How Line and Iconography Can Be Used to Sway a Reader
By: Elias Christian Pacheco
When Miles Morales: Spider-man #1 dropped in comic shops on December 12th, 2018,
it was released two weeks prior to the release of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse in cinemas.
The film bought a new perspective to how to adapt a comic book, and literally
(as literal as a comics page can be) brought Miles and other spider heroes to life.
This effectively drove up the sales, and interest, in the ongoing title.
So, by this reception to the film, by the time the second issue had been released,
the interior at had stayed the same as the first issue, yet the cover was drastically changed from
what had preceded it, mainly in order to draw in film goers to the title.
The para text, specifically the cover, of the second issue has a drastic change to the art style,
and heightens and highlights the shift in iconography to draw in the film audience.
it was released two weeks prior to the release of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse in cinemas.
The film bought a new perspective to how to adapt a comic book, and literally
(as literal as a comics page can be) brought Miles and other spider heroes to life.
This effectively drove up the sales, and interest, in the ongoing title.
So, by this reception to the film, by the time the second issue had been released,
the interior at had stayed the same as the first issue, yet the cover was drastically changed from
what had preceded it, mainly in order to draw in film goers to the title.
The para text, specifically the cover, of the second issue has a drastic change to the art style,
and heightens and highlights the shift in iconography to draw in the film audience.
To begin, the most striking difference is that of the color palette.
When compared to the first issue, the reds of his suit have a lighter quality while also having
the black of the suit be more bluish in tone to fit the film’s highly stylized cartoon aesthetic.
Jumping off from this point, the line work gives off a sense of cartooning that would be closer
to an animated film. The lines are much more simplified and less detailed, having a greater emphasis placed on having
Miles look more smooth and plastic. The shading as well is less of a black spread across with darker shades of red to simulate shading,
as is the case for the first issue, instead it appears to replace that with a more standard idea in comics with that of a rigid construct of lighter areas to create highlight,
as well as the use of benday dots and slanted lines to reinforce the idea of the classic comic book feel, which was again featured heavily in the film adaptation.
Probably the most striking evidence to support this marketing strategy is the iconography of theWhen compared to the first issue, the reds of his suit have a lighter quality while also having
the black of the suit be more bluish in tone to fit the film’s highly stylized cartoon aesthetic.
Jumping off from this point, the line work gives off a sense of cartooning that would be closer
to an animated film. The lines are much more simplified and less detailed, having a greater emphasis placed on having
Miles look more smooth and plastic. The shading as well is less of a black spread across with darker shades of red to simulate shading,
as is the case for the first issue, instead it appears to replace that with a more standard idea in comics with that of a rigid construct of lighter areas to create highlight,
as well as the use of benday dots and slanted lines to reinforce the idea of the classic comic book feel, which was again featured heavily in the film adaptation.
main elements that draw you into the cover. The most blatant of those being the six speech
bubbles with simplistic icons of everyday life, which again feed into the classic idea of the
modern comic, and have the reader be able to identify these elements easily, as well as associate
their style with that of the animation. However, a very clever use of iconography is that on
Miles Morales himself. Having his symbol be large and bolded in the background surrounding
him is a clever way to pay homage to his suit in the film, with the line of his suit encompassing
the spider within, much like Miles’ suit does in the film. As well, the face of Miles, while still
being cartoonish in style, evokes a sense of classic animated Spidey, say from the sixties,
to give a hidden style to that of animation and Spider-man while also creating an arthrological weave
back to the history of the animated Spider-man. Yet the most damning piece of evidence are his eyes.
They are overdrawn and given a cartoon shine, with the lenses using the sine and some shading to
give them a somewhat line configuration around the eye, which would evoke the main visual of the
promotional material for Spider-verse, which were the eyes of Miles Morales’ mask.
With this analysis of the theory and paratext, as well as the intertextuality, it gives light to the strategies
of companies to draw in a bigger reading group from the films.
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