Great Pages In Comics History: Marvel Boy #4
In what will be an ongoing feature on this site, I’m going to take a rather in depth look at some of my favorite and most inspirational individual pages throughout the great pantheon of my lazily-strewn-about-my-office comics collection.
Marvel Boy #4, p. 5. By Grant Morrison, J.G. Jones, Avalon Studios, Matt Milla, Richard Starkings & Wes Abbott.
So, I spent this weekend at the New York Comic-Con, which ended up not being as crowded or annoying as I had feared. A lot of my time was dedicated to any and every panel Grant Morrison was involved in, and it was quite an inspirational and illuminating experience.
But at the last panel I went to, for Final Crisis, I couldn’t think of one question I had about the upcoming book, and so I asked a question to J.G. Jones about the nuts and bolts of his process when it came to interior art (seeing as it would inevitably be a departure from his wash-heavy, painterly style for the covers of 52. His answer (basically he just considers it painting in black and white, with no tones) and his further discussion of framing sequences and “cinematography” caused me to immediately unearth all of the work of his that I had available, and revisit it.
Marvel Boy #4 does feature what is probably a more well known sequence, just a few pages after this one. Marvel Boy and Oubliette chase each other up a building in a phenomenal two pages made up of 12 Panel Grids. It’s truly fantastic, no doubt, but something about Page 5 resonates just a little bit more with me.
First of all, you’ve got the first two panels, which are just a textbook example of fantastic action sequential storytelling. Jones knows precisely where to place Marvel Boy in the frame in both panels to convey the perfect and proper level of momentum. I could just go back and forth between those two panels for a few minutes, and just study them.
He also does some amazing things with the subway flare that makes Oubliette’s position, slamming out of a subway on a motorcycle (!!!!), so dynamic.
Avalon Studios and Mr. Milla also take a fantastic little chance in panel two with the color shift. I’m not a hundred percent sure what exactly in that Subway Station is causing it, nor do I really care. Green is certainly a predominant color throughout the series. Marvel Boy’s only surviving pal, Plex, is a green blob, his own costume is mostly green, there’s a lot of green all around. By bathing the whole panel in the color, it almost gives at a kind of strobe effect, as if an alternative to the Impact Burst you might find at that moment in the panel of a more traditional comic.
And then the last two tiers give us that great tumble and final pose that’s not just static, not a moment of Ex taking a breather, but one where she immediately fires at Marvel Boy.
There’s not a moment of pause in the action on the entire page.
Also of note, this issue is lettered in one of my favorite Comicraft fonts, Cutthroat. I first fell in love with it in the pages of Grant’s New X-Men, before that painful edict was handed down, and lowercase letters joined uppercase letters in a horrifying and completely un-comic-book-like combination.
From a purely technical inking standpoint, there’s just something that really catches my eye about this small detail:
Yeah, yeah, I know. Hot stuff, right? But seriously, the line of Oubliette’s thigh is absolutely perfect, especially the way that one little dash of torso meets it in the middle. Just impeccable draftsmanship.
So congratulations Page 5 of Marvel Boy #4. You are officially one of the Great Pages In Comics History.
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Benjamin Birdie
Suddenly kind of aged, Benjamin lives in Queens with his cat. His Master's Degree in Creative Writing has helped him immensely with his primary responsibilities of drawing things.
He can be reached at benjaminbirdie (at) gmail (dot) com.
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