Review of Superman: Red son

     My review is of SuperMan: Red Son, written by Mark Millar. It was first published in 2003 in a single magazine form consisting of Red Son #1-3, and it is 152 pages long. It was done in color and has a fairly realistic style which I like. The medium seems to be a pretty standard pencil, then ink style. The panel layout is fairly standard; for the most part it kept to rectangular panels, occasionally branching out into a full page being a single panel, or a page being split into only two panels.  Lettering took two forms, the standard black and white speech bubble, and a different layout for Superman’s inner thoughts which took the form of a red background with yellow lettering. This was a very good style choice I think, because it gave his thoughts and his speech a vaguely threatening tone. The story was not very visual driven, it possible that it was, but I didn not pick up on that as much. The part that I picked up on the most was the idea behind it.

     The theme of the story is very, very different from what you would think of as the standard Superman fare, with the idea being that Superman’s pod, instead of landing in the US and being raised in the American ideal, was a few hours late and ended up landing in the Ukraine in 1938. So instead of growing up on a farm in Kansas he grew up on a soviet collective farm. Instead of learning about freedom and dedicating himself to that ideal he dedicated himself to Communism and the communist ideals. Some of the highlights are when he works under Stalin and serves the people in that context, working to keep  disasters from occurring, and one of Stalin’s illegitimate children who commanded the then N.K.V.D began to question and plot against him, culminating in his supporting  the anti-Soviet terrorist, Batman, making an attempt on Superman’s life using ultra intense red light supplied by the CIA. The second awesome part of the novel is the rise of Lex Luthor, culminating in his defeat of Superman. In that part he took the US, which was the only country on earth that hadn’t gone over to the soviet side as championed by Superman, and re-made the entire government and country, effectively making the US self –sufficient and making it rise to surpass even the soviet society in terms of standard of living. Eventually he uses an alternate dimension to assemble an army without Superman’s knowledge. Superman then proceeds to run over that army and all of their allies, only to be defeated by one sentence written on a piece of paper given to his wife at the capitol. It sounds really complicated because it builds on itself very well and it’s difficult to explain only a part of it without having to go and explain all of it.  

Superman’s musings are all given in the past tense, for the most part, until in the final pages it is revealed that he survived his downfall at the hands of Lex. Other than that all of the speech is in the first person. There are not actually any flashbacks in the whole thing, but in a surprising move the story ends up being cyclical, with Luthor’s family going on through the ages until, 50 generations removed from Lex, they send their son Kal-L (Superman) back in time where he lands on a soviet collective in the Ukraine.

     I feel like this story was written for me, honestly. The communist aspect of it is amaziong to me, and te alternate take on Superman being a communist is also absolutely amazing. The way that they crafted his dedication to communism as an ideal into the story was amazing, and the way that they talked about communism and the way that they showed it working was also absolutely off the walls amazing. I really liked the story; I loved its sort-of dark tone. It wasn’t a story that changed my life, but I would certainly read more in this vein. I chose it because I have heard of it, and I find communism interesting, and the communist tie-ins were expertly crafted. 

Dialogue

Here is all the dialogue for all of the pages. The finished pages contain slightly modified dialogue, but for the most part this is what I wanted to say.

Title page:

The Martian Vanguard

  

Page 1:

It was a very long day….

  

We were air dropped by the modified cargo haulers half a mile from the lines

  

There weren’t very many of us in my squad.

There weren’t many of us on Mars period.

  

The haulers had to go back to be refitted for clearing the mist, so we had a couple hours to wait before moving in.

  

It was unnatural. The mist that is.

The folks behind the lines weren’t exactly sure why it was there. Evidently there was no meteorological reason for it, but that was never my thing. My family had a background in physics and mechanics, none of that weather stuff.

 Page 2:

Rightly speaking, this story started over 200 years ago, and on earth.

It started as a joke. “why not send our CO₂ to mars?”

But then they thought about it.

So they aimed a massive modified pressure vessel at mars, setting it to crash directly into the southern Ice cap…

…and even though it seemed stupid and ridiculous, they found the money and launched it.

Page 3:

After it did what it was supposed to and thickened the atmosphere, and people started paying attention to it... …They saw that against all expectations it was working.

After some careful monitoring and a couple more ships sent to mars

It became a much, much greener world

And when it became green enough to support life, earth sent out a colony ship

It held all of earth’s best and brightest, sent out into the void to shine.

Page 4:

Except as the Martian colony developed, earth fell into decline. This continued for near on a century, until one day the Martian built interplanetary sensors picked up a massive radiation spike on the planet. Earth died as many had feared, in nuclear fire. But mars moved on, or it tried to at any rate. The loss of humanity’s birthplace hurt many, but what could we do?

Then one day, sectors on the south side of the planet began to literally go dark. The weather satellites picked it up first, showing that cities and transport lines had lost power and been covered by a thick cloud layer that was not responding like any kind of natural formation. Then refugees started showing up, bringing stories of things rising from the ice, things that brought cold death to anything that stood against them.

Page 5:

So now I waiting in trenches dug using modified farming equipment… …watching an unnaturally persistent wall of mist.

My squad is waiting for our angels to soar overhead and clear the cloud cover.

And as we wait the field artillery made by backyard Physicists and Mechies like me and my family set up behind us.

When the ground pounders set up we’ll be ready to set boots into soil that has been taken from us… …taken by something from the ice

Page 6:

I don’t know how it works… … but seeing our angels clear away the clouds and mist and bring in the sun was the best moment of that bloody, bloody day.

Final Project finished pieces

Here are the finished pages I have for the final project. I finished four out of the seven pages I had laid out, I'll post the final colored and ready pages here and I'll post the dialogue for the unfinished pages in another post.

[Cover Page]

[Page 1]

[Page 2]

[Page3]

I apologize for the resolution on these. Blogger only lets me post at certain sizes, so when they resize the image I lose a lot of quality. For native resolutions and sizes, check the links below:
http://rpi.edu/~hodsod/page1.jpg
http://rpi.edu/~hodsod/page2.jpg
http://rpi.edu/~hodsod/page3.jpg
http://rpi.edu/~hodsod/page4.jpg

Title page colored!

Here is the almost final colored title page!

Story Boards!

The dialog isn't fully written yet, but I sat down with my projected storyline and worked out this entire arc of story boards. The art is very, very rough, but here is how it goes:

[Cover Page]

Here the horizontal lines are going to be indicative of fog. Like I said, it is very, very rough.The page will feature the main character, Septimus, in a trench with one of the Icemen sort of looming in the mist.

[Page 1]

Here Septimus is moving in to position with his squad, He considers the mist that shrouds the soon to be battlefield and looks up at the line of clouds next to the sun.

[Page 2]

The flashback to how it all started will start here. I blocked out all of the planets just in blue. I'll put more work into them later but I just wanted to block out positions for now. The third panel sets a new standard for poorly drawn, but when I'm done it should look like a plot of the course the pressure vessel ship will take to hit Mars' southern pole. The final panel should be the pressure vessel winking against the sun in the background as it moves between Earth (right) and Mars (left).

[Page 3]

Here I wanted a different layout, and I think this will succeed. Mars will be in the upper left, while the upper right two images will be the development of mars from a dead world to something a hair more hospitable. The third panel will be the colony ship, and the fourth will be in the same style as the pressure vessel ship as it travels between planets.

[Page 4]

This story board looks pretty empty, mostly because its gonna be kinda text heavy. Top left will be a small picture of a very grey Earth. Next to it will talk about earth's decay after the colonists left. Bottom right will talk about how Mars has flourished, but earth's decay has weighed heavily on the new world. It will also talk about how some of the southern-most settlements are starting to go dark. The weird cross-hair style thing on what will be Mars will be a very rough layout of how the city you'll be able to see from space.

[Page 5]

This page is rather rough, but it'll be mostly about the Martian response to their cities going dark. The first standing army in the human history of the planet being assembled, and people picking up their ancestor's trades, converting old (in relative terms) farming equipment into weapons and things of that nature. 

[Page 6]

This is the last page in my initial vision. It is Septimus looking up and watching one of the VTOLs cooking away the cloud and fog layer on the battlefield right before he moves in with his squad. 

Final Project Idea Rundown

The comic opens up on a squad of soldiers in a trench on Mars. The atmosphere is dark, cloudy, and very cold.

The squad of soldiers is waiting for the cavalry to arrive before moving on, most carry gear and weapons specced for long range combat over the relatively unbroken red terrain.

The cavalry they are waiting for is an over flight meant to break the cloud cover, and for confirmation that the high accuracy ‘danger close’ artillery behind them is set up to provide high explosive cover fire.

The over flight consists of modified cargo haulers, VTOL craft, and the artillery consists of home brew magnetic accelerator canons, called ‘ground pounders’ for how their kickback strikes the earth, often leaving a very distinctive and deep footprint.

The soldier should talk about how they are waiting for their ‘angels’ to fly by and clear the air. They should look tentatively down their sights at the mist and fog outside the trench.

--

The shot should then cut to a far view of the earth, from space, and should follow some massive pressure vessel style ships as they move through space. The vehicle is a highly shielded pressure vessel; it should cross between earth and mars, impacting on mars’ southern ice cap.

The shot cuts to a long view of the Martian terrain and to a very small settlement somewhere on mars. The terrain should become greener, and the shot should cut to a handset of instruments reading that the atmosphere is within some kind of tolerance to earth standard.

The shot cuts back to space, this time on a colony ship, going one way to mars. The ship is a colony ship containing earth’s best and brightest, scientists, engineers, survivalists, and teachers. Everyone needed to start humanity again on a new world. (this would make a nice shot to say that and in the same shot show it winking next to a distant star.)

Wording should focus on leaving earth and its problems behind.

Fast forward 100ish years, communications with earth cut off. Nearby comm satellites are burned out in a manner consistent with high radiation exposure, long range sensors pick up a massive radiation spike in atmosphere.

Mars is now alone, cut to a shot of mars alone in the void. More time passes, mars moves on but society on mars continues to be marred by the fact that they are alone. Memorials to earth and peace are everywhere in the cities, citizens still mourn long lost branches of the family tree from earth.

More time passes, pole-ward settlements and small cities start to go dark. Before anyone can really put it all together the southern third of the planet, along with better than 500,000 new martians have gone dark. (shot of the planet again, but with lights seen from space dark on the bottom third)

Stories from survivors and refugees from the dark regions begin to filter in, stories of things, devils, waking up and coming from the icepack initially used to terraform mars’ atmosphere.

The martian farmers, some of mars’s best and brightest who have all gone out to try and feed themselves and the slowly growing cities, come together and decide to take back what has been lost. Farmers start to pick up and refine their old trades from before they became farmers, chemists, mechies, nukies, physicists, electricians and electrical engineers all start warming up the old family trade, using knowledge carefully passed down from the original settlers, and they bend it to making war.

Armor and weapons are made, and the young and restless from farms planet wide move south to be part of the movement to take mars back, to counter the ice-devil’s advance on all fronts.

--

Back to trench.

Headed to recapture all but last 8^th of planet surface, which is be held for the icemen. The farmers and the generals they selected from among them to lead this assault have no wish to commit genocide on an alien race.

Should show the VTOL moving across the sky above them, with the clouds retreating and mist clearing up in front of them, slowly revealing the massive form of one of the ‘Ice devils’.

--

And that should cover the first segment of the story. I’m sorry if it isn’t entirely clear and if the images I suggest are too closely linked with the plot I’ve made for you to easily separate them. The images and story are too closely linked in my mind to make either of them much clearer.

Response to Jim Steranko's Narrative Theory

     I have found Jim Steranko's narrative theory very helpful. It works to clarify many different aspects of comic creation, and is exteremly helpful in that regard, giving advice as it does to panels set-ups, lighting styles, shot styles, and overall page set-up in addition to many other more specific things. It is meant for a slightly different audience than I, which is something which I take issue with. It goes over the translation from text to art as though that act were a collaboration between two different people, the writer and the artist. However being in the position where I lack that other person to run ideas against I find myself at an advantage and disadvantage over what the text describes.
    Being that the reading is 18 very content rich pages, I'll go over it by general section as opposed to a closer inspection. The first section covered good content, regarding how the writing process in completely linked to the very visual art process, and the links between visual images and the services that provides to the overall narrative. Steranko put forward an interesting point when he mention how he had tailored his work to three different distinctive levels of reader, doing so using the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic meanings linking the images. The point of what he was describing is essentially to copy to a certain extent the writing in the art of the story. To use the reader inferred links between images to bring the story to a more basic art level that ca be grasped by a less developed audience. This tactic does its work twice, bringing the story to a younger audience and reinforcing and in fact adding depth to the story perceived by the more writing and text oriented reader.
   In the next general section Steranko covers specifics of the linkages between images and a couple specifics of panel construction. One of the first things he brought up is the temporal manipulation of the panels in an effort to better cover the story. To me the temporal manipulations represent the differences between your average straightforward movie and movies like Memento and Pulp Fiction. It can definitely enhance the story but at the same time, if your story requires temporal manipulation to keep it fresh and interesting, then bigger things are wrong with the story. as far as the other panel manipulations go, he recommends and explains pretty standard things, things we have covered in lecture before like the viewpoint or style of shot used in the individual panels, and the lighting of each panel with regards to character lighting.
   In the next section Steranko goes over some very interesting information regarding operating in a standard comic book setup where the viewer is actually reading two distinct pages of comics at once as part of a spread. this information was less useful for me as the work that i do is of a more digital nature and will not have that same kind of layout, he does however also discuss some alternate layouts for comics that can enhance the message or plot being delivered.
  In the final section Steranko goes over the creation of one page of comics. He went through each of the panels describing each of his design decisions, basically following all of his previous advice.