Page Commentary No. 257

Psu: I was just watching Spider-verse tonight. That movie's great.

Brellom: At first I struggled to understand how that was relevant but then I remembered that there's a sexy giant spider person at the center of this page and it finally makes sense. So, when are we getting the Dr. Botz movie?

Gunwild: Dr. Botz wouldn't have forgotten that Miles could turn invisible in the final fight scene like Dr. Octopus did, is all I'm sayin'.

Gunwild: Her mind is a steel trap! Also a bunch of more conductive metals.

Psu: Dr. Botz would probably be entertained by everything. In maybe a little less menacing way than the Doctor Octopus of the movie was.

Psu: Hey wait. Does this mean we did it first? Or... I guess evil scientist ladies are just a common trope among comic creators of a certain age?

Gunwild: Evil science is a field open to all kinds of people. All it demands is application of the scientific method! You know, but, to doing evil stuff.

Psu: I think the best evil minds are never against experimenting on themselves either. And Botz over here, showing a bit more of her brilliant mind than usual.

Gunwild: I like how they break from cover in different directions to outflank her in panel 2, it really puts a lot of action into one panel... although maybe Maddy shoulda flown a little higher and faster. Well, her mistake, not ours.

Psu: Mhm, good point but then I'd need to change the composition of that last panel to be more Maddy and Botz centric to accommodate the extra space. But instead we get to do that thing I talk about in this chapter, with multiple panel breaks inside a larger panel. You can use foreground and background to sell two separate scenes in a comic, easier than other mediums I think.

Gunwild: True, because you can do deep focus and split diopter and all that in film. But the eye is built such that it can only pick one depth to focus on at a time, right? A comic panel can give background and foreground equal detail, to explore at the leisure of the viewer. Anyway, if this were animated, Eyebot would be turning that valve by gripping it and spinning his whole body. Vyoom!

Psu: One of the disadvantages of a comic, it's not actually moving! But yeah we get to do some fun stuff by knowing the reader has plenty of time to pour over the details. We just need to coerce their eye into looking in the right direction. And I gotta say Brell's colors really do a great job of that here.

Brellom: The blue/orange colour scheme definitely helps make each scene impactful and stand out from one another, but there's also a lot of backlit characters on this page, which I think helps create a firm sense of foreground and background. We can see Penny quite clearly, but it isn't too distracting from the scene behind it. At the same time, that lighting is still pretty striking and helps bring her forward, so we can still focus on what she's doing. So even though that would technically be a lot of visual information to front-load onto the reader, it easily communicates that both scenes are happening in the same room without much trouble.

Psu: The benefit of using multiple complementary color schemes.

Brellom: Though I think a good part of that is also in the drawing itself. The left side of that panel is covered with the close-ups of Botz, but we have this big box that helps direct the reader's eye downward, and it also helps to crop the scene, sorta framing the action behind it too in conjunction with the lighting. So I guess the takeaway is composition and lighting are powerful tools in the visual medium and this page utilizes both incredibly well.

Psu: Yeah, I think this is a page we can be proud of. Though I think I've heard that fanning the hammer on a revolver isn't actually a thing shooters do...

Gunwild: It is if they're like two feet away, maybe! Possibly. I don't know, I've never used a gun designed for robot hands.

Brellom: It just needs to look cool. But yes it sounds like it'd be a pretty bad idea to do.

Psu: Speaking of looking cool. I know I asked to like shoot out Botz' eye so she looks even more "evil" as this fight goes on. But then again... there's every possibility like one third of the characters in this comic look like that under their exterior... and we all have skeletons inside us, too.

Gunwild: Yeah but she is mean.

Brellom: Yeah but it's a bit like she's shedding her mortal coil and we're seeing the true monster come out. Which isn't going to happen to like 1/3 of the cast.

Gunwild: That's what I said, but I didn't bother to make that much sense.

Psu: You know who wouldn't look like that? The 1/3rd of the cast that make up the Vanaa.

Brellom: Yeah but they're scary in their own way. They'll show their evil differently.

Gunwild: Scary CUTE.