 |
| Cover A by Marcus To |
With her new Savage series, Senior Editor Heather Antos has followed through on an earlier promise to give any series she oversees a completely different look and feel from its predecessors. This can make it difficult to unpack a new series, and review the first issue on its own merits. So I thought I might try to review this new Savage #1 by sneaking up on it. You know, like a hunter, sneaking up on an unsuspecting-but-vicious dinosaur.
LETTERING
When we read comics, we try to hear the characters' voices in our heads. What we can't hear is what words in a sentence the speaker is stressing. So usually, a letterer will make those words bold to help us hear the way a person talks. Letterer Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou does more than that. He enlarges some words, and gives them color.
In Savage #1, Hassan using the colors red and green. You may notice as you read that both Kevin Sauvage and his manager utter both red and green words. I'm not sure why he uses those colors, and what they signify. Perhaps, in later issues, his rationale will become clear.
Or maybe he was just coloring this issue around Christmas-time.
When young Kevin is being interviewed for Teen Zine, his mind drifts back to growing up in the Faraway, when he battled dinosaurs, and every day was a struggle for survival. As you can see, the narrative box is colored in, and given irregular, or even jagged edges.
There are more little tricks Hassan uses for dialogue and narrative, in addition to the big sound effects. If you look closely at the narrative boxes and dialogue balloons above, you'll notice quite a few different techniques he uses to help us hear the characters' intonations. They all help draw me into this very real, and at the same time rather surreal--story. Overall, I have to say I'm very impressed with his lettering in this issue.
Dragon Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment