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I'm going to be splitting my review of Wanted, the supervillain comic written my Mark Millar and JG Jones, into two parts. In this first part, I'm going to unload on JG Jones' art, which I think is quite possibly the worst sequential art by someone who does not actually suck as an artist. I'm doing this because 1.) I do have some general things to say about the story that I don't want to be buried by my cranky, picky art critique and 2.) I want to assuage any rogue fanboys who want to pounce on me because I JUST CAN'T HANDLE WANTED by doing the pretty much technical complaints, first.
So let me go back to what I said earlier, "the worst sequential art by someone who does not actually suck as an artist." JG Jones draws very well. The covers of Wanted, for example, are excellent. He's good at drawing human beings and objects and whatever. I remember reading Wonder Woman: Hiketia and not having a problem with the art.
However, in Wanted, whatever talent JG Jones has is not used in the most beneficial way to tell the story. The angles and layout choices in the comic make everything look muddled, distant and cramped. Sometimes I felt like he was almost actively hiding the story from the reader, i.e. me. And I remember each time I put down the book I felt a little pissed off.
Here follows what I think are 19 of the most egregious mistakes in the art of Wanted. Now, I am not a professional artist, but I HAVE read a LOT of comics so I have a good idea about how sequential art is supposed to look. And for anyone who says "Oh, but maybe he's being DIFFERENT," fuck you. David McKean's art in Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth was ACTUALLY non-traditional but he didn't hide a supervillain fight to concentrate on a box of cereal. He also didn't draw a shitload of panels on a 45-degree angle he was emulating Battlefield Earth.
I wish I was kidding.
Our hero, Eminem-lookalike Wesley Gibson, establishes himself as a loser douche. This was before I decided I didn't want to do captions on every piece of art, but ... yeah, self-explanatory. I'm also unconvinced Millar's description of the characters' actions/feelings match the drawing.
The Fox's first appearance. Other than my note, what also annoys me about these panels is that this is the full-blown entrance of a major character who will be portrayed as an unstoppable badass ... and JG Jones never gives her the full reveal.
Here's the next page. See what I mean? We never get the close-up moment where we see her in full and take in all of her power and horror the way we should. She's Wesley's mentor, lover, bridge into the underworld and his new life. She's an unstoppable, irredeemably evil badass. But she looks small in these panels, in which she is callously blowing away people in a restaurant. This strikes me as both incongruous and diminishing to the story. And JG Jones does it CONSTANTLY.
It's the same thing here. A crucial character is revealed! Let's make him really small but put a HUGE GLOWING THING IN THE PANEL THAT WILL NEVER BE USED EVER to distract from it!
This is only half the panel (picture it expanded to show his legs and the tiny people at his feet), but compare to Dr. Manhattan's first appearance in Watchmen. It's basically the same thing: new character shown working on weird science thing, but Dave Gibbons had the foresight to concentrate on what was IMPORTANT in the panel.
He hits them. Still, I can't be the only one annoyed that we don't actually see WHERE he's shooting. For all we know the flies could have just stopped in a straight line and held up signs saying "AIM A LITTLE TO THE LEFT!"
What I wrote. See what I mean about the crazy angles?
Maybe this is supposed to represent the callousness of other people, but I swear that my reaction when I looked at this panel was, "HUH? Wait, WHAT?'
Wesley in full uniform. This picture I actually somewhat like. The thought panels talk about handsome Wesley thinks he looks ("If I were chocolate, I'd eat myself right now.") And I actually think the picture has a sort of a sleek look that exudes sexiness.
But ... again, this is his big reveal as a supervillain and he's at quarter angle from the reader. Also, the ends of his legs are cutoff, giving us still the feeling that we're only getting a portion and not the full shot.
But the entrance of Rictus, the antagonist of the series, is even worse:
(Also, check out the "It's not Vulture! Honest!" in the corner. I thought about scanning purple Shocker but I got bored.)
Once again, we never get to see an important character, in full. Only in chunks. I also think these panels show the cramped the overall layout and panel is of this comic. And how everything's on an angle. And how it sucks.
An opening splash page. I honestly noticed what was in the red first, because it's prominent. (And mentions sex). Then my eye caught the word balloon, and only THEN did I see the explosion in the sky, which is supposed to be the point of the panel. Blech.
Now these panels just look like a clusterfuck. In the top one, I don't think the motion of Wesley jumping out of the exploding plane or whatever is well enough represented by placement of him and the explosion. And then they have him, whose face we can't see, being besieged by superheroes whose faces we can't see, thus ruining any suspense. And then Jones, decides showing faces is just a mug's game anyway, draws one panel where the top of his head is cut off and another from the back. Oh, and the superheroes' heads get shot off.
OK, it's not a big deal, but can two characters just TALK without a bunch of crap being in the way?
Oooh, here's a Pop Quiz! The people in the back are talking about only one of the characters in the foreground! Without a description, could you tell who? And if you can, why does that other fucker have the same amount of panel time if we're never going to see him again?
The grand meeting of the five greatest supervillains on the planet! Clearly I wanted to see it from a DARKENED CORNER OF THE ROOM with a BIG COLUMN in the way! Bah. I'm a journalist. I get enough of this shit at work, thank you.
Dear GOD I hate that panel.
Yeah, Rictus. Them. The nearly empty room that has, like, three people, a few planes off in the distance.
Yes, fans. I know he just had access to another villain's toys and he'll get to use them for the first time. The panel doesn't work because 1.) those toys are off in the distance. 2.) We never actually see that specific stuff being used and 3.) it's yet another examples of douches we never see again being in the foreground while the important characters are up front. Also, it's from the back, so we don't see ANYBODY'S facial reaction at their moment of triumph.
And just a little sum-up, reiteration of the themes. Characters in front aren't as important as those in the back. They're blindfolded, so we can't see how they're reacting. And the fucking panel is on an unnecessary angle.
----
I will say that doing a little bit of what JG Jones does here is OK, but he repeats a lot of this stuff throughout the book and it gets exasperating, especially in panels like the Council of Five meeting or the one with the cereal box, where I feel like my attention is being focused on unimportant things and not on the parts of the panel where the story is being told.
It's disappointing because I don't think JG Jones is a bad artist. He also clearly drew some cool character designs. The Wanted dossier has a lot of great pin-ups of the characters. Bill Sienkiewicz's drawing of Shit-Head is beautiful in a grotesque way. Ty Templeton's drawing of the supervillains standing triumphant over a mountain of superhero corpses is awesome. Even Brian Michael Bendis' drawing of The Doll Master is great. (Although I may just say that because he had one of the dolls hold up an insult to Mark Millar.) But all that made me think was, "Man, I wish ANY of these people had drawn the book instead of Jones, because all of those pictures looked more striking and eye-catching and SCARIER than anything in the book. And I include Frank Quitely, who I usually hate, in that assessment.
I'm not sure what went wrong here. Maybe Mark Millar gave Jones bad directions. Maybe they overshot their ambitions. (The dossier makes reference to a relationship between two minor characters that never made it to the page.) But ... honestly, it's disappointing and frustrating.
Although, the badness of the art probably distracted from how much I disliked the story ...
(To be continued!)
So let me go back to what I said earlier, "the worst sequential art by someone who does not actually suck as an artist." JG Jones draws very well. The covers of Wanted, for example, are excellent. He's good at drawing human beings and objects and whatever. I remember reading Wonder Woman: Hiketia and not having a problem with the art.
However, in Wanted, whatever talent JG Jones has is not used in the most beneficial way to tell the story. The angles and layout choices in the comic make everything look muddled, distant and cramped. Sometimes I felt like he was almost actively hiding the story from the reader, i.e. me. And I remember each time I put down the book I felt a little pissed off.
Here follows what I think are 19 of the most egregious mistakes in the art of Wanted. Now, I am not a professional artist, but I HAVE read a LOT of comics so I have a good idea about how sequential art is supposed to look. And for anyone who says "Oh, but maybe he's being DIFFERENT," fuck you. David McKean's art in Batman: Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth was ACTUALLY non-traditional but he didn't hide a supervillain fight to concentrate on a box of cereal. He also didn't draw a shitload of panels on a 45-degree angle he was emulating Battlefield Earth.
I wish I was kidding.
Our hero, Eminem-lookalike Wesley Gibson, establishes himself as a loser douche. This was before I decided I didn't want to do captions on every piece of art, but ... yeah, self-explanatory. I'm also unconvinced Millar's description of the characters' actions/feelings match the drawing.
The Fox's first appearance. Other than my note, what also annoys me about these panels is that this is the full-blown entrance of a major character who will be portrayed as an unstoppable badass ... and JG Jones never gives her the full reveal.
Here's the next page. See what I mean? We never get the close-up moment where we see her in full and take in all of her power and horror the way we should. She's Wesley's mentor, lover, bridge into the underworld and his new life. She's an unstoppable, irredeemably evil badass. But she looks small in these panels, in which she is callously blowing away people in a restaurant. This strikes me as both incongruous and diminishing to the story. And JG Jones does it CONSTANTLY.
It's the same thing here. A crucial character is revealed! Let's make him really small but put a HUGE GLOWING THING IN THE PANEL THAT WILL NEVER BE USED EVER to distract from it!
This is only half the panel (picture it expanded to show his legs and the tiny people at his feet), but compare to Dr. Manhattan's first appearance in Watchmen. It's basically the same thing: new character shown working on weird science thing, but Dave Gibbons had the foresight to concentrate on what was IMPORTANT in the panel.
He hits them. Still, I can't be the only one annoyed that we don't actually see WHERE he's shooting. For all we know the flies could have just stopped in a straight line and held up signs saying "AIM A LITTLE TO THE LEFT!"
What I wrote. See what I mean about the crazy angles?
Maybe this is supposed to represent the callousness of other people, but I swear that my reaction when I looked at this panel was, "HUH? Wait, WHAT?'
Wesley in full uniform. This picture I actually somewhat like. The thought panels talk about handsome Wesley thinks he looks ("If I were chocolate, I'd eat myself right now.") And I actually think the picture has a sort of a sleek look that exudes sexiness.
But ... again, this is his big reveal as a supervillain and he's at quarter angle from the reader. Also, the ends of his legs are cutoff, giving us still the feeling that we're only getting a portion and not the full shot.
But the entrance of Rictus, the antagonist of the series, is even worse:
(Also, check out the "It's not Vulture! Honest!" in the corner. I thought about scanning purple Shocker but I got bored.)
Once again, we never get to see an important character, in full. Only in chunks. I also think these panels show the cramped the overall layout and panel is of this comic. And how everything's on an angle. And how it sucks.
An opening splash page. I honestly noticed what was in the red first, because it's prominent. (And mentions sex). Then my eye caught the word balloon, and only THEN did I see the explosion in the sky, which is supposed to be the point of the panel. Blech.
Now these panels just look like a clusterfuck. In the top one, I don't think the motion of Wesley jumping out of the exploding plane or whatever is well enough represented by placement of him and the explosion. And then they have him, whose face we can't see, being besieged by superheroes whose faces we can't see, thus ruining any suspense. And then Jones, decides showing faces is just a mug's game anyway, draws one panel where the top of his head is cut off and another from the back. Oh, and the superheroes' heads get shot off.
OK, it's not a big deal, but can two characters just TALK without a bunch of crap being in the way?
Oooh, here's a Pop Quiz! The people in the back are talking about only one of the characters in the foreground! Without a description, could you tell who? And if you can, why does that other fucker have the same amount of panel time if we're never going to see him again?
The grand meeting of the five greatest supervillains on the planet! Clearly I wanted to see it from a DARKENED CORNER OF THE ROOM with a BIG COLUMN in the way! Bah. I'm a journalist. I get enough of this shit at work, thank you.
Dear GOD I hate that panel.
Yeah, Rictus. Them. The nearly empty room that has, like, three people, a few planes off in the distance.
Yes, fans. I know he just had access to another villain's toys and he'll get to use them for the first time. The panel doesn't work because 1.) those toys are off in the distance. 2.) We never actually see that specific stuff being used and 3.) it's yet another examples of douches we never see again being in the foreground while the important characters are up front. Also, it's from the back, so we don't see ANYBODY'S facial reaction at their moment of triumph.
And just a little sum-up, reiteration of the themes. Characters in front aren't as important as those in the back. They're blindfolded, so we can't see how they're reacting. And the fucking panel is on an unnecessary angle.
----
I will say that doing a little bit of what JG Jones does here is OK, but he repeats a lot of this stuff throughout the book and it gets exasperating, especially in panels like the Council of Five meeting or the one with the cereal box, where I feel like my attention is being focused on unimportant things and not on the parts of the panel where the story is being told.
It's disappointing because I don't think JG Jones is a bad artist. He also clearly drew some cool character designs. The Wanted dossier has a lot of great pin-ups of the characters. Bill Sienkiewicz's drawing of Shit-Head is beautiful in a grotesque way. Ty Templeton's drawing of the supervillains standing triumphant over a mountain of superhero corpses is awesome. Even Brian Michael Bendis' drawing of The Doll Master is great. (Although I may just say that because he had one of the dolls hold up an insult to Mark Millar.) But all that made me think was, "Man, I wish ANY of these people had drawn the book instead of Jones, because all of those pictures looked more striking and eye-catching and SCARIER than anything in the book. And I include Frank Quitely, who I usually hate, in that assessment.
I'm not sure what went wrong here. Maybe Mark Millar gave Jones bad directions. Maybe they overshot their ambitions. (The dossier makes reference to a relationship between two minor characters that never made it to the page.) But ... honestly, it's disappointing and frustrating.
Although, the badness of the art probably distracted from how much I disliked the story ...
(To be continued!)
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From:
Riiiight on the money, Becky.
- 45°/diagonals ALWAYS equal more action and excitement
- huge foreground "cutters" which redefine the panel borders
- huge foreground elements (cereal) to immerse the viewer into the scene
- (and... I guess the whole "first read, second read, third read" system was too conventional for this guy to relate to ._.)
But yeah, glaring issues in every single example you pulled up. One of the problems with the opening splash page is the guy way in the front is about the same size as the explosion, print-wise. Your mind is ambivalent about which to focus on. Ordinarily you'd want your closest figure to be directing (often literally pointing) the viewers towards the area of interest, not looking away nonchalantly.
The huge column right in the middle of the scene just... hurts every artistic fiber in me.
---
A-oh, kinda random, but I heard about this comic artist on NPR 2 days ago. There's not a whole lot of samples of her work, sadly, but it's worth sharing anyway. ^~
From:
Re: Riiiight on the money, Becky.
Anyway, it's good to know that my uneducated instincts on these things are correct. I could see SOME of these panels making good art as a supplement to the action panels. (Or as establishing a scene.) But then you would have to show panels with PEOPLE front and center.
(I remember flipping through Black Hole after this and being like, "Waaaah! This book has people's faces front-and-center on almost every panel! WHY DOESN'T THE OTHER BOOK LOOK LIKE THAT?")
Ordinarily you'd want your closest figure to be directing (often literally pointing) the viewers towards the area of interest, not looking away nonchalantly.
And he actually sort of does that pointing thing with the guy on the far end, but yeah, it's not the closest thing we see.
I'd heard a bit about Jackie Ormes before. Mostly from her society. I occasionally read the blog posts of Cheryl Lynn, one of the members. She's very cool.
(I should check her biography out, though.)
From:
no subject
The largest figure on the page looking away causes you to lose interest in the explosion, is the thing.
(...I figured you'd know more and direct me to some choice links... XD;)
From:
*driveby comment*
Have you ever read any of the Loeb/Sale Batman comics? I've been reading Dark Victory for the last week, and Sale's art srsly makes me cream my pants. He loves playing around, and especially plays around with dramatic, surprising full-page shots, and negative space, and good god how I love him.
Also hi yeah I'm just some random stranger. :> Surfed on in from some Watchmen discussion.
From:
Re: *driveby comment*
I haven't read any of the Loeb/Sale books because I'm a Spider-Man fan at heart and wasn't impressed with Spider-Man: Blue (the art was pretty, the story was just ... really, really bland). I may give it another flip through, though.
And it's all good. If I didn't want open commenting I would be friends-locked. Rorschach lovers are always welcome, anyway. :)