strip panel naked

Ray Fawkes is back, bringing his staple watercolour art to the first issue of The Underwinter. The majority of the book is rendered in a particular style, but Fawkes changes his approach fairly dramatically for a single sequence near the end of the book. It's a similar technique to a few different things I've talked about in this column on other occasions, but there's a very interesting element to it that makes this particular example a little different, and worth further exploration.

I'm a firm believer that comics aren't a medium that favor page after page of dialogue, so you need interesting ways to present that information. This month's Kill or be Killed, by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser, presents a perfect example.

There's a really famous set of panels that Wally Wood curated over the years, traditionally referred to as "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work!!". It's a set of panels that will always work when, as an artist, you're stuck in a situation of characters speaking to each other page after page. sometimes it's necessary for the story, so these 22 panels are ways to visually change up your visuals through the pages. In Sons of Anarchy: Redwood Original #8, by Ollie Masters, Eoin Marron, Adam Metcalfe and Ed Dukeshire, there are a few pages that really highlight how Marron has a clear grasp of those panels.

I've been a fan of Jeff Lemire ever since I first read The Essex Country Trilogy five or so years ago. Through a lot of the stories where he's been writer and artist, there's a very direct approach to framing that he rarely deviates from, particularly in work such as the current Image Comics series Royal City, where he takes a more down-to-earth tack. It's hard to tell if this is something Lemire is doing purposefully to create this effect, or if it's just the style of his art. Either way, the effect it creates is perfect for the character-focused, humanising stories that Lemire typically tells.

There's a really fun set-up in God Country, by Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, Jason Wordie and John J. Hill, which starts the heavily utilize the idea of scale in the second issue. It becomes a major feature of the work, and one that the team keeps drawing attention to, page after page.

My favourite thing about writing Strip Panel Naked every week is getting the chance to be surprised. A smarter man might have a better plan to tackle this article routinely, but mine is always the same: read comics, be surprised. This week it was the first comic on the pile that caught me off-guard, with Tom King, David Finch, Danny Miki, Jordie Bellaire and John Workman's Batman #17, as part of DC's Rebirth. There's a technique Finch employs throughout the issue to create a sense that everything is slowly unravelling and falling apart, in that he lets the panels start slipping away on each page. You can see how the pages aren't formulaic in their approach to panel layout; there's not really any grids, and panels are constantly overlapping.

Striking imagery in any visual medium can only really come about when taken in isolation. You could have a comic that is full of stunning pages, image after image of the most gorgeously rendered scenes ever, and it can lose context in book form. By overloading incredible imagery, it becomes commonplace, and you have to work even harder to sell a visual that you might need to be particularly stunning. If you could take a single image out of said book and present it in isolation, that beauty would flood backs to it. You can achieve this effect pretty easily in comics when you restrict your style to a set look and feel, and then bring in small changes when necessary to create a massive change to the images. For an example, check out the new book Death be Damned, by Ben Acker, Ben Blacker, Andrew Miller, Hannah Christenson, Juan Useche, and Colin Bell.

I loved every page of the first issue of Jason Latour, Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi's Loose Ends. There was a whole load of storytelling tricks and techniques to unpack, but I want to look at one that has sprung up before with Jason Latour in Southern Bastards, and it's the use of red throughout. This time coloured by Renzi, he starts to drop a very saturated red tone in various stages of the story.

Terry Moore continues to make some of the best and oddest comics found on store shelves --- odd especially in their merging of genres, such as in Motor Girl, which seems to stretch from PTSD sufferer's story to spy thriller; and best in that he really has an understanding of conveying character and moments.

It's Music Week here at ComicsAlliance, and I wanted to take some time to dive into a very particular relationship between music and comics. Comics obviously are silent, so musical numbers are particularly tough to pull off. Getting the actual sound across, the lyricism, the melody - it's a challenge. I want to take a look at three examples of music in comics that all use a particular approach with notation. By using the staves of sheet music, and placing notes on the page, these three comics manage to provide an extra depth to their storytelling.