What Would You Do Differently, Part 2: The Wreckoning

Hello again artists,
There follows what I would do to make these pages bulletproof. But first an observation: Especially in thumbnails, you can see these are nicely composed pages: Good variation of the sizes of the shapes, Attractive (to me, anyway) arrangement of panels and shape, nice use of diagonals. Good composition is like jazz, I suppose: you know it when you "hear" it.

Page 1

First, nice establishing shot!  Manages to establish the world and yet still comfortably accommodate two important storytelling panels. Colorist sets a mood, makes the splash panel "read," makes use of nice use of atmospheric perspective.

The artist establishes the jail--sort of. How are we to know it's a jail? There's no caption saying it's one, no bars in windows, no guard tower. Adding those would make the whole situation read instantly. Did the storytellers disdain such moves to avoid being obvious or,  horror of horrors, "cartoony"? That would be kinda dumb.

A radical proposition: Confusion doesn't necessarily create intrigue.

Being reader-friendly isn't a sellout or condescending. It's a gift.

And in a first issue especially, it's welcoming. Put another way, it's marketing.

I would have established the jail more clearly by making that hatch they're coming out of appear somewhere in the big splash panel. And the writer could have had a little balloon coming out of that hatch to relate the splash to the other panels, give more of a sense of continuity. We'd know we were in the same setting.

In panel 3, it would be good to see to see their eyes looking opposite directions, to really show that they are looking--anxiously--to see if it's safe to proceed.

The artist establishes a difference in the escapees' physical sizes that could have been more pronounced. Then whatever the writer did to give each a consistent personality and point of view would be more likely to be noticed.

The colorist goofs by not establishing the greens of their outfits in this panel.

Page 2

Panel 1: Nice deep panel. Nice distinction in their body types, body language.  But now they're moving in the opposite direction from the preceding page, breaking the 180 rule. Why?
The artist never strongly establishes that they are chained together. Again, why?

Panels 2 and 3: And now they're the same height. I'd lower the short guy, showing just part of his head. Following through on that more distinctive cropping would better set up the one-two punch the artist is trying to do in these panels. As it stands, it's pretty hard to tell the two panels are supposed to be a matched pair, meant to take us abruptly from protective darkness to bright light. The two don't even squint, either.

Suddenly, in panel 3, the two guys are apparently the same height.  The background element even changes places.

Boo. Repetition loses power when used half-assedly.

Panel 4: Pretty good layout! Having the one guy appear bigger and closer than the other creates depth. The searchlight beam makes it easy to see these guys, even as they remain in shadow, by creating contrast. I saw a lot of this in War for the Planet of the Apes yesterday. The poses are not good. And the Image-era "hidden-lower-leg" trick doesn't work quite as well when the characters are not right in the readers' face. They look like amputees.

And the two've traded places, with the fatter guy suddenly in the lead!

Panel 5: I think this inset panel works great. Note that the artist made sure that it didn't share even one  of its borders with panel 4!! So it pops forward visually. The guy's head coming out of the panel adds to that effect strongly--without misdirecting us to, say, panel 3! This panel leads off the page, and so onto the next. Excellent. When people go crazy with stuff breaking through panel borders, it can really screw up the way the page reads. But this is successful.

Page 3

Strong page with a great first panel.

This is really fussy, but in Panel 1, as striking as it is, I wouldn't have put that ring  and lightning around the light beam, because in comics and animation such effects are usually reserved for energy weapons.

It bugs me that they are about to crash into each other in panel 2. And I'd push the difference in their body types throughout.

Have your say in the Comments section!

John