The panel running along the inner seam of this page is an example not of something that can *only* be done in comics, but rather something that is not out-of-place on a comics page. Turn the page of a comic to find the script flipped, the art style changed or an elevator stripped of its outer layer, exposing its occupants standing precarious over a blackened maw, and we don’t question it. Comics can do this with every pages turn. It would be great to see this kind of visual play in more films wouldn’t it? The only stumbling block being that the average film audience is probably not used to this kind of shift happening on a regular basis.

Sure, we get some CAMERA-shoots-up-through-a-transparent-floor shots (or from the pov of the sink drain in Evil Dead II), but nothing that would stop the viewer in her tracks upon cutting to a new scene with a conversation already in transit inside an invisible elevator. They would get it. I mean it clearly reads as elevator, but there would be a pause to consider. That pause might take them out, momentarily, of the forward momentum of the story. Maybe that’s a stretch, but it’s more common to the visual language of comics than it is in any other medium. There’s a *willful* atrophy in the brain of the regular comics reader that allows us (are you there?) to accept instantaneously these types of shifts. The above page is the mildest of examples of this sort of thing.

The above is an example of “showing the strings”. We know we are privileged in our point of view of these characters (at the bottom of an elevator shaft/looking up from the depths/out of a wash of noir) and that we’re seeing parts of the known world at angles uncommon. This adds (at least I think) weight to the conversation between the characters.

I don’t know how to finish posts yet.

week I

monday or facts are never what they seem to be
Dark City
12 Monkeys
tuesday or this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife
Closer
Blue Valentine
wednesday or one by one by one
Ravenous
Alien 3
thursday or does anybody notice?
Heat
Collateral
friday or family troubles
Animal Kingdom
The Proposition
saturday or fools, out on the make
Roger Dodger
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
sunday or great! fine!  six-demon bag! what’s in it?/I just like pizza ok?
Big Trouble in Little China
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

week II

monday or and the next ten people who are trying to be polite
Greenberg
?
tuesday or “be like water“
The Life Aquatic with steve Zissou
JAWS
wednesday

This is a great example of conveying the force of motion and impact without using motion lines other than the naturally occurring “trails” left from each of the events. It’s also a highly effective rendering of forces in opposition. The cork flies one direction, counter to how the comic is read, but the fact that the panel that contains it is overlapping the next image in the sequence indicates they’re meant to be occurring almost simultaneously (which also shows you that whomever is doing the shooting has got reflexes and then some plus) With the report of gunfire, we’re snapped back into the regular flow of book.

note* It’s been so long since I started this series of posts, that a lot of context of the actual story is fuzzy.

process for an upcoming short comic story