Comic Art Tuesday: RUMBLE!

I break down my thinking behind actual comic pages

In the last issue of Wonder Woman: Evolution, Diana faces off against a version of the villain Silver Swan that has been "evolved" into a winged victory version of Diana.

Which, of course, is another nod to Diana's ancient greek roots.

I went with a double page spread so as to give a sense of scale for the environment, but also because I like using them for these kinds of 'big" cinematic moments.

I tiled panels 2 thorugh 6 over top of that borderless panel one, so as to keep that first panel as wide open as possible.

The fist panel is designed to be read from left to right, with a series of actions that could be read as "panels" within the scene. You can see the path the two warriors are bouncing along as they fight. I wanted to use it to build a forward momentum for the rest of the fight, and having them scrap across two pages does the trick here.

The environment is based on old nuclear testing facilities, which gives a ton of character to the scene. I love drawing this kind of background, with it's grimy and rusted equipment.

The rest of the fight is meant to be push violently along the bottom of the page, till the end when Diana launches Swan/Diana up and out of the scene. So, it reads a little like a loop. Your eye can go around the two pages, reading the fight backwards or forwards.

It doesn't matter since narratively all we have here is a big old rumble.

I do try to show some character differences in the fight styles, with Swan/Diana fighting with raw power and real Diana fighting like a smart, battle hardened warrior. Check out the panels above to see what I mean.

More next week!

Best,

Mike