Geiger Webskin

Mastering Space & Time: Millar & Quitely's Jupiter's Legacy 2 #1

Quitely's doing fun things with time on this page, showing Hutch skipping through the panels as he makes his way toward an armored car to free an imprisoned friend. What's cool is how you can see the effect of Hutch's actions in panels where he isn't even present, thanks to Quitely's firm grasp of space and time in comics. Bodies, guns, and debris litter the page as Hutch works his magic, giving you plenty of space to imagine what's happening, but not so much that you have to really work to read the page. It just makes narrative sense no matter how you read it, like how the flash in panel five leads to the bodies in panel six or the bodies stacked against the van in panel seven are the same ones Hutch knocked out in panel four.

We asked Millar and Quitely about the scene, and they shared this:

IMAGE COMICS: Frank, you often use the entire page as a panel unto itself, with characters dancing through the gutters. Can you tell us a little bit about how you two approach designing a page like when Hutch stages a jailbreak in JUPITER'S LEGACY, VOL. 2 #1?

FRANK: It's so long since I read that script, but I think Mark asked for one big panel with Hutch strobing across it, appearing one place after another, but when I was thumbnailing it I found that by dividing the one big background into nine panels I could control the order (time-wise) of how he moves through the page.

MARK: I love a bit of strobing in a fight scene. I've actually written it two or three times in the last few years and artists always duck it (laughs). Maybe it's one of those things that's better in my head than on paper.

JUPITER'S LEGACY 2 #1 is available now.