As a copywriter, knowing what to say is never as important as knowing how to say it. It's so easy to wax poetic and say something in 250 words, but can you say it in 250 characters? In 100? In 15? It's a struggle to know when more is actually less, when romance is necessary, what word is vernacular, but all that stuff adds up and makes you think about how superfluous most words are.
But the job of writing advertising copy is an exercise in ratios; how can you say the most with the least? Which is awesome, because Moneyball isn't just one of my favorite movies, it's one of my favorite verbs too. You're trying to make the most impactful headline as simply as possible, and simplicity translates to word economy. Occam's Razor was actually a character count this whole time.
And comics? Comics are two things; they're art, and they're words. And honestly, most of them could do with fewer words.
I get the irony of saying people should write fewer words and showing a panel that has 21 of them, but you missed the irony of me writing an entire fucking blogpost about it.
Y'know, this blog non-withstanding. But hey, let's get back to the point.
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale are an amazing team. They've told some iconic, character defining stories together, between Batman: The Long Halloween, Hulk: Gray, Spider-man: Blue, and a ton of other out-of continuity, evergreen collaborations. When you're trying to get a friend into comics, you're probably gonna throw one of their projects into the mix; they're just that good.
But recently I was reading a book of theirs that I missed because of delays (it took nearly 8 years for the zero issue and 1-5 to come out) and honestly, I just kinda forgot about it. Captain America: White tells the story of Bucky and Cap teaming up with Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos behind enemy lines for an operation in Nazi-occupied Paris.
Let's not mince words here - Loeb knows how to craft a simple story that's compelling. The way Indiana Jones captures the romanticism and adventure to set up a narrative that instantly feels like a classic, Loeb does that for the funny books and it's wildly addictive. It's so simply told, it should be taught in textbooks, and simple is never a knock. It's really, really hard to tell a story simply.
Goddamn Sale is good. His work on Long Halloween was way more stylized, but this is a bit more proportional and realistic, while still being unmistakably Sale.
And let's not mince words again (because that'd be just as silly a second time) - Tim Sale can art the fuck out of a book. His art direction is pretty singular - he instantly makes these characters his own but always familiar, and his traditionally black-heavy colors are a little more forgiving here. They're slightly more washed out, and you see a greater emphasis on a gradient of darker tones rather than full-on darkness most associated with his work on Batman. It's also pretty cool to see him tone down the musculature a bit on his figures. Instead of being exaggerated, they're a little smoother; a bit more simple to match the story.
The conceit of the entire comic is that Cap is remembering how Bucky discovered his identity and became his partner. Every time there's an exposition box, we can tell that Steve's reflecting on things he could've done differently, and had he done them so, Bucky might still be alive. The entire comic is an apology letter, something you can imagine as a private obituary for a friend. The reeling you do in a tragedy that you felt like you could have, or should have averted.
And honestly? I think that makes the book worse. The exposition taking place at a different time really just feels like a wink to the reader, and offers no real story-lifting for the narrative at all. It's just kinda there, blocking gorgeous art. It's well-written, but unnecessary - superfluous.
It tells, when it was already doing such a good job of showing. The exposition given literally just serves three pages in the entire series, but not the story at large.
It's not bad - I fucking loved this book - it's just a great example of when doing less could do a lot more.
Is there anything you get from the exposition boxes that you don't get from the image? I'm leaning towards 'no'. Instead you just get powder blue contrasting the shit out of the art.