Destroy All Comics – Panel…Craziness!

In case you haven’t been following the thread, there’s a great discussion afoot in some of the finer comics blogs about panel construction and design that’s given me a lot of insight into the most undervalued and under-discussed element in comics – the art. I’m truly loving this series of posts and even tho I wasn’t invited to the party, I decided to take a stab at doing one myself. I won’t be opening up the story elements at work so much as breaking down the basic art elements working in the panel, so I hope this doesn’t come across as too removed from the Panel Madness exercise. I really wanted to explore some Guy Davis work from Honour Among Punks, because that shit is nuclear, but I couldn’t find any decent scans and I wasn’t about to tear apart my copy. So…

I’ll be looking at the work of Gil Kane, specifically this panel, from Justice League of America #200 (Mar 1982).

Now, Kane is an acknowledged master of comic art (if he had done nothing else but His Name is…Savage, I’d still be saying that), and I could easily have chosen any number of panels from his body of work that are worth looking at in depth, but this panel captures the single most fascinating element of Kane’s work for me and does so in the simplest, most direct and obvious way. While Kane could mine drama from even the most banal scene of dialogue, employing extreme close-ups, unconventional POVs and his ever-prescient worm’s eye view, what makes his work so distinct isn’t his ability to capture heightened emotion but rather his uncanny ability to contextualize every element of a panel within a specific space. In other words, Kane was brilliant at making things feel like they’re solid and that they exist in a three-dimensional space.

The JLA panel is a perfect example of this. The storyline is the usual heroes duke it out with heroes poppycock that serves as little more than an excuse to give readers some significant beatdowns. When done right, these can be fun. The entire issue in question is a series of match-ups of various JLA members, broken into chapters illustrated by folks commonly associated with the characters in the minds of the geeks like yours truly. Carmine Infantino does a Flash/Elongated man piece, Aparo tackles Aquaman, Joe Kubert does Hawkman and Superman, etc.

Kane’s piece features The Atom and Green Lantern, two characters he helped create in the DC Silver Age. What’s interesting about Kane’s work during those Silver Age years is you can see his style become more and more refined – less house style, more eccentric, more experimental. During his GL and Atom runs, you literally see the artist work out the kinks in his approach to scene construction, panel layout, and spatial composition. You see him begin to master his famous worm’s eye (or “up-the-nose”) shot, as well as his easily-recognizable approach to action and over-the-top physicality. People just do not bend backwards like that when they’re socked in the jaw. It’s hilarious and awesome at the same time. It’s pure, unrestrained drama. And Kane adopted this approach over the course of his work on DC’s silver age characters, taking every opportunity he could to amp the volume up a few notches. Kane was first and foremost a consummate draftsman, but during these years he becomes a virtuoso dramatist.

Which brings me to this panel.

It’s The Atom.

Punching Green Lantern.

Right into our fucking laps.

It’s Quintessential Kane. The Atom is six inches tall, and he’s just socked the hell out of a guy who is over six foot tall. Logically, this shouldn’t work – it shouldn’t be anything other than absurd.  Our minds tell us it’s silly, but our eyes…our eyes tell us that this is just one awesome punch. How does Gil Kane pull this off?

I mentioned earlier that Kane was gifted at evoking three-dimensional space, and there’s no better example of that this panel. Look at the elements of the drawing – you have the Atom, you have Green Lantern, and you have some rocks. It’s how Kane arranges these elements in planes and positions them in space that defines the action, creates the drama, and gives us the feeling of things in motion.

It’s a snap shot taken just after the punch, which conventional wisdom would suggest is the optimal moment of dramatic impact. But Kane sees the real drama isn’t in a fist hitting a jaw here – it’s in the IMPACT that blow has. Maybe Kane realized that showing a tiny little fist sock some guy in the mug wasn’t the most awesome way to depict the action here. Yet after years of working on the character and mining him for every possible visual pop he could, Kane knows how to bring real comic book awesomeness to the Atom, and it’s all in the presentation. In any comic, the artist must choose the optimal moment to stop or freeze the action in order to heighten the drama or produce the biggest laugh. It’s the key to good sequential art. Knowing when to show the punch and knowing when to show the result of the punch, that’s the difference between crap sequential art and masterful storytelling. So, yeah, that’s part of what makes this panel work – timing.

But it’s not the most extraordinary thing.

This scene is given depth by Kane’s ability to isolate and position the key elements of the panel.  With that depth comes drama, which is what you want from a fight. You want tension and impact. While Kane is no Kirby, or even a Romita, Jr., when it comes to evoking that raw sense of collision when two great forces connect, he is a master of evoking the kinetic after-effect of a blow delivered, a bullet taken. He shows us the IMPACT, literally and dramatically, of what happens when something hard and fast hits something else. Bodies crumple, arc, spin, collapse and fly at us contorted in pain. It’s a ballet, and movement through space is the key to the effect.  I mean, look at Green lantern’s body, man. See how the head is turned to the left, as it would be as if hit by a right hook…see how the right arm folds over? That’s great understanding of how someone would react to a punch, only turned up to 11 as they say. Kane doesn’t just give us Green Lantern falling backwards, he fucking gives us Green Lantern reeling and twisting in response to the punch. You feel that punch, and not because you see it connect but because of how The Atom is swiveled after the delivery and because of how much physical distortion is put into Green Lantern’s form as it flies towards us.

Kane uses the empty space and foreshortening to create the illusion that there’s distance between the Atom, Green Lantern and the ground. It almost feels like we should be putting on our 3D glasses at this point to see Hal Jordan smack us right in the kisser.  Look at how Green Lantern’s right hand pops out, almost on an entirely separate fourth plane from the rest of the body, but not quite. It helps define the key compositional element in the panel, which is space defined by character position and size. Green Lantern is the largest element in the panel, made even more so by his proximity to us in his backwards freefall. The Atom is suspended in midair, midpunch, hovering there off to the right, his arm and fist at the end of their arc. Notice how that suspension, and Green lantern’s similar position in midair, are defined in relation to not only each other but the ground. You see that flat spot of black shadow under Green Lantern’s head? Notice that it’s the only place you see shadow, because that’s the closest to the ground – his legs and lower torso are still in midair and the light is coming off panel and to the upper right. This further establishes spatial depth – that black blob is a foreshortened, compressed shadow of GL’s entire body and it’s all shoved right under the head. It’s a subtle trick, but a damn effective one.

This panel works because Kane places the two characters in a spatial relationship that gives their sizes and positions in the space some context. There’s that rock right to the left that helps provide a nice bit of curve to the design, a sweeping arc created by the rock and the position of Green Lantern’s legs that cuts the panel. The motion lines are a counter arc, further helping us move from point A to point B, creating a counter-balance against stronger, more solid arc created by the rock and Green Lantern. The Atom and the “impact balloon” stand out, being the only elements of the composition outside the arc. The eye is first attracted to The Atom, because he’s outside the arc and he’s surrounded by space – in fact, the impact balloon is the center of the image, the focal point. Yet, and here’s what’s really interesting to me, the most prominent, the largest design element in the whole panel is GL and he’s the CLOSEST element to us spatially. Logically, you’d expect the largest and closest design element to be the thing that draws our attention first, but by surrounding the Atom with negative space, having him hover there in the air, Kane achieves the counter-intuitive – he makes the smallest and most distant compositional element the most significant. Its design that also serves to show us something about the character – The Atom may be small, but he’s mighty.

And, here’s the nifty part…even though you don’t see the punch connect, because your eye hits the impact balloon and the Atom first, and take in GL after, it feels like you are seeing in one single panel a real, honest to goodness movement of Cause and Effect, Impact and IMPACT – like you can sense the physical movement of GL’s body away from the blow because you register it a split second after you see the impact balloon. In other words, Kane achieves in this one static panel the effect of real motion. Look at it again and see if you catch what I mean.

That’s how you define three dimensional space in a panel, folks. It’s all about geometry and design, and Kane makes it look effortless. Wait, that’s not true at all. Kane makes it look Refined. Some artists, like Paul Pope have a spontaneous feel to their designs, as if we’re looking at some awesome form of automatic drawing that springs from the subconscious well of inspiration. Kane’s work feels like a goddamn symphony – every element balanced, measured, and elegant. His page layouts, panel compositions and sense of design feel formal and exacting, but it’s all in service of the drama, the action, the movement. Yes, Kane repeats motifs and designs throughout his career. This is a panel he probably did in his sleep. But think about that…this is a guy who could churn out panels like this…in his fucking sleep. That’s years of practice and experimentation and doing the fucking work. That’s illustration…and that’s just great comics art.