Tom King on twitter just posted this gorgeous page… The story telling is great here (though you’re coming in to the middle of the story so it’s not immediatly apparent that the the two voices are from one person – Two-Face
Art by CLAY MANN (not a batman villain) Seth T Mann (possibly related?) and Jordie Bellaire (the fresh princess)
Unscripted was the sequence where the bridge is reflected, it’s a beautiful composition, and it really works for both the story telling and the character. You can wait years to get a chance to pull off a cool looking story telling trick that is not just attractive but actually makes sense for the story.
No, the lettering (not sure who lettered it) is equally great, but it throws up one of the great conundrums of lettering… which is…
Speech doesn’t come from reflections.
It works here though, because, I suppose, Harvey’s evil side is a reflection and the illusion isn’t broken, partly because the speech is coming from a human reflected on a surface and there are no other humans in the panel. If you included, say, someone stood on the embankment watching it, the speech would suddenly seem weird – how’s it coming from there? (You’d think).
I only flagged it up because it’s interesting, and it’s interesting to see it done right (as here) as it is to see it done wrong – I drew a strip where, thinking I’d be super clever) I had two characters talking, with the characters drawn as reflections on the back of Dredd’s helmet.
I hadn’t taken in to account where the dialogue was coming from.
In this instance, the best location might have been if the dialogue had appeared coming from off panel with the characters reflections just being on the helmet.
As it was, the letterer had the dialogue coming off the reflections making it look a little like Dredd was talking to himself.
Can’t put my hands on the original art, so here’s a little simulation …
(I’d note, if you have a specific intent in mind as an artist, probably best to let your editor and letterer in on it!)
Anyway, something to … REFLECT ON! hashtag dadjoke hashtag still got it.