The Choice of Moment in Batman: Year One

In Making Comics, Scott McCloud outlines the five kinds of choices that communicating through comics require. One of these choices in particular, the "choice of moment," was a major focal point in my paper about condensed storytelling in comics. To date, one of the finest examples of condensed storytelling I've experienced lies in Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One. The page in question was used previously in my annotated comics page assignment, where I did manage to slip in some discussion on condensed narrative and choice of moment. However, this blog seems like the perfect platform to provide a deeper look into the choice of moment present in the origin story of Batman: Year One.

Page 21 opens with a scene of Bruce Wayne sitting with his parents in some kind of theatre. The text boxes drop the time of the event (eighteen years ago) and the name of the play that they attended (The Mask of Zorro). This panel is a wide shot showing a large number of audience members but focusing in on the family of three. It fulfills the role of establishing the family dynamic and presenting a once-happy Bruce in his childhood.

What follows is a scene transition to (what readers can assume is) outside the theatre. The man with the gun is introduced accompanied by a small description via text box. Within two panels, the characters and central conflict of the scene have been established.  

By the third and fourth panels, readers have already reached the climax of the scene. Both panels, featuring the murders of Tom and Martha Wayne respectively, are squared and coloured predominantly in white. The eye is drawn immediately to these center panels upon flipping the page, alerting the reader of what's to come and allowing them to fill in the blanks at their own pace.

The next panel is once that completely bleeds into the gutter, showing Bruce kneeling besides his parents as their killer gets away. This point in the page is meant to give the reader a chance to breathe and take in the previous events, reflecting upon the plot thus far and perhaps ponder the possibilities of what could come next. From a purely narrative perspective, what's important to note is that the killer escapes and Bruce is distraught over his parents' deaths.

The final panel is an extreme close-up of Bruce's face with a focus on his eyes. The text box makes note of "all sense" leaving his life, and both the angry look in Bruce's eyes and the subtle change in colour help drive that point home. The story has come full-circle in a sense with Bruce starting on his path towards becoming Batman. This event was the turning point in his life which would eventually lead him to dawn the mask and cape, and it is thoroughly communicated to the reader in one neat page. This is thanks to a number of smart decisions made by Miller and Mazzucchelli, not the least of which was the choice of moment when constructing the narrative. 

Written By: Andrew Masse 

Works Cited:

McCloud, Scott. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. Avon, 2006. 

Panel Layout and Colour in The Sculptor by Scott McCloud

The Sculptor is Scott McCloud’s first work of fiction in twenty-years and is a great display of the amount of thought that went into creating this book. It focuses on David Smith who is a young sculptor that lost his parents, has no money or job, and was recently dumped by his girlfriend. One day, Death, in the shape of his great Uncle Harry, makes a deal with David to give him his childhood dream: to sculpt anything with his bare hands. But now David has only 200 days to live his life and create his artwork.

McCloud uses the two colours of black and blue, and places his panels in a very unpredictable layout.

From the first chapter of the book, it is obvious that David is upset about something, but what exactly is causing the sadness is explained throughout the book. Using a blue hue from beginning to end only reinforces David's feelings and thoughts. In McCloud's other famous comic, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, he says, “the differences between black-and-white and colour comics are vast and profound, affecting every level of the reading experience” (192). Not only does the blue tone reinforce David's sadness, it forces the reader to have sympathy for him and makes him/her feel "blue". Also, McCloud uses the black to emphasize the characters he wants the reader to focus on and uses the blue to make everything else seem faded, like the example to the left.

McCloud rarely uses the strict 3X3 grid of panels in his comic; his layout is very unpredictable. He uses the sporadic layout that's on the right to give a feeling of uneasiness and confusion like David is feeling at the party; this panel arrangement also allows the reader to choose which reading path to take. According to Jess Cohn, "[w]hen comics layout ceases to obey the rule of a grid, the reader's eyes become free to move about in other directions ... Alternatively, some artists ... allow the reader to choose multiple reading paths" (52). In this example, it doesn't matter which direction your eyes go in because the panels don't tell the story in any sequence.

It is clear, however, that McCloud strategically places the panels on the page. In the example on the left, McCloud uses a bleeding panel, which is "...when a panel runs off the edge of the page..." (McCloud, Understanding Comics 103). If he didn't put the third panel where it is, the sensation of falling wouldn't be felt. A couple pages prior to this one, David was explaining a crazy dream he had where everyone on the streets of Manhattan was an aspiring artist like him; the ground was covered in ice and the city started tilting which caused everyone to slide into a void of nothingness. Since McCloud put the third panel at the bottom of the page and made it "bleed" off the edge, he created the effect of the cartoons literally falling into the void.

- Kylie Jamieson

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Cohn, Jesse. "Mise-en-Page: A Vocabulary of Page Layouts." Teaching the Graphic Novel. Ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick. New York: Modern Language Association, 2009. 44-57.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.