Space and Time in Comics | Hedra | Strip Panel Naked
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
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Jesse Lonergan's HEDRA is a pretty remarkable comic that's also a wonderful mediation on spatial relationships on the comic page. In this one shot, Lonergan takes us on a journey through both literal space and time in the story, but also space and time as it relates to the medium of comics. In this episode, I wanted to take a look at what Lonergan shows on the page, and what it reveals about the way comics work.
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This channel is so underrated. Maybe the channel name is causing some efect with the algorithm
haha I'm sure it is. It was my partner doing a play on words of the Strip Jack Naked card game before we realised maybe I'd make more of these things...! Thanks for checking it out!
Much like comics, the channels success will rely on fans spreading the word.
I'm sorry, I say this with all the respect in the world, but.... I do not consider this to be the case. This wonderful channel is not underrated. That is not the right word. Underrated implies that it was seen and its value was not recognized. I just think it lacks promotion. If it reaches more people, the right people, genuinely interested in sequential art: they would in no way underestimate the incredible effort and dedication you put into this channel and its excellent content. For my part, I recommended it to all my friends and I keep recommending it to every person who loves comics like me, because I feel that your channel is a magnificent work of study and analysis. Congratulations and success!
As usual, Strip Panel Naked does the impossible and shows the herculean efforts it takes to be subtle. Observant, smart and charming!
Thanks!!
It’s almost like if the author treats the pages as chessboards for the story, which they actually are if we think about it. So cool episode mate, great work!
Thanks Alex!
Fantastic as usual man, thanks! One thing that struck me as you were discussing this is how he eschews the standard 3X3 setup for this entirely. It's almost as if he decided or realized that in order to tell the story, he needed more panels, more delineations. The story couldn't be told in that format, or at least not as succinctly.
Yeah I think this is a good case of formalism being very integrated into the story, certainly, which elevates everything here. The exploration of form feels very tied into the exploration shown in the story, which is why it works well (for me).
Just wanted to say my teacher is Klaus Janson and you have his stamp of approval!
What?!
@@StripPanelNaked yeah dude! I showed him you’re channel and he said it’s a great learning tool!
Jesse has been one of my favorite artists for a year or two now. I've been wondering when he'd get a spotlight on SPN, I'm glad it finally happened!
It took a while to figure this one out, and also figure out how to explain it haha. Glad you enjoyed :)
picked this book up because I read about it in PanelxPanel so thanks again!
Yeah as you can probably tell, one of my top comics from 2020!
5:33 this set up made me think of a scene where optical illusions could create something mesmerizing.
It's a really interesting exercise, and there's loads of great examples Nick has on his website, too.
Great video. I love how you present your points as interpretations of what you see and not as "facts". It seems a little thing to point out but I really apreciate it, I feel that a lot of essayist (in comics, movies or whatever) present their opinions as the only option, even saying things like "the author wants to do this and you should interpret it that way".
Thanks!
Yeah I think realistically there are things we can accept as facts within comics -- panels exist, they contain time, etc -- but a lot is an interpretation based on the work. I always like to clarify (too much) that what works for me won't always work for everyone else, haha
What a great breakdown! Finally complex discussion of the actual medium of comics and its advantages in relation to storytelling. Love it!
Thanks Sebastian! Glad you dug it.
What an incredible example of using space and time in comics !
I find the topic of grid manipulation and using the fundamentals of the medium to your advantage something extremely interesting.
Nice one Hass !
Thanks--!
The last page in particular is really cool, The panel in the upper sections not being divided into panels, and then the panel of the character's head, gives the bottom panels of the landscape feel like it's the character scanning the landscape. But overall, I feel like the approach throughout the other examples feels more like drawing attention to its formal elements without doing anything significant with those elements. Like, I don't read the image of the man and the tractor or of the skeleton as different units of time, I just read them as one image with a grid overlaid on top. Though I will say, the top section on that page works well, with the nukes slowly receding and the destruction caused by them overtaking the page. Like, this bit makes me see the value of that approach, but I feel like it was used in places where it didn't necessarily add to the storytelling. I don't know, maybe it's just me?
We’re all going to make different connections for sure. I’d say it’s hard from the small sampling I used to see how some of the formal aspects impact the story more directly (and I’d argue they do), but the story is really a lot about time, connection and space, which is what the formal elements of the comic explore, too. If you haven’t checked it out I’d definitely recommend it! But it’s also not going to work for everyone.
@@StripPanelNaked Yeah, I was definitely thinking it might just be me, these are all subjective experiences after all. I should read the book, it definitely seems like the kind of thing I'm into. I'll check it out when I can!
I loved this comic and I think the magazine size really serves Jesse's art well. Great analysis, Hass!
Thanks James! I need to get a copy of the big magazine sized one--!
1:12 This spread reminds me of the opening page in Sir Arthur Benton.
Thanks for another wonderful video! I hadn’t heard of this book, but now I’m definitely going to check it out. Another aspect of depicting time that I find unique to comics is how the reader can influence how much each panel represents a unit of time. The creator can manipulate the form and content to direct our pace and focus, but we can always choose to linger on an image.
Yeah-- panels arguably contain "time", but that doesn't ever translate to actual reading time, which is always an interesting point!
i am so happy to see you again. great vid!
Thanks--!
This channel is so amazing, aplause from brazil.
Thanks Bruno!
Just picked this comic up. And really liked it. Glad I found your channel. I dont know anyone else talking about this story
Thanks--!
What a terrific analysis of a terrific comic by a terrific channel. Incisive, insightful and absolutely inspiring; thank you!
Thanks!!
This video is mindblowing. I always thought about a comic panel as a picture of a moment. In this comic you really can see duration, movement and plays through space and time. Sorry if it looks obvious but I find it amazing. Keep with the good work!
Yeah it's definitely that-- it's just an image at the end of the day, but arguably any image contains some sense of time in it, regardless of it is in a comic or not. The power of comics I suppose is putting two images that both contain time next to each other and having that time also interact (which is what so much of Hedra is about)! Really interesting to think about (for me--!)
I am so incredibly happy that I stumbled upon your channel. I want to be able to create a graphic novel one day and your teachings are so valuable! Thanks a lot for these highly informative videos.
Thanks Shajeeha! Glad you're finding them useful!
Love your stuff. Keep it up.
Thanks!
Well done!
❤️
This is Q U A L I T Y content
Thanks!
Awesome breakdown, man! Thanks for all the great content on here.
Thanks Magnus!
I really hope you end up doing a deep dive on Step by Bloody Step
9:00 just wow
I think having so many panels gives the page an interesting pace and rythim but i feel like if the tractor had been one big panel or the last row had been one long panel it would stand out even more
The format of the comic works so heavily on these heavily gridded structures- there’s part of that with the tractor being so early on you can see Lonergan not wanting to break any basic structures.
It’s called the kuleshov effect
Looks very nice.
By the second example, the page & panel design have already had an effect on me. I looked at the section of the two ships approaching the planet both as a whole and as those individual moments, as you note. This 35-panel design fragments what we see as a whole, but when we assemble the fragments into a whole, how "artificial" is that? We might assume relationships to be true.
By calling attention to time in this way, I questioned what I saw--are those ships actually approaching the planet at the same time or at different times? I've not read the comic (but now will), but I feel a tension in what I'm seeing that's related to time, a question of what I think I see. Even if the arrivals are simultaneous, I still have that doubt about what I'm actually seeing.
A focus on time (or space or whatever else) in this way can force us to be more attentive to time, to question our assumptions about the relationship of time among panels.
This is a good example of what comics can do better than perhaps other media---we can see different perspectives at the same time or in the same scene or page. We can see them as separate things or as a whole, with whatever relationships that implies.
Also, you do another great analysis pretty succinctly. There's a lot to tease out of these pages, which you do.
Even the color choices are fascinating. For example, in the first example, the spread is "bookended" with the dark panels--the darkness of the moment when the bombs fall and the darkness of death. Then what you have what's between those dark moments.
@@GaryBeason yeah! Very interesting. The colour coding and bookending on that first spread is a good point, too. This is why I wanted to mention the lack of dialogue being important too, I think we’d generally be less likely to make these connections and implications when text is on the page, as often we use that as the starting point- and with enough context we might not make those connections. Overall just an interesting comic to unpick and see how comics work, and how we can make comics interact with readers in different ways.
@@StripPanelNaked I enjoyed A Land Called Tarot for its wordless storytelling. Sometimes the meaning of a scene was vague, but I don’t think that should always be the goal-precise, explicitly stated meaning. (Now that I’ve read Hedra, I think it has a certain wonderful vagueness.) It seems a number of others have made wordless comics over the years. After Tarot, I started looking for them, and there are many. I still have Jon McNaught on my to-read list.
I think what you miss here is that smaller panels are "fake" panels. We intuitively understand that they're actually just one large panel with "fake" division, despite the grid, and that affects flow of the page.
They're fake in that it's the same image being broken up (especially on the first spread) but I think I talk about that in how it creates a different instance of time by breaking it up, which changes the flow of the page, for sure.
@@StripPanelNaked What I mean is that we read them differently from one large panel - but also differently from genuine 15 panels. It's completely unique.
Hmm interesting nice video.
splitting up the page in so many tiny little panels has, more often than not the opposite effect of creating time instances.
it fractures the reading and the pace of a story. the reader will only look at the whole image after recognizing that no meaningful information is displayed in the tiny panel that doesn't even fit a decent drawing in it. needlessly cracked and broken into tiny pieces. does. adding. a. full stop. after. every. word. change. how. you. read. the. whole. book? or is one well-placed punctuation not more powerful?
"the reader will only look at the whole image after recognizing that no meaningful information is displayed in the tiny panel that doesn't even fit a decent drawing in it." -- that's really interesting to me, and maybe it shows how different readers engage with pages in different ways, but one of the key features (to me) of how a comic page works is that nothing is really hidden on the page. When we turn a page we see everything at once, and then look at each panel specifically. In that regard it's hard to hide anything on a page unless via a page turn, because the whole spread is in our viewpoint at once.
But I think adding a full stop after every word does change the way you read that sentence! Certainly at first-- arguably you might move to ignore it after a while, but that sort of drawing-attention-to-itself-formalism has a role in the kind of comic you're making, if that's the intention. Adding a full stop to every word might be useful in a novel in which you're trying to get the reader to notice something about the construction of a sentence, or something like that. Hedra is very much a comic about its own formalism.
@@StripPanelNaked yeah I guess you are right, maybe i got carried away by the prospect of an entire book in this format.
Anyway love your work.
To me this looks like *garbage* story telling.
The tiny panels with the mushroom clouds looked like symbols/icons for nuclear explosions. Lack of detail surrounding the explosions, made it so it wasn't clear if the panels depicted one explosion or six. Also the tiny panels of the nuclear explosions made them seem quite banal. Almost like they happened far away or long ago...
Then there's the panels with those random arcs. Are they supposed to represent missiles traveling in space? Again they look like icons. It's all pretty underwhelming.
Then there's the image of a ruined buildings that's been unnecessarily chopped into tiny panels. What was the point of that? So that you can preserve the grid? It certainly wasn't to slow down the reader. No reader will read that image panel by panel. Rather everyone will ignore the white grid at first glance.
Then we have another chopped up image of a farmer with his tractor out in in a dust storm. We do not know how this image relates to the previous images in any way. For all we know it could be a century after the nukes dropped and on the other side of the planet for all we know.
And the final image is of a scattered bones of a human skeleton. Again we don't know how it relates to the previous images. Perhaps its been another hundred years since the last image, and the farmer is now dead and buried...
Or perhaps the picture of the skeleton is part of the previous image, and its trying to depict the farmer standing above the remains of giant mutant that died in the long forgotten nuclear war. Either way, there is no way to tell...
You can tell that i despise this kind of storytelling. Also, the color palette is ugly.
Haha, to each their own. What works for one reader won't work for another. As I said in another comment on here, part of what Hedra is doing is creating something that is discussing the form itself, so the story side of it is also a slave to the interrogating-the-medium side of it. The bit where you say about the skeleton that there is no way to tell is all the part of the magic of this, too. It's an exploration of time and space -- both within the story and within the medium itself. But as I say, what works for me is not always going to work for someone else!
The color palette looks nice to me. Not really a valid criticism... but I agree that the placement of the beginning panels with the nukes does look very strange and like it doesn't follow a storyline
Really great comic with a lot of ways of reading it with its experimental formating. One of my favorite ways to read is with music, one of them being with the soundtrack from the silent episode of Bojack Horseman.
th-cam.com/video/JD1XgoHOhFQ/w-d-xo.html
If you ever try it out, let me know what you think of how it syncs