Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Week #13: Reconsidering the Superhero

In this period of time, comic books like "Watchmen", by Alan Moore, take superheroes and put them in more adult themed stories. This starts the trend of the dark and gloomy superhero reboots like DC 52 and Marvel's endless reboots of character arcs. Comic books were officially reinvented. They were no longer just for children but refined to fit the generation that grew with the comics of old.

The comic that I decided to take a look at is Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". In this comic, Moore takes literary and fictional characters, fitting them into the superhero role. I found this premise to be refreshing, as I remember the movie was great and filled with action.



While this introduction is short for the epic, it swiftly shows what is remarkable about the quality of storytelling and craftsmanship. It has details in linework, the colour doesn't fight it. There are lots of silent panels where the time slows to read the various events happening. It also helps with the pace of the story, because its atmosphere I consider dramatic and eery. Mysterious even. We don't know what's going on, yet thanks to the illustrations and good pose, we can relate to the scenes and grasp at least details to form the bigger picture. I'd call that quality.





Storytelling-wise, we are the spectators, not omniscient. The dialogue of aliens and foreigners are written in symbols that we couldn't understand, with no subtitles. I found that interesting, as dialogues usually convey information, and this censorship adds to the suspense. The way he uses the different ways to stretch the time between and within pages is a simple swapping of page layouts, but very effective. For example, the first page I show has a regular pace of dialogue. The second page is even slower, zooming out of an abstract shape combination, to something recognisable, to a character introduction and then to a stop-motion-like animation of panels showing where the character is headed.


The overall theme is the gathering of extraordinary individuals, who are not the stereotypical costume-ridden corny superhero of the 50s, but gentlemen in a science fiction (almost steampunkish meets aliens) world, with a mystery, murders and fantasy.

I would definitely use Alan Moore as inspiration for storytelling and script.





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