Whedon Ends Run on Runaways - Sneak Peek!

Angel and Firefly (among many others) creator, Joss Whedon, ends his run on Marvel's Runaways with issue #30, to be released June 25^th.

But I wanted to discuss the art with you:

While the cover is absolutely beautiful - stunning, it's so gorgeous - the interior art leaves a lot to be desired. This is what I am talking about when I say a lot of the artists working in sequential art today are "cover artists."

Don't get me wrong, the art is technically masterful and beautiful to look at, but it's more illustration than sequential art. See how stiff the forms are, how point-by-point the frames are sequenced?

These are all mid-shots! Like, every last one of them!

While I obviously don't have a copy of the script (even if I did get to see scripts in advance, I certainly wouldn't be privy to this one), the art looks to me as though the artist just let Whedon write the entire thing and that never works.

In case you don't know, there are two. distinct "forms" of comic book scripts: traditional and "Marvel." Marvel scripts are basically plotlines and snippets of dialogue here and there. You have "beats" to hit (much like with a TV script - such as, by page #, the fight needs to be over and end the page with a close-up of the main character, yelling, "SNIPPET OF DIALOGUE!") but the whole thing is very freeform, allowing the artist to direct the action, choose the angles, and basically... draw the book. Novel concept, no? This is why everyone liked to work for Marvel.

Traditional scripts are your basic, line-by-line scripts, where the writer dictates everything. And the comics made from these scripts usually suck. (Well, I tried finding one of the scripts they provided at Joe Kubert, but I have no idea where they are, so I'll just make one up.) These read like your basic screenplay:

DAY - INT., OFFICE - MID: Matt Murdock stands in front of Karen Page's desk, holding cane.
Karen Page: You don't look so hot, Matt.
Matt Murdock: INT - I don't feel so hot, Karen.
BAL - I'm fine, just a bit of a cold...
INT - Of all the people in the world, I could always tell Karen anything... but how do I tell her this?

In the dialogue above, INT means thought balloon and BAL means dialgoue balloon. The MID prefacing the scene indicates a mid-shot, often referred to as a "two-shot" in film - as opposed to a close-up, longshot, worm's-eye view, so on. This is a single panel!

Marvel scripts are often drawn from the plot and story and the dialogue is added later. It's a much less formal process, though arguably more difficult, since nothing's concrete until it's done.

That's a bit of an aside, but now you have more to go on when I talk about things like "pin-up artists" versus sequential artists. While all traditional, newsstand comic books are sequential art, some people are just better at the whole thing than others. That's not to say the art is bad - it certainly isn't - it just isn't good sequential art; were these illustrations accompanied by text - which it may well be, but I doubt it - they'd be great, but they'd also be featured on whole pages instead of in panels.

Anyway, while the art itself is good, I find the sequencing and general form stiff and static. I am not familiar with the artist or the comic, but going from these samples, I would expect his freeform work to include lots of two-page spreads, pose panels, and pin-ups.

Remind me to give you The Rundown on Sim's new Glamourpuss.


















© C Harris Lynn, 2008