Powerful Panels: West Coast Blues by Jacques Tardi

There is something very curious that happens when the theoretical French get their hands on a bit of American low culture. Whether it is the transformation of the early hard-boiled detective novels of James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett into what we know as the existential novel or Jean-Luc Godard's sometimes brilliant, always maddening reimaginings of gangster films, musicals, road movies et cetera, the French look into our pulp and see . . . possibility. There are few better examples of this phenomenon than Jacques Tardi's adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's novel West Coast Blues, which mashes together elements of American noir literature and films with a bit of jazz and blues and even superhero comics into something that is self-consciously formalistic and inventive, yet always great fun to read.

Briefly, West Coast Blues tells the story of George Gerfaut, a middle-aged salesman with a wife and two daughters who is going through something of a mid-life crisis. Gerfaut is being hunted by two hitmen--Carlo and Bastien--as a result of his unwittingly saving the life of a man the two had been contracted to kill. The panel we're looking at here is one of several circular inset panels that Tardi employs throughout the book with varying strategies. In this case what we have is a close-up detail of the ice cream cone ditched by Bastien as they spot Gerfaut swimming in the sea and head in after him.


At a basic level, this panel highlights the particular cinematic quality of Tardi's visual narrative strategy. By cutting in for a close detail on an incidental object, a technique used frequently by filmmakers such as Luis Bunuel, Tardi is identifying himself with a more avant-garde sort of visual storytelling. In highlighting this detail within an oddly shaped panel, Tardi demonstrates his comfort with leaving the storytelling apparatus on the surface, keeping the fact that we are reading a comic book in the front of readers' minds. There is also a rather weighty significance in that peculiar double-scoop cone. In the first place, it is almost comically phallic, as though Tardi were worried that if Bastien had tossed a traditional single-scoop cone aside, some readers just might miss the significance. Of course he probably had little reason for concern and yet this sense of self-conscious intentionality is felt throughout the book and lends in the reader a sense of detachment that oddly resonates with Gerfaut's own internal crisis.


Looking at the panel in the context of those that precede it, the representation of Carlo and Bastien imbues a sense of homoeroticism that meshes nicely with that phallic cone. These dudes clearly work out and are not afraid to show up at the beach in Speedos, even if they are here to murder some schmuck. As Carlo dutifully scopes the beach for their mark, Bastien leans coolly back on their vehicle, leisurely licking his double-scoop cone. This erotic linking of Carlo and Bastien, the sense of a partnership that extends beyond the professional takes on greater significance as the story progresses, culminating in Carlo's death at Gerfaut's hand, an event which leaves Bastien suddenly terribly alone.


In what is perhaps the most comical and yet emotionally real moments in the entire book, Bastien is shown preparing to bury Carlo's locker in the absence of his charred body. As he rummages through his dead partner's possessions, the sight of his spare pair of khaki briefs moves him to tears. Then he comes across Carlo's copy of the French Spiderman, which the narrator helpfully explains is unrelated to the Marvel superhero whose stories are published in Strange magazine. As he reads from his partner's comic book--the figure of the French Spiderman watching approvingly over his shoulder--he emotionally vows to track down Gerfaut and avenge his buddy's death, setting up the sequence of events that will carry the story to its end.


Returning to the sequence initiated by that drop of the cone, we see that the series of panels depicting Gerfaut's defensive strategy against his would-be killers enhances the foreshadowing function of the cone/phallus in a more direct, tactile sense. Finding himself pushed underwater by Carlo, Gerfaut reaches out for whatever is in front of him, which happens to be Bastien's crotch. So, using the universal defense of victims of male attackers everywhere, Gerfaut first exposes and then ruthlessly squeezes Bastien's balls, resulting in a confusion that ultimately allows him to escape. The carelessness with which Bastien treats his edible cone/phallus is almost karmically linked to the vulnerability of his testes.


This sequence again highlights the peculiar tension between the slapstick comic and the emotionally real that propels the story as a whole. At the same time we see the cruelty and ridiculousness of Carlo and Bastien, we also feel the latter's pain when his partner is killed. On the same token, while the rules of narrative dictate our identification with Gerfaut as the hero, we are just as often baffled or even disgusted by his actions as we are sympathetic to his plight.

Powerful Panels: Halloween Edition Part II - What You Can't See Will Scare You: The Unseen Terrors of Naoki Urasawa

by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us

-Georges Bataille

While Jesse has taken a look at some of the more terrifying moments in the venerable horror comics genre, some of the scariest comics I've ever read aren't horror comics at all, but are sci-fi manga. Books like Otomo's Akira--seriously maybe the most terrifying thing I've ever read--and Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys and Pluto are frightening not only because they ask important questions about the possible ramifications of technology, but by their creators' ability to create an atmosphere of dread centered on some unseen and terrible power.

This technique of enhancing fear by occultation certainly isn't new and it is flawed insofar as eventually you've gotta show just what it is that is so scary. Urasawa manages to avoid this flaw and thereby redefine what is scary in comics in a couple of ways. First, he doesn't rely on suspense to move his stories forward and instead reveals the nature of the threat early on--like, you know what it is but you don't know what it's going to do. Thus Urasawa's is a terror of suggestion and dread, a psychological fear which is far more awful and satisfying than mere "heart-pounding" suspense. Urasawa also stays ahead of the need to simply reveal his monsters by constantly changing the stakes in his stories, demonstrating repeatedly that everything that readers might have thought was sacred up to a certain point no longer matters at all.

20th Century Boys:

Each of the three panels shown here depicts the apocalyptic robot weapon created by the Friends cult to terrorize Tokyo in December 2000. Though each panel illustrates the same beast, each is terrifying in different ways in large measure due to their context.


20th Century Boys Volume 2

The first couple of volumes of the series are concerned with laying down the basics of the story and readers are just becoming accustomed to the rhythm of the series's jumps in time. The panel from volume 2 comes as the derelict-prophet Kamisama recounts one of his prophetic dreams. Thus readers are getting one of their first real tactile tastes of the devastation that is in store for Kenji and his friends and it is massive and foreboding.


20th Century Boys Volume 4

A lot has happened by the time we get to the next panel taken from the final pages of volume 4. Kenji's convenience store has burnt to the ground; he has been branded a terrorist by the Friends-infiltrated government; and he and his friends are now living underground preparing to fight an enemy they know next to nothing about. As Kenji and his childhood friend Otcho are led by the Friend himself into the warehouse where the robot is being stored, the scale of the thing is apparent. Kenji's observation that the thing's glowing eyes seemed to be watching them pretty much nails the terror in this panel.


20th Century Boys Volume 5

Volume 5 of 20th Century Boys is a prime example of Urasawa's tendency to change the stakes in the middle the game. This final panel comes early in the volume, right after the group's abortive attempt to kidnap the Friend's right-hand man, now an important government minister. The date is December 31, 2000, zero hour for the Friends' millenarian plans. But when you see that robot moving through the streets of Tokyo, just at the moment Kenji and his group seem at their weakest, you cannot help but think, this isn't the way this is supposed to happen. The good guys are supposed to stop the nefarious plans of the villains and go on to live happy lives, right? In short measure it becomes clear that this isn't right at all and this is precisely why Urasawa is so good at terrifying readers again and again.


Pluto:

Each of the panels or pages I've scanned from Pluto also depict the same thing, even though they sorta don't. At a basic level, each panel shows Pluto, a robot bent on destroying each of the world's most advanced robots. The reason for my equivocation, however, is that as Pluto develops, it becomes clear that the identity of the eponymous character is a bit more complex than it first appears.


Pluto Volume 1

This page, taken from the early pages of the series's first volume, show the robot detective Gesicht reviewing the memory chip of a security robot that was destroyed. As the page indicates, the robot's attention was distracted for a split second by what appears to be a human, jumping from one building to another so quickly that the robot only registers it as a blur. That suggestive blur, so minuscule and yet powerful enough to distract a robot-cop sufficiently to allow a drug addled hoodlum to destroy him is among the series first terrifying moments.


Pluto Volume 2

This next page also depicts Pluto, in this case as he prepares to destroy the Turkish warrior robot Brando. Pluto's obscured appearances in these early volumes is terrifying not only because we never get a complete picture of the thing, but also because of his ability to summarily destroy what are supposed to be the world's most powerful weapons. Finally, take another look at the close-up of Pluto's eyes; there is a humanity to them that enhances the terror, an effect that will be magnified in later illustrations.


Pluto Volume 3

This panel from volume 3 is a bit of an oddball, since it only becomes clear later in the series that the giant in the desert is probably Pluto. At this point in the story, however, all we know is that this terrifying silhouette was seen by a small Persian boy just after his village had been completely destroyed in the war. The terror of this image comes from a compounding of the creepiness of the obscured image itself, the massiveness of the figure and the disabling terror that the image has wrought into the little boy.


Pluto Volume 6

The final page, coming near the end of volume 6, shows the confrontation between Pluto--or what we've known as Pluto for most of the series--and Gesicht. What is terrible about the images on this page is not just those horrible gnashing teeth at the top of the page, though they are frightening enough, but even more those eyes, that look of terror, anguish and recognition that is so very human. As I mentioned above, you get a suggestion of this in the panel from volume 2, but in this case it is more extreme. At this point in the story, we have a better idea of what Pluto is, his origins and identity and thus the suffering in those eyes is more devastating. With this volume, as with volume 5 of 20th Century Boys, Urasawa completely changes the stakes and it is unclear what direction the series will take in volume 7.

Powerful Panels: Halloween Edition

It's Halloween and Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader? has decided to celebrate with some fear-filled, powerful panels. Horror is a genre with a lot of comics' history behind it (duh) and it's fascinating to see how that root, horror-influence and the grammar it developed bleeds into nearly every kind of comic. Sometimes there's still just plain old, awesome horror comics, others up the gore or the details, and some graft the signs and signifiers of horror into comics that from the outside, have little to do with the genre. No matter what, you see the powerful horror style in nearly every type of comic.

The Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu

This is a classic Horror manga from the 70s, and the above panel depicts one of the big revelations in the book. This is the first time the main character, Sho, has confronted the current situation of the school. The premise is that after an earthquake an elementary school is transported to some alien wasteland. The fear comes in watching a school full of children essentially riot and the way their teachers have to deal with it. There's no monsters or ghosts so a lot of the fear is psychological and rooted in human survival instincts. It's a bit like a zombie movie.

Umezu does an excellent job of making the landscape look horrific and it acts essentially, as a monster. This double page spread actually isn't the first time the reader has seen the landscape. There is a double page spread directly before this when the teachers first notice the landscape. Sho's double page is more significant because he's the main character but also because he's the first child to see the situation. It's just the landscape and his face really hammering in the effect of this event on Sho. Although he freaks out at first, he's one of the first truly able to come to terms with these catastrophic circumstances. Sho is deeply distressed but seeing the situation actually helps him come to terms with it.

Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson

This could have been any number of panels from this classic run on Swamp Thing. Wein and Wrightson build a tense and psychologically taxing atmosphere. This is a classic Horror comic through and through, but the twist is, the hero's the monster. This set of panels really shows how the horror of the narrative works. There's no shocking surprises; just a meandering inevitability to the events.

It's a subtle technique that is demonstrated in these panels. Swamp Thing is obscured at first and through each panel takes up more room even forcing out the shooter's speech bubbles. The final, and most powerful panel, puts the reader in the shooters' position. We're forced to stare at a face that isn't particularly scary to us, just kind of weird, but we're coaxed into the same reaction as the shooter because of his position in the panel. He's not scared of Swamp Thing, but he's horrified by the realization that there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop death.

The Maximortal by Rick Veitch

This isn't a typical horror comic, but so much in it is just plain gruesome. Veitch re-imagines the Superman myth with a big twist: this super-being has all the same flaws as a regular human. So, as in the panel above, if he throws a temper tantrum he's able to pulverize you in the process. The real-life idea Vietch addresses here is a unbalanced relationship between parent and child. It's the sort of situation that you come across in maybe the mall or toy store. You'll see a clearly spoiled kid acting like an idiot and getting whatever they want.

Veitch's panel has the same gut-wrenching effects by contrasting the boys perfection against the father's mutilation, highlighting the imbalance. Part of the point Veitch makes is that many of the ideas we hold up as "perfect" grow problematic when analyzed or executed. Even though Superman works mostly as a symbol, Veitch shows that at his worst, Superman is closer to a violent, childish fantasy.

Green Lantern #43 by Geoff Jones and Doug Mahnke

There's been a lot of good recent Horror-ish super hero comics lately. It probably all started with Marvel Zombies, and includes Final Crisis #4, Blackest Night #0, #1, and this issue of Green Lantern. Probably one of the most explicit suicide scenes I've ever seen in any media. Jones actually builds to it throughout the story with a depressing tale of this C-list supervillian.

The real reason this is so chilling is Mahnke's combination of pain and a sheer blank expression on his face. It's exactly what I'd imagine a picture of this to look like. The crisp art really works by showing details like tear ducts on the sides of his eyes (for emotion) and green splattered brains (for a cringe). Of course, it's not really a suicide--the Black Hand is resurrected as a zombie Black Lantern later--but just staring at this full page spread is enough to send chills down your spine.

(Stay tuned for David's Part II. Happy Halloween!)

Powerful Panels: Jack Kirby's Black Panther

Of course, we all know Jack Kirby as "the King of Comics" for his creation of much of the Marvel Universe and his wide breadth of more experimental work later on. He’s known for his furious work ethic and due to that the quality of his work can vary sometimes, especially late in his career. These variations can lead to big surprises--things that maybe wouldn't exist if Kirby was more consistent-- when, in the middle of a decent Black Panther comic, you get an engaging and deepy emotional page of Black Panther crawling for his life through the desert.

This three-issue arc’s main thrust consists of a monster running amok in the Black Panther’s kingdom, Wakanda. The Black Panther is off doing his own thing when his plane is hijacked and crash lands in the desert on his way home. The page grabs you at first because it’s such a contrast to what’s going on in the main monster storyline. Here the Black Panther isn’t battling a supervillain or confronting political issues, like in many comics of the time, but rather the real-life effects of nature and a dying body.

The tone of the page, and especially the above panel, parallels Morrison’s recent run on All-Star Superman. Here is a superhero on his dying breath struggling mentally to keep hope alive. Kirby and colorist Irene Varnitoff show the Black Panther’s face as a man on the brink of death by severe dehydration. It’s the same slow death as Superman, where the mind has time to think about what’s coming. Both heroes refuse to accept defeat as Superman inspires hope in those around him in his final days, and Black Panther talks about hope similarly--as the vital component to life. Each hero's ultimate strength come from a spirit that “yields no grounds to the demons of darkness.”

The parallels continue with the end of this Black Panther page and the finale of All Star Superman. The conclusion of Superman shows him sacrificing himself to save the sun thereby saving Earth. Morrison makes Superman/Jesus allusions all throughout the twelve-issue run and the ultimate fate of Superman is left ambiguous. He may return as a clone or maybe he is alive in the heart of the sun. Superman represents a god-like persona and even in defeat, through sheer force of will, turns things around.

Kirby was working with the same ideas decades before, undoubtedly influencing Morrison. Although Black Panther doesn’t represent anything more than human, the strange robot in the last panel becomes a kind of hero to a superhero; a God. God basically is this unknown thing and for all we know could be this crazy giant robot. It’s Black Panther’s saviour here and something that he summoned seemingly from will. Kirby changes from thought bubbles to speech in this panel making the robot’s appearance almost an incantation from Black Panther. In Kirby’s Black Panther and Morrison’s Superman, God is rooted in humanity. Humans are able to create, construct, and continue forward via hope and belief--and those things alone, the reality of such things don't matter--despite being surrounded by unknown and terrible conditions.

Kirby has always been especially interested in the idea of Gods and mythology. Galactus, in his first incarnation in Fantastic Four, represented and God, and years later, Kirby would illustrate a Silver Surfer graphic novel that begins with an introductory, full-page spread of Galactus’s opened hand with the Silver Surfer and cosmic rays bursting out. A comic book creation myth.

Galactus' hand is in the same similar position to the Black Panther’s hand with sand pouring off his fingertips. The thickness of the sand and the appearance of Kirby’s trademark cosmic circles give it a supernatural quality. Almost as if the sand is being created by the hand. It gives the impression that the Black Panther is willing life to surround him and not the more reasonable opposite. The robot that appears, created by Black Panther just as well. It’s a more cynical approach in that man has manufactured God, but it’s hopeful because man has that enormous power. Kirby’s idea of God shifts from an all powerful tyrant in Galactus, to a more human-based one similar to the Silver Surfer. Kirby sees the ability to hope in the face of impossible odds or to shape even shifting sands on his dying breath as representative of this nature.

Powerful Panels: BPRD: 1947 #3

This two-page spread/one big panel, which illustrates the onset of a zombie attack, the moment-to-moment chaos, and to some extent the aftermath, is a prime example of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics' "invisible art", between-the-panels thesis. McCloud's work has dominated the brains of comics artists since the 90s and I'd even argue there's been something of a rote internalization amongst good, sophisticated comics to follow McCloud's thesis to a T. Sorta what I was saying on Monday about Jeff Lemire's Essex County.

It's not that it's bad but that it's kinda going through the motions of "smart comics" and that kinda bugs me. Though it's a masterpiece, at times, Morrison and Quietly's All-Star Superman certainly falls into the McCloud school, a little too much at times. That said, there's times when the "life between panels" thing still totally works and just blows you away, and Ba's two-page spread but not really a spread, is an example.

I want to try to free this as much as possible from the excellent, Dysart-scripted, Ba/Moon-illustrated series itself, and do a kind of "close-reading" of the panels/pages, because I think it works without knowing the characters' names or the plot. In short, a bunch of government agents are in a scary place and some zombies attack. It's all you need for this to really work.

The thing about the image above is technically, it's five panels. Though it looks like a two-page spread with some mini-panels in the righthand corner, the left side of the page, the agent being attacked, the other agents in-shock, is it's own panel and the right side of the page, moments later, the agents firing their guns, reacting is also it's own panel. Or is it? It is and it isn't.

If you look at the point where the pages meet, it doesn't exactly line-up perfectly, for example the elbow of the Agent with the Moustache doesn't move over into the other page, but the tomb to the far right of the left page--and in dead-center of the spread, if you see it as a spread--does roll over into the other page. Below is a close-up of the spread that's not totally a spread, illustrating the break in the page, the rolling over of the tomb, the omission of the elbow, and the two agents reacting (right) and the reacting agents' springing into action (left):

Besides it just being a piece of comics art that really, awesomely and cleverly messes with visual narrative expectations, the sort of scrunching of all this action into a spread isn't something you see a whole lot. That's to say, action-oriented two-page spreads are very thrilling and all, but more often than not, don't mean a whole lot. Personally, action in comics is something I kinda skim over, my eyes darting through the violence and sound effects quickly, just to get to the usually-predictable result. The two-page action scene spread can be awesome but it's usually just two pages allotted to convey "THAT GUY IS KICKING THAT OTHER GUY".

Not so here, where Ba (and Dysart) fill the two-page spread--that isn't a two-page spread--with so much information as to capture the chaos and emotionality of the action too. Just moving your eyes from left to right, you see the attacked agent screaming, the other agents totally in shock, then more zombies crawling out and by the time your eyes have moved to the far-right, the agents firing at the attacking zombies.
As a last brilliant touch, Ba includes a series of panels at the top of the right page to show exactly how the attacked agent is ripped apart. It's very George Romero to me, in the sense that it graphically moves-in on the gore, not only to give you some added cheap thrills but to really have you consider the horror of what's going on. Wisely, it's stuck up at the top of the right side of the page--or right panel--because Ba's constructed a page that's diverted your attention from the attack, which is going on to the left, and so, he throws up this kind of footnote of gore, so that you're reminded of what's going on even as you're now focused on the agents fighting the zombies and not the agent being ripped apart by them.

Powerful Panels: Corpse Debris in Big Guy & Rusty

You read Big Guy & Rusty quick. In part because it's brevity kinda dares you to gulp it down in one sitting and in part, because it's basically an extended action sequence, with a ton of incidental dialogue. It's easy to read. It could be a word-less comic and work just fine.

And art-wise, Geoff Darrow's obsession with detail, has the strange effect of making you actually move through it faster. You trust Darrow's detail and though you could stop and stare into any of the pages for twenty minutes, you totally don't have to, to get what's going on. The details work on a subliminal level, they're not messy or confusing, so you like, absorb them by osmosis.


So, on an initial reading of Big Guy, you might whiz by the panel above, stopping to read the comic book villain declaration ("FOOLS!") and register the image as an explosion of debris--the accidental result of a bunch of maybe too forward-thinking scientists (there's Miller's Conservativism for you) recreating "the primordial ooze"--and leave it at that. But what you'd be missing is that a significant amount of the debris flying through the air are indeed, human bodies.

Besides it just being a particularly gruesome detail, it's a very realistic one. Giving some visual time to the carnage often passed over in those old Godzilla movies and in big, Hollywood action/event pictures..and the news when it's covering real-life violence and devastation. Darrow's clearly a nut--in the best sense of the word--and obsessed with the fun and insanity comics can create, but his eye for not only detail, but near-photo-realistic detail moves even his most comic book work into something very grounded in the real-world. The image, humans as debris, flying through the air no different than the pieces of building, invoked the specific, in-the-moment, broadcasted on TV horrors of September 11th...and the subsequent, sincere though problematic focus on those horrors.

Though it often leaned more towards rubbernecking, the insincere sincerity of "the human interest story", there was indeed, a heart-felt attempt by the nation at-large to feel empathy with those stuck in the buildings. To put ourselves in their shoes even though we knew there's just no way to grasp even a tenth of the confusion and everything else going on that morning. Frankly though, most of these attempts, on a public scale failed miserably. News reporters and journalist forcing narratives and melodrama onto a situation that was sheer chaos if you were in the buildings or on one of the planes. The movie United 93 is a particularly self-righteous, quasi-"objective" example. The interest with the 9-11 "jumpers" is another.

A kind of sicko web meme, the story of those that chose to jump instead of burn or be crushed is deeply moving and cuts to a kind of core, awesomely horrible issue of contingency and morality that we rarely have to face; a choiceless choice. Death or death. Still, the interest in the jumpers was putting a human face--or really, human body--onto what was more likely, a giant mass of faces and bodies...and metal and stone and steel. Darrow does a similar thing, taking the time to insert flailing human bodies into a explosive, destructive action scene.

The difference though, is of course 9-11 really happened and honing-in on certain images and events, didn't magnify the tragedy, it dulled it. Focusing on the jumpers seemed to be a kind of coping mechanism--an intellectualized, particularly extreme example that's therefore understandable. 9-11 in a single photo, but not the obvious photo (of the buildings blowing up) we're much too cool for that. The falling man was taken to even greater extremes when Jonathan Safran-Foer, a fairly loathsome twee-hipster author, culminated his 9-11 novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with a flip-book of one of the jumpers, the sequence of images reversed, so that the jumper leaps upward. Ugh.

Darrow's panel here helps erase the intellectualized over-contextualization of the 9-11 and 9-11 jumpers and all that, bringing the visceral images and horrors of the event--and the specific like, sub-horror of the jumpers--back to their no-words, "can you even fucking imagine it" simplicity. That it comes from a comic made six years before the event is a healthy reminder that the sort of horrors of September 11th, though sometimes less politically loaded, occur all over the world all the time...even in Frank Miller's cartoonized vision of Industrialized Japan.

It's oddly appropriate that there's a distinctly "September 11th"-invoking image in a comic as fun and aggressively violent and American and jingoistic as Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow's Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot. Reading this along with 300, you're reading Miller in his final steps of transition--from a kinda cynical, skeptic Liberatarian to a Limbaugh/O'Reilly-esque right-leaning nihilist.

Remember that pill-popping, Nam' vet psycho Nuke from Daredevil: Born Again? Well now, it seems like Miller would write that character without the satire. It's symbolic that his 9-11/terrorism comic Batman: Holy Terror! is forever-delayed--the politics of the Right since 9-11 have been bouncing up and down and all around, twisting and turning, retro-fitted to the latest spin or flat-out lie. By the time it's drawn and written, who knows if the spiel Miller's giving readers will still align with the G.O.P's.

All that said, Miller's still a total legend and because there's a weird tension between satire and sincerity in a lot of his work, there's a great deal to unpack and figure out. Especially in Big Guy, which has all the xenophobia of 300 but frames it in a more fun and self-mocking style: Bubbling over with Darrow's insane art and wrapped around an updated Godzilla movie conceit. A strangely perfect comic to wrestle with 9-11 through...

Powerful Panels: Northlanders #17 by Vasilis Lolos

Save for a few sound effects and angry yells ("Fucker!") from Snorri the Black or Egil the Sledge-Hammer, the latest issue of Northlanders, "The Viking Art of Single Combat", an issue-long fight scene, is entirely buttressed by Vasilis Lolos' radiant art and a constant, pitch-perfect narration from Wood.

Lolos' work captures the whirl and confusion of a lengthy battle while remaining clear and comics-grammatical enough to make sense and the issue could really stand alone without Wood's narration, though it wouldn't have the emotional resonance. Wood's concern is with the tiny details, ritual, thoughts, worries, back-history, and everything else of viking lore, casually translated into a language closer to our own. It's like an issue of Tor with a college degree.

Much the way Kubert wrote Tor, a caveman comic, in something resembling the hard-boiled detective style, Wood adopts current slang and modern-day analogues to his viking tale, but not to simplify the story or dumb-it-down but to tap into some of the emotions at-stake: "For the common man, it's all too easy to find yourself in the middle of a levy, conscripted into service by your fucking landlord. Surely the taxes you pay means the lord and his bodyguards have an obligation to see you don't eat an axe?".
Part hip history lesson, part formal exercise in comics writing and art, and all raw, oddly affecting emotion, "The Viking Art of Single Combat", is like a comics version of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait--an intense dive into brawny athleticism and ritual, with no tiny detail spared. And that's the brilliance of Lolos' work here, a perfect balance of visual narrative that occasionally freezes or shifts to hone-in on the tiniest detail. Something, in a previous Powerful Panels post, I showed Lolos to do expertly.

Above is a perfect example of Lolos and Wood working together. Wood's line ("the central concept of "Striking where he isn't") exemplified in the main image of Snorri striking Egil, a strip of pale orange whirling around the characters to indicate the motion of the blow that indeed, strikes Snorri where he isn't. At the same time, Lolos complements the main image here with two smaller panels of intense detail. The panel in the upper left is a close-up of Egil's armor with a slash of motion across it--or that's what I think it is. It's an odd but awesome choice, Lolos zooming-in something that's not visibile in the main image (this is from the opposite angle, presumably showing Egil's front, left side) but oddly, illustrating the motion or action line as well. Of course, if Lolos didn't illustrate the line of motion, he'd have to draw some kind of damage or something because the panel without that visual suggestion of Snorri's striking would lack the kineticism necessary.


But it's the other small panel, in the lower right side of the image that's especially fascinating: An image of the sky with small pieces of metal and debris flying through the air. Standing on its own (below or at the top of this entry), it's completely abstract, and even within the narrative of the story, it's pretty jarring and initially confusing. Confusing because, Lolos' drawing captures something that couldn't be captured in any other artform. In movies for example, this kind of close-up of debris (or blood or whatever) flying off of someone/something would be a quick cut-away or a slow-motion, kinda stupid Matrix-like image that slows the scene down for a second and calls attention to the detail. It's similar to the Panels post I did on Mike Mignola's illustration of the 1/8th of a second when a match is struck and it lights up the room. A similarly strange and impossible-to-present image in any artform other than comics.

POWERFUL PANELS: Madwoman of the Sacred Heart by Moebius

Moebius and Jodorowsky's collaboration on Madwoman of the Sacred Heart feels relatively sane and down-to-earth in contrast with a sci-fi epic like The Incal or the picture book sex parable, Angel Claw. It takes place on this planet, it's concerns are more humane and gritty, and it's an all-out farce of religion, intellectualism, and the two dirty old men that wrote and drew it.

Let's just say, the movie of this one wouldn't manifest itself as a quasi-rip-off by Luc Besson, but a radically individual auteur like James Toback, an obsessor of obsessions, a reckless hedonist, and a dude just as comfortable pacing around a classroom spewing about in the world of the forms. Jodorowsky and Moebius (and Toback too) are Professor Alan Mangel, the main character of Madwoman and this sense of knowing connection and harsh satire fuels the schizophrenic plot that plays-out.

And the image above, of Daouda, the man Mangel's wife leaves Mangel for, at his own birthday party, in front of all his friends, while laying-out the reason(s) loud and clear (They haven't had sex in eight years), is a good place to start unpacking Madwoman's weird merging of opposites. In that image, Daouda's both given a lot of humanity, in his truly embarrassed "I wish I wasn't here" facial expression as his girlfriend cruelly prattles on at her ex, and sort of mocked in Moebius' stretched-out exaggerations of an embarrassed, "uppity" black man. Daouda knows why this chick he's with is nutty but doesn't care or enjoys it or something. That's the brilliance of good satire and farce, this multi-directional parody with a dash of sympathy too.

The punchline of this scene is Mangel's Wife using the younger, more exotic Daouda, to further embarrass Mangel and feed into her own "progressive" interests, to contrast with her stodgy, philosopher husband. On the page following the one I took these scans from, she self-consciously celebrates and justifies her relationship: "I may be twenty years older than he is...maybe I'm fulfilling some kind of mothering instinct...or going with a "White Woman" might be some kind of status symbol for him...but I don't care!". Of course, if she really didn't care, she wouldn't have footnoted her declaration of "love" like that. It's both a scene of out-there satire and unfortunate realism, as we've all probably heard some hyper-self conscious "it's not like that" speech from someone, the whole time thinking you know, it's totally like that.

The entire scene tows this weird line between being as out-there over-the-top impossible as any of the shit in The Incal and depressingly realistic. Even that name Daouda, while a real African name, seems goofily exotic or like, too-perfect, you know? And because we've witnessed and been subjected to more than a hundred years of racist caricature, we look at even realistic images of black people with a suspicious eye, so it's sort of brave for Moebius to really balance this line between his cartoonized style, real-life accuracy, and broad satire.

There's just something goofy-looking about Daouda, the attempt at a refined version of the flattop, the silent-move villain moustache, his slight neck-fat...you're kinda sizing him up as goofy-looking asshole the same way Mangel or really any now ex-husband would do to the wife's new lover. But like I said, there's something really humane about him too. He seems like a decent guy and he's clearly affected by this insane bit of melodrama playing out in front of him.

Moebius places the close-up of Daouda right after a similar close-up of Mangel, and really, the intention isn't to contrast the two--as Mangel's wife is doing--but to see their similarities. They both respond properly to the Wife's tirade: Mangel a kind of "whatthefuckisthis" attitude, Daouda, sincere confusion. Mangel's ire though, is in part directed towards Daouda, his wizened glare looking across the frame into Daouda's panel. Dauoda just tries to avoid eye contact and affect a "I'm not here, this isn't happening" look, even as Mangel's Wife's words invoke him in this weird attack.

Mangel's Wife's words too, hover above Daouda's--and Mangel's--head literally. While she's explicitly demeaning Mangel, her references to the many lovers she took kinda devalue Daouda or at the least, don't really set him up as being all that important, even as she's using him to represent the perfect lover in contrast with the can't-get-a-boner Mangel. The panel of Daouda's expression reveals something to the reader that Mangel's Wife is too blind with spite and anger to notice or just doesn't care. Moebius renders the face perfectly, showing Daouda's abashed expression and hinting that this isn't the first time he's been privy to his girlfriend's freakouts, making him look a little absurd and pathetic, but sympathetic too.

Powerful Panels: Cable #11 by Jamie McKelvie and Duane Swierczynski

Ariel Olivetti's art has been such an integral part of the success of the current Cable series that the abrupt and dramatic shift to that of Jamie McKelvie that happens on page 8 of the current issue at first seems like a profound mistake. That said, like a lot of things that at first glance have seemed ill-advised or even absurd in Swierczynski's paradoxically superb series, this shift reveals itself upon reflection to fit perfectly within the larger framework of the series.

McKelvie's art stands in stark contrast to Olivetti's. What makes it work is that it appears just at the moment when Cable and Hope timeslide to a future in which they are quite likely the only living things on the planet. If one could witness the appearance of these two travelers in such a landscape without negating the conceit, the experience of such would likely be as jarring as the transition from Olivetti's hyper-realistic artificiality to McKelvie's cartoonish artificiality.

This particular panel is so critical because it underlines the many and varied sub-textual strands Swierczynski has gradually been introducing into the series. Sure, this issue is about Cable and Hope timesliding into the future to avoid the catastrophic fallout of the bioweapon employed to defeat the cockroach armies and about the difficulties presented by Cable's inability to move anywhere in time except forward. But it is also about the secondary responsibilities of Cable's role as protector of the mutant messiah--namely those associated with fatherhood. It is interesting to note in this regard that for the first time in the series, we see Cable embodying the role of father-who-plays-games with his daughter in the McKelvie illustrated pages.


There are two main threads that are developed in the panels leading up to our focus here. In the first place, we have Cable enacting the role of self-denying father--assuring that his "child" is fed, even if it means going without himself. The word Hope uses to call him on this tactic--"Baloney"--sets up the other major thematic thread, namely the issue of a father's role as preserver of innocence. As Cable asks Hope where she learned that word, we are party to Hope's thoughts in which she reflects that she had ample opportunity to learn new words and concepts from Cable's military counterparts. As we come to the final panel on the page, Hope's thoughts tell us that the things she learned from Zyker and the other soldiers include those that Cable may not yet be ready for her to know.


The composition of this panel and specifically the respective aspects of and relations between the two figures speak volumes for what is going on under the surface of this issue. As Hope's thoughts inform us that Zyker and his comrades presumably taught her words of a sexual nature, her pose suggests that what she learned may have exceeded the bounds of vocabulary. The look on her face as she brings her hand to her opened mouth is one of resigned distaste. The sexualization of this gesture of eating is relatively overt and her aspect at once indicates that this process of sexualization is something with which she is as yet uncomfortable, but which she realizes is inevitable and that her discomfort will gradually diminish; in other words, she is resigned.

Cable's posture and positioning in this panel encapsulates the forest-for-the-trees shortcoming of all over-protective parents. Cable is so focused on the horizon, looking for external threats, that he cannot see those threats that are right in front of him. This sequence presciently foreshadows the crisis at the end of the issue, in which Cable, weakened by lack of food and water, collapses after timesliding once again, leaving Hope utterly vulnerable to whatever she might encounter in this unknown future.


The sexualization of the older, yet still pre-pubescent Hope is presaged by Olivetti's brilliant, but downright creepy cover. As if the comically oversized revolver she wields were not enough, Olivetti gilds that lily with the all too knowing look in her transfixing green eyes and the all too sensual leer of her criminally sensual mouth. What is really effective about all this, however, is that it keeps in the reader's mind all the little unanswered what-the-fucks that have been peppered throughout the series: Why do Little Girl and the older Hope look so similar? Was the older Hope Little Girl's mother and if so, is Cable her father? Are the two Hopes the same and if so, does this mean that Cable has already bedded Little Girl/Hope? I get the sense that none of these questions will ever be satisfactorily answered and this is yet another reason why this series has been so satisfying.

Powerful Panels: The Immortal Iron Fist #21 by Timothy Green and Duane Swierczynski

After the perplexingly lackluster and interminably repetitive "Mortal Iron Fist" story arc, this highly polished gem of a stand-alone issue dropped with all the force of the proverbial lead balloon. Though generally a wildly overused term, the comic is highly cinematic in presentation. The work's most obvious direct influence is unquestionably the comics of Alexandro Jodorowsky's Incal universe--an artist arguably more famous for his handful of cinematic productions than his far more prolific work in comics. Moreover, Timothy Green's illustrations are grounded in Moebius by way of Seth Fisher and his compositions are presented with a painterly flattened perspective, reminiscent of a particular aesthetic most directly associated with the films of Akira Kurosawa.



This particular page encapsulates much of what is great about the comic and can be read in multiple ways, each revealing different aspects of the work that are no less strong for their subtlety. The narration ("But he fought like a man") that opens the sequence follows the opening qualifier of the panel immediately preceding it ("The hero was just a boy"), emphasizing the youth and disconcertingly slight stature of the fighter who ostensibly came to save the last few surviving inhabitants of Planet Yaochi. The boy's diminutiveness is highlighted in the first panel's side-view illustration. The depth-distorting flat perspective of the drawings is enhanced by a reverse reading of the panels on the page. The effect echoes the long-lens shot aesthetic adopted in all of Kurosawa's post-1950 films and mirrors in reverse the shot sequence in Red Beard in which the Mantis surprises the young, arrogant Noboru sulking in his room.



The following panel in which Wah Sing-Rand responds to Min's lament of his tardy arrival is a sort of microcosm of the intense concentration of subtlety and understatement typical of the book as a whole. His response--"I have been with you this whole time"--calls to mind the sorta corny, sorta really affective "Footprints" poem that is central to American Christian kitsch and emphasizes the religious nature of Wah Sing-Rand's role as planetary saviour. Green's portrait of the boy, however, at once confirms and contradicts the message carried by his words. On the one hand, the boy's delicate beauty and the look of penetrating, yet benevolent intelligence in his eyes are of a piece with the stories of the precocious young Jesus. At the same time, that Matrix-y serpent running up the side of his face runs counter to the boy's otherwise overtly Christian characteristics.



Min's response to Wah Sing-Rand's claim in the two panels that follow cement this biblical reading of the comic. His face is all cockeyed disbelief and the skepticism of his words plant him firmly in the 'Doubting Thomas' tradition of those of little faith. This kid just dropped from the sky and single-handedly destroyed the robots which were raring to exterminate Min and his family and all he can think to do is ask why the boy didn't do more.


In addition to illustrating Green's particular perspectival choice, the page's final panel deepens the Christian connection to this Messianic tale. Wah Sing-Rand's response to Min's extremely disrespectful query ("I know the suffering you and your people have endured. I watched it all from above.") adds the God as benevolent father above and outside the world aspect to the God as personified son acting in the world motif developed by his arrival on Yaoching. Moreover, in claiming to have watched their suffering above, it sets up Wah Sing-Rand's story of how he was able to view their suffering and yet not able to do anything about it, which is one of the more powerful and effective permutations of an Iron Fist tale I have yet to read.