It’s Tuesday, meaning there’s a new episode of LAVENDER JACK – recently referred to as “Steampunk Daredevil” by a Genre-savvy reader – up for free on Webtoon! Check it out here.
Although I don’t know about Steampunk as a descriptor for this comic. I think of Lavender Jack as a little cleaner, a little more perfumed that that. “Laudanum Punk.” That’s more like it.
This week I’m writing the post early, since I’ll be gone at San Diego Comic Con all week. Before I leave, though, I thought we’d take a look at the development of an incidental character from this week’s episode. Main characters get designed before the series begins and background characters get worked out on the fly, but what about that awkwardly-placed middle character? More than an extra, less than recurring character? Let’s take a look at the process of creating the old man.
He’s never named in the story, and is only ever referred to as “the old man” in the script, but he plays an important role; he acts as an avatar for the kidnapped refugees, and a symbol of bravery even when you have no power to back it up. Even among the starved refugees, he’s old, weak – but he’s not going to put up with this injustice for one day longer.
He begins as a character description in the script:
Originally I envisioned this panel as shooting past the old man and onto the lead orderly, but I changed it to a straight-on shot of the old man, thinking that was a stronger visual to start off the story. I also had him holding up his bowl instead of shaking his fist – it’s not an aggressive gesture, just one meant to give emphasis to his impassioned cry.
This, for those who haven’t seen the film, is the late John Hurt in Snowpiercer:
Going off that, I began making ballpoint sketches in the margins of the printed-out script.
This first pass was both too soft and too cranky. I wanted him to have more dignity.
Here we see his face take on more sharpness and gauntness, and his hair becoming wilder. His eyes also became more intense and pained.
Incidentally: a good way to convey intelligence plus grim determination is having eyes that open with the upper eyelid instead of the bottom, paired with arched, furrowed eyebrows. The eyes suggest the character is alert and observant, while the brow gives them intensity. A great simple example of this is the design for Batman in Batman: The Brave and The Bold:
That all comes together in the final sketch:
The big hair gives him a more distinctive turn-of-the-century appearance, and works to offset his beard so that his eyes are at the center of his head, drawing our attention to the emoting he’s doing with those features.
We see how this all contrasts with the blunt, violent lead orderly:
As well as a strange similarity to the lithe, angular Lavender Jack:
The point of all this is to create incidental characters that make the world of the comic feel big, full of colorful people and unexplored adventures. If I expect you to buy into the purple science devil pulling kung fu B&Es, I’d better provide a world for him that’s at least as exciting as he is. Preferably more so.
As always, thank to everyone who reads, rates, likes, and/or comments. I might even see some of you at SDCC this week! And if you haven’t checked out the comic yet or just need to get caught up, here’s the link!
There’s a new episode of my mystery/adventure comic, LAVENDER JACK, up on Webtoon! Check it out for free here.
Written, drawn, and lettered by me, with colors by Jenn Manley Lee and edits by Bekah Caden.
This week, I’m trying out some different things with how I promote the comic. It comes out every Tuesday, but this week I only posted about it on Facebook and twitter the day-of. I’m seeing if spacing out the tumblr post to later in the week might help me keep the conversation about the comic going in between updates – not to mention freeing up my work time on Tuesdays, since I do have to keep, like, making the comic. Seven pages of content a week ain’t exactly something I can bang out on my lunch break. Yet.
For this post, I wanted to share something I haven’t shown anywhere else – the original design sheet for Lavender Jack that I included in the pitch:
My former studio mate Colleen Coover gave me some valuable feedback when I was coming up with the costume. Originally, there were more details to the shirt and eye mask, which she assured me would give me back pain over time if I didn’t pare them down. She also suggested losing those vertical lines on the mouthpiece, again to help simplify the design, as well as keeping him from ‘looking like a robot.’ I didn’t follow that advice at first, but the lines only lasted through episode three before I dropped them, as you can see in this week’s update:
Better, no?
Another thing I like about the costume is the three pleats on the back. They add character to the costume even when Jack’s back is to us (see also: Spider-Man, Superman, etc. Big ‘gold S on the back of the cape’ proponent, me.)
The three pleats also echo the three ledes on his gloves, giving the costume a stronger sense of cohesion.
You can see this also in how the shoulders, lapels, eye mask, ears, and horns all follow the same upward-sloping shape.
I’ll probably make more edits to the costume as I go along through the series, little tweaks and fixes that make it look better in motion and from different angles. But doing this design sheet at the dawn of the comic forced me to be more thoughtful about Jack’s costume, giving me what I feel is a strong base to start from.
Thank to everyone who reads, rates, likes, and/or comments. If you haven’t checked out the comic yet, here’s the link!
Long time solid dude @dirtyriver suggested that I include these updates with some BTS material, which I thought was a capital idea. I’ll be playing around with the format of these posts a little, so feel free to shoot me some feedback as I go.
Let’s start it off with a look at some process, from script to finish. For this, we’ll be examining the 15th panel of Episode 4.
SCRIPT:
I write out full scripts for Lavender Jack. I know some writer+artists prefer to keep it loose and figure out the story at the thumbnail stage, but I find it helpful to think in words first – being able to describe a visual story using only written language lets me know that I actually understand it, or sometimes even lets me know whether or not it makes sense at all. These scripts are then reviewed by my editor, Bekah Caden, who makes them clearer, better tasting, and more filling.
THUMBNAILS:
Normally an artist will do loose thumbnails to get the visual beats of the story down and then transfer over to tight pencils. Due to time constraints, I cheat this a little with a tight thumbnail/loose pencil approach that I ink directly on top of.
I drew the Lord Mayor and Inspector Crabb into this panel, even though they weren’t present in the panel description in the script. This sort of thing happens a lot – little issues you wouldn’t think of until you see them on the page. In this case, I realized that since the Lord Mayor was going to leave the scene in the next panel, we needed to see the group together in this panel, in order for the reader to have a clear sense of the geography of the scene.
INKS:
Here, ideally, is where everything sharpens and crystalizes. Lavender Jack is drawn entirely digitally, so I do a lot of tweaking of the ink lines to make sure all the characters are on-model and emoting properly. Even a dozen or so episodes into production, I’m still getting a feel for what makes these characters actually feel like these characters.
Apropos of nothing, Inspector Crabb is my favorite character to draw, followed shortly by Ferrier and Sir Mimley.
COLORS AND LETTERING:
Jenn Manley Lee is a phenomenal artist and colorist who makes this comic feel real to me. Whenever I get colors back from her, I drop whatever I’m doing to check them out. I’ve dipped out of parties, conversations, even dates to see her latest work on Lavender Jack. The lettering is my doing; this the first comic I’ve really lettered, at least since I started working in comics professionally, and I’m learning more about it all the time. Big ups to @dylanmeconis for teaching me how to letter in Clip Studio – and how to draw a French Bulldog.
Bekah then looks over everything, we do final tweaks, and it posts on Webtoon,as you can see here!
When a masked man begins terrorizing the wealthy upper class of the City of Gallery, exposing their dirty secrets through burglary and a mysterious power to make objects explode, the desperate Mayor calls in veteran detective Theresa Ferrier. What begins as a simple game of cat and mouse leads the two opposing forces of Detective Ferrier and Lavender Jack down a rabbit hole of mysterious organizations, betrayal, and lost love.
My new comic is out on Webtoon! Written/drawn by me, colored by Jenn Manley Lee, edited by Bekah Caden – six pages’ worth of comic content, every Tuesday, for free.
Master Detectives. Masked villains. Byzantine conspiracies. Copious champagne. Elderly ladies in love. Check it out right here!
Picking up where we left off last week, we’re gonna dive back into1998′s BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #1. You can check out part one here, but for those with time against them, the setup of the issue is: The Joker has killed the only son of industrialist G. Douglas Reid, who has put a fifty million dollar bounty on the killer clown’s head. With all of Gotham gunning for the reward, Batman and his affiliates have taken the Joker into their private custody until they can resolve the situation. With Batgirl guarding the Joker in the Batcave, Batman and Robin head off to answer a Bat Signal from Commissioner Gordon. We’re eleven pages in.
Along with the regular discussion of story flow and scene direction, I’m also gonna get really into some tiny moving parts that particularly interested me as an artist. That might ultimately make this one of the dryer entires in this feature, but hey – if you wanna skim through the analysis and just enjoy some great pages, friend of mine, it’s okay by me.
BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #1 and all characters contained therein are property of DC Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
***
PAGE TWELVE
Such a good design on that little Riddler iPod Shuffle (hereafter referred to as a “?Pod”). The question mark motif is clear enough to read, while still subtle enough to keep from being distracting. Loughridge does a good job of keeping the vibrant greens of the ?Pod distinct from the soft greens of Reid’s office in panel two. Burchett choses to include the Riddler’s staff on the ?Pod screen, which makes him immediately recognizable as the classic Batman villain and visually echoes the ?Pod’s design, helping us catch the motif.
Props to Bruce Timm for giving each of the Batfamily distinctive mask eyes, so they can be easily identifiable even in the shadows.
I’d also like to point out something so small it might even be an accident, but something I’ll definitely be using in the future: the different way Reid and Gordon hold their phones.
The angle of Reid’s hand in panel one suggests he’s holding the handset microphone closer to his mouth so he can better make his demands. His posture in panel two emphasizes the anger he feels, the power he’s trying to assert.
Compare with the angle of Gordon’s right hand, turning the handset so that the speaker is closer to his ear. Added to the way he’s gesturing with is other hand, this clearly shows us a man who’s trying hard to reason with somebody who just doesn’t want to hear him.
Try acting this out yourself – imagining how you’d have to be talking to be holding a phone in each of these two ways. Like I said, it’s small, but it’s some real fine acting.
PAGE THIRTEEN
The ?Pod’s great design continues to help us out in the first panel – it’s distinctive screen becomes an easily identifiable panel shape. Since the rest of the scene takes place in a green/teal environment, Loughridge gives that first panel a red boarder to help break up the scene. See also; the magenta sky.
There’s an interesting relationship between the Batmobiles in panels two and six. Here’s the page again, simplified to just those two panels:
See how the front bumper (gouger?) of the panel two Batmobile asserts itself over panel five? Somehow, this doesn’t interfere with the reading flow. Maybe it’s the simple black shape of the bumper, encouraging you to view it more as graphic element than a pice of diegetic matter. Or maybe it’s because the Batmobile is essentially a location, so we don’t expect it to interact with Batman and Robin inside – and as a result, it doesn’t throw us when we see it encroach into their space. See also: the Uptown sign in panel seven.
Furthermore! The panel seven Batmobile’s rear fin creeps all the way back into panel two. It’s definitely purposeful – it’d be easy to avoid with a very minor alteration in the angles of the cars so that they fit entirely within the panel borders. So why this atypical staging? It’s certainly a lively layout, for one thing. For another, liberating the Batmobile from the bounds of panel boarders makes it feel fast and powerful – driving at liberty all over the page.
PAGE FOURTEEN
Look at that great smirk in panel three. The New Adventures redesign of the Riddler has nothing on the amazing sport coat and slacks look of the original, but it does have a certain stripped-down charm. It’s clean, distinctive, and devoid of redundancies.
This scene suffers some a little bit of messy geography, as we’ll soon see. For now, just take note of the balcony railing at the bottom of panel one, which is unquestionably where the gunmen are in panel four.
PAGE FIFTEEN
“Or merchandise worth an equivalent amount.” Templeton immediately ties the Riddler subplot to the main Joker narrative. Again, everything in this comic radiates from the clown prince’s murder of Reid’s son. The universe of the comic feels huge, but also connected.
The Riddler’s pose in panel two is his question mark motif writ large. Lowering himself on that ball, the “dot” in the question mark of his body, is a really good visual idea. Unfortunately, it’s at the heart of the geography problem in this scene.
But before we get to that, I want to point out a great example of setting up, execution, and finishing off an action: in panel one, the Riddler uses his cane to pull the rope towards him – the setup. In panel two, he descends on the rope – the execution. Then, in panel three, he’s still touching the ball – finishing off the action.
PAGE SIXTEEN
Burchett makes great use of negative space to increase the tension of the Riddler’s countdown in the last two panels.
Sidebar: I’m remembering this bit from a Dan Olson video about – don’t freak out now – Triumph of The Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda, where he talks about the paradoxical perception strength and weakness of the enemy as viewed by fascism. Check out this segment of his video, and watch until about 10:50. It’s only a minute of video, and it’s interesting food for thought when viewed in the context of how to depict super villains, especially trickster-style villains like the Riddler (see also: Loki, Mysterio, or the Flash rogue who’s actually called ‘The Trickster’). Just try not to overthink the Nazi stuff.
PAGE SEVENTEEN
We jump from a panel of the Riddler to a panel of the Joker. Note how both of them are looking straight at us, both gesturing with their left hands – the Joker’s even echoing Riddler’s countdown with his “Quarter to three” lyric. All of this means that we get to ride the tension of the Riddler scene right into this one, and multiply it by the demonstrably greater potential danger posed by the Joker.
The scene wrings extra tension out of the metatextual history that exists between Barbara Gordon/Batgirl and the Joker in the mainline DC universe. Even without that, we feel the threat he poses to her by the way he’s staged on the page. Look how the Joker dominates the layout: In Fig. 1 below, we have all the Joker panel appearances and dialogue (darkened so as to make the contrast more apparent), and all of Batgirl’s in Fig. 2.
He’s a talker, alright. But this serves another purpose as well: it reminds us that Batgirl is isolated – trapped in that space with the Joker.
PAGE EIGHTEEN
On this page, the creative team and the clown prince have the same objective – they’re trying to draw us/Batgirl in, commanding our attention, using a repetitive visual/verbal rhythm to hold our/her attention. The rhythm breaks when the Joker reveals his little magic trick in the final panel; on the art level, this is achieved by having the Joker break the panel border, along with the sudden snap to red.
PAGE NINETEEN
The intensity spikes with this page, both through the warmer colors and the more action-y diagonal gutters. Some clever staging here; Burchett is able to convey Batgirl’s jump in the first panel by showing us the railing behind the Joker, giving us a concrete landmark by which to place her in space.
Check out the motion lines Burchett and Beatty have given us here; see how no two actions take place along the same axis, creating a ton of energy on the page.
That black silhouette in the last panel is as gritty as this comic gets, but Burchett keeps it respectable by only showing the Joker, not the Batgirl he’s clobbering. On the next page, it’s immediately made clear she’s just knocked out, not fully Jason Todded.
Also, props of everybody for never messing up which of the Joker’s hands was cuffed. It’s the easiest thing in the world to accidentally switch it up, especially when a character turns their back to the reader.
PAGE TWENTY
The Joker is now free to move about the Batcave – Burchett gives us a detailed look at the cave in panel one so that we viscerally feel this dangerous new liberty. He breaks the panel boarder again in panel two, which adds to that great double exposure as he sees the Batcave entrance. Sure, he saw it earlier when Alfred was coming down the steps, but it’s still a great moment. And anyway, it’s the Joker – maybe he just forgot about it in all the excitement. Who’s to say?
PAGE TWENTY ONE
And we’re back. Here’s the heart of the geography problem – or at the very least, a continuity problem. Back on pages fourteen and fifteen, we saw the Riddler’s goons are up on the balcony, along with him.
The Riddler then descends to the stage where Batman and Robin are standing. He then begins a one-two-three countdown; we leave the scene when he’s on two. Now he’s about to count three, and suddenly the goons are on the stage as well.
Gunfights are logistically tricky in any medium, especially when your heroes are unarmed. In this instance, the goons had to be down onto the stage so that Batman and Robin could realistically (”realistically”) take them on hand to hand. But since we never saw them descend to the stage, nor would they have had enough time to believably get there via stairs or whatever, their sudden appearance on the stage is very jarring.
A fix; in panel three on page fifteen, pictured below, we just have the goons descending on their own ropes.
If they’re fully rendered, they can be placed behind Robin, The Riddler, and Batman without interfering with their silhouettes.
PAGE TWENTY TWO
This is real solid action blocking. First panel has Batman in the foreground, Robin in the back. Batman’s punch leads organically into panel two, perpendicular to Robin’s kick – now he’s in the foreground, with Batman in back. In each panel, they have their own fights on their own planes of movement, making the space feel huge. It’s a very short, simple fight scene, but this variety of staging from panel to panel makes it feel much bigger than it actually is.
Burchett also manages to maintain a consistent rightward movement throughout. It totally feels like Batman and Robin are just tearing through these guys, and the uniform direction of movement is a big part of that.
PAGE TWENTY THREE
Back to Wayne Manor with this very cool page. Check out how the action funnels towards the bottom:
By placing the Map to Movie Star Homes where he has, Burchett guides the eye back to the central axis of the page. The action then travel’s straight down the central axis, getting narrower and narrower panel by panel, from the Joker’s wide stance to Alfred’s tactical crouch.
(The vibrating tea tray is a very nice touch.)
PAGE TWENTY FOUR
Wobbly panel shape as a shorthand for a woozy character coming back to lucidity is an evergreen technique. I’m also a big fan of the popping bubbles thing, but your milage may vary. When Batgirl comes back to full consciousness in panel three, Burchett cuts to a wide shot, soberly showing us all the characters in relation to each other, which is a great way to indicate a return to reality. We end this subplot, which preyed on themes of isolation and home-invasion danger, with Batgirl and Alfred standing together. An satisfying emotional mini-arc – and appropriately, Alfred gets a joke in on the Joker.
***
You can get this entire issue – for free! – on Comixology, along with every other issue of GOTHAM ADVENTURES for around a buck apiece.
For the last couple weeks, the time I might have otherwise spent writing more Page x Page Analyses was instead spent writing, revising, and thumbnailing the first issue of a new series. If the winds stay southernly, I’ll have more to say about that soon – but in the meantime, it’s got me thinking about what goes into making a successful first issue. Charged with introducing the cast and premises as well as telling an engaging money’s-worth story, they’re tricky beasts, even when you’re dealing with established characters. Maybe even especially when you’re dealing with established characters. For kids.
Such is the case with 1998′s BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #1!
I looked at issue 17 of this series in the debut installment of this feature. Aside from writer Ty Templeton and penciler Rick Burchett, the same creative team was here at the beginning, and all of the same good qualities are in play: strong meat-and-potatoes storytelling, muscular use of color to set location and mood, clear, clean inking, and solid lettering that invisibly guides the reading flow. With its intelligent use of simple character-driven plotlines and dynamic visual direction, BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #1 is a prime example of how to introduce new readers to a full, lived-in world – even if that world has been on your TV since 1992, and in continuous publication since 1939.
BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #1 and all characters contained therein are property of DC Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
***
PAGE ONE
We kick off our new Batman comic by having The Joker leaping straight at the reader as the entire Batfamily gives chase.
Why mess around if you don’t have to, y’know?
This is not, strictly speaking, a splash page. The inclusion of that little “With a price on his head!” panel to go along with the title is blatantly non-verisimilitudinous (meaning it explicitly breaks any illusion we have that what we’re seeing is real, immersive). I think this was a canny move; this issue is going to do some really tricky tone-juggling where the Joker is concerned, so starting out with these two very different deceptions of him right on the first page immediately lets us know what to expect. Lee Loughridge’s colors are on the job to keep this from being confusing, clearly placing the first panel in a different spacial and temporal plane than the main image.
PAGE TWO
The first panel follows immediately from the opening page, establishing a nice fast pace of action. I love how the Batfam looks sort of like a flock of birds – it’s a cool way to add a dynamic, distinctive element to what is essentially just a footchase.
This whole sequence has particularly clear lines of motion, beginning with this page:
Having Batman point directly at the reader in the last panel is an effective way to snap off the action flow of the page, making it feel more three-dimensional than the simple zig-gag it would be otherwise. Side note: how great are those sharp silhouettes in panel three? Funky and distinctive, selling the force of the explosion while still letting us know who’s who.
PAGE THREE
Lots of good stuff going on with this page. Again, the action continues directly from the previous page as Robin follows through on Batman’s order and saves a civilian from the falling debris. We get a nice little bit of characterization-through-action – Robin is a good soldier, a capable superhero, and a wisecracker – as well as demonstrating how the Batfamily is concerned with protecting the people of Gotham City just as much as they’re concerned with catching criminals. Seems pretty basic, but it’s surprising how often that simple mission statement gets lost in the shuffle of telling a new superhero story.
See also how the space where the flaming debris land in panel two is along the same latitude as where the civilian was standing in panel one. The arc of Robin’s swing also passes through that same point. This is a helpful touch, showing us how narrowly she just avoided a fiery demise.
We do lose track of Batgirl for the rest of this scene, which could be considered a structural error in the script.
Burchett makes sure we don’t lose track of Batman and the Joker by turning them into there sharp, easily identifiable silhouettes, backlit by Loughridge’s distinctive colors in the explosion and the screen. You really can’t miss them. Tim Harkins continues to help us out on the lettering front, drawing a line between Batman, the Joker, and Summer Glisan’s news report. The citizens below add to the general danger by making the city feel full of vulnerable citizens, as well as helping us get a sense for how high off the ground the action is.
PAGE FOUR
This is such a great way to get exposition across. Where an infodump like this can often kill a story’s momentum, the ongoing Batman/Joker fight keeps up the intensity of the scene in a way that really doesn’t take up all that much real estate on the page. This device also connects our main characters to the exposition by allowing the Joker to directly react to it. He really is a loathsome villain; Templeton’s script does a deft job of balancing out the goofy, whimsical elements of the Joker with the lethal. Too far one way and he’s just a clown who makes Batman look silly for having to contend with him – too far the other and he’s a shrill, boring serial killer.
More clean movement on this page:
Note how this layout draws our attention to the horrible rectus smile in panel three from two different directions; the action line from the previous panel as well as the Joker’s shaking fist, with Batman’s head in the bottom left corner pointing up to it for good measure. All conflicts in the issue derive from the fact that the Joker murdered this young man, so it’s very important that we absorb this image before we move on to the next page.
PAGE FIVE
See, again, the great balancing act. The anti-bat spray and the giant inflatable glove are patently ridiculous, but when laid over the face of a father driven mad by grief, the clownish gadgets become salt in the wound. The reader really identifies with the father here; imagine if you lost the person you loved more than anyone in the world, and this prancing asshole is the one responsible. Even when you put a price on his head, he just laughs at you. Look how sinister he is in panel three. He’s the most killable man in the Gotham City, this guy.
PAGE SIX
Man, how do you not read that first line in Mark Hamill’s voice?
There’s a really interesting use of space here. The action takes place all around the edges of the page, giving the whole sequence this great sense of verticality – even if there is a slight gaff in that Burchett and/or Beatty forgot to draw the Batline in panel four. That said, I do love the inclusion of the reporter and cameraman in that panel, giving the environment a nice sense of depth that emphasizes the splattery fate from which Batman just saved the Joker.
The action, and with it the scene, ends in the left of the last panel. This leaves the city shot in the right on that panel to act as a sort of ‘pan away’ moment, creating a quiet beat without cluttering the page with another panel. It’s super effective.
Something I forgot to address elsewhere: Burchett is always contrasting the rigid, unflappable Batman with the constant mugging of the Joker. This is largely down to Bruce Timm’s terrific character models, but Burchett is a sharp enough cartoonist to know how to stage them so those contrasts really land.
See also: this great juxtaposition at the top of this page.
PAGE SEVEN
I’ve always loved this lady in the bottom corner. No analysis, just crushin’.
PAGE EIGHT
Weirdly enough, The Joker is our POV character for this page. Despite being a comic book tie-in to a very popular tv show, this is still technically the first time we’re seeing the Batcave in this comic book series, so Templeton and Burchett give us this nice spacious look at the pace. The Joker’s reaction helps sell it as an impressive space, even if he’s mostly just talking nonsense. Loughridge uses this scene to establish the cool teals and greens that will indicate Batman’s private environments from here on out, such as the cave or the inside of the Batmobile.
Cutting from the huge shot of the cave to the narrow horizontal final panel adds to the suddenness of Batman cuffing the Joker to the railing.
“Awp!”
PAGE NINE
This is our introduction to Nightwing, so of course the wayward bad boy Batchild has to come screeching into the panel on his badass black motorcycle instead of just walking in like a normal person. Templeton and Burchett give Robin something to do by having him goof around on the railing, which avoids having the scene become just a bunch of people standing around in capes. See also: wringing a moment of tension out of Alfred’s introduction. I dig Batman’s snarl in the last panel – the most emotion we’ve seen from him so far. Alfred being in danger will do that.
PAGE TEN
Burchett adds dynamism to panel one by tossing a dutch angle into the mix. It’s a smart move – having a diving action like a tackle go directly towards or away from the reader can sometimes come across as static or just unclear. The dutch angle gives this panel enough energy to sell the action.
Also, a rare continuity gaff: the stairway entrance has a doorjamb here, where on the previous page it’s just a rough opening in the cave wall. The Joker looks a little bit off to me as well – could this have been one of the first pages Burchett drew in the new B:TAS style? It’s a pretty common practice for an artist on a new book to initially draw some pages from the middle of the issue, just to get a feel for the new project on some pages of lesser relative importance. When it comes to this specific page, of course, I’m purely speculating.
Regardless, Robin looks excellent in panel four.
PAGE ELEVEN
What a great page. This is the point at which the main plot splinters into its various subplots, emphasized by seeing all our players head off in their own directions in panel one. Batman hands the scene off to Batgirl in panel two, and in panel three we fully establish her as the new POV character for the Batcave scenes going forward. In the next panel, we see the rest of the Batfamily drive away on their various conveyances, the looming silhouette of the Joker’s handcuffed arm, and Batgirl herself in the midground between them, really selling how suddenly isolated she is. The last panel says it all – even if he’s handcuffed and weaponless, no one wants to be alone in a room with the Joker.
Here, we end the first act with all our plotlines well in play:
Batman and Robin try to crack the case Gordon has for them (which, if you were paying attention on page seven, you know involves The Riddler)
Nightwing on patrol, which will almost certainly involve…
All the Gothamites who’re scouring the streets looking for the big payday
Douglas Reid using all his wealth to get his revenge on the Joker
And Batgirl, guarding the man himself in the Batcave.
All of which will unfold over the remaining twenty seven (!) pages, each of which is as dense and active as what we’ve seen so far.
There’s a lot to love about this comic, and I’ll be coming back to it in the weeks to come. But today, I just wanted to look at the opening pages of a comic that does an exceptional job of using a clever, character-driven premise to set up its world.
***
You can get this entire issue – for free! – on Comixology, along with every other issue of GOTHAM ADVENTURES for, like, a buck or two apiece.
A couple days ago, I took a look at a short segment of the sixty-five page ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 — specifically, the four-page introduction to Superboy by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett. Today, I wanted to revisit a different part of that same issue: the nine total pages of subplot that focus on the nobody’s favorite hard-hitting hero of Suicide Slum: GANGBUSTER.
Oh, Gangbuster. While many casual comic history buffs may cite 90s comic character design trends in terms of pouches and spikes, I feel like Gangbuster represents the aesthetic of that era in an equal but opposite way. His “What if Firestorm was Robocop” look is such a prime example of what straight attempts at designing new comic book characters in the classic superhero mold looked like at the time. The shoulders. The helmet. His little logo. He’s so serious. He’s just the worst. I think I might love him.
But hey, Andrew Weiss I ain’t — far better to let you see my man Gangbuster in action and let his performance speak for itself. So let’s tuck in and take a look at his subplot in ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500, which I’ve entitled, for the purposes of discussion: “GANGBUSTER: SWING ANNA MISS.”
THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 and all characters contained therein are property of DC Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
***
PAGE ONE
Aww, yeah. Drink him in.
Grummett and Hazelwood create a sense of distance between the buildings by showing the foregrounded building Gangbuster’s hanging off of in full detail, while the buildings in the background are rendered in black silhouette, suggesting they’re far enough apart that light affects them differently. This has the side affect of giving Gangbuster a sense of height — if the buildings behind him feel far away, we automatically assume the ground must be equally far below. This is a great hero shot, besides. From this first image, we know what kind of superhero Gangbuster is: the weapon and helmet suggest he has no powers, the collar implies he’s kind of a squarejohn. To my eyes, his design invokes two moralistic Marvel characters: Daredevil and Cyclops.
The message is clear: the Super R.A. is here to kick some ass.
PAGE TWO
Excellent establishing shot of the alleyway — going with an over the shoulder angle concretely places Gangbuster, our audience surrogate character, relative to the other characters below. When added to the previous splash page, this gives us a very strong understanding of the space: a narrow alleyway with entrances on both sides.
Note how Grummett makes panels two and three a smaller inset of panel one, giving the feeling that what we’re seeing is a detail of the larger scene. Colorist Glenn Whitmore even makes the gutters of these panels a dark red, a color we already associate with Gangbuster, further coding the scene as being observed by him, even though panels two and three are not literally from his POV. This might be reading into things too much — this color coding might just be a happy accident. Super minor continuity issue with his nunchucks: they’re dangling free on page one, but gathered into his fist here. Personally, I’d think the clinking chain connecting them would give him away. But who knows? It’s the DC Universe. Maybe they’re hard rubber instead of metal. Moving on.
Also, that guy next to the car. Keep an eye on him.
PAGES THREE AND FOUR
These pages work together as a sort of splash in three parts. The black field floating behind the panels on page three is a great way to add depth to the layout — Grummett employs this several times over the course of the issue, always to good effect. On the big splash page, I really like the visual representation of the whipping motion of the nunchucks; it adds force and speed to a weapon the can often look sort of ineffective on a static comic book page. The slowly increasing size of Gangbuster across both pages conveys the growing intensity and brutality of his attack on these guys. This also sets up this moment as the height of Gangbuster’s evening — we’re clearly meant to be more or less on his side right now. After all, we need a hero now more than ever. Superman’s dead.
PAGE FIVE
The first three panels on this page consist of tight action shots, limiting our ability to see our environment, so we share in Gangbuster’s surprise when we pull to a wide shot in the last panel. Dropping out the border in panel four, surrounding the figures in negative space, enhances the feeling that the cops have swarmed him from out of nowhere — although note that Grummett adds enough puddles and junk on the ground to make the figures feel like they’re standing on something solid. Lastly, making all of the figures the same cool shade effectively equalizes them; Gangbuster isn’t a superhero, he’s just some schmuck that’s about to get canned.
PAGE SIX
Is the cop who calls out to Gangbuster in panel four the same one who fires at him in panel five (“Charlie”)? Logistically, It would make sense — there’s no one in front of him in panel four, and Charlie in panel five is clearly in front of the “Charlie – No!” cop in that panel (who we’ll call “Killjoy”). Character-wise, however, it would make more sense for the panel four cop to be Killjoy — he’s even holding his gun the same way in both panels.
I point this out as an example of the pitfalls of making characters in identical outfits too physically similar. If you’re drawing a group of big city cops, there’s no reason not to make them diverse in race and gender, if for no other reason than to add easy distinguishing elements between what is otherwise a totally homogenous pack of unnamed characters (although there’s plenty of other reasons why this is a good idea).
All that said, great bit of action between panels one and two. The close-up of Gangbuster grabbing the cop in panel one, a right to left motion, leads directly into the huge left to right throw in panel two. I love the anatomy in this scene — you can really feel how much effort the decidedly non-superhuman Gangbuster has to put into the throw. Once again, Grummett and Hazelwood create a feeling of space in panel two by dropping the back two cops into black silhouettes, with their badges still visible to create a feeling overwhelming, encroaching authority.
Also, considering how ineffective small arms typically are against costumed crimefighters, our boy Charlie is one crackerjack marksman. Or maybe — just maybe — Gangbuster is a goddamn terrible superhero.
PAGE SEVEN
Here is where I point out a minor flaw in this whole sequence; now that we’ve left the alleyway, we can say conclusively that the guy in the suit standing next to the car on page two never showed up again. He’s not even in the pack of cops surrounding Gangbuster on page five — we just lose track of him entirely. It’s a small thing, but since Grummett (or possibly Ordway in the scripting process) chose to include him in that establishing shot of the alleyway, it would have been nice to see him again when the Undercover Cops twist goes down. Losing him like this adds to the hash this scene makes of the work done to establish this space on the first two pages.
Couple possible fixes: One, take the guy in the suit out entirely. The initial interaction of the undercover cop and the drug dealer is framed very tightly and personally, so just have them be there (ostensibly) alone. Then pull the reveal of the undercover cop as is, and all the uniformed cops still swarm him from — the walls? I guess? They kind of come out of nowhere.
Two, and my preferred fix, would be to have a couple of guys in suits sanding by the undercover cop’s car on page two, with one distinct guy standing next to the drug dealer — a big guy in a leather jacket, something that screams “bodyguard.” On page three, Gangbuster takes out the bodyguard in panel two instead of the drug dealer. We keep Gangbuster wailing on the drug dealer on page four — that looked great. On page five, instead of just punching out that one cop, we have Gangbuster diving into the men in suits in a more “superhero takes on a bunch of thugs” type fight. Then the men in suits reveal themselves to be undercover cops, instead of the uniformed cops just appearing out of nowhere at the end of page five— something I keep bringing up because it really does bother me, since the geography of the narrow alleyway was so well established on page two, making the sudden appearance of the uniformed cops feel a little like a cheat. Wouldn’t Gangbuster have been ideally situated to see them hiding in the alley, from his vantage point on the fire escape high above? This proposed scenario cleans all that up, and loosely preserves the extant flow of action. And even though I did ramble on about this for a goodly while, it is ultimately a minor flaw. But then, that’s the thing about minor flaws; there’s usually a pretty easy fix.
Meanwhile, this page: Really strong lettering from Albert De Guzman at play here. Look how he guides our eye down the page, helping Grummett’s already clear line of motion by creating an arrow of words pointing right to Hob’s Bay.
Grummet consistently makes Gangbuster small (I.E. less powerful) on this page, a clear contrast to how huge he was during the opening pages. Here he’s dwarfed by everything on the roof, from vent pipes to chimneys, culminating in the huge cop’s hand + gun in panel four. I personally would’ve liked to have shown a little more of the cop’s arm, enough to see an official insignia up on his shoulder, but we’ve already established that the cops’ jackets have furry cuffs, so it works fine enough as is.
PAGE EIGHT
There’s been no shortage of great layouts in this issue, but this page is a cut above. The narrow verticality of that first panel bleakly lays out the stakes at play; the cop on the roof, the three story jump, the bay below. Grummett and Hazelwood use the fog off the bay to drop the buildings beyond into the deep background, visually “clearing the path” to the bay.
The second panel eliminates everything but this huge full-figure shot of Gangbuster diving, with a couple scraps of lead paint from the roof to place him in space. We can’t see his expression, but his captioned dialogue is tremendously affecting. Note also how while Gangbuster is diving towards the bottom on the page, the lettering still leads us organically to his plunge into the bay in panel three, even though that panel is layout-wise much higher on the page.
Nice reverse shot in that last panel, reminding us how far Gangbuster has just jumped and adding tension to the idea that he might not have survived. The last line is continued in a caption on the following page: “…No way anyone could’ve survived THAT!”
Another note about the last couple pages: Grummett always has Gangbuster moving in the same direction, left to right, throughout the entire rooftop chase. For this reason, the bullet Gangbuster catches is in his right arm — the arm that’s always facing us.
Oh man! It could’ve been a cool visual dichotomy, if we had seen the official insignia on the sleeve of the cop pointing the gun at him at the end of page seven! The officer of the law has a symbol of his authority where the vigilante has a bullet wound! Ahh, well. Still a phenomenal page.
PAGE NINE
We come back to this subplot after about twenty pages with a nice, low-energy establishing shot of the docks. The wafting, flapping paper is a great way to suggest windchill and urban decay. The bay is to the left of the page — when last we saw Gangbuster, he was making a rightward dive into the bay. On a storytelling level, we’re on “the other side” of the bay. Gangbuster got away clean.
High-Pockets is immediately helpful here, despite having a crummy night. No deep analysis to be had here, I just like it. Good little character trait for a good little character. As he hauls Gangbuster out of the drink, we see he’s transferred his wine to the pocket of his coat, which he then gives to Gangbuster. High-Pockets doesn’t offer him his hooch, mind you — Gangbuster just straight jukes it. We end on a nice reverse silhouette as High-Pockets and the slumped, defeated Gangbuster lope off into the shadowed, Superman-less city of Metropolis. Gangbuster’s last line concludes in caption on the next page: “…Then I’ll be finished with this stinking place!” Our hero, kids.
Again, this is one of the first comics I even read. When I think about it, Gangbuster has to have been one of the first, say, fifteen superheroes I was ever aware of. Before Green Arrow or Daredevil or The Question or Black Canary, I knew about Gangbuster — a character who, as depicted here, just isn’t really cut out to be a superhero. He’s a washout, a bencher, a big ol’ can of coulda beans. He’d be one of the hockey pad Batmen from The Dark Knight, only they wouldn’t let him join because he’s just such a giant prick. He’s awesome. Gangbuster, man! Gangbuster.
***
You can buy the full 65-page issue of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 for the surprisingly low price of $1.99 off Comixology! It’s absolutely worth the read, containing a truly emotional Pa Kent story as well as the introduction of Cyborg Superman, which is, if nothing else, exceptionally well-paced.
Meanwhile – we’re in the final days of the Kickstarter for SECTION ZERO!
Tom Grummett reunites with writer Karl Kesel to bring back the high quality old school team-based adventure comic — one of the few types of fiction that genuinely does work better in the medium of comics than it does anywhere else, and these guys are high in the top list of creators who can pull it off. If these awesome Gangbuster pages above did anything for you, SECTION ZERO is totally on your frequency.
If you want to read some preview pages and learn more about the project, I highly encourage everybody to check out the SECTION ZERO Kickstarter — it’s entering its last week and I very much want to see this book on my shelf.
***
As always, feel free to check me on any mistakes I might have made, add your own commentary, or share similar examples of good comics done well. I’ll be back next week with a different comic to peruse.
(After this point, I don’t know for sure who did what — this is just one of many stories in this king-sized issue, with only the script, pencils, and inks credited to this story in particular. However, Grummett and Hazelwood also drew the 40+ page story that makes up the bulk of the issue, and so it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to assume they did the duties on this story as well. Acknowledging that this is an assumption, those credits are:
COLORS: Glenn Whitmore
LETTERS: Albert De Guzman
EDITORIAL: Mike Carlin with Jennifer Frank)
Fun autobiographical fact: my mother bought this comic fresh off the stands, way back in the summer of 1993. A direct followup to THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN, this five and a half dozen page monster ran her $2.95, plus Texas state sales tax. I was all of three years old and didn’t know Superman from Peter Pan, so I wonder: did she run the numbers and figure, yeah, the son of a behavioral economics professor and an information systems management consultant was probably going to be the kind of serial fiction nerd who’d appreciate this comic? Did she take a gamble on the outside shot of it becoming a collectable? Or, Occam’s Razor: after all the media coverage about how DC Comics had killed the Man of Tomorrow, she saw the “BACK FROM THE DEAD?! THE MAN OF STEEL FIGHTS FOR HIS LIFE!” cover blurb and thought it might be worth the three dollars ten to find out how he did.
[Cover by Jerry Ordway]
In today’s mini-analysis, I’ll be looking at just four pages of this issue. I was flipping through it for the first time in years and appreciating it in a new light, owing to my newfound appreciation for the action-packed but emotionally intelligent storytelling of penciller Tom Grummett. The issue ends in four short stories that introduce the four infamous replacement Supermen; Steel, The Eradicator, The Cyborg Superman, and of course, my man Superboy — and it wasn’t until this read-though that I realized the Superboy segment was scripted by Karl Kesel, someone who does the same kind of clean, classical work with the writing that Grummett does with the art. Now, full disclosure: I’ve worked with Karl on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: GODS AND MONSTERS for Dynamite Entertainment, but I’d like to think that instead on biasing me in Karl’s favor, it just gave me a greater understanding of his scripting acumen. I’m sure you agree.
Since Kesel and Grummett are currently reuniting to resurrect their sci-fi adventure series SECTION ZERO on Kickstarter — more on that at the end of the analysis — I thought their four-page introduction to the Metropolis Kid might be worth an in-depth look.
THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 and all characters contained therein are property of DC Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
***
Before we start, this is the page that precedes Kesel and Grummett’s story (this preceding story scripted by Roger Stern with art by Jackson Guice and Denis Rodier):
So, this is what’s in our heads as we head into our next story, yeah? Okay. Onward.
PAGE ONE
The opening of this page has a couple hoops to jump through: it’s the start of this new four-page story, and has to introduce us to our characters and setup like any opening panel has to. But it also has to maintain the loose illusion of being a continuation of the main sixty-five page narrative; it can’t indulge in a splashy title page. And lastly, it has to execute a pretty acute tone shift from the darker than dark “Vengeance of Superman” vignette Stern and Guice just served up.
The path that vaults all hoops at once: Environment As Action. The blaring alarm at four in the morning, the scrambling troops (who in this first panel act more as setting than as characters), and a couple simple caption boxes letting us know what’s up. Background? Man, to hell with a background, we only got four pages for this thing — it’s all action, it’s all information, and it’s coming straight for us, right down to our super heroic focal point character making eye contact and shouting orders at us. This is How You Engage a Reader 101.
The rest of the page immediately, but smoothly, gets us up to speed. Who’s the Captain America guy? The Guardian. What’s his deal? He’s in charge of the Cadmus soldiers. Who’s the suit? Westfield. A reminder of the early hour — that’s clearly important, and Kesel doesn’t want us to forget it. What’s Westfield’s relationship to the Guardian and the soldiers? The wet blanket superior officer who commands authority but not respect. Who do we like more? The Guardian, because he’s a better leader and we’ve seen his face, so we connect more with him even though his face is now partially masked. Plus he looks like a cool superhero, while Westfield looks like your friend’s lame dad. And it all ends on a classic page-turn cliffhanger: “No telling who — or WHAT — is on the other side!”
Five panels in, and already we’ve forgotten all about “the Vengeance of Superman…”
PAGE TWO
Ballsy use of such a huge panel in such a short story. The muted, mid-tone coloring of the lab not only makes the Guardian stand out, maintaining him as our focal character for this scene, but also draws our attention to the small scrap of bright red Superman cape hanging on the shattered glass tube. Situating that scrap in the bottom right quadrant of the panel guides our eye clockwise towards the next panel. And just in case you didn’t notice the scrap on its own, Grummet uses Westfield’s eyeline and his outreached hand to draw an invisible line to it. Also of note: Guardian, the honest hero just doing his job, notices the big thing, the shattered tube — Westfield, who knows what’s really going on in that lab, is the one who notices the scrap first.
Guardian is super dominant in the rest of this scene. He picks up the scrap, taking physical charge of the evidence of Cadmus’ sketchy Kryptonian secret. He’s looking directly back at Westfield, who’s turned away from him and is making excuses; signs of weakness. Guardian continues to be the largest/strongest presence in panel three and again in four, where he aligns with our POV as we look up at Packard. Speaking of Packard, he’s rocking another very recognizable lame dad look. So far the two grown-ups we’ve seen who aren’t exciting soldiers or cool superheroes are stuffy, grumpy squares. This is what adults are like in this Superboy story.
Note how the room feels full of soldiers throughout this scene, even though there’s only ever one soldier in each panel. The smoke filling the room goes a long way to achieving this effect, suggesting unseen mass, and Guardian seals it by commanding “McFarlane” to “Have your squad search every inch of this place.” Great way to keep the scene full, but not cluttered.
PAGE THREE
As we change from interior to exterior settings, the page layout changes from the boxy, squarish panels of the previous pages to a series of page-wide horizontal panels. Nearly every panel is a good example of a different way to utilize this type of layout, starting with panel one: it gives us a nice wide establishing shot, clearly showing the geography of the tunnel entrance, the highway, and Metropolis beyond.
In panel two, the powerful left to right movement of Superboy punching the grate off the tunnel entrance is enhanced by how it utilizes all the vertical space, giving the feeling of focused power — like a bullet through a barrel.
In panel three, we see how well a horizontal layout helps us introduce a bunch of characters at once, with lots of non-active space on either side of them for everybody to get in a line of character-establishing dialogue. Kesel even sneaks in a nice little hint at the nature of Superboy’s powers. Notice that the Newsboy in the middle of the pack doesn’t get a line, but that’s fine, because he’s featured heavily in the next panel. No need to cram everyone’s moment into the same panel, which usually feels forced anyhow.
In panels two through five, the limited vertical space is employed to cut our freshly-minted Superboy into segments. By keeping us from seeing all of him at once, we build his mystique and the anticipation of the reader, not to mention helping us get a feel for the individual elements of his complex new costume.
PAGE FOUR
Ladies and gentlemen: a late but strong entry for best superhero costume of the 20th century. After teasing him for pages, we get this legitimately iconic reveal of our new Superboy — no matter what he says he is. We also benefit from how well Kesel and Grummett established the spatial relationship of Metropolis, the tunnel, and the highway, so that we don’t need to show any of the Newsboys to know we’re sharing their POV here. We’re so familiar with the space at this point, we inherently know that’s where we are. This composition is thematically strong, too — he’s throwing this last defiant declaration before turning back around and heading down into Metropolis, into whatever adventures await him there. It’s like a low-grade cliffhanger. It’s a promise of something exciting to come. This is how you introduce a character.
***
You can buy the full 65-page issue of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #500 for the surprisingly low price of $1.99 off Comixology! It’s absolutely worth the read, containing one of my favorite Pa Kent stories ever.
Kesel and Grummett reunite to bring back the high quality old school team-based adventure comic — one of the few types of fiction that genuinely does work better in the medium of comics than it does anywhere else, and these guys are high in the top list of creators who can pull it off. If the Superboy pages above did anything for you, SECTION ZERO is totally on your frequency. Take a look:
Right?
If you want to read more preview pages and learn more about the project, I highly encourage everybody to check out the SECTION ZERO Kickstarter — it’s entering its last week and I so want to see this book on my shelf.
***
As always, feel free to check me on any mistakes I might have made, add your own commentary, or share similar examples of good comics done well. I’ll be back next week with a different, longer comic to peruse.
Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley wrote and drew ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN for one hundred and eleven consecutive monthly issues. Can you even imagine.
(I, by contrast, drew WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT for twelve consecutive monthly issues and barely made it out with all my fingers still intact.)
Neither or them went into this cold — Bendis cut his teeth on a long series of hard-edged indie crime thrillers like AKA GOLDFISH and TORSO, while Bagley had been a regular Marvel Comics fixture since the eighties, with a strong history drawing Spider-Man in particular. But they both hit their stride on ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, kicking out a new version of the character that felt fresh and familiar and, in the process, creating one of the most consistently entertaining superhero comics this side of EMPOWERED. My personal MVPs: their new versions of Aunt May, Daredevil, and the surprisingly affecting mega-narrative of the Ultimate Green Goblin. And that ending — ho man, that ending.
The issue we’ll be looking at this week, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69: “MEET ME,” takes place more or less in the middle of their mammoth hundred and eleven issue run. And that’s part of why I chose it — the goal of this feature is to take solid, workmanlike comics from professionals who know what they’re about and see what makes them tick, but also to see what we can learn from their mistakes. Mister Bagley’s credentials are unimpeachable; I’d place him up with John Romita JR and Andy Kubert as one of my top living artists of straight-up old-school Marvel-style Super Hero Comics. But mid-run slippage is inevitable, and sometimes the shortcuts of a good artist can be just as useful to pick apart as the abject failures of a bad one.
I also picked this issue because I thought it’d be a good fit for my guest: comic artist Aud Koch, one my favorite people to talk theory with and someone whose output I’m both impressed by on a peer level and super into on a fan level. Even though this is the first time I’ve had a guest on this feature and I only half know what I’m doing, Aud was still willing to sit down and help me beta test the tandem Page X Page Analysis experience like a mensch. Now, Aud’s the nicest person you’ll meet in a year, but she’ll also tell you exactly what she thinks and damn the torpedoes. She’ll make some poor young artist cry one of these days. She’ll feel just awful about it, too. My point is: I didn’t exactly pick her name out of a hat for this, y’know?
With that, let’s go to the transcript!
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #69 and all characters contained therein are property of Marvel Comics, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
PAGE ONE
DAN: So, Aud: are you of the opinion that a single issue should be a complete story in and of itself?
AUD: That depends on what the intention of the writer is. I think this one is fine without being that way — I mean, this whole series is set up like a teen drama show. They always have cliffhangers.
DAN: And “previously ons…”
DAN: There’s certainly a lot more boring ways you could start an issue off.
AUD: It’s definitely eye-catching, but an immediate problem is: who’s the main character? You’d think from the first panel that it’s Liz. Or Johnny, who’s the one with the big action shot. But no, it’s actually those tiny little figures in the corner.
DAN: We’re not really getting much from her expression in panel one.
AUD: Which is a problem that I had throughout a lot of the comic. The expressions felt slightly off to me.
DAN: I would have to agree. The point of this exercise is not to nitpick, but sometime small details really do go a long way towards keeping a page from working.
AUD: Later on, there’s that scene that’s entirely just Peter and MJ standing around talking to Johnny for like four, five pages, so it entirely rests on the acting that Bagely does through characters, but there’s no movement happening at all. Bagley doesn’t do the thing where he makes everything a soap opera, which is good, but he also can leave his figures rather flat.
PAGE TWO
DAN: The game’s upped quite a bit here. I feel like we get a lot more from the expressions. Bagley has a great model for the Human Torch — he’s able to suggest emotions and facial details even though he’s all flamed up.
AUD: The artistry of the flames on Johnny is really beautiful. Looking at it now, these last three panels should have been the first ones of the issue.
DAN: Mm, yeah! We’d start off with Johnny looking down at our main characters. Because it really is Peter and Johnny’s interaction that the issue hinges on — Liz’s story is a secondary thing, even though she’s the first character we see in this issue. Bagley and inker Scott Hanna do a good job of suggesting the city in the panel one background, giving the scene a good sense of pace; They’re not in the Mojave desert, they’re on a beach near New York.
AUD: Something I found a bit distracting though is — what the hell is going on with that moon? Like, that’s not a moon! It’s a warty… mass!
DAN: Fair enough. And it’s funny because the city’s so nicely abstracted, while the moon is — I feel you there.
AUD: It’s like a giant tumor in the sky!
DAN: I also have a little problem with Liz’s motion in panel two.
AUD: Yes! She should be be running away from Jonny and off the page. That way she’d be looking back at him as she make her exit off the page.
DAN: Yeah, I think that would be better.
PAGE THREE
DAN: Here we have another juicy Human Torch splash image…
AUD: See, that’s another money shot — storytelling-wise, it would have made more sense if it was us looking up at Johnny from where Peter and MJ were standing, seeing him him shooting off into the distance from their point of view. This one looks like we’re about to follow Johnny off on some… flame adventure.
DAN: You’re right, it really does feel like we’re transitioning to his POV, when that’s clearly not what’s going on.
AUD: Bagley also didn’t take into account where speech bubbles would go. you can see that the letterer was like “what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
DAN: Yeah, they’re spillin’. He could’ve dropped the figures a little bit.
AUD: The only reason it doesn’t fit is because Bagley wanted to leave room for this image of Johnny shooting off, which again, storytelling-wise, doesn’t really work.
DAN: One thing I do really like about those bottom three panels — they’re this nice narrative unit, small and cramped and comic booky in the corner to offset the splashy sci-fi spectacle of Johnny shooting off into the night above. It makes MJ’s dialogue, which is think is pretty funny here, even funnier by comparison — it’s like a small comedy aside.
AUD: But then, they are the main characters…
DAN: They are the main characters! Good point.
PAGE FOUR
DAN: Alright, here we are back in the Baxter Building.
AUD: This is one where it was really, like, these expressions are so flat… it doesn’t carry the scene.
DAN: One art thing I have trouble with here… I don’t know if Sue is his mom or the same age as him. I have trouble placing her.
AUD: Well, the only reason you’d know that is because she says “little brother,” which I feel like Bendis might have added because it wasn’t clear.
DAN: It’s a problem when you have a character who’s supposed to be a teenager, which Sue clearly is —
AUD: Wait, she’s a teenager?
DAN: I mean, is she not?
AUD: [Laughs] She probably is…!
DAN: I mean, that’s a problem, we should know! And she’s wearing lipstick and whatnot…
AUD: It’s that hollywood syndrome! Women don’t wear makeup when they’re in let-down at home clothes. Ack.
DAN: That said, I think Bagley does a good job of moving the camera around. Even though there’s not a lot happening on this page, it’s not static. After Johnny says “leave me alone” in panel five, we cut to this nice, lonely panel with heavy shadows.
AUD: I don’t like the way they’re facing inward in that panel necessarily, though.
DAN: You’re rather maintain Johnny’s rightward positioning from the earlier panels, to maintain a sense of space?
AUD: I want his face to keep facing the bottom right corner, so if Sue’s off to the side, she’d be closer to the outside of the page, since she’s on the outside of him in the conversation.
DAN: Yeah! Johnny’s sitting still and staring in one direction, so we really should we moving around with Sue, not moving around with Johnny, who’s stationary. That’s a really good point. Also — I like the hot pretzel line in panel four. That was something specific to them that nicely places them as siblings. Sometimes that little element of specificity can really help sell a scene.
THE SHADOW STRIKES! is high on my list of favorite ongoing series ever. As far as I’m concerned, of the many four-color iterations of The Shadow, this is the one that truly gets it right. The Shadow of STRIKES! is a lurking, manipulating hybrid of The Phantom of the Opera and John Wick, the action of the series playing out mainly through the perspectives of his agents and his criminal quarry. This book is tight, hard-edged, and restrained; it avoids a lot of hacky pulp comics pitfalls because it understands that the original Walter Gibson Shadow novels weren’t “trying to be pulpy” — they were trying to be lean, lurid action thrillers. This is almost entirely down to writer Gerard Jones, but it works better than anywhere else in the issues drawn by the artist that defined the look and feel of the series — Eduardo Barreto. STRIKES! sometimes suffers from being the type of lower budget 80’s/90’s DC book where the fill-in issues can be sloppy to unreadable and the truly great issues mainly succeed by virtue of being the product of creators who weren’t really being watched that closely, but that doesn’t mean I’m grading on some kind of a curve when I say the truly great issues are truly great.
Today, we’re looking at one of those issues — the second installment of an amazing four-part storyline that sees The Shadow, along with his most trusted agent Margo Lane and the begrudgingly complicit Inspector Cardona, taking his private war on crime from their habitual New York haunts to the streets of Chicago. In this analysis, I’ll be looking at how tightly Barreto’s pencils and inks hew to Jones’ script, and how the diligence of colorist (and Shadow historian) Anthony Tollin actively facilitates the near-seamless transitions between the plot’s many storylines. This is a full comic that never feels crowded, a dense comic that keeps light, and a very comic booky comic book that never loses sight of the emotional reality of what it’s depicting.
THE SHADOW STRIKES! #13 and all characters contained therein are property of DC Comics and/or Conde Nast Publications, reproduced here solely for educational purposes.
COVER
I love how conceptually simple this cover is. Graphic, understated buildings. A mostly obscured main character. Smoke and mist wafting around for a little atmosphere. There’s only one thing that’s clearly rendered — a tommy gun, unfired. The Shadow is usually depicted using handguns, so him holding this universal visual signifier for “MOB STORY” immediately lets you know what you’re in for. And that’s even without the blurb at the top. You wanna see The Shadow fight the Chicago Mob? I know I wanna see The Shadow fight the Chicago Mob.
PAGE ONE
Something THE SHADOW STRIKES! does particularly well is maintaining the balance between mainstream comic book sensibility and HBO subject matter without making either seem out of place. We open with a prime example — the hand acting in panels one through four clearly conveys uncomfortable reality of a woman having sex she doesn’t enjoy with a man she doesn’t like. This transitions to her reaching over to grab a cigarette and light up in panels five and six (along with the barb “what was even quicker than usual” for those in the back). This establishes her as our POV character for the scene, something every scene going forward will have in some form or another. The point of this opening scene is to establish bad guy mobster Anthony ‘Half-Step’ Sbarbarro as a detestable macho prick in his personal as well as professional life. By identifying with this woman, we share her lack of fulfillment and, soon, her ongoing victimization. We quickly learn to hate Half-Step by seeing him through her eyes. We also see a hint of a gun in a shoulder holster, in case you didn’t realize what kind of comic you’re about to read.
PAGE TWO
This page validates the bad feeling we got about Half-Step on the previous page. Not only so we establish the leg injury that gives him his nickname, we show how petty and violent he is. Note how loose his fingers are as he strikes her in panel four — it’s a casual, low-effort act in between tying his tie and pulling on his pants, and it absolutely demolishes her. Half-Step is a powerful man who callously uses that power to abuse those weaker than him. The scene ends on her, leaving us stewing in the emotional trauma Half-Step leaves behind him. Imagine a version of this scene that focuses on him instead of this nameless woman; his hands on the first page instead of hers, him walking out into the hall in this last panel instead of her crying into her pillow. One version of the scene encourages you to identify with Half-Step, or, jesus, maybe even thrill in his violent savoir faire. This other version shows him for the monster he is by humanizing the people around him.
PAGE THREE
Chick Heck — a dynamite name — catches us up on the events of the previous issue and shows us pictures of the main players so we’ll recognize them when we see them later. While Joe O’Hara is mainly just a quippy mannequin to help Chick with the recap, there’s some great staging between him and the showgirl in the first couple panels. She’s way too smart for him, and even though she’s constantly placed in positions of power in her panels (larger than him in panels one and three, walking past/in front of him in panel two) he just keeps checking out her legs with the unearned confidence of a white man with a little hair.
PAGE FOUR
More concise, well-written recapping, which Barreto livens up even further with a variety of camera angels and some cool lighting and drapery. We see Half-Step (who I keep accidentally and only quasi-understandably calling “Johnny Stomp” before correcting myself) near the end of the page, connecting this scene to the last and reminding us how much we would like for somebody to kill him. Chick does us a final narrative solid by setting us up for the next page with a great dramatic line.
