Without Fear

Chris Shehan had asked an important question on Twitter – “Show me a comic page that made you see comics as one of the greatest storytelling mediums of all time.”

I had to think.

This is the page I finally settled on. I am pretty sure it’s the one that came first. I started reading all of the EC comic reprints when I was somewhere around 10 or 12 or something. I was in a newsagent with my biggest bro and saw a copy of VAULT OF HORROR #1 and pestered him to buy it for me, and he did. Thinking back, what a champion. There are loads of reasons why he did it, but what’s important is that he’s a 20-something dude, with his own income from being in the Srmy, and he insta-spends it on some comic that randomly caught my eye.

What came from this was years of hunting back issue bins to find any comic I could with the EC logo on it. I amassed an insane amount of them, and read them all voraciously, so when I read Chris’ tweet I had to think about what early comics I might have really imbibed with an eye for the flavour of comics being comics.

It could have been old Marvel stuff, but i didn’t think so. I dug that BARTMAN miniseries, but nothing stoof out to me, same as the MONSTER IN MY POCKET mini.

Then I remembered that I was an EC hound, and their stuff was dynamite, so which page would do it.

One page instantly came into my mind. It’s from the story ‘Wolf Bait’ by Jack Davis. It’s about a sled full of people going through the snow and being chased by an insane pack of wolves. They are trying to work out what to do and they realise, once all the meat they had has run out, that if one person is sacrificed then the rest will make it back. Each person had a sob story, a reason it shouldn’t be them, and then the story ends with them throwing someone off in silhouette, so we never know wh it was.

That ending stuck with me for years. I reread that story so many times, loving the ambiguity, and the pacing on those old stories was always rocket fuelled. But that silhouette panel, it’ll haunt me to my grave, and it’s that thing that showed little RKL what comics can really do.

This post originally appeared on my Patreon for free – you can follow along, or pledge for $1, to see me unpack my writing page as much and as helpfully as possible :]

I’m always trying tot hink about comics. When you make comics, you find yourself constantly trying to figure out how to make the magic happen. Not just how to make it happen, or anything happen, how to make the magic happen.

I find this works best when I just leave my brain powered on, eyes open, and seeing/thinking about the world. Which is why I found myself staring at this page from Frank Miller’s first run on Daredevil and just seeing the simple beauty of the layout/composition.

To best tap this knowledge into my brain, I quickly wrote about it, as seen above. I thought about the jagged composition, and what it meant for the scene, and for the characters. It’s not too intricately thought out, just a depth charge to get your brain spinning, and to hopefully make you appreciate comics, or get inspired to make comics, or just go dig out your old floppies and have an afternoon with them.

Or in my case, maybe all three.

I try to think about comics a lot.

You can support me on Patreon where I store a bunch of this stuff.

Or you can sub to my newsletter, THE TWO FISTED HOMEOPAPE, where I often turn my brain inside out and shake loose this kind of semi-helpful detritus.

May it find you well.