The Thor Lettering Of John Workman

Via 💥BWHAM💥

*swoon*

This Pride, don’t forget about us

Here’s dril’s candles on a graph for reference.

Oxford, 25.01.20

When you keep getting easily distracted while writing:

Labels are bad

Alpha Flight: A Summary

I stg every single time someone says “you are not immune to propaganda” I can barely hear them over the sound of their own subtext screaming “but I am”

for New Scientist

p.s. get my artwork and comics at www.tomgauld.com

Daredevil vs. Prophet.

[from Age of Apocalypse (2012) #1]

• THE SERIES? It’s back. • JON AND SUZE? Also back. • THE BANK? MUST BE TAKEN DOWN. • THIS ARC? THE LAST. Gasp! • BULLET LISTS? How do you turn them off in Microsoft Word The highly anticipated return of the #1 New York Times bestselling humor/romance series SEX CRIMINALS kicks off its final story arc.

Sex Criminals #26, The End: Part One — September 29, 2020

Alpha Flight #10 - John Byrne (1984) Ah, yes. The Northstar origin short, AKA “James MacDonald Hudson and The Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Sales Pitch”. The hint regarding Jean-Paul’s homosexuality this time around is pretty straight forward: he’s not interested in women. What I find more interesting is where that takes the scene when the exchange is read in-context. Just about everyone else in Alpha Flight has Mac come to them about joining the team or gets the offer on neutral ground, and it’s always framed in terms of there being some benefit to the recruit. The Beaubier twins are the exceptions. Aurora is brought in by Wolverine, but still always sees AF as a rescue from the drudgery and abuse of Madame DuPont’s. Jean-Paul, however, gets a summons to Parliament Hill, where he’s met by an underling. He’s then escorted to Mac’s office in the super-secret Dept H section below the building. Mac then brings up Jean-Paul’s recently-revealed heritage (note that despite “recently” being two months prior, the fact that JP has a sister has been withheld), questioning his choice to accept it so quickly. Basically, everything Mac does seems designed to make Jean-Paul feel at a disadvantage going in. (Bravo to the speedster for zero fucks given, tho’.) Then he reveals just how much digging he’s been doing into Jean-Paul’s past and pairs it with an offer that has no question mark in it – it’s an “I want” not “would you?” Essentially, Mac’s approach is to make it clear that he has all the power in this encounter, he lets Jean-Paul know he has the means to out him as a mutant and end his career, then he makes his pitch. Putting all that together, “…the women don’t seem to have interested you overmuch” comes across less as an idle observation and more as added pressure. Mac wouldn’t need to out Jean-Paul as both gay and a mutant, as either one would sink him, but given how Mac has been stacking the odds in his favor, he probably wouldn’t be above dropping a hint about just how thoroughly he’s done his research. So it’s a small wonder that Jean-Paul blows him off without evidencing the slightest bit of interest in Alpha Flight before Aurora comes into the picture. Why in the world would he want to work for someone who had just no-so-subtly threatened to out him on multiple fronts? Now, I don’t think that’s how Byrne intended this scene to be read. He thought that Mac was boring (hence killing him off within a year of the series’ launch), but seems to present him as the well-meaning heroic sort, and heroes don’t go in for blackmail. Northstar is probably intended to come off looking the worse of the two for being unpleasant and self-interested. But as a queer reader, I remember that my reaction after reading through this story a couple of times was, “JFC, did Hudson just threaten to out Northstar if he didn’t join up?! No wonder he has a chip on his shoulder.” So yeah, between that and Mac’s decisions about Aurora joining the team, I usually give Mac Hudson’s overall leadership capabilities some serious side-eye.

ETA: Adding commentary from genuine Canadian @becausedragonage because cultural context:

For ppl who need the source here’s a guardian article

IG: maxwittert

T: waxmitert

To anyone in NYC: come to my hour-long comedy special, which I’m performing at Union Hall on Monday, November 4th 2019. It’s part of the New York Comedy Festival, and has a few fabulous openers. Feeling threatened? Good. Head to my IG for tickets (@maxwittert).

Happy Halloween!

Szymon Kudranski’s Framing Rhetoric & Panel Design in “Punisher #1”

One of the more intriguing elements of Kudranski’s art in Punisher #1 (2018) stems from the way that he is able to take the formalistic functions of the comics medium and make them work as a narrative device. In fact, we’re primed for this type of usage from the very first page:

This page is deceptive in its design because of how Kudranski utilizes panel insets (a panel inset is any panel that is superimposed over top of another panel). Here, we see that this page is really one large splash page to the bleed where (for the most part) it is “broken up” only by the inclusion of thick white frames strategically placed over “important” images. These first three panels draw our attention to three elements of the visual rhetoric that Kudranski is identifying as important; the narrative caption provides for us a sense of time and place, while the two boats that are focused on in panels two and three are clearly of importance, possibly even linking back to the text captioned in the first panel (“Why the bloody hell have the engines stopped?!”). Kudranski sets up for us the expectation that panels and page layout are going to be as important to the communicative power of the issue as the panel content is.

The first time that we see the panel frame actually act as “character” though is when we arrive at the Roxxon job in Staten Island:

Here, the thick frames that Kudranski has been utilizing for the majority of the issue prior are replaced by jagged, violent, sharp, blood coloured red frames that mimic the trauma/violence occurring within the panel content, just like a video game might shake and tint the screen red when taking damage. This is far from the only time Kudranski uses this element either! One of the more memorable usages of this framing rhetoric takes place during and elevator ride:

With this page, Kudranski is able to juxtapose the calm, serene frameless moments when the doors are closed and the elevator is in motion, with the violent POV moments as the baddies open the door and are put down by Frank. Each time the elevator arrives at a new floor, the panels take on the jagged shape tinged orange (to imitate the elevator light perhaps?) and we become the men killed by Frank through perspective.

The juxtaposition or parallelism that is witnessed here with the white/orange frames is also a go-to communicative device for Kudranski. We see it again moments before the issues climactic ending:

This page is particularly interesting in its use of parallelism and juxtaposition. Notice how during the moments where the Mandarin’s words are the primary focus, we are presented with white framed panels. These are non-representational and are overwhelmingly normal and traditional in their presentation. However, the second set of vertical panels are frameless and exist as an intermediary space in between the Mandarin (Frank’s target) and the placing of the bullet into the gun/pulling the trigger (the assassin gets his kill). The final two vertical panels are representative, again, of Frank and, as a result, we immediately know that the man pulling the trigger is the Punisher. By utilizing the frames that we have begun to associate with his character, Frank’s face does not need to be depicted for us to recognize the narrative events; we associate these panel frames with his particular type of violence at this point.

The last point to be made about Kudranski’s layouts is his use of iconic substitution. This occurs for the first time when he replaces the gutter separating two panels with a streaking rocket from a rocket launcher.

This simple substitution replaces the traditional process (called closure) that occurs as we read two images and violently inserts the rocket. What should be a simple reading process from one to the other is hijacked by the realization that this rocket is about to cause the catastrophe below (French theorist Theory Groensteen would call this archeological function). It mimics for the reader the violence and chaos that is being depicted on the page and makes the reading experience almost representative of that chaos.

Finally, Kudranksi does something similar in what might be my favourite single page of the comic:

Here, Kudranski substitutes a panel for the reflection of the biker’s helmet. We witness, through the visor glass, Frank killing the last of the bad guys. The final panel then acts as a unique panel-within-a-panel device, whereby the helmet becomes the vehicle to progress the story. It also keeps the reader detached from the event; we do not see Frank kill the man from the perspective of the biker, but rather have it mediated through the glass. In this way, we are able to see the Punisher in silhouette which emphasizes the iconic skull on his chest.

This is a fantastic, granular breakdown of the impact that one of the elements of comics layout that we often treat as invisible can have when used deliberately.

The X Ladies by Arist Deyn.

[ID: a two panel fan comic showing Cyclops and Kitty Pryde. Kitty is sitting at a table with her cheek resting on her palm, looking sad, when Scott approaches.]

Cyke: Hey Kitty what’s wrong

Kitty: I think I’m just going through some things [Scott glares at Kitty as she smiles while phasing her head through the outline of the panel. end ID]