here you go
Roquefort RaiderLe Bras d’Orion CommentsLet me preface these comments with this, I am looking at this both with a reader’s eye and an editor’s eye. I prefer the first, but I cannot turn off the second in most cases, especially when I am reviewing and/or making comments. The editorial comments can sometimes come across as nitpicky in tone, and I apologize in advance if they do, but I prefer to be brutally honest than to hold back comments that could help even the tiniest bit in the long run. We tend to be our own harshest critics, but sometimes we are so close to our own work that we overlook/accept things without a second thought because we lack perspective. My editorial comments are intended as an outsider’s look at something to provide insight and an opportunity to look at the work with a second set of eyes and not to denigrate the work. Any suggestions or alternatives I offer are meant to give a different look at how to possibly do something, not to imply my way is better, it usually isn’t. Feel free to ignore any (or all comments) or to tell me to go take a flying leap, I’m used to it…
These comments are being typed as I do my second read through of volume 1. I meant to comment after my first read and after I read volume 2, but I put too much other stuff fin my brain and need a refresher before commenting. Instead of offering a few general comments after a big read through, I am going to (mostly) comment page by page and then offer some general remarks afterwards. I will post a few pages at a time (as I type up the scribbles from my notebook that I make as I read through it a second time), so I will post them in chunks of a few pages at a time.
Vol. 1 Rah the SlayerJust a general note, some of the translations into English have a rough sentence structure in the English, like the words were translated directly from French to English in order, but the word order wasn’t changed to reflect English usage standards. I only say this because this was one of the things I struggled the most with when I had to translate from one language to another (I especially struggled trying to get the English usage right when translating Ancient Greek the one semester I took of it, I was so focused on getting the words right I missed the structure of the sentence as I translated it. I mention it first, because it first struck me first on the intro page just after the title page with this phrase…
Victim alongside his community of a pogrom disguised as a chance act of banditry, Rah…
The grammar geek in me screamed that the prepositional phrase of a pogrom modified victim so needed to follow it and that victim needed an article, and alongside would translate better as Along with or altered slightly altogether to read something like:
The victim of a pogrom against his community disguised as a random act of banditry, Rah…
But I am being nitpicky, the translation into English was provided as a perk, and I am sure it reads more naturally in the native French it was written in. I have enough trouble constructing sentences properly in my native tongue let alone any others I have any proficiency in, and overall the translation is commendable.
Story Page 1 (5 in the PDF)-I love, love, love your space-scapes. I want to pick your brain on your inking techniques for these.
-When I first saw the pupil-less eyes on the two figures I immediately thought of the eyes of the spice-users in Dune, which I was reading at the same time, and having noticed the acknowledgement of Frank Herbert in your thank yous, I wondered if that was an influence. I also wondered what color they might have been if this were in color…
-love the title font at the bottom of the page too
-overall a very effective page of establishing shots giving the reader a sense of the setting and the dramatis personae without any written exposition i.e. great job in showing, not telling
Story Page 2 (6 in the PDF)-right to the action, which is great, it hooks us in and gets us to invest in the story right away, even before we fully know what’s going on and who everyone is. In that sense the opening reminds me of the first Star Wars film where we see the Star Destroyer descending on the Rebel ship then boarding it…it’s a bit in medias res but the establishing shots gave us enough to have our bearings and then we kick right into it locking us in and having us wanting to know more about what’s happening
-I love the diversity in the faces and looks of the patrons at the bar. All recognizably human but very stylistic, giving us an alien read as well
-in panel 6 I wasn’t sure if divulgated was a translation error for divulged or if it was meant to be a dialect of some sort
-I really dig the camera angles and the panel layouts on this page, especially the first and last panels. I really dig the layout of that last panel, but I hate the balloon placement obscuring the faces of the crowd, would have liked it better if it were at the bottom obscuring Rah’s left leg instead.
-a general note on word balloons and caption boxes throughout-they suffer from the same malady I often see in a lot of English translations from the French in the European albums, the word counts to say the same thing in French and English can sometimes vary wildly leaving some panels/caption boxes overly crowded and others feeling empty with a lot of white space. I am not sure there is a solution to this, but it always strikes me when I read books in translation
Story Page 3 (7 in the PDF)-The replacement font for the alien captain’s speech is so much better than the one initially use the first time I read through it, which I really struggled with and it took me out of the flow of the story.
-again I love the camera angles in your panel designs
Story Page 4 (8 in the PDF)-panel 4, perspective is one of the things I struggle most with when I try to draw, so I commend the use of it and its done well for the alleys and buildings, but Rah’s front leg just looks a little off, but other than that, another very well designed panel that really gives a feel for the setting of the space port
-I love the little touches like the rat atop the trash can in panel 5, tiny details like that breathe so much life into the visual narrative
-panel 6 though has a big infodump exposition dialogue, maybe necessary but it leaches out a little of the dramatic tension that had been built into the scene by the frantic pace of the chase through the visuals, a case of the scripting working at odds with the art, but it’s so hard to find a balance between exposition and action when a piece of info is crucial to understanding the sequence of events being depicted
-panel 8: Rah’s response-Quite despite myself reads a little awkward, again I think the result of an awkwardness in the transition into English, likely do to an idiom that doesn’t directly translate if my guess is correct
Story page 5 (9 in the PDF)-poor trash can, it is amusing how retro the trash can design feels now, we still have an old metal trash can like that out in the garage, but it just fits the spaceport design for me, so I get a kick out of it
-I don’t know why but I tend to hear Tondal’s dialogue in a Droopy Dog kind of voice when I read it (yes I know this reveals more about my strange nature than the work on the page, but so be it).
-again admire the perspective in panel 2 and on the viewscreen in the background in panel 3, that’s a lot of effort for a background piece, but it just sells the whole thing so well
-I dig the layout of the last panel a lot, but part of me was disappointed it wasn’t used to set up a page turn moment where the first panel atop the next page didn’t show the other side of the firefight with the pirates firing behind their cover. It just struck me as I read through that this would have made a great page turn transition
Story Page 6 (10 in PDF)-panel 2-Tondal just reminds me so much of Charlie 27 from GOTG in that shot, don’t know why, but it’s what I thought of immediately upon seeing the panel
-again admire the perspective in the alley panels and panel 6 when the ship is descending
-panel 7-there’s just something about a rope ladder coming down from a spaceship that makes me giddy, it strikes me as so retro and inspires the giddiness because it evokes a Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serial vibe when I see it. Yes it only takes little things like this on a comic page to make me giddy! And then throw in a Dick Tracy wrist communicator with television like screen! Oh my! However, as giddy as I was, those were big chunks of dialogue in that panel in what was otherwise a tense fast paced scene, and stopping to read those large chunks affected the overall pacing of the scene.
Story Page 7 (11 in the PDF)-Rah’s line in panel one just seems so Han Solo-esque, I just thought back to the scene in the Death Star detention center with Han trying to bluff the Imperials over the com and then blasting it and delivering a similarly pithy line
-panel 5 with the ship escaping and blasting away felt like it should have been the end of a page too, the switch to the aftermath with the pirate captain kind of blunted the climax of that scene, taking away some of its finality. It might have read better with escape panel, reader pauses, takes a breath, turns the page and then starts intot he aftermath and the pirate captain dealing with the escape.
-panel 6-the pirate captain sitting in his throne just evoked the classic Big John Buscema poses of the likes of Loki or Conan similarly sitting on a throne like chair. Nice touch (but still would have been better as the first panel of the next page…)
-panels 7 and 8: I realize its necessary exposition, but Klen sure is a wordy S.O.B.
Story page 8 (12 in the PDF)-love the tower design in the last panel, and the clean street design of the city as the captain commutes to the tower (panel 6 especially) is at odds with the seedy retro feel of the spaceport from the chase scenes outside the bar, but it works because it conveys the sense of distance and travel the captain undertakes to reach the shiny temple tower from the slums of the spaceport bar just by contrasting the visual feel/look of the two settings even if they are on the same planet/settlement
To be continued….-M
