is coming!" in a delighted voice (like I would) is saying something very different from someone screeching "the dog is coming!" in fear. Comics, which are a silent medium are great at conveying the word content of character dialogue but struggle a bit in layering in the emotional reaction.

Normally comics manage to encode emotion through character acting: the tenor of the dialogue is implied by the happy or sad or horny faces of the portrayed characters. But this isn't always perfect and sometimes, like when a comic is way zoomed out like above, the facial clues needed for this aren't available. Which is where smart comics happens: Multiple Warheads bakes the emotion of some dialogue boxes right into them with artwork that captures the feelings of the speaker. The above selection is, I think, pretty great because the uncomfortable glance in the dialogue box changes a kind of emotionally ambiguous moment of dialogue into something definite. It's really astute stuff.

Another fun example of using illustrations inside of dialogue is this selection. Instead of having the two stoned buds here discuss how Moontoone's nose looks kind of like a dick using words, the comic shows this using pictures. It's a great choice because it takes way less space/time to parse than the equivalent dialogue: the reader can at-a-glance suss out the phallic pictionary of the situation. It's also petty great because, I think, it changes the feeling of the sequence. Reading someone explain in words how someone's face looks like a penis would be actually pretty cruel, but seeing it here in pictures makes the entire situation feel a lot looser and sillier. Less a cutting criticism and more two dopes being goofy. (I mean, it's still kind of mean, but for me it's the difference between jerks and people being ignorant, y'know?) The choice to use images here instead of dialogue here, I think, just makes this sequence work in a way using text wouldn't.

Another cool bit of dialogue box trickery in Multiple Warheads is the above sequence. In the comic a dragon is smuggling back a magical weapon-thing in his belly that a wizard extracts from him through his speech bubble. While it might not be a generally applicable bit of comics, I love it when magic is depicted in comics as something impossible or fourth wall breaking. Magic for me has always been impossible, amazing things that violate the rules of the universe, and seeing that played with as a visual metaphor is always cool. 

I think my favourite example of fun dialogue box experimentation is this selection here. It might not be the smartest or more most experimental dialogue experiment in the comic, but it is just so charming and fun. The way the call box and the wonderful hand lettering combine to make a yawning face, is neat, and the way that enhances the weight of that yawn on the page is pretty smart stuff. I am also pretty keen on this choice because yawning is just such a visceral experience, more about the motion and the physical sensation of yawning mouths and scrunched faces than the actual noise of it. I think the choice to build the face into the sound here lets the dialogue box convey more of that physicality than just the text alone would. Which is effective storytelling.

(I mean, it's late here, and I am yawning up a storm trying to write this section, which is further evidence that this bit of comics is great.)

Multiple Warheads, still making the case that there is all kinds of ways to make good comics.

Previously:
Island #1: Multiple Warheads

Island #1: I.D. Part 1
Island #2: ID Part 2

So I Read Multiple Warheads Vol. 1
Multiplexed storytelling in Multiple Warheads

Deep Sequencing: Fathoming Octopus Depths

Or a look at the use of vertical height and time in Octopus Pie
by Meredith Gran

A thing I find interesting is how the limitations of a media shape the way stories are told. In the case of print comics there are obvious limits imposed by the physical nature of the product: comics are expensive to print, so that page sizes and issue lengths are dictated in part by the economics of making the thing. The physical nature of comic books also dictate that the books have sequential pages. This effects the flow of time such that it flows page to page through the comic and also adds all kinds of nifty clipping and cutting effects between pages. There are just endless ways the form of print comics effects the reading experience.

The same is true for webcomics, but in different frequently interesting ways.

In particular, I want to talk about Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran and some of the nifty things she is doing with vertical space in her comic to play with time.

Specifically, I'll be talking about this comic. While Octopus Pie has lots of fun examples of this effect, this comic is maybe the most extreme example and really emphasizes just how far this effect can be taken. You should definitely go read the thing before we get started. (I'm not going to post it here because it is giant, so please follow the link.)

Unlike print comics, which are constrained by page size, webcomics are constrained by browser resolution and the way computers navigate. Essentially webcomics have a fixed width that will fit comfortably in a browser window since scrolling sideways is weird. At the same time there is practically no vertical direction limits: scrolling up and down a page is very intuitive and easy which means that even a very tall comic feels natural and readable. Webcomics are also free of printing costs or the physical constraints of different printing formats, which means that there is no reason to be locked into a particular height of comic (except probably the time it takes to draw comics of varying lengths). What this means is that storytelling space in a webcomic can be as tall or short as a creator wants and can even vary between instalments to do some nifty comics.

Octopus Pie uses this vertical freedom to play with time. The webcomic uses space as a surrogate for time (like pretty much all comics). Due to horizontal constraints, this space-time-continuum exists mostly in the vertical direction where there are no practical limitations. In this comic Meredith Gran really stretches this space out to make a comic about routine and ennui and dealing with heart ache with time. The comic stretches, and stretches down the page with snippets of moments in a grand repetitive routine. It's really effective stuff from a purely use of space front. It is also really cool because of the tactile experience of navigating the page: such a tall webcomic requires readers to stroke trackpads or whatever making the navigating the page an actual effort, a kind of ersatz exercise that mirrors the jogging in the page. It's like the touch equivalent of using eye guiding to create emotional resonance. It's super cool comics.

So I Read The Fuse: Gridlock

A 250 word (or less) review of Fuse Vol. 2
by Antony Johnston, Justin Greenwood, Shari Chankhamma, and Ryan Ferrier; Image Comics

The Fuse is an ongoing comic, to read about the first chapter go here.

The Fuse is a police procedural comic that takes place on The Fuse, an orbital power station with a nebulous sovereignty, bitter inequality, and fermenting discord. The current volume centres around the death of Starlight, the star gridlocking racer of a popular sport on the verge of lucrative syndication. It is up to murder detectives Klem Ristovych, a longterm veteran of the station, and Ralph Dietrich, a recent emigre from Earth, to solve a case that will see them run afoul of the power company, drug dealers, TV producers,  and FLF, a group agitating for Fuse independence. The Fuse: Gridlock is another really satisfying instalment in the series: it continues to be a complex police procedural that uses its Sci-fi trappings and sense of humanity to tell an intriguing mystery and provide insightful social commentary. This current chapter is also significant because it manages to build off the initial great premise of the series and create intriguing new directions for the longterm story. I am now deeply invested in the both the individual episodes of the comic, but also the overall story direction of the series. If you are at all a fan of detective stories or space stations, The Fuse is a comic you really ought to be reading.

Word count: 210

Previosuly:
The Fuse Vol. 1