I read recently read the first volume of a comic called Iland that I had picked up about a year and a half ago. It's a quick read since vol 1 is really more like an extended first issue but I found it to be a pretty sophisticated book in the way it tells its story. I bought it at Gosh comics when I was in London but you can read it
online here
I'm just gonna highlight some parts I thought were particularly nice
This is part of the first opening pages. The background is in color but the characters are in BW. This is as decompressed as two pages can get but I think the comic sets the easy going tone of the story well here. The way the rhythm of the dialogue is accentuated by the paneling is very chefs kiss.
The two boys are shown in two panels each and the way the page is laid out, your eyes are drawn to the bottom right. The panel the boys appear in are even overlaid and infringe on the space of the panel the girl appears in. The girl appears again below but as far away as possible from the focus of the art. The story actually focuses on her but I think this was a really interesting way of depicting the main character of the issue considering the events that follow.
It's more evident in the later pages but Tsouknidas is working digitally. his textures, colors and line work emulate traditional art without overdoing it. His gestures really bring it all together. I'm loving the choice to keep the characters in greyscale and background in color
In the story, the boys end up not jumping into the water. The girl who was off focus jumps and becomes the central character from here on. She sees something in the water and decides to do a deep dive. I don't really want to get into the story much since I dont want to spoil it and I think plot is pretty much overemphasized when people talk about comics. I do wanna talk about how effective the creators are at telling a story and these two pages do a really good job of it. Each panel is so purposeful in driving action forward and presenting it in such an appealing way. Just look
In the first similarly sized panels and equally oriented panels, the character stays central while the environment changes and builds focus of direction. In the 4th panel, the character rises and at the far end of the panel we see a location of interest (the mystery door). In the 5th panel, we see the character exit the water the decided to explore deeply in the 1st panel. This is really good page structure! In the last panel we see a resolution to the goal presented in the first panel as driven by the previous page (which I forgot to take a pic and Im too lazy to go and add it now) But now we have a new interest! This drives the overall story forward for us as a reader!
Lets see this work again! In the first panel we see the character start their journey to our goal (the door/light we see). It also re-situates us. The 2nd panel achieves the same thing so one of these is a little extraneous but Im more than happy to see a comic not strip down every page to purely essential panels as I think this is too slavishly followed in western comics.
In the middle panels we see the character become interested in opening the door and struggling to do so. This is the basis of storytelling. The atom of conventional storytelling. The character wants something and is finding difficulty in doing so.
You might say "hey why are you bringing this up its literally like 2 panels." Yeah thats true! But think of storytelling as a pyramid The overall story isnt going to be interesting to you if the chapters arent interesting by themselves and those chapters arent gonna be interesting if those pages arent interesting and those pages arent interesting if the panels dont do stuff thats interesting. Panels that depict the character deciding to do something and then struggling to do so in the next panel is a building block of good storytelling in comics.
Also note how the story is effectively driven by the last panel! The character has succeed in opening the door and resolving our most recent problem. But now we are given a new interesting nugget of info. In this secretive cavern there is already someone there, but there off panel so we are left wondering who they are. This lingering question innately makes us want to continue the story and turn the page.
One other thing that makes this comic work so well and specially in these two pages is the artist's focus on planes so clarify action. A lot of times with greyscale comics, you might see comics accidentally muddying up their work by using greys that are too close in value. Tsouknidas avoids all that by paring it down to 3 values essentially. One midscale grey in addition to black and white. As you can see, the character's skin is depicted without any grey whenever he background is grey and background elements typically are blocked out in large swaths of black with some some strokes providing texture and additional form.
Anyway, this is a good comic and I wouldnt be surprised to see this creative team do something super interesting down the road
