For this research task I selected three of the four recommended collections:
Batman, by Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
Batman
Narrative
I enjoyed reading the 70s incarnation of Batman. I read a few from this era while I was a boy living in Saudi, but I've never really gotten into all the different phases the character has been through. The comics I read were very episodic in nature, sometimes with links to previous episodes and some multi-part stories.
The stories themselves still used lots of exposition and seemed to freely break the principle of "show, don't tell". The upshot of this approach, however, is that they don't assume that you have to be an avid reader to pick up the comics and enjoy the story.
Batman is lighter, and less brooding than he is portrayed now, he feels somewhere in between the campy 60s version and the Dark Knight. The language is very much of the time it was written, it felt weird for Batman and the other characters to be using phrases like "buddy", "cat" and "far out". The character Ling seemed to fill in a stereotypical slot to cater for the 70s obsession for Kung Fu martial arts films.
I really enjoyed the Night Reaper story, it was great fun with lots of visual parody of the Marvel universe within a DC comic.
Visual
There seems to be quite a judicial use of spot blacks - most block shading seems to be used on figures. The imagery is realistic, not cartoony but at the same time, it is sanitised and not graphic. There are remnants of silver age conventions, particular in how the text-based sound effects are used.
Despite the move away from its campy past, the characters still sometimes show levity and often have exaggerated expressions. There is a rollover of fashion styles in the work from the 1960s; this is most pronounced in the female characters.
Batman is in his classic blue and grey outfit, but it now gives a sense of realism. He is portrayed as athletic and the artist seems to like playing off the relationship between the stiff cowl and the draping, flowing cape.
The artist like to mix up his panel use and layouts, and you see experiments with using white space and figures breaking free of panels as a way of establishing and controlling the pace.
Watchmen
Narrative
Watchmen doesn't treat its reader as a child. It knows what it is, and it knows what it is trying to do. This creates a cynical streak that runs through the entire book. It's not afraid to deal with geopolitics and complex characters.
It uses superheroes as a narrative statement and subverts each and every normal superhero trope. It separates the super from the hero. Everyone is grey, even those whose ability set them apart from the general populace.
The writer uses the different aspects of traditional superhumanism to tell his story and state his case; we see masked vigilantes all the way to transcendent super beings.
It deals with what it means to be a hero, as well as what it means to be human. It's a statement on how governments operate, and more realistically how they would utilise super-powered humans.
Interestingly, the writer takes a variety of approaches to tell the story, sometimes switching to full prose sections as a way to world build and add backstory context.
Visual
The visuals in Watchmen are of the style of the 80s, where things start to turn darker and more gritty. Gibbons uses blacks more liberally, especially to add contrast and shadow. The scenes are realistic and graphic, dealing with blood, death and nudity frankly but not gratuitously. The world is realistic and emphasises the dark nihilism of the story.
The 9-panel grid (with extended panels within that format) helps to give a sense of rhythm to the story, allowing us to keep going and put our concentration into other things. This allows Gibbons to get clever in things like composition, page design and motifs. I think this is essential to help the reader to let go of things like structure and pacing and allows them to absorb the dense amount of visual and narrative information. Each page seems to have at least one element of action to keep the story moving forward.
This really comes into its own when paired with the colour choices. The colourist, John Higgins uses very interesting and unexpected colour choices. You can tell that as much thought went into how he planned his colour choices as Moore and Gibbons took with the narrative and visual pacing. There are odd hues of yellows, oranges and purples in places you wouldn't expect them.
It's only after reading this story back again for this task did I start to realise how intentional those choices are. Higgins has masterfully used colour to accentuate the words and images, drawing on their content and dialling it up to 11. He can create a sense of unease, dread, outrage or creeping nihilism by changing the colours in use. The amazing thing is that because of the interplay with the grid and narrative you don't even notice. After the first few chapters, you accept the initial odd choices. Higgins then uses this suspension of disbelief to use the colours he needs to help tell the story and evoke the emotion he wants. It's pretty cool!
The costumes of the superheroes in the book are outlandish and harken to the golden/silver age of comics, which is clever and speaks to the superheroes' heydays in the story itself. They create tension with the dark and depressing present-day of the story, seemingly out of place which draws focus and attention. It creates a sense of 'other' that the reader can tap into, but not in a positive way. It draws us into the same herd mentality as the background characters, showing us that all these costumed heroes are whirlwinds of chaos, and full of their own cognitive biases that are magnified by their costumed personas to give us the central core of the story.
Planetary
Narrative
When I started to read Planetary, it gave me the feeling of an episodic TV show from the 90s: lots of episodic mysteries with long-running themes slowly burning away across the issues. A kind of "X-Files with Superheroes".
The stories themselves draw upon mythos and popular culture and subverts them, creating a "truth" that has been hidden (like the island populated with the actual monsters from Japanese atomic horror movies). These great episodic stories serve as a canvas on which to paint the dysfunctional team dynamics, and the stories really are an ensemble piece.
The superheroes in the story are enigmatic powered individuals, but apart from interesting clothing choices, they don't stand out as superheroes. But their powers do set them apart; unlike traditional heroes, we don't get a massive amount of exposition upfront about their powers, or longevity. There is lots of hidden information, gaps that draw the reader in and want them to be filled. When combined with the narrative that these groups uncover mysteries themselves they play together and almost help the reader become part of the team trying to discover things.
The world it is set in is realistic, but we also see more fantastical elements, which plays into the narrative that the team uncover the mysteries behind the curtain; the world that is there but we are not allowed to see.
Visual
The comic has a realistic style. I did not notice a massive use of spot blacks; shading is done pretty conventionally with a very tight, competent but mainstream approach to linework, shading and feathering. It feels like this is done to make the most space for colouring. Again, this is done in a modern conventional way, with airbrushed highlights, gradients and digital glow. I am personally not a massive of this style of work, I think it makes comics look plastic and artificial rather than realistic.
The artist uses a breast deal of variation in the panel choice, with each page considered individually on how the artist wants to tell the narrative visually. Whilst this did feel that the reader has to jump around a lot, it does create a nice pace of reading that draws you in, and through, each of the stories. It works well to make the collection quite the 'page-turner'.
There is stylistic variation, where the comic shifts from panels to full prose, much like parts of Watchmen, in order to fill in context, backstory or subplot - usually as newspaper articles. It does not rely on this mechanic nearly as much as Moore's writing in Watchmen does. Ultimately though I found the stories compelling and I am looking forward to making my way through the full omnibus.
References
Ellis, W. and Cassaday, J., 2014. Planetary Omnibus. 8th ed. Burbank: DC Comics, pp.1-56.
Moore, A., Higgins, J. and Gibbons, D., 2014. Watchmen. 7th ed. Burbank: DC Comics.
O'Neill, D., Adams, N., Giordano, D., Wein, L. and Robbins, F., 2020. Batman by Neal Adams Book Three (The Brave and the Bold (1955-1983)). 1st ed. Burbank: DC Comics.
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