I was reading an interview with Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker about Iron Fist, when I scrolled down and saw a panel from an upcoming issue. Take a look.

Normally, when you read a comic it's read left to right, top to bottom. It's just how the American eye works. But whomever drew this panel chose to buck that trend, and do things a little differently. I can't think this was in Brubaker and Fraction's script. Only because it's too outside the box for a writer. Though, if they did write it, hey, kudos to you guys, it's frickin' cool.

I've been noticing page layouts similar to this one; where one image is used for multiple panels and only the character shifts within. This page takes that style to an extreme, and I think I love it.

The panel flows, quite wonderfully, with Iron Fist moving left to right, right to left, left to right. It's perfectly natural, and the only thing that took me out of it was that I knew it shouldn't be natural.

Fantastic work.

A Pro Speaks: Ed Brubaker on tragedy in Criminal

Ed Brubaker has really busted out in recent years. A while ago I'd never heard of the guy. Now, he's writing Captain America, Daredevil, Uncanny X-Men, Iron Fist, and his very own Criminal.

I read and enjoy four of those books. Pretty good, especially considering one of those books would be a very hard sell for me. If you really want to, you can figure it out, one of those titles is very much unlike the others.

If you've read the title, you might be expecting this, but I'm very interested Brubaker's use of tragedy in Criminal. Not only is tragedy one of the least used storytelling devices, it also resonates with me like a Low B on a bass guitar (for a long time in layman's terms.)

From Brubaker's interview with Newsarama:

Tragic. It's a noir, but it's got the twist of, I want Leo to survive to tell more stories about him. But there are levels of survival in noir, that leave a lot of messed up possibilities open to me. I will say Criminal #5 is probably one of the most brutal things I've ever written.

I love noir. I love tragedy. They go hand in hand (though, wouldn't it be interesting to see a noir that ended on an upbeat note?) and are so underused that I jump on anything that includes those elements.

Which is why I think it's so great that Brubaker is writing a comic book, especially a comic book, that might draw in people who are larger fans of genre than they are format. I'm sure people like that exist.

I just want comic books to be more than super hero comic books. Not because I don't enjoy super hero comic books, I do, but I'm also interested in other genres and I love the comic book format.

Musing: Comics and Manga

This will be short.

Manga is really popular in America. American Comic Books, they don't have a fun name, are a smallish niche market which ironically harbor some of the most iconic figures in America.

Why aren't Comic Books as popular as Manga? Well, there are two very good blog posts discussing the reasons with much more knowledge and insight that I currently have into the situation.

noflyingnotights

So please, comics industry folks? Get it into your heads that manga works more because of the stories than anything else.

And a very long post from Halifax_slasher on Facebook:

The reasons for this change are due for their own essay (tentatively titled "What Went Wrong"), but for now let us note that while there was a time when a single issue of a comic would have Spider-man meet a foe, get defeated by the foe, mope around, become inspired, track down the foe, fight him again, defeat him, and then wrap up a subplot involving Aunt May--in other words, when an issue would contain a complete dramatic arc--nowadays Frank Miller can write entire issues in which Batman never leaves the car.

I'll write a long-winded post about the styles of early comic books vs. modern comic books and writing for the trade vs. writing a done-in-one another time.