Critiquing Action Fantasy #2: Necrosha X Continued

Last post, I discussed the concept of the paradox between compression and decompression in superhero comic books. Specifically, I asserted that the trend in current superhero comics is for emotional and other elements to be decompressed over a comic book line, resulting in an extreme form of compression of the action. As superhero comic books are supposed to be action fantasy, I feel that this is a large problem with the genre. 

And Now Some More Examples

I am currently using X-Necrosha, an X-Men comic, (technically X-Force and some other X-spinoffs) to illustrate my points regarding action compression. Here is another example from the comic:

Here, numerous resurrected mutant characters attack various members of the X-Men. While this particular page does a decent job of giving an impression of a great deal of action and combat, very little actually happens. Drawing from Scott McCloud's terminology, this page relies on another level of abstraction in the scene to scene transition to tell the story. These are all jump cuts. 

This one panel is all the reader receives for this action sequence. Husk and the New X-Men are being attacked by resurrected Synch and Skin. This panel is a mess for several reasons. As displayed by the rest of the page, the protagonists are usually depicted in the upper left of the panel or in the foreground. This panel, however, reverses that pattern. Combined with the darkened artwork that makes Skin look like Nightcrawler (another staple member of the X-Men), this panel looks like the the villains in this panel are those attacking figures in the lower right part of the panel. In fact, it is the protagonists who are on the right, and the startled and scared figures on the left are the aggressors of this panel. This confusion is compounded by the fact that the character names as listed in this panel are in an order that implies that it is Husk and the New X-Men who should appear on the panel first. Only insider knowledge of these characters, depicted in a dark and minuscule manner, gives an accurate clue as who is even doing what in this panel.

In addition, the nature of this entire conflict is horribly ambiguous. Synch is firing some pink energy at Rockslide (I think, maybe Onyx?) and Trance is firing her astral form or whatever at the attackers. Ok, so that looks interesting. I wonder what happens next...

Another scene-cut to another battle that has apparently already concluded before the reader has seen anything. But what about that fight we were just watching? What did Rockslide do after being struck with pink energy? Who did Trance attack and what was the result of this attack? We never find out. The reader has to assume, via jump cuts, what plays out in this fight. This usage of transitions is not action storytelling, it is a tease of storytelling. Actually showing the effects of action and their consequences on a battle between super beings is storytelling. It shows the reader what happens, and uses transitions to guide a reader to fill in specific blanks in time. Simply put, the gaps between these panels are too large, and in some cases, simply lead to a chasm with nothing on the other side. Nowhere else are these battles fleshed out, so there is no closure, even between large spans of time. We get this panel, and that is all. We as readers have to imagine how the fights might have played out. This is lazy storytelling. Once again, let me point out that having a number of mutants come back to life and fight the X-Men is not lazy. It fits the genre perfectly. What is in fact lazy is to promise a reader that a number of returned X-Men will fight the living only to fail to deliver on that very premise. There is nothing inherently wrong with the story presented, but there is an enormous failure in how this story is being told. 

It seems that the creators of this comic assume that since readers have seen superheroes fight before, there is no need to show what happens when these characters engage in action sequences. Since we know in the back of our minds that superheroes win their fights, Rockslide (or whoever) must have shrugged off the pink beam and Trance must have done something effective with her power. Again, however, this is lazy writing. Assuming the aforementioned principle to even be true (which it is not, as plenty of superheroes, even in this very book, lose fights all the time), we can only begin to guess how Trance's power incapacitated one or both of the attacking Synch and Skin. 

The panel of Blindfold fighting Tower is just as lazy as its predecessor. Blindfold, leaning on a wall and walking, is shown doing absolutely nothing, while all hell breaks loose concerning Tower. Did Blindfold do anything to Tower, or did she merely avoid him? Is Tower being attacked by someone else? The reader is left guessing and has little guidance from the storytellers. 

Here is another example, from a tie-in story from the same book:

In this example, the featured X-Men are shown battling...well it's hard to say. Clearly Colossus has Stonewall in a headlock, but the other two combatants are quite difficult to make out. One is another rock character, and the other is a reptile. Once again, the reader is given little context for the battle, as it is already happening. Once again, the action oriented reader is left wishing that they could have come into this story a few imaginary pages early, so they could witness the whole of this interesting looking affair. Even worse, any hope of actually getting a fulfilling sense of this action sequence is immediately banished on the very next page:

Where has everyone gone? Wasn't Colossus just in the previous panel fighting Stonewall? Wasn't Nightcrawler there? Where have all of the antagonists from the previous page gone? They have literally disappeared. Pylocke is being helped up from the ground for some reason. One can only assume that she succeeded in her wrestling move to bring the rock guy to the ground, but the gap between the previous panel is exceedingly ambiguous. The sad truth is that anything could have happened in between these two pages, but the choice of transition compresses the action into nothingness. Two panels are all we realistically have in regards to this action sequence. 

So with all of this action compression, where is the decompression? Well, it comes at some of the most counterproductive and self serving moments for the monetary interests of the industry: 

Here, a wolf character who is tied to another key player in the X-Necrosha story howls at the moon. For five panels. An entire page. While entire battles are completely left to the imagination of the reader, this single moment is chosen to linger on for an entire page. Now I have nothing against emotional development, and there is nothing specifically at fault with this particular page. However, seeing this sequence and comparing it with the dearth of information provided in the action sequences of the comic is telling in regards to the inverted priorities of X-Necrosha's creators. If comic book storytellers want to pause for these moments, then they must also show some level of respect for the action oriented storytelling that is the backbone of the genre. 

So this page displays a werewolf howling at the moon. The manner in which he is answered by the presence at the end of the page is also worth noting. On the very next page, the werewolf is confronted by the following: 

This page is one panel. A splash page. The character being introduced here is Hela, who is the goddess of the underworld from Marvel's Thor comics. So we have two pages that linger on a wolf howling at the moon and summoning a character from another storyline. This deliberate choice of framing and priority regarding storytelling is important, for it shows that the creators of this comic are more concerned with the emotional moments that pertain to cross-continuity than they are with presenting entertaining and engaging action fantasy. This splash page exists so that it can reference other comics offered by Marvel. It exists to tie into other stories told by other people. 

And here is the overarching, sinister, and tragic reality of modern superhero comics. The strategy of modern comics is not so much to tell stories, but to imply stories and reference other stories outside of the current tale being told. All of the action sequences I have shown thus far imply stories more than they actually show them occurring. The purpose of this implied storytelling seems to be to constantly keep readers guessing and wanting more from another issue. The constant in-referencing, while it has its charms, also seems to come into play in keeping readers from actually gaining a complete story in a given book, but it serves to keep them continually seeking other stories to fill the gaps that plague them. The tragic aspect of this setup is that readers never gain the closure they seek, but they continually are drawn in a plethora of directions towards the promise of a story that will never be fulfilled in actuality. 

Next time, I will conclude my analysis of X-Necrosha with a few observations regarding modern, big-event oriented storytelling.