Silver Surfer #11 - "Never After"

[laughing_tree]

"Silver Surfer #11 is the best bit of formal experimentation in a supercomic I've seen lately. Genius." -- Al Ewing



I'm posting each of the images twice, one right side up, one upside down, because I imagine rotating the picture on your screen might be a hassle for some of you. So, here:















Now here's where it gets funky. The right page, with the re-appearance of the Never Queen narrator, can act sort of like one of those Mad Magazine fold-ins. Fold it onto the left page -- help the Surfer "be the one who turns this page in the story of [his] life," like she advises -- and this *new* spread reveals itself:





And with the new spread revealed, we can keep reading and find out both what happens after the time loop's end (in the bottom tier), and what happened *before* it's beginning (in the upper tier):



"WE SHALL BE FREE!"

Which he exclaims amidst a single-image double-page splash, breaking free of the two-tiered page layout that was used every previous page. (Unfortunately, I can't post the splash without exceeding the page limit.)




Also, Dan Slott's whiteboard notes for this issue:

Comments

[gricha2380]

I absolutely love the creativity that has gone into this.

[filthysize]

As soon as I finished reading this issue, my first thought was "I'm sorry to those reading this in digital..."

[baihu]

I think not even orientation lock can save me if I try to read this. Definitely a moment where a good old physical issue in the hand is way easier to handle.

[q99]

I really don't like turn-upside-down gimmicks... I mean, you can do two tracks without them.

[filthysize]

Not for this story, for a couple of reasons.

It's an unbroken loop. You're supposed to follow the track through four sections continuously until you get four different POVs of what's happening. So at the end, you turn the issue upside down, and you read left-to-right like normal. If both the top and bottom are upright, there would be no loop. You'd have to flip the pages back and start over, or suddenly switch to a right-to-left reading. It's not the same effect at all.

Also, the way it's specifically written, the upside down portion of the first half of the issue builds on what we learned from the earlier POVs. So printing them upside down certainly helps the wandering eye to ignore reading those panels until you get to that part in the loop.

[q99]

Ah, that does make more sense.

[sagrada]

What is this art and experimentation with the form in my cosmic space adventure comic book graphic opera space stories for boys?

Reading upside-down and backwards was a lot of fun, getting this on a tablet/physical copy must be downright splendid.

Thanks very much for posting this, and the picture of the whiteboard.

[dragontail]

Not enough words to express how much I enjoyed this issue.

Also, I remain impressed that Slott and Allred crafted something so complicated that it, at the same time, so easily understood once you get into the flow of it. My daughter read and adored the issue... she's 11, and admittedly bright for her age, but she still absorbed the whole thing. That's an all-ages comic.