Debris Issue 3

Trash Talking

Titling your comic Debris stands as a confident choice for the creative team. Such an appellation exudes their faith in the book with the way they’ve exposed their work to a potential collection  of disposable derogatory comments.

While filled with trash, Debris isn’t trash. Debris is a four issue story from Image comics set in the future. Readers begin the tale in a small settlement scratching out a minimalist existence from the land. A guardian and her apprentice defend the settlement from mechanical monsters. The elder guardian is killed; the water supply to the settlement is destroyed, and the youthful guardian ventures into hostile lands to find a way to save the settlement. 

Riley Rossmo’s renderings of rubbish intrigue, dancing back and forth between detailed and complex to minimalist panels reminiscent of Chinese ink paintings or woodblock prints. Initially this shift could grate and raise questions of why every panel doesn’t contain fine rendering of page one of issue three with the Godzilla looking robot trash monster. Yet these shifts in rendering remain essential to the plot and tone of this four issue limited series by slapping the reader to attention and startling them with the pages’ contents and mimicking the pacing of the action occurring on the page.

This variation in Rossmo’s style keeps the reader’s awareness nimble in that each page offers a shift in his visual voice. No page ever comes across as sloppy, or carelessly rendered. Each collection of scenes contains harmonizing balance with panels containing a minimum and maximum of line in various panels. Page four exemplifies this balance of styles. The small panel in the upper left hand corner has the detail of each plate on the trash beast’s armor, rivets are drawn, and hoses and wires appear between the plates. Yet the trash knight has a cape and legs of minimum lines. This same design is echoed in the largest panel. This uneven detail speeds up the reading (a fight scene) to a violent pace. The reader’s attention, much like the character’s, is drawn to and keeps returning to the trash beast. While having one’s eye continually returning to the monster never could substitute for fighting a live version of the beast, this artistic trick captures at least some aspect of fighting debris creatures, keep your eye on the beast.

The book also utilizes this technique throughout the entire issue. If pages 4 and 5 have limited detail, pages 6 and 7 are lush and captivating enough to stare at for some extended time. Pages 8 and 9, with the print version of the book spread before you, almost completely abandon background details in favor of colored blocks (again, another fight transpires), yet pages 10 and 11 return to varied colors and indulge with details within the panel. This pattern loosely continues throughout the rest of the book; a shift occurs about every two pages, if not in the level of details in the panels, then in the panel sizes. This variation causes each set of pages to jump out to the reader. The images act sharp and alert, and slightly unsettle with bold shifts and colors, yet ultimately they unify the book as all the drawings generated from Rossmo’s fingers. 

Having never viewed shifting elements and principles employed in exactly this way in a comic before (and maybe they have been and I just missed…if so dear readers, please enlighten my ignorance), this technique fascinates and keeps one returning each month to sift through the debris, pleasantly surprised by the findings.