Scott Koblish

The Weapon Issue 3 Countdown at 6 days!

I think issue 3 turned out to be my overall favorite issue of the Weapon. It's the issue where I really felt like my work was all coming together as a whole - the layout, anatomy, sorytelling all seemed to start to really jell in a way I was happily suprised to see.

The first page of issue 3 was a real bitch. As I think I mentioned earlier, we reduced the page count on issues 2, 3 and 4 (rightly so, I think. It caused no damage to the story and resulted in picking up the pace a bit). Fred did an absolutely great job of condensing on issues 3 and 4. He condensed pages 1 and most of page 2 into the first page, which left me in a bit of a bind because I wanted to make sure the first page had a great shot of Tommy before all the exposition started. But this is a real case of necessity being the mother of a invention and of real improvement - Here's the page layout I had as the initial first page of issue 3-



And here's the second page layout for issue 3- Kind of dull and straightforward - they tell the story, but with really very little in the way of pinache-





The layout for the revised first page had to include all of that information, plus all of the dialogue that had to occur between Tommy and the Lin Kuei. But I REALLY wanted to have Tommy big on the page - I kept fooling around with layout after layout and realized that the big square of Tommy leaping down off of the telescope wasn't going to work, I just had no room to have him jump down and THEN establish that he was surrounded by all of these yelling loons - so I took the action of him leaping out. I broke up all the horizontal panels with the Lin Kuei yelling into little overlapping panels and it turned out waaaaaay more interesting visually, as well as more useful, because now I could leave a very large block of space for text without it seeming unnatural. Way better page, due completely to the necessity of combining down information.





The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that I took out the establishment of place (all the backgrounds - the establishment of *where* they are), but I liked that it was slightly disorienting at first, and by page 4 - (you'll see those of you that buy it) it opens up to a 3/4 page establishing shot of the room that houses the giant telescope, stopping the pace of the storytelling completely so that Tommy can asses the dire situation he's in, make a quick joke and create a real pause before an action sequence that lasts about 8 pages.

posted by Scott Koblish @ 12:20 AM