Drop the Background

Background has become too important in comic books. I don't just mean background as in the setting of panels, either -- character background, history and "continuity," the whole nine. All this "background" in the writing is a marketing gimmick, but a lot of contemporary artists include rich backgrounds in almost every panel and it's distracting.

The art of a comic book is the human form. It doesn't matter if you draw people in their underwear or anthropomorphic walruses (walri?), the background is not a character and there is a point where it starts distracting from the story. To be sure, there was a long period in the 1990s where almost no one drew backgrounds and that became distracting, too. But action lines, negative space, and other designs are part of good cartooning.

Photorealism has been a staple of most mainstream comic books since Neal Adams, and background is a key factor to good sequential art, but dropping the detailed backgrounds and focusing on the characters not only improves storytelling (when done effectively), it would also go a long way toward solving the lateness issue. It also adds emphasis to the panels and splashes with detailed background. Background should be used to establish and reinforce setting; colors, design, and movement/pacing provide tone and atmosphere.

Arthur Adams' Action Comics Annual #1 is a great example of fewer, and less detailed, backgrounds. Note that many of the backgrounds are little more than a single element or two -- a copse of grasses, the brick of a building. Not only does the lack of background bring the character into focus, it makes the comic read faster. Then, when more detailed panels containing actual background occur, the reader slows down, stricken by these images. It works for the story, it works for pacing -- it just works.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010