The Wild Storm #22

[laughing_tree]

Comments

[shadur]

And there's our semi-regular reminder that none of the Jennys have a theoretical upper limit on how powerful they can get.

Good day to ye, miss Sparks. Always a pleasure to see you.

[repto]

I was about to complain about Ellis doing his whole "century babies" thing, where people born at the beginning of a century are given special powers to defend the world, because someone born at the beginning of the twenty-first century baby would only be...well, they'd be 19 already. Christ, I got old.

[doodleboy]

I like the fact that as the battle starts the comic starts dropping the 9-panel grid and starts going more widescreen.

It’s a neat storytelling choice.

[elilla]

He talks a lot about this stuff in his newsletter, and you can tell he's been thinking on how to explore the formalism of comics for narrative effect. He's always hyping classic and new authors who do creative things with it…

[doodleboy]

I think it's primarily one of the reasons the main western comic writers I follow now are Ellis and Gillen. Most of their paneling and story-telling decisions in their comics are thought through and have a purpose in mind.

I mean there are writers who just use the 9-panel grid because Alan Moore did it and ignore all the other things Alan Moore did to make it effective (*cough* Tom King and Geoff Johns *cough*). But with Warren Ellis and Kieron Gillen there's always a intent behind their writing, so even if I find flaws with their stories I at least know they're trying something interesting. With both comics formalism and larger thematic goals.

[laughing_tree]

I'd argue King cares a great deal about formalism, more so than any but a handful of mainstream writers: The 'bang bang bang' and 'Darkseid is' inserts in Sheriff of Babylon and Mister Miracle, respectively; the second half of Omega Men pages mirroring the first, as well as the talk about white prison bars at the end of that series. Even in his lesser works like Batman, there's stuff like how in the latest issue every even pages takes place in at one time and every odd page at another, alternating back and forth until the last page where the two time periods collide in a page split into two panels down the middle.

[doodleboy]

Admittedly I haven't read Mister Miracle or Omega Men and probably should read those before fully judging his work. The Omega Men bars and the time-periods in Batman do sound interesting.

My biggest problem with King's use of the 9-panel grid (and this applies to some extent to Kieron Gillen too), is that the main association I have with the 9-panel grid and King is 9-panels of the same angle. It'd either be a close-up portrait or a mid-body shot in every panel. It's most obvious in Heroes in Crisis, but it's there in the rest of his comics too.

And to me, that's boring. Using it that way does 2 things, draw out a scene and adds some acting moments. And the way it paces the scene out is plodding and repetitious because you're using the same timing each time. Instead of having an interesting composition that pushes story-goals, it's nine-shots of talking-heads.

It feels like using a 9-panel grid for the sake of it. The way Superman plopped down the "35 seconds ago" line to reference Watchmen in Heroes in Crisis. You're referencing Alan Moore, but it has nothing to do with the story you're telling and adds nothing to it.

I kind of want writers to do something else at this point. Even if I liked the 9-panel grid in Peter Cannon and Wild Storm, by itself the layout isn't really that special.

There are other things you can crib from Alan Moore that feel underused. Like having the fore-ground and mid-ground depict different events forcing you to read the comic twice to get everything, it's murder on the artist but still. Or you can try something completely different, there are other comics out there with interesting techniques, other ways you can tell stories.