Sunday, January 27, 2013

Blogathon 43: Different Formats

From Augie de Blieck, Jr.: "Which comics would you most like to see in either a smaller or large page format? Who's art would look better at a larger size? Whose artwork might work best shrunken down a tad to tighten up the lines? Include any current reprints that you like for these reasons, or surprises along the same lines, good or bad."

I'm not going to choose to shrink art too often. Though, I will say that Frank Miller's Sin City stuff looks great in the smaller paperbacks. Even the edition of The Hard Goodbye that I have that came with the DVD of the movie looks great and it's quite small. However, the only reason why I would choose to have a comic shrunk would be to make it more portable, not because I think it would look better. Some may well look better. I'm familiar enough with shrunken down art to say which books would benefit and which would be hurt by it.

Larger is a whole other story. I would love to see Kirby's stuff done bigger. Absolute Fourth World! A larger edition of Automatic Kafka would be great -- or Elektra: Assassin. Actually, this could be a long list. Almost any comic I think looks great would probably look better bigger. I know it won't be the case, but Marshal Law on Absolute-size pages... oh dare I dream it.

My favourite oversized hardcover is Absolute Authority vol. 1. The first twelve issues of the Ellis/Hitch/Neary/DePuy run of the book. Gorgeous pages that look even better at that size where everything seems to have more room to breathe. The colours just overwhelm you. I love the way DePuy did the sky at the end of issue three. That hazy dawn loook... wonderful. No other colourist has matched it. Gorgeous pinks and purples.

By the same token, a giant, blown up That Yellow Bastard could be a sight to behold. I've seen it smaller than standard size, now I want a giant version. It's the boldest of Miller's Sin City, visually. Big, thick lines to go along with big pictures. And that final scene... on large pages... It would be fitting.

In 30 minutes, I'll turn my attention to the Joe Casey rewritten/edited Youngblood hardcover with Tim Callahan.

We're up to $1020 raised!

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]