(sound blurb)
- [Announcer] Hello and welcome to Comicana.
I'm Hass and each episode we're going to take a look
at some of the hidden artistry in the pages of comic books.
Visual storytelling is all about, you guessed it,
using the visuals to tell the story.
Something I was always taught when studying film
was if someone watched a film without sound,
would they still understand the
relationship between the characters?
Would they still understand the story?
If not, something's probably gone wrong.
This is the same for any visual medium
and indeed should be the same
for comics as they are a visual medium.
For and artist, when drawing their page,
they are working without the luxuries
of having the word balloons already placed on the page.
They're attempting to design the story without that there.
David Finch has been doing this for awhile
and can be argued has gained some level
of superstar status within the industry.
When you look at a comic such as the new Batman series,
written by Tom King and with colors by Jordie Bellaire,
you can see why he's reached that level.
As always on Comicana, I want to look at
a very specific set of pages as an example.
In this Batman series we're faced with two new characters,
Gotham and Gotham Girl and if we take a look
at issue two there is a panel in which they're presented,
this big single splash page.
What to you, does this read like?
Do we assume these people are heroes, villains?
Powerful, weak?
To me and hopefully to most of you,
they look powerful, strong, heroic.
How are we learning that though?
The only text on the page is a singe, "Don't worry."
at the bottom, it's not really enough
to learn a lot about the characters though, is it?
So this information about what kind
of people they are, that's all
being told through the visuals.
It's a clever mix of framing, character design and coloring.
So let's breakdown what's actually going on
in this page to make that response happen.
The first is the framing.
If you frame someone head on,
it creates kind of a neutral response.
If you bring the camera, for lack of a better term,
above them looking down, it will make them look smaller,
perspective will shrink them and it'll
make them look shorter and seem more childlike.
Now if, like in this example, you bring
the camera below the characters,
it actually works to elongate them.
It also creates a sensation of looking up at someone,
which in turn makes them seem
bigger, stronger, more powerful.
And you're getting that here, backed up
by Jim Gordon in the corner of the page,
covered in shadow and looking up.
Which brings up another thing the page does, lighting.
Finch is great with lighting and if you look
at any of his pages, you can see
the considerations he makes for it.
A few pages earlier, you have Jim Gordon
in his office and Finch uses shadows here
from the lighting to draw your eyes
to particular key moments and
that impacts that final panel.
So when you render these characters being hit
by a light head on, it makes them look good.
Traditionally bad guys lurk in shadows
and good guys work in light, you know,
Superman's powers are fueled by the sun.
So we're being shown these characters in
glorious, glorious detail and a huge panel,
a splash page and a powerful stance and powerful framing
and also making Jim Gordon look quite small in comparison.
So let's turn the page and see how Finch renders Batman.
That's interesting, right?
They're already dramatically different.
Batman is small in the frame, whereas Gordon
was small in the last image, now he's large in comparison.
His head and shoulders taking up more room
than the entirety of Batman's body.
He's also shrouded in darkness
and only small bits of him are visible.
As you can see he's behind the large lamp
illuminating Gotham and Gotham Girl.
When we punch in on Batman in the next panel
and then Gotham and Gotham Girl the panel after,
you can see that direct contrast happening.
With one, Batman is menacing,
over half of him is pure black.
With the others it's mostly golden yellow
and Finch has only rendered a small amount
of shadows around them.
There's something else happening here too,
Batman is perched atop that stack-chimney type thing,
not entirely dissimilar to say a gargoyle
and because Bellaire has rendered the area
of the roof a similar grey to Batman,
he starts to blend into it all.
This is helped by how Finch uses
shadows on this set of pages too.
If we flip ahead a page, Batman almost does
just disappear into the background.
Where the light hits the floor on the roof,
there you can see it's kind of yellow-grey,
but the parts of the roof that Batman sits on
is all blue-grey, yes an indication of
how the color of light changes the color of
the surface that it hits, but it's also
cleverly designed to create some separation.
Batman isn't the good guy here, you know,
these two seem to be instead.
He's part of the furniture of Gotham
like a gargoyle perched on the side of a building.
He's a much a part of Gotham as this building is.
If you place those two moments side by side,
the splash of the two Gothams
and Batman here in the shadows,
without any context or understanding of
who these characters are themselves,
who seems like the good guy?
You'd definitely be forgiven for thinking
Batman was the villain and that's all thanks to
the strength of the visual storytelling
from Finch and Bellaire.
And there's another moment of visual mastery
in this issue that we can take a look at.
And it highlights the difference
between the Gothams and Batman again.
At the beginning of the issue,
the Gothams are fighting Solomon Grundy.
And every moment of their interaction,
you can see how strikingly big
Grundy is in comparison to them.
It happens panel after panel, two pages in
you can see it in full force.
As the fourth panel of this page,
where Grundy throws Gotham away.
Besides which, is further extrapolated
for the remainder of the page
where Gotham and Gotham Girl are shown to be tiny.
It's reinforced too, by the size of this statue,
which only helps to make them seem smaller.
But when we go to the next page, Batman turns up.
And if you see the final panel of that sequence
where Batman is crouched, he's actually
pretty similar size to Grundy in that frame,
they take up a relatively similar amount of space.
Turn the page and Bats has got Grundy up in the air,
over his head, sure Grundy looks huge here too,
but Batman outstretched and carrying him,
is a powerful visual and the size
after making Gotham and Gotham Girl
seem smaller and smaller, really
makes him seem quite impressive.
These pages work without dialogue, without captions.
Short nothings add context, but they need to
add context to pages that already tell you a story.
I focused on Finch and in some cases Bellaire here.
And what you've also got though is Tom King,
who is a writer who knows how to use this medium
and understand it's primarily a visual medium.
It's a creative team working at full strength in all areas.
When looking at a comic, this should always be the case.
The writing as in the actual speech and captions
should be there to add flavor and context
to the visuals, which really, ideally you know,
should be the thing doing the heavy
lifting in terms of the story.
After all, as I've said probably numerous times now,
this is a visual medium and it should be treated as such.
Looking at the new Batman series,
you've got a really good example of that.
Thanks for watching.
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You've been watching Comicana, I'm Hass
and I'll see you next time.