Static action in comics.

[Courtnall6]

I was looking at comic previews at CBR when I came a cross a page of the Fantastic Four. In one of the panels The Thing is punching someone up into the air. This panel perfectly illustrates one of my major gripes about most modern comic artists. There was no movement in Ben's action what so ever. I know what your thiking..."Uhhh C6...it's a comic book not a cartoon!"... well yes, however, artists in the past have made action sequences on a page come to life! Kirby, Romita, Buscema, Byrne, Frenz, Simonson, and Perez are just a few names of guys that do/did just that. With a few simple additional lines they were able to make that punch, kick, hammer toss, shield throw, etc look like it's moving in panel or across the page. To get a better understanding (using my feeble skills compared to the greats listed above) I edited the Thing panel to make it more dynamic with motion and less static.

Original Panel: Boring and motionless. It looks like a photographer is standing behind Ben with a high speed camera snapping away and then decided this pic would be "the shot". Also no impact flash or sound effect. Honestly it looks more like Ben just threw him rather than punched him.

Edited Panel: Here I added motion lines (are those words taboo these days?) to Ben's swing and another one to the villain arcing up and away. I then added an impact flash and a sound effect. Muuuuch better! It looks like Ben actually punched him with a mighty arcing swing that delivered some serious damage. It looks like you're watching the battle unfold in the here and now and not some photograph after the fact. It also looks like you're actaully reading a comic book. "GASP!"

Spoiler

[herodad1]

totally agree c6.motion lines add SOOO much.i wish the characters in freedom force had them too.

[Epimethee]

Classic motion lines can also remove from the mood and believability of the more realistic comics (which Fantastic Four isn't), so it's absence here can still be defended as an artistic choice. However, motion lines a an easy shortcut ? if you don't use them, you need to work much harder to compensate.

Here, the panel would have worked better if, primo, the inking and colouring had been more nervous, secundo, the Thing and his adversary had been positioned left and right respectively, and tertio, if the enemy had been shown at the moment of impact rather at a much later moment (which instead puts the emphasis on how far Ben can send him).

HeroDad: I'd have loved this in Freedom Force too!

[daglob]

Unreality and exaggeration are all part of the super-hero experience. Comic artist all have an assortment of techniques to make the unbelivable at leat believable enought to suspend your disbeif lon g enough to enjoy the comic.

The layout need to be different too, and allow the action to flow from one point to another (basically, make the panel a little wider or make it narrower and move the point of view away from Ben), and perhaps exaggerate Ben's pose a little more. The inker was skrimping on ink too (yeah, yeah, I kmnow-with the new coloring techniques it isn't necessary to do a lot of shading and feathering-it still looks like a coloring book).

I miss Jack Kriby.

And Gil Kane...

and Curt Swan...

and...

[Courtnall6]

believability of the more realistic comics

Here's the main problem for me really. In a book where you have any kind of super power...believability and realism go bye bye.

However, motion lines a an easy shortcut ? if you don't use them, you need to work much harder to compensate.

All that extra hard work is pointless to me. I rarely see any difference between one artist's photographic action shot to the next. It all looks frozen in time. The colourist can use all the Photoshop tricks he/she wants to convey movement...in the end it gets all muddy and ruins the artwork of the penciler and inker.

[Epimethee]

believability of the more realistic comics

Here's the main problem for me really. In a book where you have any kind of super power...believability and realism go bye bye.

Yet, the evolution of super-heroes comics from the '60s through at least the '90s was chiefly concerned with increasing ?realism? (in an obviously fundamentally unrealistic setting). The problem I see with motion lines is that they introduce noise, as do panel border or speech bubbles ? usually useful noise, but still noise. You need to evaluate the trade-off in context, to find the solution appropriate to create the suspension of disbelief.

Would I use motion lines if I were to draw FF? Probably. So in this case, I disagree with the FF artist's choice. However, for something potentially more anchored to the illusion of reality (say, Swamp Thing or V for Vendetta) a more "realistic" approach could be beneficial. Speaking of V for Vendetta or Watchmen, without looking at the issues (l lent them to my girlfriend), I'd guess motion lines are used quite sparingly.

However, motion lines a an easy shortcut ? if you don't use them, you need to work much harder to compensate.

All that extra hard work is pointless to me. I rarely see any difference between one artist's photographic action shot to the next. It all looks frozen in time. The colourist can use all the Photoshop tricks he/she wants to convey movement...in the end it gets all muddy and ruins the artwork of the penciler and inker.

When I'm speaking of realism, I'm talking of the overall tone of the story, not of true photorealism, which is usually a poor fit for the medium (even painted comics are hard to pull off correctly), comics being centred around duration and rhythm rather than the capture of a specific instant ? made to be read, not stared at. And I am definitively not advocating over-the-board Photoshop effects ? they usually betray a profound misunderstanding of the medium. Honestly, I can't remember a single instance of obvious Photoshop not making me cringe. A particularly awful and surprising culprit was David Lloyd, in his Kickback book. No motion lines here, but a lot of cheesy Photoshop filters.

By ?the inking and colouring had been more nervous?, I was thinking essentially to higher colour contrast and to more decisive and fluid inking.

[tommyboy]

I think that motion lines, onomatopoeia, impact flashes and so forth are valuable storytelling tools. Not every panel needs them, and like cross-hatching they need to be used by an artist who knows what they are doing. But used well, they add a dynamic feel to comic art which few other media can match.
If you wanted a fight to have a particular "feel" you might omit motion lines completely, but like "thought bubbles" and closed narrative captions, they are part of the language of the medium, and in languages, less is seldom actually more, so they should never be abandoned completely.
My vote would be for the C6 edited version in the two panels above.

[Epimethee]

My vote would be for the C6 edited version in the two panels above.

In case this wasn't clear, so would be mine. My point is only that not using motion lines has its place too, as you more succinctly put it, Tommy.

[herodad1]

whenever ben says " its clobberin time ",that motion line with the word balloon that says "THOOM! " really does it for me.now if you see a group battle like when the new avengers first came together at the prison to stop the criminals from escaping,well i could see leaving them out.any other time make mine THOOM!

[Jakew]

It really depends on the drawing style. You have Bryan Hitch-style photo-realistic stuff which doesn't need motion lines because the way he composes and frames the action is spot-on, and the lines would detract from the intended realism.

The reference pic you posted doesn't look very good without motion lines because of the position The Thing is in after his punch, the space between him and his opponent, etc.

[Podmark]

Mike McKone could benefit from some motion lines use. I've had some difficulty following actions in his Spider-Man work.

[Tomato]

See, I guess my thing is... if it's just an impact flash or a text sound effect, yeah, those things don't happen, fine. But Motion lines actually DO happen, maybe not to the extent they do in comics (or manga, or games, or animation, or whatever) but if you wave your hand really fast in front of your eyes, there's a trail. Heck, even in most still photographs (and I'm sure this is less so now, but I don't have experience with digital photography as opposed to cheapo cameras) if something is moving too fast when the show is taken, that something is very blurred. The shot C6 posted, however, is in no section blurred, trailing any kind of motion, or anything. So what we're left with is a picture that is actually LESS realistic, LESS believable BECAUSE there are no signs of motion.

Plus, IMO looking at the art here... it actually benefits from the old-school techniques.

[S.A.M.]

I think the artist should have drawn Ben's enemy at the point of impact, then emphasized or exaggerated bad guy's face to show how much that punch hurt, and added small motion lines, thus minimalizing the need for an impact flash.

[AncientSpirit]

C6, couldn't agree with you more!  You should send your side by side comparison to Marvel with a note.

[Tawodi Osdi]

I am going to have to vote in favor of the action lines.  They seem to help to sell the story seperately than plotline which was valuable to me as a kid.  I am partially dyslexic and it took me longer to read, but I could still look at comic books and get the gist of the story.  One would need more of the context of the panel to understand the one that is sans lines.  The one with the lines tells a story by itself.  The first may look more artistic, but the second tells a better story, and comics are about stories.