There’s a thing happening in this chapter that we just don’t do all that often: decompressed storytelling. Since its widespread mainstream adoption in superhero comics around the turn of the century, I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with decompressed storytelling. On  the one hand, you can create more cinematic moments with this style of storytelling. On the other, you can really drag a story out with it, creating a lot of space and increasing page count where it’s not only not necessary, but boring and dissatisfying.

Mind you, what we’re doing in Chapter 24 would barely be considered decompressed by traditional comic standards, but for us, relatively speaking, it very much is. All of this is not without purpose. I rather like the way Frank Miller used decompression during his run on Daredevil where he’d break down brief moments across many panels, only to ramp up the speed again for the scenes of plot and character interaction. This had the effect of giving big moments much more weight. It’s when EVERYTHING is decompressed that it gets boring and lazy.

We’re trying something similar to the Frank Miller way here, but I imagine the mileage will vary on how successful you think we are with it. I do however believe the eventual collected book of these stories will justify the approach…especially with some of the surprises we have planned for that book.

See you on Monday with 812 – Attack Pattern!