By Harry Kassen — Hello readers, Harry Kassen here. I’m back this month, but I want to thank Jed McPherson for taking the time to write an article for Comics Anatomy last month and all of you for being cool with new stuff as I work on developing this column. If anyone else would like to write a guest article, please contact me or Zack and let us know what you’re thinking.

This month, I wanted to get back to my roots a little bit and really dig in and dissect a page on the craft level. I had a good time doing that in my first article before moving into the more conceptual stuff, and I wanted to do it again. For this one, though, I’m going to be looking at a one-page comic by Goran Gligovic called Theomachy.

I saw this one on Twitter when he posted it back in September and I was struck by how great it is. If you ask any of my college friends, I was absolutely insufferable for weeks, as I explained to anyone in earshot how wonderful it was and all of the craft elements on display in it. After a few people told me to stop talking, I realized that I should probably just write a Comics Anatomy on it and spare the people around me.

Right off the bat, this comic is just really good looking. Beyond that, the storytelling is incredible, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about here. It’s incredible how much information and clarity there is for just being one mostly silent page. For purposes of comprehension, I’ll be splitting it up into chunks and breaking down how those operate.

The first chunk is the first three panels, which do a really nice job of setting the scene.

The first panel is a great establishing shot that really sets up everything that’s going to be important in the comic. We’ve got one character way in the foreground, though we can’t see much except for the clothes he’s wearing and the equipment he has with him. We can also see the setting for the comic in the wide angle shot. Additionally important, in the whole comic really, but in this panel for now, is the use of color. Far in the background, we can see a yellow, almost golden, figure surrounded by other figures the same color as the surroundings. Those other figures get lost against that backdrop, but the gold one stands out because of its coloring. In the foreground, the character in the cloak has arrows that are also colored gold. This serves once again as a way of popping that element out against the things around it, highlighting it as more important than some other foreground elements. Another result of this choice, however, is that because the arrow and the figure in the background are not just colored differently than their surroundings but are the same color, they are linked to each other. They seem to be two pieces of a set.

The second panel is a closeup on the foreground character, set against a dark background. He’s centered in the panel and all we can really see are his eyes. This is the first time we see his face, which humanizes him. We couldn’t tell if he had human features in the last panel, but now we can. We can see he has a determined look.

The next panel serves a similar function to the second one but also does a few more things. It’s a closeup on the golden figure from the background of the first panel. We can see more details here, such as the figure’s clothing, his beard, and his crown. More important, though, is what we cannot see in this panel. This figure doesn’t have human features, and that can be seen clearly in this panel. Whatever he is, crowned and golden, he isn’t human.

This chunk is really important for establishing the world and people of this comic. It tells us where we are, shows us the two important figures, and where they are in relation to each other. It links them through the arrows, but also sets them up in opposition to each other. In that first panel, both figures are obscured by the composition of the shot. One is facing away from us and one is very far away. The next two panels show us closer shots of the two characters and we can see that one is clearly human, and the other is clearly not. This is going to form the central opposition for the rest of the comic.

With that first establishing chunk out of the way, we can get into the second chunk, which has some action.

Where those first three panels were all about scope, showing the full range of characters across great physical distance, these two tiers are all about showing one character, in one place, across a few moments. This chunk is composed of six panels, all of equal size, which sets up a very consistent pace from panel to panel. The panels themselves are small, which enhances the idea that each is just a moment and that they swiftly pass from one to the next.

Starting at the beginning here, we have our cloaked archer pulling an arrow from his quiver. This is shown in extreme closeup. We see the arrow and a hand against the background of the archer’s clothing. Importantly the arrow is still gold. This maintains the link between the golden figure and the arrows.

The next panel shows the archer pulling that arrow back on his bow, once again in extreme closeup showing just the tip of the arrow against the bow and the hand holding it. The color contrast from the last panel is enhanced here. Just about everything in the panel is purple (I think, bear with me, I’m colorblind) except for the arrow, which is gold and pops right out from the background.

The final panel in this tier shows the archer finishing pulling back the arrow. More of him is visible here, as the panel shows his face framed behind the bow. The color contrast is the same as the previous panels. I’ll get deeper into this later, but there’s a sound effect in this panel and that’s an important part of the composition. Both because of what it represents and because of the way it’s drawn, this sound effect creates the motion in this panel. It shows us that he’s pulling the bow back.

Moving onto the second tier now, we’ve got what’s either a very close redraw of the last panel or a copy of it. The difference is that the sound effect from the last panel is gone and there is instead a puff of breath and a sound effect accompanying it. This serves a few purposes. The first is that the same way the last panel shows the movement of the arrow, this puff of breath highlights the stillness of everything except that breath. For reasons I’ll get into when I discuss the chunk as a whole, these two panels also serve as an effective transition from one set of rules to the next. It’s so smooth that you don’t even think about it as it’s happening, because the base visuals for the two panels are the same.

The next panel is a really interesting one. Rather than showing any of the things we’ve seen so far, it shows an EKG heartbeat reading. The whole panel is blacked out except for the heartbeat shape, which starts out the same color gold as the arrow, and shifts to a soft red as the line moves from left to right. There’s a lot happening here. It’s not clear what specifically the heartbeat is supposed to represent, but there are a few possibilities. It could represent the heartbeat of the archer, as breathing control and lowering heart rate are an important part of archery. It could also be the heartbeat of the target, as that’s an important symbol of life and death. It could also be a general metaphor for life, death, emotion, and all that. My personal theory is that it’s all of that. Images can represent lots of things, and there’s no reason to choose. Beyond the heartbeat, there’s a lot of other stuff going on in this panel too. The left side of the heartbeat line almost lines up with the arrow in the previous panel, so the heartbeat takes on the additional meaning of being the path the arrow takes after it is released. The heartbeat shape is important to this as well, as it helps to sell the idea of a fast moving projectile. The rise and fall of the line speeds your eye up as you move across the panel. It also changes from gold to red, which helps to give the impression that the arrow was fired, traveled, and then struck its target. The significance of the red is further emphasized in the next panel.

This panel shows roughly the same shot of the archer as we saw in those earlier panels. Instead of being that same purple color, the whole panel is colored red, just like the right side of the heartbeat line from the previous panel. The whole image has been shifted upward in the frame, cutting off the top of the archer’s head, to make room at the bottom for a sound effect reading THWACK. Clearly the arrow has struck home, and I say home for a reason. The golden color of the arrows and of the figure connect them, and so when the arrow strikes, it can be seen as the arrow returning to where it came from. This will be more apparent in a bit, but it’s clear enough at this point. Additionally, while the arrow and bowstring are gone, there are now speed lines in the panel showing the fact that they just moved.

Now that I’ve gone through each panel individually, I’m going to talk about this chunk as a whole for a bit. The two tiers work on similar, but slightly different mechanics. If you’ve read Scott McCloud, you’ll recognize these as being two different kinds of transitions. I won’t get into that, because strict categories aren’t super useful in my mind, but that does apply. What we have in the first tier is a series of moments all showing where the arrow is at a certain time, and what’s around it, but it’s important to note that all of the panels show different things around the arrow. This emphasizes the different steps in the process of nocking an arrow, focusing on the physicality of each stage. The second tier, with the exception of that heartbeat panel, shows the same angle of the archer in both panels. This emphasizes the stillness involved in loosing an arrow, and the small movements it involves. That’s what makes the transition panels that I mentioned earlier so brilliant, and so important. The series of movements involved in nocking an arrow end with that panel of him drawing the bow, and the movements involved in loosing the arrow start with him exhaling. Those two panels form a natural bridge, which is necessary because a switch from the first tier’s strategy of changing frame and subject to the second tier’s strategy of keeping that constant would be jarring and distracting without it.

Alright, now on to the third and final chunk of this comic.

Where the first one split between the archer and the figure, establishing the opposition, and the second one focused on the archer, this one focuses on the figure.

The first panel contains a sound effect that I read as being the sound the arrow makes as it moves through the air. There’s also a little bit of the fletching from the arrow peeking through from the panel below. The sound effect fades out as it moves from left to right, indicating that the sound softens and eventually stops.

The second panel is the bulk of the information in this chunk. It shows the figure with an arrow through his head, falling backward. The crown has fallen off of his head, and there are drops of golden blood in the air. This is all pretty straightforward, but when you read the first two panels as one unit, then a few more things jump out. The first is that the sound effect starts to fade around where the figure’s head would have been when he was upright, and fully fades out around where his head is now. That’s a nice little touch that shows not just that the arrow was moving and then stopped, but where that happened too. The other thing that jumps out to me when reading these two panels together is that the panel break seems to be roughly where the figure’s head would have been if he were fully upright. Looking at it that way, the panel break functions as a marker of the arrow’s path before it was interrupted by the head of the figure.

The final panel is a quiet moment. It’s an extreme closeup of the golden blood as it hangs in the air. The drops get smaller and smaller from left to right, following the path of the falling figure. There’s not a ton going on here, but it’s a cool image to end on, and feels appropriate for the pacing of this comic. Much like the rest of the page, it focuses on a small moment that can tell us something about the big picture. And that’s what comics are all about really. They’re collections of small pieces that make up a whole. This one page comic represents that really well. Each panel is just a small moment, but taken together they add up to something much larger.

That’s all for this month. Thanks again everyone for reading, and thanks to Goran for this lovely comic, which was shared over social media. Next month we’ll have another wonderful guest article, and if you follow along on Twitter you might know what this one is. If not, it’ll be a fun surprise. As I mentioned at the top, if any of you would like to write one of these guest pieces, just let me know. Thanks again, and stay safe out there.

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Harry Kassen is a college student and avid comic book reader. When he’s not doing schoolwork or reading comics, he’s probably sleeping. Catch his thoughts on comics, food, and other things on Twitter @leekassen. You can support his writing via Ko-fi.