Comics Do It Better: Becky Cloonan's Wolves
Comics can do things traditional writing cannot. After all, humans were pairing words with pictures long before even the Greeks carved up the Parthenon Marbles, which, if you think about it, is a form of ancient comic storytelling. The artwork of a comic can accentuate the tone of the script, captions allow the reader to access the thoughts of the characters, and reader pacing is manipulated by the spacing between panels.
Never read a comic? Never fear. Becky Cloonan’s “Wolves” is a short and sweet introduction to the world of sequential art. Although Cloonan has written for Marvel Comics, her self-published comic book is a dark, expressive foray into a simple but compelling fantasy world, not a blow-stuff-up-while-wearing-spandex superhero comic. This short twenty-page comic in which the readers follow the story of a hunter on a mission that will change his life syncs gorgeous black and white artwork with a memorable script.
In only using black and white (and greys in between), Cloonan’s artwork emphasizes the tone of the story: dark, sharp, stark. With the black and white limitation, she dynamically uses white space to tell her tale. The shadows, a natural result of the lack of color, create a fantasy world that is primeval and melancholy. The forest world of the hunter is depicted as chilling and harsh by severe diagonal lines throughout.
A combination unique to comics of first-person captions with third-person artwork always thrills me. It makes comics such as these so personal yet comprehensive. The readers can understand the feelings and thoughts of the characters, but exciting techniques such as dramatic irony can still be expressed. In “Wolves,” we read the hunter’s anguished thoughts through the captions, yet still have a view detached enough to see this anguish expressed in his posture, eyes, and proximity to other characters.
Cloonan rarely uses dialogue, but reveals the depth of the characters through first-person captions and compelling full-panel close ups. Attempting to express character emotion through a pair of eyes filling the panel is risky. A bad artist will not be able to convey the emotion with a set of 2D irises, but Cloonan pulls it off.
Cloonen’s panels are expressive as well. Square panels enclose events happening in real time, rounded panels, the past. The space between panels, called “gutters” by comic writers, are used to express leaps in time and control the reader’s pace. Cloonan effectively uses the gutters, increasing space between panels to draw out a scene and pushing panels closer together to increase tension on the page.
“Wolves” employs sophisticated techniques unique to comic books. So if you’ve never read a comic, just know that basically, comics can do it better.
