The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood: Chapter 1, Issue 1

The first chapter of the first issue of The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood is a tense story of a man trying, and almost failing, to provide for this family. As hospital bills for his sick son rack up, Charlie’s home life begins to unravel. Multimodality is most helpful to better think about how this story is constructed within the comics medium. Gestural, visual, and spatial elements like facial expressions, white space, shading, and gutters help deconstruct this visual and written narrative of a desperate man weighing morality and security. 

Charlie looks at his sick son in anguish.

From the first glance, readers are drawn to the close-up shot of Charlie’s face. His slightly pouting lips, narrowed eyes, eyebrows knitted together, and worry wrinkles evoke a man trying his best not to cry. The two insets add information without detracting from the evident emotion. From the uppermost inset, readers can assume that the wedding band and hand belongs to Charlie, while the small curled fist belongs to another, who readers learn in the inset directly below, is a young boy, sleeping. 

The white space in this panel sets apart the insets from the diegetic world that readers see when looking at Charlie’s face. The white space boldly frames the two smaller pictures as if to say, “Focus here. This part is important.” Using a minimum number of images, a wealth of information is obtained. The genre, that of noir fiction, is outlaid within the drawing and narration of this single panel. “He’s so innocent . . .” and “With all the evil in the world . . .” lays bare the main conventions of noir, that of an evil world harming the innocent. The use of light and shadow and a black and white colour scheme almost scream Noir. 

Chee, the artist for this issue, makes the area underneath Charlie’s lower lip darker to emphasize its pulled-up expression. Only one eye is in the light, the one crying. The deeply etched lines around the nose and mouth suggest a man who is worried and strained. With this introduction to the title character and basic premise of the comic - how an increasingly desperate Charlie deals with his son’s recent sickness - readers can expect to follow this harrowing tale using a minimum of information. 

This panel introduces the central man responsible for Charlie's damnation, Mr. Barnum, who alludes to himself as Faria, a character in a novel Charlie is teaching the students in prison. This conflict is evident in Charlie's facial expression and body posture. His eyebrows are drawn down forcefully creasing his brow, indicative of an angry facial expression. He is frowning and his jaw is squared emphasizing a tense, muscular reaction to seeing Barnum coming into his classroom. Readers unconsciously know these are the main characters because one can only see the backs of the three others, faceless and unidentifiable men who are not important to this panel's story other than to demonstrate class recently ended.  

This page layout is tightly structured. There is little breathing room evoked by the tight and narrow gutters. The bottom half of the page mimics the top half in structure. The wide gutter separating the two halves give the reader some breathing room before revealing, through narration and monstration, the moral conflict that Wormwood encounters which is partnering with Barnum to earn extra cash to support his son and wife. 

This chapter continues to play with panel shapes, gutter spaces, and facial expressions as it moves towards the climax, his son seizing up. Without revealing the whole first issue, one can see how using these elements helps deconstruct the story. 

As for my first serial comic reading experience, I immensely enjoyed it. It was difficult waiting a month for the next issue, but now that it is here, I am excited to tackle it and see how Charlie responds to Barnum's prodding.