Revisiting Clarity of Form with The Joker

A reader let me know that they thought that in this post I was unfair to block out the Joker’s silhouette in the following two panels because the Joker’s white face stands out against the purple sleeve behind it.

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball: Storytelling through Acting Continued

Visual storytelling and “Good Acting” Continued

We’ll continue here with the next segment of Chapter 30. Please read the previous entries in this series if you haven’t already. (You can find them all in order on the Effort Posts by Series page in the header.)

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball Part 4 (Continued): Essential Action

Essential Action

If a character is in a scene, they should have one overarching “essential action” that describes what they do during the entire scene. A character can take many individual actions in a scene, but they should have only one “essential action.” This action, determined once the script is complete, informs the artist how to portray the characters. Let’s go ahead and have a look at Dragonball Chapter 30 and try to reverse-engineer the thought process that went through some of the “acting” we see.

Three comics that have the right idea

Now I’m not always down on western comics. Here’s an American comic with excellent blocking, composition, and flow:

Look at how that directs your eyes. Good stuff.

And lest you think I’m biased toward the humorous or cartoony, here’s another American comic. This is from Habibi by Craig Thompson, a totally amazing comic that integrates the geometric patterns of islamic art into the panel designs.  But let me show you something a bit simpler to make it easier to compare:

And here’s a Spanish comic, Mortadelo y Filemón Again, great poses and flow.

Petiso

Mortadelo is certainly the last thing I expected to see on SA’s Dragon Ball Z thread.

Me atrevo a postear lo diferente.

Superman vs. Goku

This post originally appeared on the Something Awful forums.

Introduction: Goku is more popular than Superman

Superman’s problem is that, at least right now, he does not resonate on a deep level with anyone under the age of 30. I mean, sure, it can be fun to go out and see the latest Superman movie at the movie theater, but Supes himself is not what he used to be. Per comichron.com, 823,829 copies of “Adventures of Superman”, Superman’s primary monthly ongoing, were paid for in 1965. In 2014, Superman’s primary monthly ongoing sold only 97,166 copies. Almost everyone has some sort of fictional world that was very influential on them in their formative years. The kind of thing that, even with all its flaws exposed, still evokes feelings of happiness, even affection. While I don’t have raw data on this assumption like I did for the sales figures, I’m going to say that the number of people who feel a closeness with the Dragonball franchise is much larger than the number of people who feel the same for the Superman franchise.

Why? Thesis: Superman is less appealing to modern audiences than Goku because of two unfortunate flaws: first, his core qualities are tied to a presentation that is not as appealing or relevant to modern audiences; second, there are huge pressures preventing any change to the fundamental aspects of Superman’s presentation.

Why was Superman so popular?

I’m going to discuss the presentation of Superman’s core qualities vs. the presentation of Goku’s core qualities and why Goku’s presentation is more suited to modern readers’ than Superman’s. I say “presentation” because at their core, they are both very similar characters – many people who have made more superficial comparisons than then one I’m attempting right here have cited Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” so you can probably just google “Goku Superman monomyth.” Some people complain that music producers have managed to engineer repetitive pop music that prods your brain into liking it even though each song has the same beats – to which I say c’mon, son, we figured that out for narratives like 5000 years ago. There’s just something that makes our brain squirt dopamine when it comes to stories about people who are somehow special or powerful in some way who fight enemies who are just as powerful as they are and in doing so showcase the best of both themselves and what we value as humanity.

So since the obligatory “how are they alike” paragraph is out of the way, let’s talk about the differences.

Why was Superman so popular to begin with?

Superman’s first appearance was in 1933, right in the middle of the Great Depression, meaning he provided a power fantasy to powerless readers. His outfit was familiar to his initial audience as it was designed to resemble that of a circus strongman. Buying a comic book in those days was relatively cheap, and it was one of the most affordable forms of entertainment in terms of both monetary cost and time. Alternative forms of home entertainment: books (this is also the golden age of the pulp novel) and radio (though in 1930 only 40% of Americans even had a radio – would be 90% in 1940). Through the middle of the 20th century, comics were the ideal form of entertainment for kids – portable, inexpensive, and, very importantly, due to their episodic nature, easy to discuss with friends. You could be working class, middle class, or maybe even rich, and still enjoy a Superman Comic. There’s another component of Superman’s presentation that I don’t see discussed as much as I believe the topic warrants. Superman is not only a heroic selfless character (as any character following the monomyth pattern would be), Superman is also a moral authority. The Comics Code Authority, whose standards were in use from the 50s to sometime 20-30 years ago, ensured that Superman would never behave in any way short of upstanding, but even independent from that, Superman is the unassailable arbiter of right and wrong – Lois and Jimmy behave like a petulant children and Superman gently scolds them and saves them from their own poor decisions. Supergirl and Krypto look to Superman as the “father” of their Super-family. For a child inundated with Cold War scaremongering, I imagine that having a strong authority figure to look up to would have been quite comforting.

What made Supes less fun?

Jumping forward to after the fall of the iron curtain, a lot of these qualities aren’t just neutral, they’re downright unattractive. “What’s the deal with superheroes wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants!” is like the “What’s the deal with airplane food!” of preteen humor. I don’t know many people whose parents made a habit of taking them to the circus. Weirdly enough, I actually did go to the circus often as a kid (it was always in town right around my birthday) and I remember most of the acts being built around death-defying stunts and/or animals. I guess strong guys aren’t that interesting to go see IRL now that you can watch ’em on ESPN or something. So to modern kids Supes’ look is just “the established superhero look,” with no real rhyme or reason, and certainly no connection to the real world. Nobody short of a fan at a convention would want to actually go around wearing that getup. Comic books are also not a great form of entertainment for a kid. They’re pretty expensive and you have to wait a month between each issue. Even worse, they have a high barrier to entry in terms of getting up to speed with the story and characters. You could, as I did, pick up an issue of Wonder Woman in 1996, find it peppered with footnotes, and not know what the hell was going on. That means even if you did manage to get into Superman comics as a preteen in the 90s, who are you going to talk about the latest issue with? Most of your friends aren’t going have the funds or patience required to get up to speed. And then the biggest stumbling block for a preteen kid just looking to have fun, this horror, brought to us in the 80s and “perfected” in the 90s – the company-wide crossover. To get what’s happening with Supes, you have to also buy 5 other comic books. Actually following a modern ongoing is the domain of either adults or the children of the middle class.

OK, but that’s just the comic – what about the character itself, featured in several cartoons in the last two decades. That brings me back to how Superman is the quintessential paternal authority figure. Even in his 90s cartoon, Superman doesn’t get tired and lash out in anger. Superman doesn’t act selfishly in a weak moment. In the Justice League series, Superman is a senior member of the League and acts in part as its moral center. His best moment in all of these cartoons is his famous “world of cardboard” speech where he discusses how he HAS to be perfect all the time because if he makes one little fuckup, he could kill someone. It’s a fascinating moment of pathos, but nobody can hear that speech and think, “yes, that is me! I can be like that!”

Superman is your dad. In many cases, Superman is a fond childhood figure TO your dad. Supes IS the establishment. And we dont’ like the establishment around these parts. (“No, fuck YOU dad.”)

Why is Goku so popular?

So let’s talk about Goku now. We like to joke about how Goku is the world’s worst father, but in a way that reveals part of his appeal. Does YOUR Dad act like Goku? I should fucking hope not. So weirdly, even though Supes isn’t a father in most of the known versions of his franchise and Goku is, Goku doesn’t read as this paternal figure who’s gonna come and tell you to pick up your goddamn room and write a thank-you letter to Grandma. I’ve read a lot of people who said Goku taught them bravery or that, in a weird mutation of WWJD, they ask themselves “What would Goku do?” but I have never read someone say “Goku was the father I never had.” (And I have read people say that of Optimus Fucking Prime of all people…robots.) Goku’s just a simple guy who does what he thinks is right, but he’s sometimes selfish (eats all of Roshi’s prize money away), sometimes careless (see beginning scenes where he somehow loses track of the whereabouts of his 4-year-old son), and every now and then commits a social faux pas (talking to everyone, even Gods and Kings, like a hick). He is more or less the best we can realistically aspire to – we’ll never be perfect, but we can try to do our best to be courageous. Who can hope to emulate Superman’s perfection?

Goku’s costume is relatable as well. Goku wears a gi. Gis are fuckin’ cool. If I had one I would wear that shit out to the park.

Oh yeah and the violence. Preteens love violence, or at least the sense that there are consequences to what they’re watching (lol violence has no consequences in the world of comics) DBZ is more violent than the Justice League cartoon and it’s a fuckload more violent than the comics of the 50s and 60s. Maybe on par with the 1985 comics and forward, but that brings me back to continuity.

Yes, DBZ is a linear story and isn’t episodic, but it is a hell of a lot easier to enter as a beginner than any given Superman issue of the last several decades. Hell, most of us started out never having seen Dragonball. You got these seemingly random characters like Yamcha or Chaotzu, but there’s never a plot twist that hinges on knowing some obscure fact about them from years ago. You can watch DBZ at home, then go chat with your friends about it and argue about power levels. Watching DBZ is affordable. You just need a TV and maybe cable (although I believe when it aired in some countries, you didn’t even need that!) You don’t need to get your parents to drive you to a store or buy you a subscription. You can enjoy DBZ independently, even if you’re a kid. If you’re a preteen you can nerd out about DBZ with your friends even if your friends are poorer than yourself. Full disclosure, I am a comics nerd, but not a single one of my IRL friends is. I’ve got no one IRL with whom I can share the joy that is Blue Beetle. I’ve turned to drugs and the internet to dull the pain.

Alternate explanations for Supes’ waning popularity

Q: If Superman doesn’t “get tired and lash out in anger,” how do you explain this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8VPOP7huew

A: What I meant was, he doesn’t snap at Batman or something just as a result of being physically tired the way one might say something kinda catty to their spouse just because they had a bad day. (As in, he’s a paragon of virtue we can’t hope to emulate due to our human failings.) I didn’t make that explicit as I should have though, and that is a sweet fight scene.

Also, to be clear, I’m speaking about how likely it is for either franchise to be cherished in the heart of someone because of their fond memories of it from their preteen/teen years. I know that it’s quite possible to come to love Supes as an adult – I didn’t “get” Superman until I was well into college.

NowonSA: “Branching off from continuity, there’s also the fact that there’s simply less media (comics/manga, movies, cartoons/anime) about Goku than there is about Superman by a wide margin. Even a great idea or character can get boring if you see it, or him, too much. DBZ is also primarily Goku’s story, but there’s plenty of episodes of the anime that he’s not in at all, or plays a very minor role in. By comparison, Superman tends to be the focus of things (in general, I know there are plenty of exceptions) even in a team-up or justice league book, simply because he’s Superman.”

I have plenty of friends who like Spiderman and can’t wait to see more Spiderman movies; my best friend’s fiance loooooooves Spiderman and reads every issue (lives in another town so my reason for drugging and interneting myself into an early grave still stand). Spider-man is in a shitload of media. Furthermore, I have a boatload of friends who will rave about the 90s X-Men cartoon and buy X-men video games, even if they don’t read any X-men ongoing comics. And don’t get me started on Batman. Everyone loves Batman. His 90s animated series was baller (and watched by everyone) and the video games are even moreso (and played by everyone).

We all want more Spiderman, X-men, and Batman. We don’t want more Superman. Why? Spidey, Bats, and the X-men are all anti-establishment. If you’re a modern kid, do you really want to be with the establishment? If you’re a racial minority, gay, an immigrant, sort of funny looking, a latchkey child, just kind of a rebel shithead, or whatever, the answer is no. Supes has a reputation, deserved or no, for being establishment. Even if you can run a bunch of what-if stories and little side stories where a different aspect of Superman is explored, you will never see a cartoon, video game, or movie feature a genuinely fresh take on the character. You won’t even know if, let’s say, a story about what would happen if Supes landed in the USSR as a baby even existed unless you were already somehow plugged into the comic book scene. If you were some kid who didn’t already read comics and who didn’t have a friend or family member who read comics, you wouldn’t say to your parents, “take me to the comic book store, for I hear there will be an alternate take on Superman that I will like more than the established version of the character.” And unorthodox takes on the character will always be comics-only.

Blue Star: “That’s a fascinating analysis, Xibanya. I’d tweak it a little to include people born a little earlier than 1985, maybe close to 1980. I was born in December 1983 and for me Superman was just sort’ve there. I enjoyed the WB animated Batman and Superman shows but DBZ completely ensnared me when I first saw it in 1997. One thing I think you left out, though, is the rise of the internet in the 90s and early 2000s. I think that might’ve been a factor to DBZ’s success. Because even if there weren’t a lot of other kids to discuss DBZ at school you could still go online and talk about it.”

I would say the internet does not account for the DB franchise’s global success. My best friend from high school is from Brownsville, Texas, and she had all the DBZ movies on videotape. Her family was also broke as shit and she never had a computer (she still doesn’t actually. She uses her phone exclusively for what I usually do with a computer). Mexicans gonna watch DBZ man, they won’t let things like a lack of internet stop them. I would actually say what makes the internet significant is not so much because it fueled DBZ fandom (though it undeniably played a huge role in fandom in the United States) but because it was yet another alternative to comic books as a form of entertainment.

It’s impossible to “fix” Superman

We’ve discussed why Goku’s presentation resonates on a deep level to modern audiences while Superman’s does not. Now I’m going to discuss why it’s impossible to “fix” Superman in the sense of making his character really grab audiences the way it once did in the mid 20th century.

So, about Supes. He’s a household name in a way that Goku doesn’t come close to matching. If the Scarlet Pimpernel is the granddaddy of all superheroes, Superman is THE daddy of all superheroes. The tropemaker and trendsetter. Yet he’s kinda not fun. Surely the rich guys who run DC comics can hire some consultants to help them punch it up a bit (haw) so what gives?

Part of it is that Superman is not really the character or the story. Superman is a brand. You know immediately what he looks like. You know what he talks like and acts like. He’s practically the mascot of American comics, the mascot of DC comics in all but name. Yeah, he has a comic, but the money that brings in is peanuts compared with the merchandise. You got toys, picture books, costumes, PJs, T-shirts, movies, movie tie-ins, video games, mugs, keychains, etc etc etc. People who don’t even give a flying fuck about Superman probably have at least one Superman branded item in their home. (I have Superman PJs my mom bought me. She doesn’t even know I like comics.) You can’t change the way Superman looks because then you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Oh yeah, sometimes you get a costume revamp or whatever, but that’s always comics-only and while you can get some kind of deluxe 10″ figure of Supes in the new costume, it never bleeds out into mainstream merch. And inevitably the new design in the comic is reverted back to the classic design to great fanfare (often accompanied by the comic trumpeting “You asked, we listend!”). In short, changing Superman will damage the brand and make the shareholder’s less money, at least in the short run.

But money aside, fans won’t allow any changes to be made to the character. You can’t change Superman, he’s always been that way! Even though for decades now Superman has existed on echo nostalgia – you have to go back to the early 1930s to get to a time where there is not a single person who can claim to have fond memories of reading Superman as a child. As a recent and concrete example of how you can’t even change things very much for a character seen as “nostalgic,” even in an out of continuity story, look no father than the “Epic Mickey” video game. Mickey Mouse suffers from a similar issue. He used to be a scrappy trickster a la Bugs Bunny but became sanitized over the years to the point of basically being a living saint. Early press for the game promised that it would be a return to Mickey’s roots when he could actually have flaws and moral failings. The game purported to have a morality system where if you acted good, Mickey would look like a shining beacon of virtue, and if you acted bad, Mickey would start to look mean. This got thrown out before release because play testers hated the idea that Mickey could be anything less than a paragon of virtue.

http://www.1up.com/news/scrapper-mickey-removed-disney-epic

Disney Epic Mickey focuses on the mouse’s ability to make choices, resulting in a good heroic Mickey, or an evil “scrapper” Mickey (above) — or at least, it used to. The Mainichi Daily News reports (via Joystiq) that the mean-looking mouse is being removed from the game after Junction Point found he did poorly in focus testing. Instead, bad behaviors like theft and erasure (i.e. cartoon murder) will result in a smudgy look.

“People don’t like when you mess with Mickey,” said creator Warren Spector. “We did a focus test that was really eye-opening for me. There was a biker dude saying, ‘Oh, I’d never play a Mickey Mouse game,’ and then we showed him images of a changed Mickey. I was sitting there thinking, ‘You’re gonna love what we do,’ but he said, ‘No! Don’t mess with my childhood.'”

So there you have it: the game concept of moral choice is still in, but Mickey will look a lot less menacing because a biker dude (who would never play the game) wants his childhood left alone. If only that biker knew the power he wields. For the time being we’ll just trust that Spector knows what he’s doing. Check out our hands-on E3 preview for more information.

You can bet that people who don’t even give a fuck about Superman comics, people who have never ever read comics, would flip if you made any kind of change to the character. If you need more proof, just look at the hysteria in the 90s over the “Death of Superman” (when savvy fans all knew he’d be back eventually) or non-fans freaking out over the dissolution of Peter and MJ’s marriage in Spider-Man (I’m not fond of the plot twist myself, but they stayed married in the other versions of the franchise, why are all you normals gettin’ mad?)

The Fall of Goku

SO, that brings me back to Goku.

I believe that the DBZ franchise is far from over. I’d say these movies and DB Kai are testing the waters for a more modern series. DBZ will go on. And there may come a time when modern audiences cannot relate to Goku. Given that Toei’s answer was to literally revisit Goku’s childhood instead of finding a way forward, you can bet that if that time comes, Goku will stagnate just as Superman has done for all the reasons outlined above. (Goku appears in public service announcements and soft drink commercials? No way he’s ever going to appreciably change in appearance or get replaced by a younger character.) And if they tried, fans worldwide would scream bloody murder.

To sum up some of the previous parts, Superman is less appealing to modern audiences than Goku in part because Superman is associated with establishment authority. The popular perception of Superman is that he fights crime. By it’s very nature, fighting crime means seeking out people who are going against the mandates of authority and passing judgement on them right there. And Superman, the crimefighter/defender of Earth has a master – that master is The Law, or at least his own rigid moral code.

But what if the audience has lost faith in its governing institutions? It has been well documented in the USA at least that faith in central authority has eroded considerably since Watergate. It wouldn’t surprise me if Japan had a severe crisis of faith in the post WWII era. Japan has a culture that forces one to submit to authority in order to get ahead, but Japanese movies and TV (real scientific, I know) imply to me that when a salaryman kisses their boss’s ass, often they’re just going through the motions.

Enter Goku – Goku does not fight crime in the sense that he goes out into the world looking for people he thinks are up to no good and then raining hurt down upon them. All of his conflicts are quite personal. And while Goku has martial arts masters, he has no master in the sense that he serves no one, not even The Law. So Goku is Superman for an era in which we have lost faith in institutions and instead have faith in ourselves.

So one threat to Goku’s popularity would be a cultural shift towards faith in institutions. Hard to say if that would actually happen, but if it did, kids might prefer a strong authority figure who upholds law and order to a goofy manchild who just fights people who mess with him and his friends.

The biggest threat to Goku, however, is increasing diversity of options. DBZ in many parts of the world, was the only prominent anime available at the time – that means the only show with a serialized format (instead of stand alone episodes) and the only show that showed a semi-serious story with violence that had consequences as opposed to goofy slapstick for laughs. When I first started watching DBZ in the late 90s, there was absolutely nothing else like it on TV. But if you’re a preteen today and you want to watch a sem-serious serialized cartoon that has punching with consequences (I should start a band called Punching With Consequences) you have a veritable buffet of choices. As TFS has cheekily pointed out, you can have Ninja Goku (Naruto), Pirate Goku (One Piece), or if you want your Gokus to be made in America and animated in Korea you can watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. There are tons more that I haven’t even listed because if I did we’d be here all day. A goon here mentioned how the internet fuelled DBZ fandom, permitting fans to discuss episodes over the net – but these days you’ve got Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming services that weren’t available then, meaning that when picking out your punchmans show of choice you’re not even restricted to punchmans that air when you get home from school.

Since Dragonball was the trendsetter for modern Shonen, creators have had three decades to expand and improve the formula. So what does it take for Goku to stay relevant with Luffy and Naruto? More new material, certainly, but except for Battle of Gods, we’ve just been getting retreads of old material (video games just follow the established storyline, next movie is literally revisiting an old foe). The franchise needs new stories to move forward.

So what does Goku need to stay beloved in the hearts of children and adults around the world? More Goku.

An aside:

Even if we get more Goku, if the show’s creators (Toriyama, Toei, et al,) are unwilling to let anyone other than Goku be the hero, they have limited the number of stories they can tell. Sure, you can have a parade of amazing new bad guys, but you can’t have any significant character development on the part of Goku. Fundamentally, all good stories show the protagonist confronted with a choice – change something about themselves for the better or decline. If they change for the better, you get a happy ending – even if the lead dies! (Carton, “A Tale of Two Cities”) If they refuse to change, you get a tragic ending, even if they live (Creon, “Antigone”). But you really don’t have much latitude with Goku as he is at the end of DBZ. And even if you did, you can’t change the fundamental nature of Goku for the same reason Superman’s costume will never permanently change – Goku is a brand now. He’s too firmly established to change without having fans scream bloody murder or losing merchandising revenue. This isn’t a deadly flaw, however. We don’t even need real Goku character development, after all, Batman is still a brooding loner, Spider-man is still a wisecracking nerd, but in order to tell a wider variety of stories, I think that the supporting cast needs to be permitted to have a little more focus – after all, with Spidey and Bats, the bulk of the character development is mainly done by their supporting cast anyway. I do have hope, however, since Toriyama hinted that this might happen in the movie coming out uh, is it today? So we’ll see.

 

The Anatomy of the Art of Dragonball Part 2: Composition

Composition

Composition is basically what makes a picture “look right,” or as a smart professional would put it, “composition means the distribution and placement of forms, shapes, colors, and values to produce a unified and harmonious whole.”

“Once the basic size and proportion of the picture are decided, a whole series of decisions must be made. Right at the outset, if you hope to present a realistic picture, you must determine the point of view of the scene. Next you establish the size and scale of the most important elements…Because we live and operate in a three-dimensional world we are prone to see, within the limits of a flat surface, illusionary implications of depth and space. Such illusions are fundamental to creating a believable picture. Scale and size of relationships of elements within the picture, overlapping, and use of values and color are crucial to this process.” Fritz Henning, Concept and Composition

Let’s have a look at some object placement schemes that are generally considered to be good ideas:

(image photographed out of Concept and Composition)

Composition is particularly important to a comic because it doesn’t just helps us parse what is happening — it ensures that we read the scene in the correct order and focus on what is necessary for us to notice in order to understand the story. However, the comic book artist has some unique considerations. He or she does have to make sure the image in a panel has good composition, but he or she must also consider the composition of the entire page, which is made up of several panels stacked together. For everything to work, the artist must also direct the flow of the reader’s eye. In this entry I’ll be discussing how flow clarifies the sequence of events in a comic and directs the reader to the next important element, but the artist can also deliberately create a certain flow in order to manipulate the reader’s perception of the passage of time. That topic, however, will be discussed in part three.

With that in mind, let’s have a look at some stuff from Dragonball chapter 30.

This panel has some features that you’ll see Toriyama use a lot. Notice how the background elements all point you to where you need to go. Objects that touch the border of a painting or panel or that have a tangent line tend to draw attention to themselves (and often slide the eye off the image). This is bad when done unintentionally, but it can be very useful when used correctly. The smoke from the volcano takes you to the horizon line and straight into Roshi. The rolling hills take you from Roshi to the palm tree, and then straight down to Krillin. The sloped roof of the house and its foundation then carry you right off the page in the direction of the panel sequence.

A comic book artist also has the advantage of using word balloons — you can use their tails to literally point at things you want the reader to see. You’ll often see that a drawing element doesn’t point to a balloon, but the eye will go there anyway to read the dialog, and then the balloon itself will point to the next element.

Of note here, you will notice in this panel and several others that Toriyama uses Goku’s hair to point to the next element in sequence. In fact his hair can get some slightly different curves just to serve this purpose.

When an object is smack dab in the middle of an image or a composition is symmetrical, all of the elements surrounding the center point are given equal importance and weight. Here in panel one, Roshi’s face is clearly the focus and nothing else in the panel particularly matters. Interestingly there are still some background elements, all of which point to Roshi as the central figure, even though Toriyama could have gotten away with not including any background elements at all.

In panel two, the curves of Roshi’s body (the fact that he’s facing left) guide our eyes leftward.

In panel 3 I want to draw your attention to the fact that the panel can be split in half without dividing any art. In paintings this is a big no-no because being able to draw a straight line uninterrupted through the important elements of a painting basically means there’s a gutter that draws the viewer’s eye right out of the painting (bad.) However this is not necessarily a bad thing here, since it takes the eye down in the direction it ought to be traveling in in order to keep reading. You’ll notice also that Roshi’s back slopes to his speech bubble but his straight front-side also takes the reader down. Goku’s speech bubble also points straight down, so you see him as you go down. Also notice how Roshi dominates this panel. He occupies more space both literally and in the sense that he’s the dominant character of this scene.

In panel four we have more clever use of scenery and Goku’s hair. Notice also how Goku’s body points to Krillin! Toriyama has basically intentionally created a “gutter” of blank space here to draw your eye to the next element. The palm tree then ensures that the first thing you eye goes over in panel five is Roshi’s dialog.

Panel five is quite powerful, drawing us straight to Roshi again. He’s practically star-shaped here.

Panel six has something interesting going on. It essentially has two separate focal points, like two paintings stuck together. What’s going on here is that all of this is in the same panel to show Goku and Krillin looking on as Roshi jogs away, but Roshi and the boys have equal importance. Krillin and Goku are grouped because neither is more dominant than the other (thematically speaking). I’ll discuss more in my post about the passage of time as communicated by comics, but we’re supposed to parse this as Roshi beginning to run as one beat, and then the boys’ reaction as another beat. Weirdly enough if these were two separate panels, this would read as a faster, more simultaneous event.

Here’s an example just to show I’m not making this up:

Now that I’ve discussed my markup, you can probably see what I’m getting at here without too much commentary. I do want to point how how Toriyama very cleverly uses roads in panel 3 to form gutters to guide the eye. The road that goes toward the sea is visually blocked, whereas the road going off-panel to the left is not. Also note the use of Goku’s hair in panel 6 to direct you off-page.

And so on.

Note in the last panel where Goku talks to Roshi that the smoke rings prevent there from being a gutter straight down the middle of the page. Characterization + composition. Toriyama’s fuckin’ awesome.

Synthesis: Superman/Batman

Bad Seafood: “Obviously I don’t have the same eye for these things as you – even with your assistance, reading the “Flow” still kind of escapes me – you were plenty clear, it’s more just a the way I read comics… Rather than allowing my eyes to trace individual objects within a panel, I tend to view the panel itself as one giant block of information to take in all at once.”

Well, nobody consciously follows the lines I drew, “flow” is sort of a thing that you only notice when it’s missing – like you look at a page of a comic book and it’s almost like your brain is rejecting it, going “the fuck is goin’ on here?!” A page where you feel like you have to really pay attention just to figure out what’s actually happening and when. I remember I had a comic book where I only realized on a third reading that there were a few speech bubbles I missed because they were poorly placed on a cluttered page.

I do agree though that actually puzzling it out can seem unintuitive at times. I actually took a shortcut for the sake of clarity! If I were really showing the flow of the eye on the page, I would have zig-zagged up and down the word balloons! But that would have made the page so cluttered that people would start skimming instead of actually following – exactly what happens in a cluttered poorly conceived comics page.

Scott McCloud writes that every comic book artist has to wrestle with balancing clarity with intensity. This chapter doesn’t feature much intensity, so I’ll have to highlight some of his fight scenes later – but in general Toriyama leans very very heavily on the clarity side of things.

It’s a little hard to appreciate Toriyama’s blocking and composition in absence of other material, so I plugged in my external hard drive to look through my vast pirated comic book collection and this is the first issue I grabbed, so you could probably find worse if you really wanted to look. This is from an issue of Superman-Batman. The setting is that we’re watching some punchmans duke it out in an arena while the rogues gallery of Supes and Bats lurks around. I’ll start with page 17 of the issue, but I really want to discuss page 18 and page 20-21 in particular.

So we have a character yelling “down in front!” He is actually a well-known member of either Supes’ or Bats’ rogues gallery — so well known that even people who don’t read comics have heard of him. Well, I guess it is pointless to try to block it out, but the other character is Darkseid. What I want to discuss though is the 2nd panel. From careful study I have determined that the “down in front” guy shouts “Usher! This man is annoying me!” and then RIGHT after that, Darkseid shoots lasers at him, narrowly missing. However, what it looks like is that at the same time as the “usher!” shout (since he’s shouting WHILE dodging the laser) the laser travels FROM The crowd into Darkseid’s eyes. I also want to point out that the panel is super left-heavy and not well-balanced at all. So this sequence commits a number of sins – it guides our eye in the wrong order, a famous character who ordinarily has a rather recognizable silhouette just seems like a generic guy, and events that clearly happen one right after another are presented as happening simultaneously.

So this is the next page (the bottom panels of the last page where a cutaway to a different scene taking place elsewhere.  You can read the whole page if you like.) – do you know what the blob in the 2nd panel is?  It’s “Down In Front” guy, but what is he doing?  What position is he in? Wasn’t he just in the arena seating? Where is he now? Look closely. Behind the jumble of word balloons you can see that this character is now IN the arena! So what happened to the combatants? Oh, they’re still there (helpfully pre-silhouetted for me) but where are they with respect to the location of the point of view characters?

And now…I’m not even gonna bother editing this piece of shit:

Blammo our heros teleport into the center of the arena – notice that Lex Luthor is far behind Supes in the establishing shot, but then Supes (with angry red eyes) talks to Mister Mxyzptlk (note how it’s not clear from that shot that Mxyzptlk is bald on top) and then suddenly Supes is IN FRONT of Luthor, sticking his hand into Luthor’s…robot chest? What is he breaking there? When did he get in front of Luthor? And I had to actually think about who Supes is talking to – he’s still talking to Mister Mxyzptlk but we don’t see Mxyzptlk’s distinctive hair as it’s cut by the panel border! So the previous panel with Mxyzptlk and this one show such different aspects of him that you’d have to check some other page to verify what he looks like head-on to realize it’s the same character. And then we don’t get another establishing shot so we really habe very little idea of who is where now. When did the Joker pop up? I guess he wandered over at some point off-panel. That would have been a great opportunity to show him coming over in the foreground while the characters talk in the background, since then we’d be able to see how they’re standing in relation to one another. Oh yeah and the fuck is Mxyzptlk doin’ in the bottom row there?

Well of course I can find out by reading the comic very carefully, but that’s the point. The reader shouldn’t have to read the comic very carefully or flip back and forth because they missed something.

And this was done by an industry professional. I actually toyed with doing a webcomic, but then I realized it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.

And now the grand reveal!  The “down in front” guy featured before was the Joker. Yep. The fuckin’ joker who has crazy hair, a long chin, and marfan-esque limbs. Lost in a muddled mess.

Here are the unaltered pages:

Petiso: “At first I thought the red lines in the silhouette page were added by you as visual guidelines or something, so bad…

I read lots of european and japanese comics but I’ve never liked mainstream american comics but I could not explain why, I guess it’s related to what you’re saying, the comic panels usually look like snapshots from a movie and don’t flow as naturally.”

Spiritus Nox: “Wow, that is striking. Toriyama’s silhouettes just makes those DC pages look like trash. You can basically always distinguish characters really easily – both from the background and from each other. I couldn’t even tell the Down In Front Guy was a person without outside context.”

Bad Seafood: “This actually reminds me of something.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, though I am only now just watching Dragon Ball for the first time, I know quite a bit about the series just through conversations with friends and general cultural osmosis. Concerning the android arc, I knew about Cell – that he existed at least – and Androids 16, 17, and 18 because it was a little hard not to. What I didn’t know up until incredibly recently (around the same time I decided to get into Dragon Ball) was that there were actually two more androids apparently nobody talked about.

“Yeah, Toriyama introduced two others who were intended to be the main threat of the arc, but his editor thought they looked dumb so he traded them up for some others.”

Curious, I decided to spoil myself a bit and go digging for an image.

First off, whoever Toriyama’s editor was,” [Toriyama’s friend and former editor, Kazuhiko Torishima] “that guy was an idiot cause these dudes look dope (though perhaps unmarketable). Secondly though, in light of everything Xibanya’s been posting, I can actually see a lot of their points about Toriyama’s proclivity towards distinct shapes and silhouettes (and even flow). Even if you scrubbed out both androids’ details, there could never be any confusion which one was which. Also, some nice composition in this pic in particular. Much more visually engaging than either 17 or 18 from the images I’ve seen.

Also also, that Darkseid panel’s utter lack of flow finally helped me grasp what you meant before. It really is one of those things you don’t notice until it’s not there.”