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Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Rabbit! Run! Rabbit!
Dave Fiore has already gone down Grant Morrison's writing in the latest issue of WE3 (see preview pages here) so I thought I would go over what has made the book excellent for me, namely the artwork of Frank Quitely.
I have enjoyed Quitely's artwork before in The Authority and New X-Men but I feel what we are reading now in WE3 will be remembered as the height of his skills (and if he can come up with something to top this I'll be first in line to read it). The other books I mentioned proved Quitely was a master of creating exciting action and illustrating texture all with in a simple style that is very easy on the eyes. Here Quitely takes that style and uses some great visual acrobatics to make a simple Frankenstein-like story into one of the best books of the year. These aren't antics put on the page simply to draw attention to them, the art on WE3 works beautifully with the storytelling skills Morrison is employing.
The first issue impressed many readers with its "security camera grid" pages that built the tension until we got a cathartic double-page spread starring the protagonists of the book. It turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg. The second issue has a great sequence on pages six, seven and eight where many small panels are used inside bigger ones to actualize this tremendous sense of anarchy. I love the aforementioned Mr. Fiore's title for it: a "Wall of Violence." Pages ten and eleven also have this great sequence where Number 2's mayhem is illustrated in a way that puts film's latest trend of "bullet-time" to shame. It’s with these arrangements that Quitely makes the reader care more about the blood being spilled and ergo makes the reader care more about the story and its characters.
It's not just the sequences with fancy panel works that impress, either. The entire attack of the rats scene plays up Quitely's mastery of creating detail without the artwork ever feeling too busy or bogged-down. The bridge of the bottom panel on page 18 would looks so stark in the air if it weren’t for the thousands of bio-enhanced rats attacking the runaway robo-rabbit, -cat and -dog. This is a gory comic, although never does it feel sensationalistic, and that realization seems at its clearest when you see the end bit of a rat hanging out of Number 1’s mouth.
Reading this book I did feel that this is the proper evolution American action/adventure comics should take after the achievements of artists Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller. I know Morrison talked about creating a "Western Manga" with this book and while I wouldn't say manga isn't and influence it feels like those three artists and the innovations they brought to comics starting in the 1970's really feels like an immediate precursor to the stuff we are reading in this book now. Or do I just talk about Chaykin too much?
The next issue doesn't come out until January, eh? Oh well, who said the good things in life aren't worth waiting for?
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