Daily Comic Panel Slow Read #14

From Beowulf | Art by David Rubin, words by Santiago Garcia
Page 172–173

I thought this would make for an interesting daily exercise for 2017. The idea is to slow down my reading and just look deeply at one particular panel of a comic for about 15 minutes in order to really study its construction.

• This is one of many double page spreads in this stunning adaption of the classic Old English poem. Rubin re-contextualizes the epicness of one of the oldest epics in classic literature by presenting it in terms we now associate with being “epic”: scale, noise, violence, style. He does this by using a modern visual language derived from cinema and even comics themselves. You can imagine the slow-motion leap — like a scene from a Zack Snyder film — as Beowulf plunges his sword into the dragon’s head. The monster itself is like a modern-day Kaiju with its massive size and deeply ridged scales. The splatter of blood and fire looks like it is stopped in time, as if we’ve freeze-framed on this moment (a film effect which of course is an effect that comes naturally in comics).
• The “CLANG” sound effect is an epic piece of graphic design on its own. It hangs in the arc of Beowulf’s leap, but the way it grows in size from left to right simulates the reverberation from the sound of the sword striking armored scale. Beowulf himself is hanging on the edge of the sword, rattling along with the sound. The C looks like it is getting penetrated by the sword along with the dragon’s head. The sound goes on well past the edge of the scene as the last letter barely stays on the page.
• The dragon’s head diagonally occupies about a third of the image while the CLANG, along with the wing, spreads across the other 2/3 of the page. These are all massive objects whose scale is explained to us by the placement of the two human figures. The swordsman on the right is almost stepping backwards out of the scene and seems so helpless and useless in the battle the way Rubin isolates him in the corner.
• Rubin is not afraid to use color in bold ways. The yellow of the fire is intensely bright. So much so that its glow is cast upon the sound effect as well as the underside of the wing.