Fragments of Time
The thought bubble is an interesting in between literature and film to me. In prose you can easily write what it is a character is thinking just as easily as their dialog. Authors can use this interiority as a tool to build tension or in the case of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s novella Who Goes There? excise it completely and ratchet up the tension. In film interiority is slightly trickier. You can have the voice over monologue representing a subjects thought in the present or past tense. Film also can situate its visual point of view as being in the subjects mindset ala The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but that gets into a lot of psycho analysis of film that I am in no way qualified to even pretend to know. Comics as a medium kind of have it both ways. The writer literally writes the subjects inner thoughts while the letter/artist represents them on the page, the thought bubble is something only for the reader, so it functions as if we’d read it like prose. Being sequential art, there is a visual element added to it wherein the artist can use information to better represent the tone of a given page or panel like Dr. Caligari.
“Rise” first page is a conversation between Superman and Wonder Woman they don’t realize they’re having. Even as they look at each other and quickly agree it has been a long time, they’re still talking. Blue and red boxes litter the page, both of them are internally psyching themselves out over the things that have changed in that intervening time. The short burst nature of the thought boxes are nice representations of how we actually think, quick and not near as complete as you’d think.
How long it’s been is unclear, all Soule gives us for temporal location is “Then”, “Now”, and “Between”. I suppose if you wanted to get real technical you could look at whenever Wonder Woman officially became the God of War. But that would ruin the ambiguity of “Then”, “Now” and “Between”, the actual passage of time doesn’t matter, all that matters is that too them it’s felt like forever.
With how “Until the End” concluded, I kind of wish Soule had left out the “Now” on the first page. It can be read as if this is a dream sequence between the two, or at least Wonder Woman. It has all the qualities of a dream, semi idyllic setting though it looks like London has gone through some trouble, with no clear sense of when or how things got to that point. It’s all just immediacy. Even their very human night at the dance floor appears as if it’s out of a dream. This dream like read is reinforced by the timey wimey nature of “Then”, “Now”,“Between”.
Clark describes this bit of down time as if the world is taking a breath. Diana counters that it’s just holding its breath and soon it’ll exhale. Either way it provides a nice epilogue to this first arc. These types of stories are a never ending battle and so this moment cannot end but at least for a night they got dance like dorks at some underground club.
Those final pages of Clark and Diana on the dance floor are unsurprisingly beautiful. It seems kind of oxymoronic to talk about how a painting of dancing has great motion to it but that’s what I did when discussing Zod’s flight in issue 3 “Zod”. The Club sequence is predominantly isolated frames that form a larger sequence but don’t really follow like in “Zod”. To my eye, penciler Eddy Barrows and colorist Bryan Miller, achieve this in several ways. First there is the disco ball light source hidden from view but never the less at the top of the frame. It shimmers down vibrant colors and action lines . Bryan Miller changing color pallet both from frame to frame and within some of the larger frames also helps to build visual contrast. It finally comes down to how the actual figures are drawn, they are mid motion. That half way point between beats, it’s an odd moment if you think about it, but it allows our minds to understand what is coming next. To go back to Michelangelo’s David, he set his piece the moment before the battle with Goliath but has his figure staring off at him. As audience we know what’s to come.
Bits At The End
So that’s the first arc of Superman/Wonder Woman. It was surprisingly good; I picked the trade up on a bit of a lark. Makes me want to go read more Charles Soule’s stuff, I’ve always heard good things. I think I’ll be taking a couple week break before picking all this up again with issue 12 “Metaphormorphosis”, there are other things I want to write about. I finished buying Secret Six vol 3 so might as well start working my way through that and am thinking about the working my way through Young Avengers the Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie run. Suicide Squad still needs to be continued. O and I want to try and write something about Infinite Crisis. O the best laid plans o mice and men.
Was it just me or did Diana’s bust jump a couple sizes?
I am Michael Mazzacane and you can find on Twitter @MaZZM and at weekntv.com and comicweek.com
