How to Not Read Comic Books Too Fast

Reading a comic book tin exist a daunting task.

Text flies at you from all angles. Sometimes, the sequence of events tin be hard to follow. And there are plenty of titles that are specifically meant to exist challenging. And mostly, comics readers take to be self-taught. We don't have a great system for teaching people how to read stories told in visuals.

But at that place's an art to reading a comic book, i developed over nearly 100 years in the US.

As the historic period-old practice goes mainstream, both readers and artists are experimenting with new ways to speak to and read each other. Hither, and so, as role one of an ongoing series, is a brief guide to comic nuts — starting with panels and gutters.

In this article, nosotros're primarily referring to American comic books. There are other comics, like Japanese manga, which are structured and read differently.

How a comic book is structured:

Ody-C #two (Ward/Image)

Comic books take a form and their own language to refer to that form. The diagram above is a very basic breakdown of what it would await like if you opened a page in a comic book.

Pages are meant to exist read from left to correct and in a "z-like" pattern — you read the rows as they're tiered and make your way down a page. Each folio consists of panels — single illustrations, usually sequential, that tell the story. And the space that separates each console is known as the gutter.

While stuff like the gutter and the size of a panel or what a panel's border or frame looks like might seem like tiny details, they're actually places where comic volume artists are weaving in important concepts and making deliberate decisions.

What a comic book artist's job is similar

Comic books are different whatsoever other art form. Because of this, the comic book creative person has to juggle lots of information on whatsoever given projection. They have to rationalize the angles and signal-of-view the style a movie director would. They have to think about composition and dissimilarity the manner a photographer might. And they have to anticipate the use of colors in their illustrations the way a painter does.

"The biggest difference between a single illustration and a comic book is fourth dimension," Christian Ward, the artist for the comic bookOdy-C , told me. Ward was an art teacher and is at present a total-time artist, working with companies like Image (the publisher of Ody-C), Dynamite, and Curiosity.

"You're trying to illustrate time and the passing of time. You don't see that passing of time in the comic because if you're doing it correct, the passing of time should be the gutter of information technology," he added. "Each panel is a moment of time. And so the gutter is the time occurring, and the side by side panel is what happens after that time'southward occurred."

Here's an example from Ody-C. The two characters in these panels step into a kind of hot spring, but you don't see a continuous sequence — you see fragments.The actual movement of the characters stepping into the bound and adjusting to its heat is in your head (if you're following along):

Ody-C #two (Image/Christian Ward)

In a sense, comic book artists play the part of editors, too, choosing which fragments to give life to, when they want to hold the reader's mitt, and when they want the reader to infer something on their own.

"Y'all have to decide how those fragments of time are," Ward said, explaining that Matt Fraction, the writer of Ody-C, gives him a plot script but ultimately lets Ward decide how to compose each panel.

"Each page will have bullet points. And then I've got to make the decision [of how to portray those important points]. I and then kind of describe it upwards," Ward said, adding that it takes him around four weeks to create the art after receiving the script.

Where the magic happens

All of this could make comic book fine art sound almost formulaic. Only that isn't the example at all. Within the boundaries of panels and gutters, artists change the way readers absorb a book by playing with the form's existing conventions.

For example, there are no rules most a size of a panel. When artists brand panels big and wide, readers slow down, spending time closely examining an image. This is hugely effective when you lot desire to, say, bear witness off a superhero squad, as in Avengers & X-Men: Axis:

Avengers & Ten-Men Axis #one (Kubert/Marvel)

By shortening a panel, artists make the pace more than frenetic. Here, inAlex + Ada, artist Jonathan Luna plays with size to speed up the violence and heighten the fear in the sequence:

Alex+Ada #12 (Jonathan Luna/Image)

There are as well means that an artist can subconsciously signal time or a state of mind to a reader. In The Wicked + The Divine, artist and co-creator Jamie McKelvie and colorist Matthew Wilson exercise this by changing the colors of the comic's gutters.

When McKelvie and Wilson are portraying the present and a dialogue y'all're watching equally a third person, you see white gutters and well-baked lines:

The Wicked + The Divine #2 (McKelvie/Image)

When McKelvie and Wilson depict an contradistinct state, the colors of the gutters shift, as well as the framing of the panels:

The Wicked + The Divine #viii (McKelvie/Paradigm)

And when the comic is depicting a flashback, the gutters turn grey. The frames or borders of the panel also become fuzzy, perhaps because this is an imperfect memory:

The Wicked + The Divine #ii (McKelvie/Image)

There are ways to subvert the rules and class of panels and gutters to convey parts of a story.

If panels and gutters stand for fourth dimension and structure, then the absence of panels means something is broken or something is so powerful that rules don't apply to it:

Uncanny X-Men Annual #one (Sorrentino/Marvel)

Artist Andrea Sorrentino plays with this inUncanny X-Men Annual #ane. Sorrentino is telling the story of a mutant named Eva Bell with the power to travel through time. But Eva isn't quite in control of her powers, and in society to convey this, Sorrentino beautifully creates chaos, shattering panels and having them bleed into ane some other. By the time Eva has grasped a little flake of control (the bottom of the page), society is restored.

What Ody-C does and so well

Ody-C offers an operatic inversion of Homer's classic tale. Instead of a ship at sea, Ward and Fraction have taken the story to space and gender-flipped the epic's characters.

Ward's fine art is bonkers. Information technology'southward dizzying, one of the most artistically aggressive books on the market:

Ody-C #1 (Ward/Image)

"I've always liked doing pages that are more challenging," Ward said, explaining that he wants to play with the format of a page. "I'll often approach a page like a puzzle."

The consequence is swirling spools of images that look like the comic lovechild of Dali, Daft Punk, and David Hockney."People never believe me, only I've never done drugs before," he said.

Ody-C #ii (Ward/Image)

But Ward'south ambition isn't without thoughtfulness. The absenteeism of structure is a methodical decision that only occurs when the scene involves the story's gods.

"The gods are the only characters that speak with speech bubbling," he said. "They kind of exist in a unlike, 3-dimensional airplane from the residuum of the comic … When the gods are involved, we see them directly trivial around cosmically."

Ody-C #2 (Ward/Epitome)

Because they are gods, the rules of form don't employ to them. Therefore, the pages where Ward depicts them are nebulous, with structure about ignored. When the comic focuses on the story's human characters, the scenes are quieter, and the panels get more sequential, feeling every bit if they occur in the present tense, instead of outside of time altogether:

Ody-C #three (Ward/Image)

Infinite, which is ordinarily very linear and structured in many sci-fi stories, is nebulous and mysterious in Ward's comic. This fluid feel is an ode to the original tale and meant to mimic what people look like underwater, Ward told me."The comic book'due south liquid elements are a flash and nudge to that," he said.

With Ward weaving and so much into the comic book, it'south possible that not every reader picks up on exactly what he's thinking. Sometimes, he explained, just making a person feel a certain way through art — even if you lot can't put your finger on why you feel the mode you practise — is why he loves his arts and crafts.

"Every page, you lot make a 1000 decisions, some of which are conscious, some of which are subconscious," he said. "Simply when people do pick up on these ideas, some of which aren't always sign-posted, that'due south fantastic. You know you're doing something right."

Ody-C #3 goes on sale on Wednesday.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/2/25/8101837/ody-c-comic-book-panels

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