The Climax of Willworld: page 92

I think I have posted this rather spectacular page a couple of times already in different contexts. I apologize for repeating things. But after posting the pages leading up to it, and the intense psychological/spiritual trials that Hal faces in the book, it seemed only fair to post also his victory over the chaotic forces of his own psyche.

A few interesting things about this image of victory:
~The squidman does not entirely explode: just his head (the source of the chaos).
~The head explodes, not with fire and lightning, but with bubbles--possibly there was nothing really there at all. In any case, the explosion does not cause harm to those around him, it merely bursts the bubble. It actually seems to explode like an overblown balloon: it appears to have gotten bigger and bigger until it just popped with a huge noise.
~The sound word, PsycaBOOOMM!!--another of Seth's words--is not only the sound, but actually part of the explosion.
~The explosion, or the fact that Hal actually flew into his mouth--sends the squidman reeling backwards, so the thrust of the energy of the image goes diagonally from bottom left to top right. Diagonal lines, and diagonal flow of energy, always has more movement than horizontal and vertical flow. There are no vertical or horizontal lines in this image. The circles are calming, but the energy is all outwards.

Willworld page 27

This amazing page shows Hal flying a triplane that he picked up a couple of pages earlier, but which is coming to the surface of the bubble that he is in. The plane breaks up when it reaches what appears to be a sort of membrane that keeps him separated from other of the warriors wearing the same garb as he. (I don't know the Green Lantern other than this book, so I am unfamiliar with the terminology for who all these people are. Jedi Knights of some sort, it seems.) The transparent stretchiness of the membrane, the mechanical breakup of the airplane, and the sound effect words all come together in these images in striking contrast to give great drama to what is, of course, a very dramatic situation.

We have talked about Seth's sound words in other pages. This page gives another example of words that really bring to mind the sounds he is trying for. "Drroingg!" gives a good feel for what it would sound like when a spinning object (propeller) bounces off a soft and springy wall. And "Wokka wokka" sounds to me exactly like a propeller going slower, until something breaks off with a "Poinkt!"

Willworld page 60

I probably should go through Willworld in order, but I was casting around for something to post quickly and I saw this very dramatic page.
What makes Willworld interesting, and a huge challenge for the artist, is that so many of the ideas and happenings in the story are so ethereal, so metaphysical. The artist has to come up with images that show what is happening, when what is happening is largely within different areas of the hero's psyche. So here, where the voices are warning Hal that he should not have tried to look beneath the mask of reality, what possible images could be used? Horrifying, frightening images certainly, because it is supposed to be a fearful experience, but the fears are vague and sort of nameless. Without color, too: someone else was doing the color. Seth's answer has undersea creatures (always a potential source of fear, coming out of the dark where they could be nearby and you wouldn't necessarily notice them), and besides, Seth always liked the denizens of the deep, plus angry faces with large toothy mouths.

I would challenge readers of this blog to close your eyes and try to imagine what YOU might see when you heard angry voices saying to you, "I warned you not to look beneath the mask of reality!"

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 4 page 18

Seth's notes to his editors say, "So this is the climax. I hope you like it. I think it's pretty funny, and I love the combination of humor and tragedy. Makes it really funny. Again sorry about the molecules." [Zeb Wells, the writer, had a vision where the moloids were seen as molecules, and Seth tried but could not quite carry off that detail given the constraints of space and visual effects. Making the pages work was always a matter of problem solving to Seth.]

Seth made a point of building up anti-sympathy for Mole Man, since he was going to have his most precious possessions taken away here. So though he is something of a tragic figure, we are not especially interested in his pain; he is too unpleasant.

The sound effects here are all very Seth, the sounds of large springs springing: Fling, Floop, Gwap, Flong, Flu (with an oomlaut), etc. And indeed, it is the giant springs that are freeing the moloids from servitude. I love the image of all of them in tuck position, somersaulting to freedom.

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 4 page 15

After the two splash pages, this page has five frames of varied sizes, and in each one something different and hugely dramatic is taking place. All the build-up of energy from the story thus far is leading to the decisive actions in the various panels on this page.

In the top left frame Reed--who throughout the story has been working out what might be the use of everything he has seen, and has finally figured out the weakness of the Beast--reaches for the control of the device that he has determined will subdue the great creature. In the background of that frame is a deafening "RARARARARARA". We know it is a consuming sort of sound because it is taking up so much of the background of that frame. The small upper right frame of Reed's face is like an actor turning to the audience to tell them his concerns.

In the middle two frames, Johnny has dived down to the underground sea to heat it up and begin the eruption that will trigger the activity that will save Everything from the Beast. Will he make it? He dives into the water with a very liquid "SPFOON" and a lovely Art Nouveau sort of whirling of waters. The fish bones floating beside him tell us that the water has become toxic to life (already superheated).

In the bottom frame, the animal that we saw on yesterday's splash page is crashing up into Ben & Reed's room with a mighty "FCROM!" Seth's sounds are as usual all his own, and his creatures are awful but also pretty cute. This one has six toes on its large feet, a bulbous, mushroom-looking sort of nose, those projections on its back that look like thick, soft, rubber bristles, and two babies (which we saw on page 14). In all the drama, Seth has not neglected to show the hardscape, even when it does not add to the action: the stairs leading down on the lower right, and the entrance to the next room.

Reality is tearing! FF/Iron Man: Big in Japan 3, page 12

So how DO you show what happens when Reality tears?
Well, each of the people in this picture is shown at least 4 times, in different drawing styles, with their limbs on and off, and their eyes bulging and closed, their bodies right-side-up and upside-down, with things falling apart behind them (the World As We Know It, I assume). Reed, with his stretchy body, is particularly effective at expressing the inexpressible. The humans are all packed together at the bottom of the page for maximum effect, while the fingers that form the wall holding back Chaos crumble and bend, with Seth Fisher sound effects thrown in for good measure. I love 5D MEGA GOURB! And you can't leave out INTERSTELLAR ZWANG. Not to mention !PORQNK!

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 2 page 18

This page has a few things in it that I wanted to point out.
First of all, the sounds, or emanations, coming from the instrument that Reed is blowing are expressed in the same orderly diagram-style lettering that I talked about a couple of days ago. Though they are not letters of the alphabet, they are something that is clearly understandable by someone. It is not a vague "Oom-pah-pah" that he is broadcasting; it is a message in some seemingly ancient runic script. I have very little experience with comic books other than Seth's, so I don't really know how other comic book artists express this sort of thing. Yet, when an artist wants to show that something is inexplicable, I would think that usually he would choose to make it soft-edged and fuzzy. Not Seth. He made up an alphabet, or alphabet-looking characters, and had them spilling out of Reed's party horn expanding trumpet like alphabet soup letters pouring out of a box.
In the lower panel we see the cow-faced Grogg as he listens to the horn that we see Reed blowing. But Grogg responds to the sounds as they pour onto him from the panel above. Seth used the restrictions and freedoms of the comic book medium to show in one graceful arch both the loudness and forcefulness of the sound coming from the horn, and the monster's reaction to it, as if the syllables of sound were falling on to his head and giving him a headache.
Also in the lower panel, there are a couple of billboards. One says, amusingly, "Buy our ideas". The other says "Seth". Both feature noseless people, as though ever since Vertigo Pop Tokyo the nose had gone out of fashion in Japan.

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 2 page 8

Close up of Grogg the monster's hand. Though his face is cowlike, his hand is like Mickey Mouse's, with three fingers and no fingernails. It looks surprisingly benign, lacking anything like a claw to threaten us with. Tell that to Iron Man, of course, who is smashed against the building by that huge hand.

The sound words here are Seth specials. BOOM BOOM from the cannons or guns, is straightforward enough, and the look of those words is too. FOOM FOOM from the torpedos on the left, is a little less standard. But the wonderful one is at the bottom right where Grogg hits the building with the flat of his hand: WPAK, in 3D letters drawn as if they were level with the side of the building, with blocks (Blocks of sound, that is, these are not pieces of concrete) scattering from the letters. A splendid representation of the sound made by an enormous hand smacking a building.

Big in Japan 2, page 15 pencils

This is the last of the pencil drawings I have scans of. Only three panels, each image taken from the point of view of maximum clarity for the particular part of the action he wanted to show. I particularly like the dents in the buildings, in both today's and yesterday's drawings. He didn't smash the buildings and make total chaos. The chaos is just beginning here, and so things are starting to fall apart, but not in ruins.
Is the whale-type creature with the big tail something of Seth's own invention, or is it a more-or-less well-known monster? He did take great delight in creating monsters.
One more item: the sound effect words. These are all Seth sounds: PKOP! FOOM! YIK!
Each one has its distinctive font, and each one is clearly audible and discernable as to what kind of sound it is.

Spiderman Unlimited page 6

This is the page that is hanging on the wall behind where David is serving wine in the photo below. It has all those mature Seth trademarks: sound effect words that express the sound visually, clean clear images, quirky details, a page that is designed so that all the elements fit together as a whole. I just noticed that he nuns on the bottom left are standing so that the curve of the nun in front makes an arch of negative space around the nun in back. Lovely.

Spiderman Unlimited page 9

OK, one last image on the subject of sound noises. Julien Schantz, a comicbook art collector in France, wanted to be sure I included this image, which not only has sound effects that show all the facets of Seth's sound effect vocabulary, but also has an elegant full page structure, with things breaking at the top (top of the page, top of the building), someone falling and being caught in the middle, and a crowd at the bottom (on the ground) trying to get out of the way. That is, the page is not so much divided into panels that show sequential actions, but the page as a whole makes sense. The actions are sequential, but the time elapsed between each panel is very brief, and there is time overlap.
One of the things that interested Seth when he was first beginning to do comic book pages, was that the artist could move the action along faster or slower by the way he drew the panels.
Tomorrow I will show another page from Julien, where Seth consciously made the action sloooow down.

Willworld page 6

All I have of this page is a photograph rather than a scan. I apologize for the poor quality of the image, but I just wanted to show this page as an example of what Seth did with sound effects. The letters of the sound words are integral to the image, and they are bent and crumpled--what a crash!
His sound words are also his own; they vigorously portray the sounds and feel of the action, don't they?

Doom Patrol #14, page 16

Here is another page where Seth drew the sound effects himself as part of the image. You can usually tell when they are his own, because they are nonstandard, but entirely evocative sound noises: "KRUNK", "GLICK", "WONK". They are also part of the image, not a later add-on, and often drawn in a font that somehow expresses the sound. In this page, and in several others, some of the sound noises are partly hidden by the activity in the panel, showing that the particular sound is occurring behind something else. Some of them are written in perspective, coming out at you, so the alert reader "hears" the sound getting louder.