Art Critique
I'd like to try a new feature, "Art Critique," although I can't promise when the mood will strike. Often, the mood strikes but the trouble it takes to get a page image-d and online-d for preview often makes the mood fizzle out. Still, i've been wanting to do this for a while, and there's no time like the present to just jump in!
Sorry, Roberto de la Torre, but you're first. Here, in Daredevil #509, written by Andy Diggle/Anthony Johnson, with colors by Matt Hollingsworth, we seen Dakota North, private eye, being attacked by ninja. Right before this page, she warns the ninja about the exploding gas tank, and then we get this:
Here's what doesn't work. Check out the two panels in the center of the page. At first reading, I thought the ninja must have busted out the gun to fire at Dakota before she reached for her pistol. But then the last panel wouldn't make sense, not even after flipping the page. Oh! I see! On second read, flipping back, I realize that it's Dakota firing the gun.Do you see how the staging doesn't work? I understand the need to establish Dakota reaching for her gun, although in the days when "swoop lines" were appropriate you might have been able to draw this in one panel, but the focus on just the hand is too jarring to suddenly cut to a medium shot when she fires. Also, the pose where she obscures her face *showing only her eyes just like the ninja's own costumes* as she fires certainly doesn't help.
And what's with the ninja? In a violent explosion, the ninja is blown forward, but then wouldn't he have leaped next to, if not on top of or even OVER Dakota? That's a pretty large explosion for the ninja to be in the same spot he was in on the previous page, not to mention the fact that it didn't even budge Dakota from her own spot, which was in sword-swiping distance from the ninja anyway.
And where did the others come from? Two pages ago, the scene was blocked as Car - Dakota - Group of Ninja. Then some shots were fired, some shuriken were flung, and then the scene was blocked as Car - One Ninja - Dakota. After the explosion, she finds her gun and mows down three ninja in succession? What? Did they happen to enter the panel just as she was firing? Too early, Ninja-san!
For awkward staging plus the added complication of muddied poses/colors, I have to conclude that this Daredevil Doesn't Work.
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