I'm working on my actual review for Stumptown #1 by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth but since I read the issue last week, I've been trying to wrap my head around the first 2-page spread that shows Dex getting shot under a bridge. That isn't any kind of spoiler since it happens within the first 5 pages of the book but Rucka and Southworth do something that's kind of stumped (pun probably intended) me.
I really like how the scene is staged underneath this expansive bridge. They give it a feeling of a small event in a much larger world even though the event is actually pretty big and shocking. There are four inset panels, slowing down time to show Dex's fall into the water. At the same time, there are 13 more inset panels to show the flight of a bird from underneath the bridge to the top of one of the towers. Those 13 panels are perplexing because they don't fit in with a lot of the other storytelling in this book. Does the time it takes for the bird to fly to the tower equal the time it takes for Dex to be shot and fall? Or, since more of the bird's flight is over the final two panels, is that how much time she's lying there in the water? I think the big misstep in those bird panels is making the background white in most of them. It really sets those panels apart from the rest of the page, calling attention to them. I'm pretty sure that the birds are supposed to represent a short but not quick passage of time but they would have worked a lot better if the white backgrounds had been the same bluish tint that the sky was.
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The birds, to me, were a call-back to older noir movies where they would cut away from a shooting to just sound of the gun-shot and a flock of birds flying away to denote the murder (most likely done for censor’s purposes).
Regardless of the message it was meant to convey, it didn’t work for me either for the same reason. It drew your eye from the action on the page and left me wondering what they were on about instead of engrossing me in the story.
That said, this was still a fantastic issue and I can’t wait for the rest.