The Emotions of Arrangement

    When reading Crime Suspense Stories I was often paying the most attention to how an artist decided to arrange objects within a panel. In older works like Superman, panel construction was used to give information very explicitly. Things like who's talking and the location of the scene are brought to our attention first through image, and dialogue and additional text reveal the inner workings of relationships and characters. This simplistic almost-dichotomy works well for the superhero narrative, where we are interested with exterior sources of tension such as catching the bad guy. Yet, in suspense comics, we need to know the emotions of a character to be compelled to keep reading, so we need more revelation in the image.
    Looking at 'High Tide,' we can see from the first page that perspective is important. From the splash page opening, we get the feeling of watching or being watched, our perspective as audience from above and focused on the horizon. This set up is the utter opposite of the last panel on the page where we are looking from below eye-level, over the skipper's shoulder, at the boat passengers. Instead of seeing the freedom to see everything, our eyes have to move past a character (who is later revealed to be the killer) in order to see the scene. The perspective is reminiscent of a movie that introduces you to the killer at the beginning only to have you realize they're the killer 90 minutes later. Perspective not only reveals here, but it hints at tensions not revealed by words.
   Moving to the climax of the work on page 40-41, we are treated to an ever-changing perspective reflecting the struggle at hand. This was used in former comics as well, but here we are up close and seeing every change in expression, every little detail that is building and building until the revelation in the last panel of the top row of 41. Here, we are learning the identity of the killer at the same time as the last innocent man, almost as if we are being the ones shot. A movie equivalent to this comic would be the final scene of The Great Train Robbery where the robber shoots directly at the crowd. The artist is not only showing us the killer, but showing us the depths of his evil, that he would shoot any one of us to get off that boat. And by enveloping him in the black of the gun blast, the artist strips him of any humanity, leaving him as nothing but a killer.