G.I. Combat #5: The Haunted Tank

Four Panel Page

Greetings readers! For the month of October The Low-Frequency Listener will badly bandy about excessive alliteration to be buoyed by a focus on a full page compositional unit from a book that migrates into my comic library.

The ability of taking in a full page (or a two-page spread) at one glance is an effect digital comics have yet to fully replicate. A good comic book page is able to advance the story as well as function as a complete composition. I never before considered (sad really, given the length of time I’ve been reading comics) how the panels on a page work together to create a unique effect. Like a troglodyte wolfing down a Big Mac value meal in a mere 13 bites, I blindly bolted from panel to panel.

So, this month it’s just a focus on a page of a comic each week with hopes of refining perceptions and awareness of the mysteries and allure of the page.

G.I. Combat #5 brings in the Haunted Tank (my favorite character in the very limited pantheon of possessed mechanized war machinery). The story consists of the Haunted Tank escaping from The Red Room to find Jeb Stuart, the still surviving World War Two veteran of 98 years who commanded the Haunted Tank in the European and Pacific theatre. Stuart’s grandson, Scotty Stuart faces execution in Afghanistan, but the Haunted Tank travels by some mystical means known only to ghost tanks to rescue Stuart and preserve the family blood line. Overall, a good read from Peter Tomasi (on story) and Howard Chaykin (yes, THE Howard Chaykin…though no tank penises (at least that I saw) migrated from Black Kiss 2) on art, and Jesus Aburton managing the color palette.

Page 15 contains 4 panels (lots of Chaykin’s pages work with four panels, but the variations with the panel placement and design  kept this layout from becoming dull) Page 15 has a weight to it that seizes the eye with the top panel and then slides it down to the bottom of the page to visually advance the story. The top panel (of two soldiers from Argus getting shocked or blasted by the Haunted Tank with some spectral powers draws the eye with the panel size stretching fully across to the margins of the page. The close focus with the two helmeted combatants getting shocked shows the largest figures on the page. The sound effect, “ZZZRAKK” of the electricity has the “A” breaking the border and poking its pointed cap into the white margins that aid in the attraction of the eye. In addition to these factors, the coloring in the panel really snags the reader’s perception. The Argus figures are black, and the light-blue-almost-white electricity chiaroscuros against the figures (they are the darkest and largest images on the page) and attracts the eye. As if these factors weren’t enough (and I know this sounds overly obvious), the first panel of page 15 is right where readers expect the first panel of a page to be placed—at the top. This fulfillment of expectations further adds to this panel’s ability to serve as the primary focal point of the page.

Next down we have veteran Stuart standing with his tank, reaching up to touch the main gun barrel. The white blue sky in the background of panel two has a similar color of the electricity in panel one and causes the eye to leap to the panel border. The electric bolts in the top panel also go down to the bottom of panel one and lead the eye right into the second panel of blue white sky. The top half of panel two is lighter in color, while the bottom half is dark. The almost solid black oval of the tank’s track connects this second panel to the first, but still distinguishes it from the first panel. The second panel is the same height and width as the first, but the third panel is placed atop the right side of the second panel. The third panel, a slim rectangle filled with a helicopter pilot’s head (you can see his helicopter in the sky of panel two, the machine tilted to the third panel…another small trick to keep the reader’s eye moving in the proper sequence). The pilot’s helmet, white, binds with the white of the sky in the second panel and the lightening of the first and the rising smoke and dialogue balloons of the fourth panel. The white spaces seem to be the axis of this page, moving the eye in a rough backward “s” motion over the page. The head in the third panel is slanted down toward the right, directing the reader’s eye to the white right hand border. So how to get the reader’s eye to the fourth panel (which is the same size as the first)? For starters, the third panel also slightly overlaps the fourth. But the fourth panel jerks the reader’s eyes from the far right of the page back to the far left with the white of the word balloon set off against the sepia interior of Stuart’s house. The sepia is enough to emphasize the word balloon and draw the eye, but not overpower the focus the eye (like the dark black of the soldier’s uniforms at the top of the page) to be the first thing a reader sees. The guards, now unconscious and smoking and prone on the floor anchor the panel (and the page) with their dark uniforms, but don’t interfere with the immediate notice of the word balloons. The word balloons too move from left to right and at a downward slant, which moves the reader’s eye back to the lower right of page 15, having the reader all set to turn the page and continue the narrative.

Along with the balance of black and white moving the eye like the silver ball in a Labyrinth game, the flag cape of Stuart unites panels three and four. In panel three, the white stripes are the most prominent on the flag. These pale stripes aid in the eye’s rightward movement to panel three as well as work the eye downward to panel four (much like the electric bolts functioned in panel one, and the overlapping panel three also moves the eye down the page). The flag  in  panel four has Stuart facing right instead of left (in panel four, Stuart is facing to the right margin, the same direction in which the dialogue balloons are traveling) and there are many more red stripes of the flag visible (which link it back to the flag in panel three, yet make the flag in the fourth panel distinct from the one in the third) and only shows a small sliver of the stars atop the blue filed, whereas the flag in the third panel has a large section of the stars and blue prominently upon Stuart’s shoulder.

Finally in the fourth panel, the rising smoke off the soldiers provides a thin connection that allows the reader’s eye to slide down from the dialogue balloons to the page bottom. The two columns balance out the panel (each placed about an equal distance from the left and right margins) and don’t impede the eye’s rightward travel.

Thus is page 15. I confess I was shocked at the role the colors played in directing the gaze and how the traveling eye can add motion and excitement to a flat static page of paper.

While I can’t say I’d be happy to see a Haunted Tank (or anything haunted for that matter) appear at the door of my house, I would be impressed if it moved with the grace and speed of this page…unless it was chasing me….