12th May 2022, 7:33 AM
A question for those of you who have read old school superhero comics - have you ever noticed how much the characters talk when they’re in the middle of some action that, were it happening in motion, would not give them enough time to say all that dialogue? In comics, dialogue can be used not just to convey plot information to the reader, but also to convey how much time is passing. If a character is saying something out loud while performing an action, it follows that the action must take at least as long to perform as it took to speak that amount of dialogue.
In the early Marvel comics of the 1960s and 1970s, this would often be taken to absurd lengths, as characters spoke dialogue to inform the reader of not only what was happening in that moment, but also to fill them in on events that had led up to it - all while the character was throwing a punch!
This kitschy element is one of the things that makes those comics so much fun to read, and it was the inspiration for this page.
I knew I wanted to start this issue with an image of Steamroller Man - he is the star of the story, after all - but I also like to have the first page of each issue set the stage for the reader. My idea here was to play with the idea of jamming way too much dialogue into an action that would be happening relatively fast. This called for an action image of Steamroller Man and Night Knight falling down the trap-door chute from last issue. I made the dialogue purposefully bloated and blatantly expository, even going so far as to start with “WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!!” Hopefully this clues the reader in to the fact that this is all intentionally over-the-top.
I’m never sure whether anyone but me will get these allusions - hence my addition of the final “plenty of time to sum everything up” line, so hopefully the reader understands this is all intentionally tongue-in-cheek. It was a challenge to compose the figures and the word balloons in a harmonious way that leads the eye around the page, from top left to bottom right.
For those of you wondering why there was a two month delay between this post and the last, I’ve been dealing with a lot of real-life stuff recently that has sapped my energy and motivation to work on the comic. Any notion of a regular posting schedule or a buffer of completed pages has gone out the window for now. I’m just going to post each page as I finish it. I definitely do not want to leave this story unfinished, but I’ve been second-guessing my every creative decision as I’ve tried to claw my enthusiasm back to get into my old routine of working on this every day. At times it feels like trying to get a boulder rolling again - or a steamroller, I guess.
I don’t really even feel like I have the energy to do the social media thing at the moment, but if you do want to follow me, my links are all up on my Linktree.
Thanks for reading, sorry for the depressing ending to this post. Hopefully I’ll have the next page up soon!