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

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

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #14

Or breaking down the comic remix in WicDiv #14 
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles, and Dee Cunniffe; Image Comics

WicDiv #14 is formally a very interesting comic book. I'd like to talk about why. 

There will, as always, be *SPOILERS* for WicDiv #14 below.

WicDiv #14 is, to a certain extent, a flashback comic. It recontextualizes numerous events in the comic from the perspective of Woden, who beyond being a creepy enigma, Knows Some Things. Like a lot of flashback comics, WicDiv #14 takes advantage of existent panels and artwork to show memories. It's an expedient choice because it let's the comic replay the events exactly as we all remember them and because it makes sense not to unnecessarily spend time redrawing events. What makes WicDiv #14 interesting is that it constructs the entire issue, including current and unseen events almost entirely out of recycled artwork.

WicDiv #14 is interesting in that it repurposes artwork from previous issues to construct entirely new comics. Given no other information, this discussion above looks and feels like entirely native content, that it's a brand new sequence custom drawn to deliver a pitch perfect sequence. Kind of incredibly, everyone panel on this page is lifted, without major alteration from an earlier issue of WicDiv. It's pretty cool stuff.

WicDiv #14 takes the experiment further by building new comics out of not only its own past, but also from depictions of its characters from other comics. Specifically, WicDiv #14 also uses artwork clipped from Sex Criminals (by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky), which contained the WicDiv porn parody, 'The Lick-ed and the Divine". Beyond being a fun little meta-circle jerk, this choice really advances the question about remix culture and comics: if you have the vector artwork of digital pencils (or a vectorized scan), just how much comic can you build using recycled artwork? If you make it seamless enough, like WicDiv #14, is using reused artwork markedly worse or lesser than new artwork? And, as a creator, can you use recycled artwork to increase the length or speed you create comics without compromising comics? WicDiv #14 is an intriguing story, but as a critical experiment, I think it really opens an interesting discourse on the nature of comics.

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space
WicDiv #3 and character design
WicDiv #4 and body language 
WicDiv#5 and facial acting
WicDiv #6 and possessions as character
WicDiv #7 and the power of lettering
WicDiv #8 and the disorienting layout
WicDiv #9 and the economics of design
WicDiv #10 and powers as character design
WicDiv #11 and stretching the moment
WicDiv #12 and layout encoding
WicDiv #13 and retroactive narratives

Ogling ODY-C #1

Or a look at some interesting layouts in ODY-C #1
by Matt Fraction, Christian Ward, Dee Cunnifee, and Chris Eliopoulus; Image Comics

I'm a sucker for first issues. I love to at least try comics I've been looking forward to before budgeting realities force me back to tradewaiting. They are like these delicious little appetizers for comics I can't wait to read. And ODY-C, featuring writing by Matt Fraction and art by Christain Ward is pretty much the peanut buttercup of comics for me. So obviously I was going to read the first issue.

And, uh, wow, it's as good as I was expecting it to be. 

It's also a comic that has some pretty great layouts and comics which are worth taking a closer look at.

There will be *SPOILERS* below. You know, as much as a comic based on a 3000 yearold piece of literature can have spoilers. 

Probably the most exotic comics element in ODY-C is the 8 page gatefold which depicts the conquering Odyssia and her fellow warriors on the eve of Troiia's defeat. It is big and epic and ambitious and functions as an immediate mission statement that ODY-C is a big, epic, and ambitious comic. It also serves as a great statement about how important and dramatic the events of the Iliad (1ly-Ad?) were. It provides this really key bit of context: this really big, important war happened and now this other story can start. So this gatefold is pretty important and smart comics.

It's also noteworthy in that the otherside of the gatefold is a beautiful timeline of space-ancient-Greece and some wonderfully designed star charts acting as an atlas of the comics universe. As someone who loves comics inforgraphics I love these touches. More comics should show charts of information.

One of the things I find really exciting about creative teams that involve Christian Ward is he often uses elaborate layouts that are constructed around the theme of the narrative. This layout is probably my favourite example of this from ODY-C #1. The story here is that the ODY-C, the Swiftship of Odyssia, is wracked by some sort of divine/cosmic phenomenon that blows the ship off course. The crew panics, which is apparently disruptive to the function of the ODY-C, as Swiftships seem to run on crew consensus. This page here depicts Odyssia marshalling her crew to work together to bring the ship under control. What I love about this page is that we see Odyssia, in her piloting-hood thing in a circular panel that functions as the focal centre of the layout, around which we see a ring of crew pulling together to correct the flight of the ship. It's a layout that beautifully illustrates the theme of the crew working together under Odyssia. I also love how the ODY-C can be seen tumbling across the page wildly before stabilizing in the bottom right. The way the ship is shown flailing across the page, regardless of panels or events, helps sell how wildly the ship is moving and how disconnected it is from normal comics behaviour and phenomenon. It's really great stuff.

I am also pretty excited about this page of comics and how it uses a more traditional grid structure in innovative ways to create a pretty nifty action sequence. The key to this page is, I think, that the underlying 12 panel grid is used explicitly in the composition. In the first row, the scene is set with a row of three panels with a nested panel. The three panels discretely separate Odyssia from the Cicone raiders and create this panelled physical space between them. Which is eliminated in the second row of the 12 panel grid where Odyssia and the Cicone collide in the centre panel. The way these two rows of panels interact make the start of combat feel visceral and quick; they convey the sensation of charging soldiers. I also really like the use of the nested panels that float above the grid, that really punch up and complicate the action, adding impact and chaos to the design. However, it's the bottom two rows of the underlying 12 panel grid where this page gets really nifty. In the third row of panels Odyssia kicks one of her opponents through the panel gutter, which is totally rad. It feels impactful and really showcases that Odyssia is sufficiently powerful to break the laws of comics. In the final row of panels we see the broken gutter-stubs from the previous row reused as position markers for horizontal difference. These stub markers are used to show that Odyssia has advanced further to the right than in the previous row of panels. Which is really smart. This bottom row of panels also takes advantage of the down-left carriage return from the previous row of panels to make the reader start the bottom panels from the far left. This means that the reader cruises across the page in the direction of Odyssia's leap, which in another flourish of comics-rule breaking, takes her clear off the page. Which is also pretty rad. This is just a really technically smart page that uses and subverts comic grid structure to make a pretty compelling action sequence. It's great comics.

So ODY-C is a comic that I think everyone should try. If ODY-C #1 is any indication, this is going to be a really exciting series. That said, I might tradewait ODY-C. Don't get me wrong, I REALLY liked the first issue! I just found it had a very distinctive voice, both in the writing and art, which I found took some time to really get traction on. I feel like this a strength of ODY-C, but I also feel like it will maybe make the comic more rewarding to read in a bigger chunk. But you should definitely check it out and make that judgement for yourself.

I can't wait for the first trade.