Freeze, Gerry Duggan, Matteo Scalera, Dave Stewart, Deron Bennett The passion of Victor Friesīatman: One Bad Day - Mr. And it’s a testament to Vaughan and Staples’ talents that the first panel of their comeback is a simple reframing of the very first page of their comic, and a jump cut-style time jump, yet still felt like the natural next step. Even more remarkable, the only thing there really was to say about Saga #55 was that it was just as good as Saga #54. In 2022 Saga faced another rule to break: Returning from a three-and-a-half year hiatus with, if anything, a bigger audience than the book had when it paused in 2018. At least not until Hollywood is chill with an X-rated, hyperviolent, special effects-heavy family adventure. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staple’s epic is the exception that breaks every rule in American comics publishing - a hit with Wednesday Warriors and trade-waiters alike that only grows more popular over time, never loses narrative steam, and will probably never get optioned for a cinematic adaptation. What if instead, Superman’s anger was righteous and controlled, a protective reflex? What if it wasn’t a burning laser, but an icy breath that douses a house fire and hangs in the air as he makes a final attempt at deescalation? What if we know that Superman is angry because his eyes are simply those of a protector defending his friend, rather than an enraged god destroying his enemies? Hitting the ground running But Batman #127 says: It’s also a crutch. And look, red-eye angry Superman is a temptingly strong visual. Hollywood has made sure that we all know the iconography of an angry Superman - he floats impossibly in the sky, his eyes glowing a radioactively furious red, a promise that looks can kill and maybe he will too. Image: Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles/DC Comics Not an angry god, but an angry friendīatman #127, Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles He picks the exact moments that convey both previous and impending motion the exact point in the shot where somebody like Zack Snyder would switch to slo-mo the moment every voice in a crowd would gasp in unison - and blows a split second out on the page so that the tension and beauty of it hangs forever. Johnson takes the eye of a Renaissance painter to Power Bomb. But where the comic takes your breath away is movement.Ĭomics are a deceptively still medium, in which we use phrases like “motion lines” to mean “a developed iconography of abstract lines which are invisible to the characters but indicate to the reader that motion has occured.” Wrestling, on the other hand, is a pastime in which movement - literally “wrestling moves” - are the entire deal. There is not a page of Power Bomb that’s ashamed or sheepish of its subject matter, it’s all sincerity, all camp, all heart, and all spectacle. The story of Do a Power Bomb is that Daniel Warren Johnson got into professional wrestling for the first time during the pandemic, and this is his love letter. Image: Daniel Warren Johnson/Image Comics She-Hulk, Rainbow Rowel, Rogê Antônio, Rico Renzi, Joe Caramagna Where Evely draws Kara Zor-El with a gaze hard enough to pierce the reader’s heart, Mat Lopes pops her irises with ice blue flecks, his work a carefully conducted symphony, emphasizing the important even as it highlights Evely’s intricate linework. Artists have used the iconography of Superman to recreate Michelangelo’s Pietá before, but Evely may have done it best, choreographing cape and clouds and sun onto the essential pose. The question isn’t “Is one of the best panels of the year in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow?” It’s “Which panel in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow do I choose?” I’ve previously said Woman of Tomorrow is the most Sandman-like thing Tom King has written, and while some portion of that is the semi-contained fable of each issue, it’s also the craft that artist Bilquis Evely brings to the comic’s worldbuilding, in a space adventure by way of the inexplicable creatures of Star Wars rather than the scientifically enumerated biomes of Star Trek.īut what makes Evely’s single panels wondrous is her compositions and her acting. Image: Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes, Clayton Cowles/DC Comics
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