Jonathan Hickman (Red Mass for Mars, Nightly News, Red Wing,
Fantastic Four) and Ryan Bodenheim (Red Mass for Mars, Fear Itself: Fearsome
Four) have crafted a comic book with
“Secret.” Nothing is wasted, not
pages not panels not gutters, it’s all there for H&B to play with, and they
do it really well.
Look at the pages above. We see this masked man, brass-knuckled, fist cocked back
mid-air, about to punch the living shit out of some guy he’s holding down. Michael Garland did the
coloring for this book and “Red Mass for Mars.” The red pages above are the published pages, the image where
the masked man is in black is from a promo preview page of the issue. The red duotone is a marked
improvement. It sets the mood for
this scary, violent encounter. The
palette changes as the book progresses but the duotone persists in setting tone
scene after scene.
I want to take this chance to mention here, one of the
reasons this comic book is really good is because it looks and reads like a comic
book, and not a screenplay storyboard.
It does what only a comic book can do (and should do) in that it tweaks
our visual filter into a unique but forced perspective. It is more than a suspension of
disbelief that is essential in any fiction, it requires us to participate in a
suspension of our default perception and surrender to that of the artist and
writer. Unlike a movie that
dictates sight and sound, the comic panel has only the visual impact of its
color, shape, and dialog. It
demands just a little more than the typical matinee, it requires our
imagination. We all have an
internal voice when we read, and what we
see influences how we read. Can you say “WELCOME TO THE
JUNGLE, WE GOT FUN AND GAMES!” without hearing
Axl in your mind’s ear? The
panel doesn’t dictate all, it requires us to fulfill the other half of the
visual narrative equation with our mind, even if it’s happening on a
subconscious level. And this is why I will always love
comics more than movies.
S says to me, without knowing anything about the comic or
its author after I show her the first few pages, he knows how to manipulate type and image to his advantage. Hickman if I remember correctly came
from a world of graphic design, but I’ve been unable to confirm that
anywhere. The 5th panel
at the bottom of the page with the black ski-mask doesn’t hold the same
dramatic weight as the same panel with the red ski-mask. The black is what’s expected, almost
safe(?) but the red screams. The
red is there unflinchingly. The
red is a visual representation for the simmering violence until it explodes
through the panel.
Do you see how the masked man’s body rises out of the bottom
bleed panel on page 1? His
violence overflows the panel, body
winding up, the punch frozen in that moment where all his kinetic energy
contracts the shoulder and bicep.
It is a visual comment on this character, his violence can not be
contained. It commands our attention
as readers drawing us to the action on the page before we even know what’s
going on. We see it again on page
2, panel 2. Our masked man’s head
protrudes into panel 1, his dialog confirming what we’ve already come to
suspect, “I am simply a man that cannot be kept out.”
“Comic panels fracture both time and space, offering a
jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments,” according to Scott McCloud in "Understanding
Comics," and “closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally
construct a continuous, unified reality.” But what does the overflowing panel do
to the narrative? What is the effect on closure? On a subconscious level the reader is introduced to a
character without physical constraints.
He goes where, and does what, he pleases. He exists in a space outside
his normal two dimensional physical, and here arguably moral, planes of his
reality. His presence in the panel
gutters interferes with our sense of closure, he doesn’t allow us to imagine
the transition from panel to panel. HE is the transition. In our immediate consciousness there is
a sense of the overwhelming, much like he has overwhelmed his captive. The reader is just as bound to, and
broken by, the masked man as is his prisoner, who we see again later on page 9 in
a panel that’s literally drawn like the corner is broken off and detached. It’s all just really great. I love it, I really do.
Page 4 is a full splash page of what looks like solid black
panes breaking, exposing a quote credited to an anonymous member of the East
German secret police, the Stasi. “We climb the wall to see the world we
rule with secrets, lies, and half-truths.
We climb down to do murder.” Page 5 and 6 continue with a double splash
page, “Chapter One: Teeth with Which to Eat,” the cover image doubled along
side the text. The broken glass
runs over to page 7 but only covers the top left corner, about 20% of the page
leaving the rest white. It’s the
equivalent of a title sequence fade in/out and it sets up the visual “silence”
that precedes our home invasion victim’s broken panel beautifully. How the quote foreshadows the narrative
has yet to be seen, but the chapter title is aptly named.
I’m not going to tell you any more of the story. I think it’s worth your $3.50 to find
out on your own. This book reminds
me more of Hickman’s “Nightly News” than say “Transhuman” or any of his Marvel
work. Its design consciousness is
both narrative and visual and it excels in both. At its least maybe it’s a hyper-corporate-government-espionage-extortion-story,
but there is more going on here.
It’s just a delight to read and look at it and we shouldn’t take that
for granted, go buy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment