The Thousand Words Method

Or sometimes you shove an entire beatdown into a perfectly composed single image, (to be fair, a large, double-page spread image):

art: Rob Haynes book: Daredevil publisher: Marvel Comics Group © Marvel Comics Group

Rob Haynes’ clean “European” line gives a beautiful stillness to the bedlam and even seems to suggest slow motion within a non-moving drawing.  But there is so much action taking place within the drawing through deliberate construction of well-placed diagonals.  The perspectival depth of the scene is almost entirely suggested by the perfectly angled throwing stars.   This could never be a freeze frame of a movie because ever s0 slightly different moments in time are all being compressed into one image.  The tiny details of the detritus should alert any haters to the intense care put into Haynes’ seemingly simple style.  This methodology is fully-considered, able to tackle large buildings, figures and even minuscule hoops of metal.    Haynes doesn’t need to cover his anatomy work with hatching or cleverly placed shadows.  Every line is exactly where it should be and any more would be needless fiddling.  The lines may and colors may be flat, but I’ve never seen Daredevil look so round.  The athlete the stories always tried to suggest is finally there in this shot, seeming to float across the tops of buildings.  And the story itself was a clever little conceit designed to fit perfectly between the surrounding issues of the run, fleshing out the world of the story much as this gorgeous image fleshes out Murdock and his New York night life.

And before any nitpickers point out that, be all that as it may, Haynes still got lazy and recycled his perfect pose on the female in the back, her name is “Echo.”  I’ll let you guess her powers and put that wagging finger down.