Monday, March 28, 2016

THE MARK IN AMERICA, ISSUE #2, PAGE 24



In those innocent times, back in the early 90’s, a would-be terrorist such as Helda could entire a high security environment with a purse filled with grenades. Ah, the good old days…


Panel 3 is ridiculous, but unavoidable. One grenade alone wouldn’t have done the job on either The Mark or The Archon, but neither I nor the writer, Mike Barr, wanted to waste time/page space on watching Helda pull the pin and throw several of them. Plus, logically speaking, the audience around her would have probably stopped her before she got the second one off. So this almost laughable cheat was necessary.

As much as I detest the coloring on this series, John A. Wilcox got one thing right: if he used the computer he kept it a secret on these pages. There aren’t any of the painterly effects and garish over-renderings that have plagued comics in the last 20 years. God, I’m sounding like Alex Toth, but it’s true. One of my pet peeves is self-color lines in explosions and gun fire efx. It’s like these colorists have never taken an Intro-to-Color class. If one colors the black lines yellow or even red, or colors the bulk of the explosion a dark color, it REDUCES impact. Black against white (or yellow) is one of the most dramatic contrasts you can get, and any other color combo should be considered with reluctance.

And this is the end of issue #2. For the next few days I’ll be posting recent additions to my collection of original art by other artists.

This is page 24 for "The Mark" issue 2, volume 2, otherwise known as "The Mark In America", published by Dark Horse Comics in January 1994. Written by Mike Barr, drawn by Brad Rader.

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