Every week on “Sunday Page” an author has to choose a single page from a comic book. It could be for sentimental reasons o for a particular technical achievement. The conversation could lose itself in the open water of the comic book world but it will always start with the questione: «If you had to choose a page from a comic book you love, what would you choose and why?»
This Sunday I’m out with Bruno Oliveira, a brasilian artist working in the US for publishers like IDW Publishing and Marvel Comics. Among his most famous credits: Drones, Mosaic, Gwenpool and The Amazing Spider-Man.
The page I’ve chosen is from the Ultimates series, issue 5, written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Bryan Hitch). Now, about the page, just like the artist you interviewed, this is not my favorite page ever, but it is/was a very, very important sequence for me because, it came at a time when I was studying storytelling and for the first time in a super hero comic, the action wasn’t a huge close up of hero and villain hitting each other. It was beautifully “shot” from a distance, giving it a cinematic feel that blew my mind! After that, I threw out all my conceptions about storytelling and super heroes to start to come up with something new!
So, what were your conceptions about storytelling before this page?
I’ve always wanted to draw comic books and the artists I met were all artists who worked drawing super hero for Marvel and DC. So my main references for learning how to draw were these artists. So my notion of how to tell a super hero story, was that way that most artists do (even nowadays though it has been less so), everything is in your face and everything storytelling wise was over the top, surprising. They very rarely took the time with their story.
What was so different about this page, then?
So when I saw this page (which, if I’m not mistaken was the first story I read illustrated by Bryan Hitch -and then later I went back to read The Ultimates since issue #1) it was mind blowing. It felt different and it took me weeks to figure out why it felt different. It was his confidence. He didn’t need the huge “in your face shot” all the time (in fact he almost never does it). It gave me a whole new notion on how to portray action shots. And storytelling wise, the way he was doing made complete sense to me after I studied storytelling more thoroughly, because it was perfectly simple and perfectly clear. I was never lost while reading, i knew where they were, what they were doing and where they were going.
Well, I think sometimes Hitch really does some ‘in your face’ pages, but it’s actually Millar’s fault. Like the page with Captain America going “You think this letter on my head stands for France?” – it’s a splash page but Hitch made Cap NOT looking to the reader, quite so, but not entirely, so it’s like he’s trying to taking the edge off to Millar’s bombastic script.
Exactly, the scene with him pointing to the A on his forehead and not looking at us is a “in your face shot” but still quite brilliant, not so much the cliché comic book hero type! I totally agree with you, without Hitch he wouldn’t have made such cinematic work. Millar’s script reads like a movie! Hitch’s stuff before The Ultimates like The Authority already had the horizontal panels and a clear storytelling but Millar’s definitely took advantage of that!
Do you think that Ultimates is Hitch’s strongest work?
As a storyteller point of view, it is his strongest work in my opinion. But as an artist point of view, I don’t like The Ultimates that much over his other works (both before and after). The Ultimates is too “tight” a work! His drawing is perfect but if you look at the stuff like Fantastic Four and even The Authority, his artwork is a lot looser, more expressive and spontaneous. The Ultimates seem too “technical” a drawing. That’s a little boring to me. It serves the story perfectly though!