When I began reading superhero comics there were at least two stories in every issue, sometimes three. Writers and artists had to cram their pulp printed tales of Good and Evil into as little as eight pages of four color pulchritude. Within those few panels, Superman could face of with a mad scientist, devolve into an ape or be mutated into a giant headed super brain, often both, succeed in saving the day no matter what his form and have time left over to foil Lois's attempts at discovering his secret identity. In today's comics that same story would take seven or eight issues and possibly a crossover event.
It's called "decompression" and is bemoaned in some quarters but I enjoy it. Gold and Silver Age comics were more like outlines of plot points. Their glory was packing stories with huge ideas, surprising twists and a conviction that Good will triumph. But a modern comic can convey emotions, motivations, atmosphere and build suspense. It takes time to do that.
Flying is taken forgranted in comics. The Legion of Superheroes got to the point where it wasn't even considered a power, just a means a transportation. Every character was just given a flight ring and would be zooming into the sky with great confidence by the next panel. When creating the following pages of EMMARYN I wanted to make the idea of flying special, a little terrifying but ultimately joyous.
On the previous page Emmaryn was floating out of control due to her newly sprouted faerie wings. She was trying to get to her mother who was leaving for work. In the last two panels the anti-gravity effects stopped and she put her hand on the door knob to open the door. I planned Page 16 to be revealed by the turning of the page. Again, you'd have to tell me if this was effective. I counted on your brain making the connection between her hand on the door knob inside with the image of her hanging onto it for dear life as the wings kicked in again. The page has no dialogue for two reasons: There's nothing that needs to be said and I wanted this page to contrast with everything that came before. The lettering of sound effects or a scream would just clutter up the images. This way it's open and airy.
I broke down the moment further. Her feet against the sky is Em's point of view. Graphically it's the same as if I drew her stepping over an abyss. The close up of her hands show her fingers slipping. Her tiny figure against the clouds indicates how fast she "fell." Finally, the car backs out of the garage showing that her mother missed seeing her by seconds. This page shows that I'm trying to translate film effects to comics. Cutting the sound out during a scene highlights the tension of a moment. Adding panels in the portrayal of a moment slows down the reader like slow motion in a movie.
A note on color: I was planning there to be some. The clouds would have had their thick black outlines replaced with a light blue which would have increased the sense of depth and not fought the foreground stuff for attention. The same kind of color treatment on Page 17 would have reduced the clutter.
First off, forgive the spacing on the lettering. Great letterers do a lot more than choose a font. I am decidedly not a great letterer. Here you see me animating on the page again. The camera pushes closer and closer to Em to increase the tension and provide the contrast of an extreme close up with the extreme wide shot in the bottom panel. The sound of the jet engine would have had graduated color, from desaturated to intense, to suggest a sound getting louder and louder.
Page 18 also suffers from lack of color. Imagine the page featuring the pale blue of the early morning sky with the clouds catching the warm colors of the rising sun. Then slashed across it would be a dark room in an entirely different palette. Dialogue-wise, note I'm mentioning characters we haven't seen yet. "Cog" is the other guy in the room and once again there is a mention of "Mage" as someone that others worry about.
One more page for today. Artwise this car is better but looks traced, it probably was. The props of a comic story should match the style of your characters and this is a marginally realistic car being driven by cartoon characters. There's an unfortunate juxtaposition of line between the mom's hair and her jaw line. That would've been an easy Photoshop fix. Don't know why I didn't catch it.
The dialogue is fairly good although "Time to share the fun" is on the lame side. I wanted to portray Amber as the "bitchy spoiled girl" archetype. I think her mom's comment takes the curse off it. Amber was to later to be helped by then become a friend to Emmaryn, a relationship arc I was proud of until I realized it was basically Cordelia from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. I like the depth of the last panel and the sense of hovering to Emmaryn. Sometimes flying is more impressive when close to the ground.
That is it for today. The format controls of Typepad are completely wonky for some reason. I'm hoping the final page looks normal. Remember, let me know what you think about what's working or not. --Tad
Typepad likes to be really difficult when it comes to thumbnails. Maybe it's just my monitor, but when I click the pictures they pop up too large, and there's no scroll button, so I have to do some right-clicking action and open things up in a new window to get the full image in there.
I'll admit, when I first saw the panel with fellow talking to Cog in the room, I thought he was flying the jumbo jet, since he looks like he's wearing some sort of flying gear (which would be confusing since he's clearly not human). But when I read your explanation about how the room would look when the comic is in colour, it makes more sense that it's an unrelated area. I read the comic first, and then your description after, so that I could get my own impression of everything first before seeing your interpretation of it.
Also, I really liked the "I can't run out of air and die in my pajamas!" line. Very funny, and it's nice to see some realistic acknowledgment of flying (well... as real as a person growing wings and flying can get!). Like you mentioned with other comics, rookie fliers not only make it look easy the first time, but nobody seems to mention the logic behind what happens if they fly too high!
I don't think the car looks too out of place... it hasn't been given intense detail like a realistic portrait of a car would.
I really like the lineart too. It's so clean and clear.
Posted by: Angeline | 01/10/2010 at 03:49 PM