Annotated 48-5
FB: “Objectivity has fallen to metaphor! Our literal engines of destruction are no match for their figurative engines of destruction!”
Jack Kirby is one of the most widely discussed artists in the history of action comics, especially if you’re old enough to remember the last days of his career. But I haven’t seen a lot of analysis cover his “shouting into the camera” trick, seen in the image at right (the guy shouting “OPEN FIRE” at the bottom) and imitated in our second panel here with the soldier.
It’s a nice way to get the immediacy of a close-up along with the far-ranging scope of a long shot…intense emotion and mass destruction in one image, almost interpenetrating each other like in a Picasso. If we had it all to do over again, I think I’d urge us to go even closer-up on that soldier, maybe cutting off part of his face the way Kirby did in the sample here. Still wonderful art, though.
Sir Groff’s role in this battle mostly consisted of getting you guys to say “Which one is he again?” (Panel one, riding the rhinosaur mount with the ridiculously big, gnarled lance.)
Who is wielding the blue power in panel 2? I’m not sure I’ve seen that from anyone other than the Silver Centurion.
That’s not the same blue power! It’s a sky elf portal. (Wielded by a sky elf, naturally.)
Ah, the classic “open a portal under the enemy” trick. Always nice, when not used against yourself
Something wonky with the navigation again.
Only way I got here was to go to the previous page, then go “next chapter”, which wraps me around to the first page of the comic, and then click the “Last” button…
So, previous page is somehow the landing page, and doesn’t correctly link to this one.
If that sort of thing happens (i.e. new comic seems inaccessible but I’m pretty sure it’s up already), I go to the page before it and manually increment the page number in the URL. If that doesn’t work, that means the page is definitely not up. Unless I got the page number wrong because there’s a new chapter or some intermission, which means I’m still not 100% sure …
Should Damask/Peony be tagged? One of them is clearly on the right of the bottom panel, though I don’t think they appeared apart previously so I’m not sure which of them it is here.
Also, aren’t the brontothrashers the big sauropod things in the background of panel 1? The guy with the huge jagged lance (Sir Groff, as stated) is riding on a Rhinosaur.
Right on both counts! Corrected.
That’s a pretty interesting observation about Kirby, and now that you say it, I am sure he used it a bunch of times. I didn’t appreciate Jack so much back then, but over the years I have come to recognize how much he did for sequential art.
I disagree, this is perfect. It puts the reader as the person right behind the soldier – i.e. facing the same danger.
The example from Kirbi makes the soldier’s distress much more palpable, but it leaves the reader merely an observer
Those Brontothrashers really seem enjoy thagomizing things.
Love the varying perspectives and scales in these panoramic action pages.