Graphic Scenes: Kingdom.

The sound of silence.

Hello again! And welcome back to the KIOSK.

You’ve joined me just in time for another breakdown of a comics scene I like. Last time we talked about an action scene in Tintin that really captured movement, today we're looking a scene which celebrates the small and the quiet.

Volume is something that comics do well. Even the least comics literate understands how sound effect words work, and can infer the volume of the sound by the size and style of how it is displayed. This can be used to great effect in big, loud scenes, but it’s almost more effective when it’s used to highlight the silence between sounds. Married with ‘time’, the other element that comics are particularly good at, it can be such an effective tool in conveying a real and palpable sense of a place.

Stand to one side for the master of such things, Jon McNaught.

Kingdom - Jon McNaught (2019).

Kingdom is beautiful book that follows a small family on they their seaside holiday. It’s brimming with nostalgia and feeling, evoking the universal with its perfectly selected specifics. Every scene is a graphic masterpiece, so well balanced, and sprinkled with all the right information to transport you to this world.

There are far more beautiful sequences than the one I'm about to share, so I urge you to go read it entirely, but that is the very reason I have chosen this particular scene, as it accentuates what McNaught is able to pull off.

I’ll let you cast your eyes over it , and I'll see you on the other side.

Magical, isn't it? A kid using a public toilet in service station, is magical. How is that possible?! It's not romanticised, nobody wants dripping water and grunts from the toilet cubicle, but it's so transportative. It’s so well observed, with all the small elements collected and laid out, and no panel being given greater status than the one before it. They all fit together, giving us a whole picture of the experience, working in sequence, but also as a collection of observations for us to cast our eyes over in any order, just being in the space.

Among the familiar sights, we're treated to the things that catch the boy's eye in particular, with McNaught's humour sitting just below the surface, but the real star is the use of sound. For a ‘silent’ two pages (nobody speaks), it is alive with sound. Each one is delightfully placed and pitched to transport you aurally through the scene.

The ‘KLAK’ of the the cubicle door lock starts the mundane symphony, and we run through chords and interruptions, the tiniest plip of water, and the crescendo of the hand dryer, until we close with the small ‘KLICK' of the pen on a string coming to rest on the back of the door. I think this is a beautiful use of the form, understanding what are the actual elements in the world that we build our memories around and making sure they are all triggered.

When comics excel is when you can't quite imagine it working in another medium. Or not in the same way at least, and I think that is what’s going on here for me. I don't want to see this described in text, and nor do I want to taken by a filmmaker’s hand either. I want to be given this perfect chord of images and text that have somehow made a service station toilet poetic.

If you’re not familiar, please check out Jon McNaught’s work HERE, and you can hopefully find Kingdom in all good bookstores.

Not sure what I’ll be looking at next time in the KIOSK, but be sure to come lean on the counter and we’ll go through together it with a coffee and flapjack.

Owen D. Pomery