Okay, we’re back on track now. Sequences like this one are really rewarding to draw because they’re so challenging. Fitting “block a lariat, slap, springboard on the opposite side, moonsault, catch, Tombstone ferris wheel counter” into a 5″x10″ space takes a lot more mental energy to figure out how to execute than scenes like the previous page, which sort themselves out pretty easily. There’s a lot more consideration that needs to go into the visual flow of a sequence like this one. For example, at least one panel needed to break the left-to-right flow to avoid completely swapping El Bastarde and Mascara de Oro’s positions. The slap was the ideal point for that, because it represented a jarring action – since the action going the opposite way jars the reader, it’s best served to do that when it can convey something about what’s happening to the characters.
I don’t know why that turned into a subsection of the comics class I’ll be teaching in the summer, but there ya go.
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