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SuperHerosFuckYeah

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calamityjon: One of my favorite comic pages, despite being from a series I didn’t like all that much. This is from Justice, the limited series from DC as created by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger and Doug Braithwaite. I read this when it first came out and just couldn’t follow it, a problem I attributed to the immense cast of characters (there’s probably something like a hundred in these twelve issues) and its bi-monthly publishing schedule. With so much going on, I assumed I was just losing the thread from issue to issue. I recently re-read the whole thing in a single sitting and, no, it’s no more coherent. I get the larger plot, but making heads or tails of individual scenes within the comic is more like making hay. Part of the problem is that the actual mechanics of story-telling take a backseat to dynamic layouts and cinematic spreads, so that the illustrations are stunning but make for a lousy, cloudy read. Part of it also has to do with the fact that this series emerges from the legacy of the oversized Dini/Ross books, and like those books this is not a book about a story; it is a book about ideas. This is a series about who Ross and Kreuger believe these characters are, essentially, at their core. When things happen in this book and the plot moves along, it’s mostly to get us to another scene or another caption where a character’s monologue can tell us something about themselves, or their friends and allies. Here, Ross and Kreuger get Captain Marvel and his relationship with his deadliest and most persistent foe, all in a single panel. Confronting the insidious Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana in his cell at Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane - and observing the torment Sivana is suffering as near-microscopic alien parasites riddle his bodily tissues - Marvel turns with the grave, bright seriousness of a child and explains to his companion ”This is my greatest enemy.” For good or ill, Sivana is a part of Captain Marvel’s life, and Captain Marvel is -at heart - still a child. Here he reacts to the threat of losing his greatest enemy the same way a child might respond to death or divorce, the fear that some day everyone will go away. When he describes Sivana as his greatest enemy, he may as well be saying “This is a member of my family, and I want him to be okay” …

calamityjon:

One of my favorite comic pages, despite being from a series I didn’t like all that much.

This is from Justice, the limited series from DC as created by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger and Doug Braithwaite. I read this when it first came out and just couldn’t follow it, a problem I attributed to the immense cast of characters (there’s probably something like a hundred in these twelve issues) and its bi-monthly publishing schedule. With so much going on, I assumed I was just losing the thread from issue to issue.

I recently re-read the whole thing in a single sitting and, no, it’s no more coherent. I get the larger plot, but making heads or tails of individual scenes within the comic is more like making hay. Part of the problem is that the actual mechanics of story-telling take a backseat to dynamic layouts and cinematic spreads, so that the illustrations are stunning but make for a lousy, cloudy read.

Part of it also has to do with the fact that this series emerges from the legacy of the oversized Dini/Ross books, and like those books this is not a book about a story; it is a book about ideas. This is a series about who Ross and Kreuger believe these characters are, essentially, at their core. When things happen in this book and the plot moves along, it’s mostly to get us to another scene or another caption where a character’s monologue can tell us something about themselves, or their friends and allies.

Here, Ross and Kreuger get Captain Marvel and his relationship with his deadliest and most persistent foe, all in a single panel.

Confronting the insidious Doctor Thaddeus Bodog Sivana in his cell at Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane - and observing the torment Sivana is suffering as near-microscopic alien parasites riddle his bodily tissues - Marvel turns with the grave, bright seriousness of a child and explains to his companion ”This is my greatest enemy.”

For good or ill, Sivana is a part of Captain Marvel’s life, and Captain Marvel is -at heart - still a child. Here he reacts to the threat of losing his greatest enemy the same way a child might respond to death or divorce, the fear that some day everyone will go away. When he describes Sivana as his greatest enemy, he may as well be saying “This is a member of my family, and I want him to be okay” …

(via docshaner)