This image, lovingly curated from the digital version of the second Hellboy omnibus, exemplifies one reason why I think digital comic "books" are superior to their physical ("analog") counterparts. I don't have the physical product to compare, but I'm willing to bet there isn't the same manipulation of depth of field in the analog book, originally published in '98.
Its aesthetic success in this case is debatable, but I'm still impressed with it. HB is, by virtue of his coloration, more often than not the centre of attention in every frame he occupies. During early days in this series creator Mike Mignola struggled with this challenge, and not always successfully. A frame like this is an example where HB really should not be the focus, quite literally -- it is his BPRD partner, a homunculus named Roger, who is experiencing the disquiet of the larger scene, and who will direct the action subsequently. "Fading" or blurring HB helps place Roger in the fore, and directs the eye appropriately.
Again, in this case the technique is a touch clumsy. But it is still an improvement on the print version.
3 comments:
Been meaning to dig this us, and have not been getting to it, sadly. This BPRD panel I don’t recognize (or memory’s just showing the wear). Is the story a one-off? Colors Stewart’s? He doesn’t become the colorist until a few years into the thing.
Someday I’m going to fill in the gaps, get caught up on all this, I hope.
Good questions, all. It is a one-off ("Being Human") art by Richard Corben (my bad), colors by Dave Stewart. Christina McKenzie is the digital technician.
Also, a correction: HB Omnibus 2 has a string of stories which begins in '98, but include one-offs like the above, which was published in '11. Reading the Omnibus sequence can be surprisingly jarring, considering the editorial effort was to establish continuity.
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