The Comic Page as Art

We're headed toward a new world  of digital comics.  It'll take a color Kindle-like device and one much cheaper than any prophecied Apple tablet but it seems that's the road we're on.  

Some people swear by the iPhone app that breaks comics apart so they're displayed a frame at a time.   Motion comics based on existing books do a similar thing.  Both approaches ignore the idea that the comic page has an impact as a single work of art.

Take a look at this beautiful page by Mike Mignola.  It's from the Hellboy short story, King Vold, which you can find in The Right Hand of Doom collection from Dark Horse comics.  The guy in the upper left made a deal with the headless ghost of King Vold.  He betrayed Hellboy for the promise of gold.  But gold is cursed and burns right through his hand before turning into stones. 

       

Look at it panel by panel and the story is clear.  The wolves of the ghost king look on, apparently laughing at the plight of the mortal.But take a look at the page as a whole and you'll see that there's a meta-image, an almost animated depiction of the action.  Look how the gold is caught in the upper left panel then burns through the guy's hand on a diagonal then drops straight down to the ground where it turns to stones.  The action image is strengthened by filling the other panels with gray so the eye follows the path of the gold.  You'll never see that in any medium that only shows you a panel at a time.

 

The next example is a page of an unpublished comic by me.  A slumber party is disrupted by a poltergeist attack but one of the girls can see the creatures that are causing the chaos.  The page is about the creatures noticing her. 

We see her in the center of the page, surrounded by the creatures, suddenly immersed in their world which is the greater thematic point.  Again, a statement lost if delivered in peaces.  The story will still be told but the graphic storytelling is gone.   The comic is reduced to being a storyboard.

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The final page is really more of a gimmick.  It's Neal Adams in the original run of Deadman saying, "Hey, look what I can do!"  I've broken it up into separate panels in an attempt to keep you from seeing the meta-image.  When you see all the panels together on a page that you realize they puzzle pieces making up the face of Deadman.  The fact that the panels form his face doesn't add to the story.  In fact, it detracts a bit because you can't help pulling out of the story to say, "Hey, look what Neal Adams can do!"

Comics are a fantastic storytelling medium.  An artist/writer relate a story in ways that film can not.  It is a unique medium, not a long comic strip or animated storyboard.   Appreciate comics for what they are while you can.  Once artists start writing for digital devices, a whole new language will develop.   Or maybe that's the excuse to buy a hard copy of something you enjoyed digitally; you'll get the comic page that you never saw, which can be more than the sum of its panels.   

Meanwhile, please forgive me for the layout of this post but it's late and I'm done fighting with the formatting tools.   --Tad

Comments

[Angeline]

Thank you for posting this in response to my question! I've never read a comic on iPod before. Personally, I prefer reading the real thing, especially my favourite comics. I like staring at the whole page, taking in the artwork.

Your unpublished comic looks interesting. How many of your own comics have you done?