Atoll Comics

Pretty Deadly #2: Holy Shit Moments depicted with Holy Shit artwork
Pretty Deadly #1 pt. 2: The Song of Deathface Ginny
Pretty Deadly #1 pt.1: Breaking Rules

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Pondering About Pretty Deadly #8

Or some thoughts on colour in Pretty Deadly #8
by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

Something that I continue to find fascinating about the current iteration of Pretty Deadly is just how dream-like the comic is. Between the lyrical story, indistinct yawning battlefields, and supernatural elements, Pretty Deadly feels to me like its constructed out of the collision of a dream and a nightmare. Pretty Deadly #8 takes this sense to the next level, letting the supernatural elements take centre stage, and really unleashing some truly feverish artwork. It's horrible and beautiful and effective. An important element of why this comic is so effective is a great use of colour.

There will be *SPOILERS* for Pretty Deadly #8.

The battlefields of Pretty Deadly are muted, dark places. Instead of a colourful world, filled with verdant life, the battlefields are barren places constructed of desaturated colours: greys and grey-browns and grey-olive-drabs. I'd say it's as if the world has been bleached, but the overall colour palette is also particularly dark, colours showing a certain black tone that further increases the gloom of the page and gives the artwork a kind of claustrophobic heaviness. The effect, when summed up makes the battlefields of Pretty Deadly feel like nocturnal zones, a kind of world of twilight that to makes me think of sleep and alienation and a kind dream-logic gulf. It's effective stuff that I think really showcases just how lost and lonely Cyrus, the protagonist of the comic, is.

Pretty Deadly #8 also introduces a new colour palette that takes a different approach that adds to nightmarishness. The comic features the confrontation between The Horsemen Big Alice and Deathface Ginny and the rogue Horseman of War as well as their proxy/allied armies. This conflict happens in the midst of green clouds of toxic gas and the whirling blood and viscera that are hallmarks and visual signs of War and his power. This choice significantly enhances the nightmare quality of the page. One of the fundamental aspects of colour theory (and really about the limit of my understanding of it) is that certain colours are 'complementary', that they are opposite colours that essentially clash in a way that is striking to the eye. Red and Green are such colour complements, and their use together here makes both colours surge off the page with a feverish intensity. It feels and looks unnatural, lending to the nightmare reality of the comic. It also, when contrasted against the dark, muted palette of the usual battlefield, makes the green/red pages painfully intense. The switch from green/red page to dark/barren page gives the issue a seething pulse, that again evokes the feelings of nightmares and malaise. It's... so effective that staring at the colours now to write about them is enough to get my vertigo going a little and make me feel nauseated. It's great stuff.

Pretty Deadly #8 is a noxious fever dream, and its colours are enough to make me feel sick.

Previously:

Pretty Deadly #7: On perspective

Pretty Deadly #6: Layout stanza

Pretty Deadly #2: Holy Shit Moments depicted with Holy Shit artwork
Pretty Deadly #1 pt. 2: The Song of Deathface Ginny
Pretty Deadly #1 pt.1: Breaking Rules

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Pondering About Pretty Deadly #7

Or a look at the relationship between disorientation and spatial context in Pretty Deadly #7
by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

I have been trying to put my finger on just what I like about Pretty Deadly #7. There is something really cool about the way the comic is depicting the war blasted wasteland of WW1, that is kind of elusive and hard to articulate. I think it's that the depiction of trench warfare in the comic is somehow both nightmarishly indistinct while still grounded in an a relentless, granular sense of place. And I think a sequence in Pretty Deadly #7 is a great example of this.

There will be *SPOILERS* for Pretty Deadly #7 below.

The battlefields of the First World War have always stuck in my imagination as barren moonscapes.: sort of a brown-grey desolation filled with a kind of dreamy vagueness. And I think Pretty Deadly captures that sense by portraying a dark, open world devoid of life and vibrant colour. Which I think captures the sheer inhumanity of that war and a sense of how emotionally lost the protagonist of the story is. At the same time, Team Deadly has done a fantastic job building a discrete sense of place into this nebulous barren zone. Like, take the trench system on the left: it has the fine grained detail and subtle human touch that lend the broader nightmare wasteland a critical sense of realism that grounds the more fantastical aspects of the setting.

The tension between the nightmarey-vagueness of the battlefield setting and the granular realism of the comic, I think plays out spectacularly in the gas attack sequences. The page on the right devolves into a whirling cloud of toxic gas that the protagonist flees through in a swirling reading path without obvious reference. At first the character seems hopelessly mired and lost. But on a closer examination, the motions of the character within the page depict a clear set of motions which played against the previously viewed trenches reveals the character arming himself and moving to cover. It's the application of spatial storytelling to a chaotic anti-space.

And this page plays with same tension but in a wonderfully different way. Instead of having the character navigate an indistinct toxic cloudscape, the cloudscape effectively navigates around the protagonist's fixed perspective. The hook of the page is that the round panels are the restricted view of the character looking out of his gasmask. As such the comic has a clear implied sense of place: the area immediately around the character, but is still nightmarishly indistinct: the severely limited view of the character is just as disorienting as the thick smoke of the previous selection. It's a great, emotionally resonant effect.

I think this page, though, is my favourite. It is a wonderful example of the beautiful, brutal violence that I think characterizes Pretty Deadly and it showcases the clever page construction that allows the reader to quickly navigate through the key action on the page. This sequence also uses the same combination of disorienting setting with a really rigorous application of spatial positioning. This composition is, at first glance, spinning madness in an indistinct toxic cloudscape. The use of a perspective that wildly rotates around the protagonist lends the page a bewildering insanity that is punched up by the noxious red/green colour palette. It is pure feverish nightmare. But at the same time, the individual moments of action occur in a distinct spatial context. If you deconvolve the action and imagine each snapshot of violence depicted from a single, fixed perspective it all fits together perfectly. This page very much has an implied, mundane reality constructed into it that despite the madness inducing expressionism gives everything clarity and a realistic context. Which really makes this page a spectacular fusion of gritty realism and supernatural horror that is, I think, at the very core of what I love about Pretty Deadly.

Previously:

Pretty Deadly #6: Layout stanza

Pretty Deadly #2: Holy Shit Moments depicted with Holy Shit artwork
Pretty Deadly #1 pt. 2: The Song of Deathface Ginny
Pretty Deadly #1 pt.1: Breaking Rules

Friday, 27 November 2015

Pondering About Pretty Deadly #6

Or a look at narrative structure in Pretty Deadly #6
by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

A return of Pretty Deadly means a return to essays talking about why this comic is so, so good. I don't really have any preamble: so without further ado, I'm going to take a look at how artwork, script, and lettering intersect to create different modes of storytelling in Pretty Deadly in what I think is a pretty spiffy way.

There will of course be *SPOILERS* for Pretty Deadly below.

I've written a lot about what I like Pretty Deadly, pulling specific examples of how individual sequences are constructed to artful, or impactful, or just generally effective storytelling. What was maybe lacking is some of the broad factors of Pretty Deadly, the general things this comic does exceptionally well that help make it such a pleasure to read. One of these things, I think, is how the story is organized on a structural level, and how this creates these discrete moments.

Take this page here: the main story of the comic opens with a wide open establishing shot of a wild west homestead. Then the story provides this palette establishing sequence of snapshots: tight, singular moments of noise or sensation that build this moment or feeling. In this case a bleak frontier roughness and a kind of undefined sadness. With this emotional moment established the comic moves into new story information: a sickroom and an obviously old woman being given a drink before the page deploys it's final moment and coda. A final moment that structurally the whole page builds towards, and which comes to this sharp point that redefines and provides the context of entire preceding sequence. A final moment that is also sharp and barbed, which cuts to the truth of the page in a pretty brutal and honest way, and opens the way for the story going forward. It's a very effective way of pacing the page and creating this moment of narrative clarity that I found very engaging.

These inverted storytelling triangles can be found throughout Pretty Deadly #6. Emotion palettes are established, a wider angle panel shows the main events, and then the composition hones in on that key moment of frisson that completes a narrative moment and advances the story. It's this repeating storytelling device that builds and delivers a complete narrative moment. Which... it's like a stanza of comics. Which is an interesting approach since it lends Pretty Deadly #6 a decided poetic sensibility and also gives much of the comic a structured, deliberate rhythm. Which makes this triangle device not only an effective way to generate beautifully charged story moments, but also a metric that provides the majority of the comic a narrative identity.

The sense of narrative identity that the inverted-triangle-stanza delivers becomes important in the most supernatural moments of Pretty Deadly #6 which have a completely different story structure. Instead of the tight, mechanical layouts used to make the triangle-sections work, the mystical moments of the comic adopt a more open format and a swirling, organic flow of the narration and artwork. This creates a clear demarcation between the mundane and magical portions of the comic, which goes a long way to making the supernatural parts of the comic feel distinct and special. It's a really smart use of contrasting layout approaches.

Which is all evidence of the kind of general storytelling brilliance on display in Pretty Deadly and how macroscopic, repetitive storytelling choices can be really effective.

Previously:

Pretty Deadly #2: Holy Shit Moments depicted with Holy Shit artwork
Pretty Deadly #1 pt. 2: The Song of Deathface Ginny
Pretty Deadly #1 pt.1: Breaking Rules

Friday, 5 December 2014

Deep Sequencing: Pretty Mouthy

Or a look at the expressive mouths of Pretty Deadly,
by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics.

I really, really enjoyed Pretty Deadly. It is a fantastic story that is brought to life with such a wealth of innovation and courage. This is a comic just filled with great comics and as someone who just loves to pick over sequential art I can just stare at it for hours. I documented a lot of my favourite things about Pretty Deadly already, but there is at least one more facet of Pretty Deadly Vol. 1 that I think bears closer examination. And that is the way Emma Rios and Team Deadly use mouths.

People are wired to understand faces. There is a huge wealth of information deposited on our fez about our emotional state, and we devote a truly impressive amount of brain power and motorcortex real estate to making the millions of subtle, variable expressions of our faces. We also devote a similar amount of brain resources to studying, decoding, and understanding the expression changes on other people's faces. This is a major way people communicate with each other. The vocabulary of this communication is carried through a wide array of facial features and moving parts including the eyes or the shape of the brow. But a key component of facial expression communication is the mouth.

And I would argue the mouth is under utilized in comics story telling.

For whatever reason, probably that drawing a convincing mouth and not having it look disgusting is difficult, I don't often see mouths utilized as the primary focus of panels. While there are certainly some artists that use mouths effectively in the context of faces (McKelvie and Cloonan for instance), Emma Rios and the rest of Team Deadly actually make mouths the primary emotional focus of a lot of their storytelling in Pretty Deadly. And it is a really, really effective choice that carries tremendous emotional impact and a decidedly visceral edge. I think it is absolutely taking a longer look at.

For lack of a better approach, I harvested every mouth primary panel from Pretty Deadly Vol. 1 and stacked them in chronological order. Nothing was cropped down from a larger panel; these are all more or less how they appear in the comic. I just want you to look at them, and just feel the passion, the anger, the cool disdain, the pain, and the catharsis encoded in literally just the mouths of the portrayed characters.

There will of course be *SPOILERS* below. So go read Pretty Deadly.

It's really effective isn't it! I suspect you were able to experience the emotion of every panel and a pretty reasonable facsimile of the entire emotional arch of Pretty Deadly Vol. 1 just by studying the mouths.

Actually, it occurs to me that the mouth panels chosen here almost tell a complete story unto themselves. Admittedly, one with a different shape than Pretty Deadly. But... okay. I can see a story here where a red haired man and black haired woman are lovers. Then they have some sort of fight (maybe jealousy over alleged infidelity on the part of the woman?). The woman cuts her face in a way that mocks the accuser, and the red haired man kills her. Some time later the woman comes back as a spectre and haunts the now old, grey haired man. They have some sort of altercation that somehow ends in ghost-lady reaching catharsis and leaving. Or maybe not. The point here is less the story I've concocted and more that with JUST THE MOUTHS of Pretty Deadly you can construct a cohesive narrative. That is remarkable.

Emma Rios and Team Deadly do a fantastic job in this comic.

More comics ought to utilize mouths as a principle point for communicating emotion.

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:

Pretty Deadly #5: Pulling off a great ending

Pretty Deadly #2: Holy Shit Moments depicted with Holy Shit artwork
Pretty Deadly #1 pt. 2: The Song of Deathface Ginny
Pretty Deadly #1 pt.1: Breaking Rules

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

So Jenn Read Pretty Deadly: The Shrike

A review of Pretty Deadly Volume 1

by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

Pretty Deadly is a gorgeous Old West-styled story. A bunny of bones tells the story to a butterfly, a tale of love, loss, and vengeance steeped in deep mythology. Our story follows a young girl and older man traveling from town-to-town telling the story of Deathface Ginny, the reaper daughter of Death and Beauty. Though a spell kept Ginny from being able to visit the world of the living, the spell has been broken, and the race is on for all of our characters to take their vengeance, complete the penance, or step into a new place in the cycle of life and death. Every element of Pretty Deadly oozes beauty. DeConnick’s words read like poetry—in fact, I found I enjoyed the book even more when I read it as if it were a poem. Rios’ style lends elegance to every scene, even bloody and violent. The color palate Bellaire uses also deserves to be recognized as a major contributor. Art and words blend seamlessly, making each indispensible in the telling. I do think Pretty Deadly benefits from its collection into a trade; there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of in this story. While following Pretty Deadly in issues, I caught myself going back to ensure I had plot points straight; for me, this meant experiencing the story all at once greatly improved my enjoyment. I’m eager to read Ginny’s next tale.

Word Count: 237

Post by Jennifer DePrey

So I Read Pretty Deadly: The Shrike

A 250 word (or less) review of Pretty Deadly Volume One.
By Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, Jordie Bellaire, Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

I don't buy into the concept of there being a best comic or having an anointed favourite piece of media. It always strikes me as narrow-minded and numb to the reality that, in the face of variety, you really don't have to choose. That said, I totally buy into there being outstanding comics that everyone, EVERYONE has to at least try because they are just so profoundly good. Pretty Deadly is that fucking good. The comic tells a tale of supernatural vengeance and destiny in the Wild West and stars Deathface Ginny, a Reaper of Vengeance and the daughter of Death, and Sissy, a young urchin girl with an important fate. Pretty Deadly is a difficult comic to describe: it's such a unique and unexpected vision that relies, I think, partially on the engine of discovery. To explain Pretty Deadly here would be to rob the unfolding. What I can say is that every facet of this comic is virtually perfect: the dialogue sings in a way that is both lyrical and concise, the plot unwinds with the unpredictability and volatility of a serpent, and the artwork is as gorgeous, brutal, cerebral, and unexpected as anything I've seen. Pretty Deadly is one of those rare examples of a complete, total comic and is a testament to just how powerful collaboration can be. While, I might not believe in favourites, Pretty Deadly is now one of the benchmarks I use to judge all other comics. You absolutely have to read it.

Word count: 250

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:

Pretty Deadly #5: Finishing on a high note