Batwoman #13

Labyrinthine Page

JH Williams III grants readers the perspective of gods, or at least a Dungeon Master peering at a fine pre-made dungeon map.The October comic book page focus turns its gaze on Batwoman 13

Pages four and five of Batwoman 13 contain a two-page spread depicting Batwoman and Wonder Woman traversing a labyrinth prison (Batwoman calls it “An Amazonian Arkham Asylum) for monsters and murderers guarded by the Amazons. The two DC heroes walk through the tunnels splashed with blood, corpses, and some fine decorative art. These two pages calmly escalate the tension before a minotaur and Nyx (goddess of night in the personification of a giant millipede) attack and the heroines.

The perspective of the labyrinth walls surely would make Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, or even Michelangelo (the Renaissance artists, not the Turtles) stare with wonder. The maze radiates from a central cone (the inside filled with chests of gold, armor, and I’m sure what looks like a +3 vorpal blade) and contains twists, sharp angles, and each block of stone. Not only are the perspective walls included, but also Wonder Woman and Batwoman are drawn from various angles (yet always viewed from above) of their progress through the labyrinth. The corpses of monsters and Amazonian guards slump in the various postures of their death and add to the visual perspective variety.

The extended two-page labyrinth with its turns molds tension for the reader because of its complexity. At first glance, the pages' composition resists precise determining (although this confusion swiftly resolves itself) and all the sharp turns and isolated features evoke a horror-movie dread.

For still images on a two-dimensional page, these pictures move. Williams III divides the two pages into five panels with four bold white lines spanning from top to bottom. The three central panels occupy equal width, while the two end panels have dieted. The pages have no borders. The five panels bring to mind ecclesiastical triptychs (pentychs in this instance?) depicting various Biblical narrative scenes. Reading left to right, top to bottom, the narrative moves forward with Wonder Woman and Batwoman as well as the reader’s eye. Not only does the eye move from left to right (in that ingrained English language reading pattern) it also bounces up and down. In the first panel (on the far left) the word balloons hover at about mid-height, the second panel has the stark white of the word balloons ascend to the top of the panel. The red of Batwoman’s costume, Wonder Woman’s costume, and the splashes of blood hoist the eye upward. The second panel has the red at the panel's top balanced with the red thought boxes from Batwoman near the bottom. The second thought box (also red) slides the reader into the third panel. And the pattern continues, up and down. This movement between the highs and lows of the panels adds to the tension and anxiety of layered by the labyrinth. The shifting up and down to such extremes (high and low on the page) disorients, like when someone turns the radio’s volume knob from silent to very loud in rapid succession. To add to the anxiety, the red, pools of spilled blood pull the reader’s eyes through the page as well, and the red matches the same shades of Batwoman’s hair and costume. That Batoman (and Wonder Woman too on her Amazonian chemise) wear the same color as blood is creepy and unnerving…a perfect set of feelings for walking through an Amazonian prison labyrinth filled with the dead bodies of Amazon guards and monster inmates.

In addition to Wonder Woman and Batwoman, and the corridors of the labyrinth, JH Willimas III further generates a feeling of movement with the dead. The slain monsters are known figures from mythology, and seeing them dead reminds one (well, me at any  rate) of watching the first 10 minutes of Transformers the Movie as a kid, where all the Transformers I’d come to know through daily cartoon devotionals died in the opening battle sequence.

The first monster looks to be some kind of armored boar (?) with spears protruding from its back and skull. Two Amazons (one hacked in half and having its arm severed) fill the hallway and one slumps in a corner. The third panel (subtly, I missed it the first two reads through the comic) shows a dead millipede, a servant of Nyx that come to overpower the two heroines later in this issue, along with a dead female corpse that looks like it could be Eddie’s sister. The bottom of the third panel has a dead harpy (or some femme fatale version of Icarus) while the top portion has a giant-faced crab monster and more dead Amazons (there are a lot of dead Amazons). Panel four gives the reader at least five demon corpses, a large crab, some skeleton warriors, and more dead Amazons (one with a severed head. The top of the fifth panel shows a dead giant cyclops and the center of the fifth panel has the shadow of a minotaur that falls upon the heroines on the next page. The dead are visible, but due to their subdued coloring and slouched and prone postures, they are easy to overlook when initially viewing the page, yet their presence unnerves and adds to the tension while simultaneously unifying the page and advancing the reader’s gaze.

JH Williams III leaves the reader with a final grisly image (which also happens to distract from the shadow of the minotaur {all these distractions and from the subtleties in the art add to the anxiety too…a reader could start to feel like she is missing something, overlooking some mosaic on the wall, or colored tile work on the stairs…and then suddenly have to start studying the pages in detail…} by drawing the eye to a dead and decaying body of an Amazon wither intestines hanging from her side and hanging inverted, head down, on some stone terrace of the labyrinthine prison.

Williams III builds the tension in these two pages where nothing physical happens (beyond Wonder Woman and Batwoman walking down a twisty hallway), yet still the pages suggest action past and future while being visually dynamic and moving the reader’s eye, stoking anticipation for the future encounters. A deft weaving of tension, curiosity and wonder snares the reader by knitting the need to know with the terror of discovering what awaits beyond a bend of the labyrinth.

Conan the Barbarian #9: Border Fury Part 3

Doppelganger

While this issue doesn’t have ghosts, vampires, werewolves or (thank Crom) zombies, a doppelganger does lurk in the theoretical frames. D&Ders know, few creatures can wreak havoc in the lower levels of a dungeon crawl worse than a doppelganger. No need to worry though (unless you are reading this review in a dungeon’s sub levels…in which case you’re probably on the wrong blog…), this beast confines itself to the metaphorical (mostly).

Continuing October’s focus of a single comic-book page for each review, this week (from last week’s release) highlights page 19 of Conan the Barbarian, written by Brian Wood, drawn by Vasilis Lolos, and colored by Dave Stewart. This issue concludes Conan and Bêlit’s tracking of a mad reaver (a childhood friend of Conan named Maeldun) who razes villages throughout Cimmeria while using Conan’s name. The young couple catches up with him, kills him, and (happily) leaves Cimmeria.

Page 19 has the conclusion of the final confrontation with Conan and Maeldun in a six-panel page. The page has a balanced division and an apt composition emphasizes the doppelganger aspect of the two boyhood friends’ final fight.

Dividing the page in two vertically, the top half occupies the majority of the page by slightly more than half. In this top section, three panels demarcate the space. On the left, two equal size rectangles are stacked and the right side of the panel (its width less than the two squatter rectangles) a taller rectangle fills the space and spills beyond the border right to the very edge of the page.

The swords guide the eye through this paneled trinity. The top left panel has Maeldun and Conan crossing swords and facing off (also serving a reminder to the reader of the link between the two in that they are the same height and share similar looks). The pale tan of the background color makes the white (with very very light grey shadows) of the sword blades all the more prominent that takes the reader’s eye to the panel below, where a darker yellow, almost burnished golden, background resides. The color helps unite the panels, yet still keeps each one distinct…just like Conan and Maeldun.

The two combatants maintain their left/right orientation of the previous panel, but Lolos rotates them at an angle, placing Conan’s backside closer to the reader and Maeldun further away. This angling of the characters adds to the dynamism of the speed lines and also starts the reader’s eye moving to the right to take in the tall rectangular final panel on this top part of the page…the panel where Conan guts Maeldun.

In this panel, Conan’s sword acts the magnet to the reader’s eye. The gaze travels along the edge of blade, pulled faster by the light off-white chiton worn by Conan and the black armor protecting (albeit not very well on this page) Maeldun. Arterial red fills the background, serving both to highlight the killing blow, but also to highlight the off-white blade of Conan’s sword that balances the panel and unifies it to the two rectangular panels to the left through the similar color of the sword blades and Conan’s sword maintaining the same angle in both panel one and panel three.

Red draws the eye and connects panel three to four. The loud crimson background in three echoes the thin lines of blood that seep beneath Maeldun’s armored forearms in a stark white background. The balance on the lower half of the page reverses the top part. The tall rectangle is on the left, and the two wider rectangles are stacked on the right. The white central border orients to the left of the page’s vertical axis, where as the center border on the top of the page is to the right of center (this is starting to sound like a political analysis). Yet the two asymptotic lines balance out the page.

The fifth panel has the dark gray of Maeldun’s helmet at the top left of the rectangle, which pulls the reader’s eye up from the white negative space of panel four, showing the reader the dying anguished face of Maeldun. His face tilts to the right giving a ¾ view. The head angle slants at a similar angle to the horizon line of the hill in the sixth panel. The eye falls from panel five, slides along the slope of the hill, hits the word balloon. A triangle forms of two heads (still attached to the bodies) of Maeldun’s cronies and lines can be traced to the apex of a triangle, the curled corpse of Maeldun. Conan stands with his arms extended, showing triumph, but also balancing out the panel as the counterweight to the tan of the narrator’s box.

The snowy white background lifts the reader’s eyes to the top half of the page with white on the swords blades in panels one and three; this coloring keeps the page unified and the eye moving and active during this final fight scene. This page design with its two balanced, yet distinct, sections mirrors the one-on-one fight between two similar characters and emphasizes the dual theme (Conan & Maeldun, Conan & Bêlit, civilization & wilderness, land & sea, etc.) that seems prevalent in this series. Don’t worry though, the doppelganger was the one on the left…who is dead physically if not metaphorically.

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….