10/10 page layouts/composition

10/10 page layouts/composition

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This completely caught me by surprise because I hadn't seen anything like it since Steranko left comics.

One of the most ellegant uses of the Z reading pattern. Garcia Lopez makes every panel seem like a splash page.

Was Tom Strong the last time Alan Moore was worth reading?

I love this spread from Ronin so much.

Sienkiewicz before he developed his signature style

no, he fucked up here
the eye flow is all wrong

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just looking for pages i've saved with some nice stuff. JRJR killing it with the flow here

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hey it was just those two but this kinda?

this is great

3x3 is the GOAT tho

I saw a story that DC intentionally kept all info about Garcia Lopez's information super secret because they didn't want Marvel to steal him. Like false names and shit

This is just an awesome page in general.

That's like classic Japanese video games, I think SNK and Capcom was the main offenders. The credits were full of nicknames so the competition couldn't scout out the people making their games

Neal Adams

And Dave Sim taking the same idea, but doing an entire issue with it

Source?

i'm so mad at this page, jesus.

I always have a fondness for letters used as panels.

I love bisected shots of buildings

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That is incredible

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Experimentation with page layout is the biggest plus American comics have over international ones. Europe and Japan seem much more conservative with it, which is unfortunate. People who are outsiders to the whole American comic scene don't seem too impressed by it, which is a shame. I always see people talking about how manga does better and more dedicated fight scenes, but clever layout can make a brief one more interesting.

Pack it up scrubs, literally the best example of paneling coming through.

How so?

From the Legion of Superheroes Five Years Later.

It's pretty much just LOOK AT ME I CAN LAYOUT but I have no problem with it

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that's an elegant simplicity in Mignola's layouts, he doesn't use flamboyant or unconventional panel shapes just straight forward rectangles and squares but they're used to such precision pacing

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People take Miller and DKR for granted

obligatory

It's almost redundant saying this but just about anything by Moore or Miller in the 80s belongs in this thread.

you mean Bissette, Gibbons, Lloyd, Leach, Davis, i can't think of any others rn...

No, I meant by Moore. Yes, he's a writer but he's a writer who gives very detailed descriptions of what he wants. Most of the artists you mentioned also reached their peaks as page composers when they were working with Moore. That's not a coincidence.

Rick Veitch and John Totleben, the other two main artists on his Swamp Thing run

I'd say that Alan Davis kept growing after their 2000AD and Marvel UK days

I really need to read more Dave Gibbons the random pages of Green Lantern or Rogue Trooper I've seen are all great

Gibbons' other height as an artist (well, mount everest height) was The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century...which was written by Miller.

those panels of the joker make me unreasonably sad

This page was part of the inspiration for Hush, huh?

Top 10.

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Is that comic any good? JL expies with skeletons in their closets sounds like it could get real edgy real fast.

characters breaking borders and leading the eye to wrong panels
not all of it's wrong though
a decent effort but doesn't belong to this thread
great design btw

It was pretty good but then was abruptly canceled so they had to rush the ending.

We Are Robin was alright, but that 4th issue is fucking great.

>no shirtless cigar-chomping Nick Fury crashing his insane jet powered motorcycle through a fucking wall while shooting his futuristic hand guns in two different directions, one in a direction he's not even looking at and the other in the direction in which he is missing his fucking eye

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Greg Smallwood deserves more love

What is this called? When the whole setting is drawn on the page and the panels are put over it like this?
Did Gibbons invent this? It's all over Watchmen.

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It's replicated here as a visual reference to Watchmen- and theres the other scene in Pax Americana which does it on the staircase.

Half the pages you quoted are older than Watchmen.

Nigger I don't know anything about comics.
So the artist for master of Kung Fu could be given credit for this technique?

Tom Scioli is most excellent

>Almost but not quite imitating Jack Kirby

I would be SHOCKED if Eisner never did that and he was back in the 40s.

Also, I'm almost 100% sure Windsor McCay used the technique on Little Nemo over a century years ago.

So the technique have a name?

A finely composed page of panels is a hundred times better than any spread or pinup.

They each serve different functions and can be used together to create very effective, dramatic storytelling.

Yeah, it's weird how it's pretty much an American thing.

master of kung fu, but not the heart. :(

No.

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You literally can't fuck up a comedy page with that layout. you can't

>Here's a preview of the sixteenth floor of Hell: THE MOUNTAIN OF FLAMES!
>burns the guy's hands a bit
The writing looks like the weak link in this book.

I pretty much figured that's what you meant. I just wanted to get more discussion going

lol

That just looks like a mess to me, are the circles supposed to form something?

I know it's inconceivable that the artists actually influenced the page design but making these comics was a collaborative process.

I don't know of a specific name but Frank King regularly employed this technique in Gasoline Alley Sunday pages dating back to the 30s.

Not for Moore it isn't (or for Miller when he draws his own work). Look up some of the scans of Moore's scripts. He literally leaves no room for artist interpretation. Literally every single line of art and every single shade of color is described in exact detail.

That isn't true. Hell in the Killing a joke Script he says Bolland should do whatever he wants. His scripts are long and full of detail but he always frames them as just suggestions for the artist to build on and reading them with the complete book you can see the liberties taken.

>balloon placement doesn't serve to build the flow of a scene

You just like to look at the pictures, don't you.

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sadly, comics being the mongrel artform looked down upon means these sorts of things are mainly kept in a sort of visual tradition, not really committed to records. I'm sure some people have done analyzations on these things, but its so long after the fact its hard to truly layout the history of it all.

One of the depressing things to me is that, since fewer kids read comics, and the ones who do mostly get into it through manga or webcomics, the language of comics and comic layout will be overwritten as these kids grow up and become comic artists themselves. And how many of them will read Masters of Kung Fu? Or any number of older books? even if they did, the manga/webcomic stuff they grew up with will be too ingrained in their style.

Now you're making me want to buy the Masters of Kung fu hardcover to have for posterity.

you know those highlighted passages are bc Gibbons just highlighted what mattered and ignored the rest right

stop making me sad. i can't draw and I'm into it so it's crazy to me that artists working rn don't spend time diving into the past and getting into whoever. just inconceivable

>Gasoline Alley

Thanks, I knew there was an another newspaper comic that loved that technique.

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That is some crazy distortion or the biggest bed on the world.

This one really caught my imagination when I was a kid.
I have read a lot about Kirby and Marvel and this run was apparantly very much maligned around the office at the time of its publication. Funny thing is that it seems far, far less dad thant the "ripped from the headlines" shit that preeceded it.

After this thread I'm going to.
You probably should- it's apparently going to a limited printing and some copyright BS means they might not be able to ever print it again.

It's pretty cool, I think shit ramps up even more in vol 2. I am looking forward to it.

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How is the prose for Master of Kung Fu? I love old comic art but so many times the writing is just painfully stilted in ways old movies, tv and books aren't