Hello!
As it’s cold in the KIOSK at the moment, I thought I’d warm us all up by talking about ‘heat’. For the new people, in this occasional sub-series of the newsletter I talk about an individual scene in a comic or graphic novel I like and why. And usually I’m focusing on one particular element. The first one was about Tintin and explains the concept more fully, but you’ll get the idea, and it’s more fun than it sounds.
Today we’re looking at a quick scene from this short and minimal, social sci-fi…
The Oven. Sophie Goldstein. (2015)
So, as discussed in previous episodes, one of the things I think the medium of comics does particularly well is ‘feeling’. And that subtly of showing, not telling, is perfect for emotional tone, but it also works great for simply creating a visceral environment.
A key way it can do this is with selective details. Again, comparing it to film and books (two mediums that comics often feels sandwiched between), I really like how comics can come in on the inside lane with this one. Film is often restricted by rendering the whole scene with the same level of fidelity and has to focus or zoom in on the details it wants you the concentrate on. Literature has to choose what you need to know about an environment and then choose how much or little to convey beyond that. Such as, ‘It was hot’ versus, ‘The heat was oppressive, permeating everything in a relentless…’ well, you get the idea. But deployed less than expertly, the options are often clunky, or just a banal, orientating requirement.
I’m being a little unfair and reductive, there are of course plenty of ways that good books and films convey atmospheric things subtly, but comics do have a special knack of being able to slip in visual signifiers without intruding too heavily on the experience.
Okay, so here’s the three page scene.
First up, these won’t always contain nudity, it was just the way it worked out. But also, it’s another great example of what I was talking about in For As Long As It Rains, as in this case, we’re dealing with some classic ‘narrative nudity’. In fact, it’s one of the visual signifiers of the environmental conditions I was just talking about, and Goldstein is using to convey the feeling of heat. Our subject for today.
I think the various ways these pages convey the temperature is a real masterclass in graphic communication. However, that’s a pretty dry way of saying it, so just look at the pages and I think you’ll agree it just feels hot, right?!
But let’s spoil (or enhance) the magic a little, shall we? Firstly, the choice of colour palette is great. Various shades of orange, and the extreme contrasts of white to black, run though the whole book. I think the choice to make the colour of the suns black is genius, making the source of the heat read visually as hot as the shaded areas, giving the feeling of the heat being everywhere. The orange that runs through every page (even the page edges, if you’re lucky enough to have a physical copy) glows like an ember, almost radiating warmth into your hands as you read.
In terms of the small details, the minimal illustration style means that everything included in a panel is very much there for a reason. The sweat, the dust, the contrast - they all combine to give you the key information you need without saying a word. This frees up our characters to have more naturalistic rather than expositional dialogue. Not that we need much dialogue either, because the body language is superb too. I love the slump down the wall and the fall onto the bed, and the top panel of the last page features one of the best ‘flopped characters’ I’ve seen.
Another simple device is the perspective jump. We see the suns and their effect as experienced by the characters on the ground, and then we get a nice flip in the second to last panel. We see the suns’ view down on the tiny figures cooking in their little house, as viewed though the skylight. Much like…an oven.
There are so many things going on with amid the deceptive simplicity of these three pages, and when they’re all played together as a chord the reader just gets it. It’s HOT.
I think that will do us for now, we don’t want to pull it apart completely, do we? If it looks like something you would like to read, you should track a copy down. Originally published by AdHouse Books (now sadly defunct) you can still get copies from various places, and it looks like Goldstein sells them herself, so you should probably pick it up HERE.
Thanks again for dropping by for a chat and we’ll do it again soon. Hope your January is going well, or at least not too awfully.
Owen D. Pomery
p.s ‘Narrative nudity’ is not an actual thing, but it can be if we want it to be. Just start dropping it into conversations.
My local library has a copy of this! I just picked it up, cannot wait to read through it.