A Splash of Power- The Suicide Risk Reveal

    Superpowers are awesome, we all agree. And the main way they gained acclaim is through comic books. Recently I read Suicide Risk, a comic centred around a world in which the heroes are loosing to the villains, and the cops are being caught in the crossfire. The story itself centres around Leo Winters, a police officer whose partner is wounded in a battle against the villains. He later finds the designer drug that is giving so many people powers, and decides to take it himself to get revenge for his partner.

    

    So, the premise of the story is revenge with superpowers. I won’t say anymore on it because I don’t want to spoil the story itself. However, the picture below is unavoidable (SPOILER ALERT!). It is the splash page used when Leo first gains his powers, and it becomes a pivot point of the first issue. Firstly, it is the second of a two-page spread, so the reveal happens before we even read the first page of the two. That, on its own, can cause a bit of the surprise to wear off before a reader has experienced the narrative happening on the previous page. 

    But the splash redeems itself because it isn’t the reveal that’s important in this particular moment, rather the resolution of tension set up in the previous panels is what the narrative was working towards. While only the splash page is shown below, the preceding pages show a very tense situation between Leo and the drug dealers, resulting in a gunpoint drug deal and everyone being curious as to what powers he would receive. And then suddenly his body lights up with electricity.

    I realize I promised I wouldn’t spoil the story, so I won’t anymore. The context of the splash panel was necessary to understand that it isn’t a usual splash reveal since there isn’t actually a page flip included. It draws the eye before the other panels in the 2 page spread, and that is both a strength and a weakness. Its a strength in that it resolves the tension of the narrative situation first, but it falls flat in letting the revelation of his power be a surprise. 

   

All in all, splash panels have been used to reveal superpowers in multiple comics, and in Suicide Risk it happens with a bit of trepidation on the part of the reader, until they dive deeper into the story and find out that the single splash of power was just the tip of the iceberg for Leo Winters!