Monday, May 19, 2008

Panel Discussion: Scans from Young Liars, Amazing Spider-Man

Every week we at Geekanerd rip panels from our comics and put them on display here, recognizing the best, worst, and weirdest moments of the week. Beware some SPOILERS!

Click the pics for high res goodness!

Beatdown of the Week - Young Liars #3
Little Sadie here apparently attended the Jason Bourne School of Resourceful Dustupping. Not only does she pull an IV out of her transsexual junkie friend and jam it in her attacker's eye....
...she then proceeds to squeeze the remaining contents of the IV bag into the guy's face! Holy crapsticks that is hardcore.

Hit the jump for the highs and lows of Amazing Spider-Man #559's art!

Art Worth Praising - Marcos Martin, Amazing Spider-Man #559
I praised Marcos Martin in my review of the book but I'm glad I get to do it with some visual reference now! You can see in this page how deceptively simple his linework is. It feels very spare and uncluttered, but really there is a high level of detail crammed into every inch. The panel-to-panel storytelling is especially great on this page. Martin tells a fun little story with all the details he's packing into Spidey's characterization: the subtle wringing of hands behind the back as he worries about being seen as a psycho, the contemplative hand on the chin in the next panel, and the resolute fist in palm at the end... You would know what was happening in this page even without word balloons, which is really as good as it gets.

One more thing I want to say about Martin's art in this issue of Amazing Spider-Man is that his sense of architecture is spectacular throughout the issue--so many comic artists draw cities as block after block of homogenous rectangle buildings, but Martin does a great job of keeping his setting just as varied as real world New York.

Also contributing to the great look of this issue is Javier Rodriguez on colors. He is a perfect compliment to Martin, with a coloring job every bit as subtle and smart as Martin's linework. EXCEPT...

(Mis)Adventures in Computer Coloring - Amazing Spider-Man #559
Yes, this is the third time I've gotten on this book for grievous misuses of Photoshop. What happened, Javier? Every other page of this book is beautiful, so why did you lose all sense of subtlety and restraint for the nightclub scene? It's so unpleasant I can only hope you were just trying to make a statement about how distasteful you find clubbing.

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