The Visitor #5 Spotlight: Penciling & Inking

 

The Visitor #5 Cover B by Caspar Wijngaard

In The Visitor, Soo Lee may have created one of the most stunning characters ever. His mask shows a mix of interesting shapes and lines. Combined with the hood, all those shapes and lines mesmerize.

 

Her design for The Visitor doesn't stop at a mask. His black and purple uniform and grayish black jacket offer a multitude of ways to capture shadow and reflect light. Such an outfit makes us wonder what people and culture created it, and why.

Soo Lee displays an excellent grasp of perspective in panel after panel. Consider this one in which The Visitor pulls on the rope to make sure his knots don't come loose.

In terms of composition, Soo Lee tends to respect panel boundaries. But each page is different. Sometimes the panels touch, sometimes they don't. Occasionally they aren't square or rectangular, or a character will break out of his or her panel. 

One interesting feature is how she sometimes insets a panel within another. This gives us a close-up look at the character, while communicating the larger scene.

 

In The Visitor #5, her human characters sometimes seem less detailed and nuanced than in previous issues. It makes me wonder if she spent so much time on the buildings--all that structural detail--as well as her fascinating Visitor, that she had less time to devote to her people. 

Nonetheless, her characters show emotion well. You can see the woman's shock, and the other characters' concern for her, in this panel.

 

Returning to composition and perspective, consider this two-panel shot. You might wonder why she separated the panels, as they show a little more of the same scene. But then you notice that Soo Lee is also separating the panels in time.

What I took for a plane in the first panel is actually revealed to be a bird in the second. 

Note also the background of leaves hanging from the branches of a tree. That sort of embedded panel composition helps us feel as if we are in the forest with The Visitor.

 

 

When our gal Talia Dauber, the United Nations Security Expert, encounters The Visitor, he knocks her to the ground. Then we look down on them. We see the Visitor walk away while Talia recovers.

Is Soo Lee showing us what the bird is seeing from its perch on a tree branch?

 

Interesting characters. Startling perspectives. Classy page layouts. In The Visitor #5, Soo Lee truly presents us with a feast for the eyes.

Dragon Dave