Suspense in Comics – Ur Doin It Wrng!

Suspense in comics is just plain hard.  It has so many things going against its success.  No music, soundfx, actual time elaspment in the progression of a scene, etc.  You really have to be pretty good at storytelling to make it work at any sort of competent level in a comic.  It’s proven to be the biggest challenge for me on Adamsville from a presentation perspective.  I mean, how do you shock and scare people when they can so quickly jump to the next point of action?

Well there are three things I have been focusing my attention on.  In the above scene you can see two panels that illustrate at least two of them.

1) Pace things out –  Do a lot of aspect to aspect shots and moment to moment.  In other words, slow the pacing down.  This draws out the action and allows the moment to build to the final shot or reveal.  I’m a big fan of this type of storytelling.

2) Frame images carefully – In panel 1 of the above shot, the framing of the black against the figure should evoke a feeling of mystery and give us the sense the character is going into something timidly.  Then when the reveal happens in panel 2, it should standout a bit more.  Again, a lot of black is used in both panels to help evoke the sense of mystery.

3) Place your big reveals on a even page number – This one is just a good idea because doesn’t allow the reader to scna ahead.  So when they get to the bottom the odd page number, they have to actually TURN the page to see the reveal in the end.

A series I would highly recommend if you enjoy good suspense and in comics form is MONSTER by Naoki Urasawa.  As well as his 20th Century Boys series.  Urasawa is just a genuise of this type storytelling in comics and both are great reads.  I also spend a great deal of time studying films by Hitchcock and Shyamalan’s earlier works, and I can think of no better suspense film than Jaws.  When you break all of these things down you can get a sense for how they do things and hide information from the viewer.

These are just a few ideas around this concept.  Does anyone else have any ideas for how to achieve tension and suspense in their comics?