Anybody remember our friend, the Red Guardian? His battle with Captain America had me thinking how that tableau scene of fight maneuvers between the two might have fit in nicely with a previous post about wordless action sequences--that is, had writer Roy Thomas decided to omit the scene's dialog.
Out of curiosity, let's do a quick comparison of the two options. First, the scene with its dialog removed:
And now, the battle as it was originally published:
With all due respect to Thomas, there seems to be little if any dialog here that's needed which a little narrative couldn't compensate for. We've seen Cap size up his opponents many times before in other fights, so there's nothing really new here in that respect. And the Guardian's bluster is already on record. If anything, I would have preferred more words between the two combatants, since Thomas is going that route--there's a little extra room for them, and Thomas is no stranger to cramming dialog into tight spaces.
At least we found out that Cap is a master of Judo. Come on, I'm sure the Red Guardian didn't know that. Listen to how surprised he is.
Generally speaking, John Buscema's work rarely needed words.
ReplyDeleteThere's always a sync problem in scenes like you showed -- throw a punch while you read one of those word balloons. You'd be pulverized while waiting to put the period on the sentence!
Doug
I always think of that sort of thing when watching Quicksilver in a fight. If his opponents have time to talk to him while he's attacking, he's definitely not moving fast enough!
DeletePlays so much better without dialogue. Some writers appear to believe they aren't doing their job if they don't write something in every panel.
ReplyDelete