Comics I Bought This Week: April 12, 2014
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got seven new comics.
This week’s comic book cover to look at and examine is “Strangers in Paradise” number 53 by Terry Moore. This one come out in September of 2002 and I bought it at my local comic shop. Once again this wasn’t one I remembered specifically but it jumped out at me as I was thumbing through my SiP comics.
This cover is a take-off on Alphonse Mucha’s famous Art Nouveau style. A lot of people have borrowed Mucha’s style but rarely with such skill. The style is decorative and pretty and Moore has got both of those things going on here. We get two pretty women in flowing dresses surrounded by ribbons and flowers. Moore is really really good at pretty.
I like the way the color holds this drawing together. I find it interesting that the black line is held to a minimum but not abandoned altogether as I often see when people uses color for holding lines. A red holding line is used for the red dress, a purple one for the light purple dress, white for the scarf, and a brown one for the skin tones. Yet he kept the black line in the places he wanted us to look at first. The eyes of the two women and the hair of the one on the right. You’re immediately drawn the gazes of the characters. One looking at the other while the other looks out at us. Very well done.
The toned down color of the background is also executed nicely. It gets a uniform brown line instead of black and all the decorative objects in it are tinted so they fade away a little. This really makes the red dress and the red flowers stand out as decorative elements. This cover is all about decoration and the gaze. You don’t see that too often on comic book covers.
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