Listen to From the Vault Episode 8!
Jeff and Russell talk about Incognito by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. This is two trade paperbacks worth of material, the first miniseries followed by Bad Influences. We talk about the treatment of female characters in this book, pulp, and superhero books generally as well as in the context of cultural morality. We recorded this episode on March 15th of 2011 and we’ve said some of it better in other episodes but there’s some good stuff here nonetheless.
Just look at this cover. Great composition and amazing colors, it gets across everything pulp. Zack’s clothing, the crazy mad scientist machines behind him, the light coming off the explosion… glorious stuff. (Incognito Bad Influences #3 Cover)
Just one of the many examples of Sean Phillip’s sense of action and weight. You can feel Doc Lester looming over Zack and Ava Destruction swinging the wrench at his head. He’s capturing a heck of a lot of story in a single panel. (Page 15, Incognito #6)
An example of Sean Phillips page layouts. In the first example (Page 21, Incognito Bad Influences #3) we see the action of firing a gun broken into three panels moving down the page with the background providing context. That’s somewhat unusual, more often there’s an establishing shot at the top of the page as in the second image (Page 22, Incognito Bad Influences #3) and then action following, but there’s lots of variation. Each page is simple enough to not distract the reader and complex enough to keep things interesting.
All art by and copyright Sean Phillips, written by Ed Brubaker, published by Marvel Comics.
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