Page Commentary No. 139

Gunwild: The conventional wisdom is that in comics, if you want the reader to spend longer looking at a panel, you make it bigger. So a two-page spread of one image is like saying, "Spend a little time on this, okay?" because we want the book to be paced that way.

Psu: I think I just wanted to have the page real estate to draw in all those smoke effects. I'm really quite happy with the way the energy is billowing out from behind the ship. And there's a bunch of little details I forgot about in there, like some window blinds and chairs. I think I pictured this as an office building and I would've gone so far as add some desks and stuff.

Gunwild: I don't recall if I've mentioned this before, but about when I was really getting into collecting comics, The Authority was making waves. I wasn't reading it yet, but later I did. It was doing this pioneering thing that came to be called "Widescreen Comics." Like, you could adapt the film techniques of huge-budget movies to include a giant effects shot on a grand scale like this, and tell a story of that scope.

Psu: Trouble is the print medium makes it difficult. It might be something worth exploring with a website dedicated to fitting comics on 16:9 monitors though. Also, the eye doesn't like reading in long lines of text from left to right.

Gunwild: It's nice that we can show a spaceship busting through a building without spending hundreds of millions of dollars for render farms to realize the image, though. The budget for a comic page is more measured in time and talent and how much of the book it takes up. All important considerations, but at least we have that stuff. We don't have the studio fortune.

Psu: You just have one crazy person going, "I think this should be a two page spread." And me bugging our web designers at Hiveworks to let that happen.

Gunwild: Thanks, Hiveworks!

Gunwild: Did I pick a good name for the nosecone art lady?

Psu: I like it! She seems cool. I'm just trying to remember how we decided on nosecone art at all...

Gunwild: It's a bomber. A bomber should have nosecone art! Also it's a joke, because she is blue, like cobalt, and cobalt bombs are a thing.

Psu: What a bombshell.