MY COLLECTION #26

This is page one of a set of six pages of original art that I acquired directly from Mr. Navarro when we were both employed as staff storyboard artists on the short-lived “Stripperella” animated TV series for Nickelodeon (Pop Toons). I traded 6 pages of my own original artwork from issues of Catwoman and Batman for these pages which first saw print (I assume but am not sure) in Sonambulo v.1 #3, in a story called “Carnival of Souls”. They were reprinted as chapter 4 of the graphic novel in “Sonambulo in Sleep of the Just: The Collected Cases”.

“Carnival of Souls” page 12

I find Navarro’s comic work primarily interesting for the spotting of black shape areas in the compositions. I enjoy the grass shapes in panels 2, 3 & 5, both as flat graphic patterns, and as definers of the physical space within each panel. In Panel 5, I’m not so keen on the treatment of the shadow covering the ground beneath Sonambulo’s feet; Navarro resorts to white lines to separate the feet (and the cloak of the fallen cult leader) from the surrounding background black. This strikes me as unnecessarily sloppy; the visibility issue could have been solved through judicious editing of the overall shadow shape. The white-line-on-black-shape strategy is more successful in describing Sonambulo’s rumpled shirt