Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Comic Book Images (Commonplace Book)

There is no reason a Commonplace Book cannot contain images from comic books. I grabbed four images today that I thought were great details in great comic books.

The first is from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's WE3 3: a dead body stares blankly at the sky; bullets rained down from the sky on her, and now actual rain strikes her retina, creating a beautiful crown of water.


The second is from Grant Morrison and Ed McGuinness's JLA: Classified 2: Batman is supervising the Squire, who is hung, Mission Impossible-style, over a cube of stars -- an infant universe -- trying to contact the missing JLA; her pony-tail gets a separate suspension apparatus.




The third is from Frank Miller's Sin City: That Yellow Bastard. A figure with a revolver emerges from the shadows; going for minimalism and a hyperbolic stark black and white, Miller has not drawn the barrel of the gun: he draws the tip of the gun but there is a large part of the barrel that the viewer just mentally fills in.

The fouth -- actually two images -- are the Travis Charest covers to the two collections of Alan Moore's WildC.A.Ts run. Charest is a great artist, one of my top five, who works slowly and has spent years on a legendary project no one has seen. He has a weird sense of humor, and his covers here place the team and their enemies -- fairly standard comic book action heroes -- in a version of the Gap Kahki adds. Genius.

12 comments:

Geoff Klock said...

If you have any of your own to add -- this is the place to do it.

jennifert72 said...

hi geoff
i am unclear what a commonplace book is.

jennifert72 said...

never mind. i found the entry that had the wikipedia entry. excellent. when are you going to share some recipes?

Geoff Klock said...

I will have to put Nigella Lawson's recipe for Cherry Coke Ham up at some point. It's the best.

David Golding said...

That is a lovely We3 picture from Quitely.

I think you're misreading the Squire panel, as much as I love what you pointed out. The lines that "connect" with her hair clearly go on to connect with her body.

I'm glad you pointed out that Miller doesn't draw the barrel - too many people cite the "film noir" look, without noticing the difference - in film noir, things might be in shadow, but in Miller's art they might not be there at all!

Geoff Klock said...

David -- I have looked at the Squire image, looked at the original image and looked at another image of her hanging in JLA Classified 2. I don't understand what you mean. She hangs from several cords -- her torso gets two sets, her waist gets a set, her feet get a set -- and her pony-tail gets its own set, and that's what I was pointing out.

Have my two posts on Miller and hyperbole changed your mind about Miller's writing in Sin City? It's a jacked up version of Mike Hammer, and it's a whole lot of fun. And the Gnostic pill, as you say in your post, may be hard to swallow, but it's the only thing that does it for me these days.

jennifert72 said...

i had also originally not seen the ponytail apparatus because i was looking at the thing sticking out of the top of her head. her long, braided ponytail goes down the side of her body & it is clearly being held. that is a great little detail :)

David Golding said...

Argh, yes, I'm misreading the panel - seeing Squire's feather, not her pony tail! As soon as I looked at the actual comic I realised. Staring at a monitor too long obviously makes you blind to the little things!

I can appreciate the exuberance of Sin City, but it still doesn't agree with my sense of humour; the subject matter isn't my idea of fun.

Anonymous said...

There is a striking Bachalo panel in X-Men this week, where one of the new villain characters (The fact that I can't remember her name says something, doesn't it?) creates an eclipse. Beautiful. I want to frame it.

Geoff Klock said...

Bachalo is one of my favorite artists. I will be blogging about one of his best images Monday.

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Geoff Klock said...

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