Broken Frontier

Sean Wang takes you behind the scenes of the first installment of his and David Schwartz' Image mini-series, Meltdown.

Contrary to what some may think, MELTDOWN is not my first comic book. I’ve actually been doing comics for almost 10 years now, having written and penciled various TICK books for New England Comics, most notably the 6-issue TICK AND ARTHUR series. I’ve also been self-publishing my own sci-fi action-comedy series RUNNERS for the past few years (and for many, many more years to come!). But MELTDOWN was probably my most ambitious project to date artistically, in that I wanted to use several different art styles to portray the different phases of the lead character’s life.

For those unfamiliar with the title, MELTDOWN is a 2-issue, prestige-format series from Image Comics. The story chronicles the life (and death) of a fire-based hero whose powers are killing him. With only a few days left to live, Cal (AKA The Flare) must find a way to tie up all his loose ends and hopefully find a way to reconcile himself with the life he has lived and the decisions he’s made.

PAGE 3

The opening sequence establishes the gritty and realistic art style of the Present. It also marks the introduction of Maelstrom, Cal’s archnemesis. Fitting that the main antagonist would represent one of the four elements (air) to contrast Cal’s power (fire). Actually, a significant turning point in Book 1 takes place underwater, while an equally important event in Book 2 occurs underground. Water and earth, perhaps?

Anyway, since Maelstrom would be showing up in flashback scenes as a costumed supervillain, I wanted to establish some visual cues, like the purple color motif of his shirt, which would be the predominant color of his supervillain costume. He also sports cufflinks with a tornado-shaped whirlwind, an insignia that will also appear on his chest in the flashback scenes. The tornado imagery is repeated with the sculpture in his office on this page.

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The page marks the first flashback scene and the first change in art style, going from a gritty realism to a fun, cartoony look. I drew Cal smiling a lot in the early flashback pages, especially as a little kid, to establish a happy, optimistic mood that would serve as a contrast for the much darker days to come.

Panel 1 was a bit of a struggle. Normally, I would have gone with an establishing shot of Cal’s house. But early on, I decided that whenever the story transitioned from Past to Present, I wanted to create a visual transition as well. This usually took the form of similar panel compositions or blocking of elements. This particular transition was the toughest.
Ultimately, I decided that the previous panel had Cal, very tiny and curled up, being pushed out of an office window. So with this panel, I also had him very tiny (as a foetus), in roughly the same position in the panel. I’ll admit it’s a bit forced, but the embryo shot does fit with the text being about his creation. The super-observant may have also noticed that the womb outline is very similar in shape to the Flare insignia.

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This was one of my favorite Past-to-Present transitions in that I think it’s fairly subtle. The last panel of the previous page shows Cal in the background, walking out of a baseball locker room, with his uniform neatly folded on a bench in the foreground. Cutting to the Present, Cal is once again in the background, but this time he’s charging forward towards Maelstrom, who occupies the foreground in the same spot as the locker room bench in the previous panel.

The surface they’re fighting on will be revealed on the next page to be the roof of a Metromover car, the downtown Miami monorail system. David Schwartz (the writer) and I were both pretty keen on representing parts of Miami accurately, having both grown up there.

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This page is the first of the Intermediate art style. It also sports a Present-to-Past transition with a birds-eye view of Cal in both instances. The previous page shows him lying at the base of the Bayside Hard Rock Café, injured physically. Cutting to the Past, Cal occupies the same space in the panel, but now he’s walking through a rain-soaked theater district, injured emotionally. He’s also the only one without an umbrella, to add to his pathetic-ness, and to draw your eye immediately to him.

The hero on the poster in Panel 2 is supposed to be a combination of the two most iconic “leader” characters: Superman and Captain America. It’s also a nod to the very recognizable Uncle Sam recruitment poster. The Hall of Heroes is a fairly obvious homage to the Hall of Justice, although I think the statues, globe, and stars add that extra bit of grandeur. Guru-eFX originally colored it in tans and grays, but I thought it was important to give it that white marble look, like a shining beacon in the heart of the city.

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David originally wrote this with Cal getting a bit of hero experience by catching some petty criminals first before auditioning for the superteam. I thought it would be funnier if his “experience” just consisted of him practicing heroic poses in front of a mirror. Plus it seemed to fit his character more since altruism wasn’t really his primary goal. Cal’s first costume was supposed to look as cheesy as possible since it’s homemade, and, for me, cheesiness is exemplified by a low collar, like the uniforms in the first couple seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This page let me get back to my TICK roots, in that I got to have some fun with some really stupid characters, in particular the hero wannabe with the tentacle arms and the one with the light bulb head and lasso of Christmas lights. The Hall of Heroes consists of your typical superpower types. In the group shot, Cal is meant to be barely noticeable, relegated to the background.

PAGES 24 & 25

This double-page spread was a nightmare as the New York background took forever to draw. On the plus side, I think I have an okay eye for perspective, so I didn’t have to actually draw out grid lines or perspective guides. If you look closely, you’ll see the inevitable snafu here or there, but all in all, I think it came out well.

With Amara, it was important for her to be immediately recognizable upon her reappearance, which was difficult since she was last seen as a teenager. To assist the character recognition, I relied on some visual cues, like the choker on her neck, which she also had as a youngster. I also gave her star-shaped earrings, to tie back to the star shapes on her sleeves and circling around her when she was first introduced.

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This page was the start of the trickiest scene of the book in that it had to transition from one art style to another over the course of 7 pages.

David gave me free reign with the creation of the Evil Incarnate villains, so, as a big fan Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, I went mostly with an homage to the Sinister Six. There’s a Doc Ock type with mechanical arms and legs, who I imagined to be a quadriplegic. There’s also a Vulture type character and a hunter villain akin to Kraven. The silver buzzsaw guy was my Green Goblin type character in his use of personal flying gadgetry.

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This page in some ways epitomizes what I was trying to do artistically to differentiate the various styles in Book 1. In addition to getting looser with the inking and laying down more areas of black in the grittier style, I also relied on the page layout and panel composition to enhance the different looks. While the Past style had white gutters to emphasize a lighter, more optimistic feel, the Present has black backgrounds to make those pages feel darker overall.

And while the Past panel layout conforms to a more static grid layout, giving it a structured look, the Present has more overlapping panels, breaking of panel borders, and other elements to give the pages a more chaotic look to match the increasingly chaotic emotions Cal is experiencing in his later days.

I hope I pulled off the different styles and they do their job in enhancing the feel of the story and Cal’s journey. I think the progression came out pretty well, and that progression continues, as the style gets even looser and grittier with issue #2…

So those are just a few of the key art moments from MELTDOWN #1. Now go forth and impress your friends with your newly acquired MELTDOWN trivia knowledge. And don’t forget to check out MELTDOWN #2, the concluding chapter, which hits comic stores today.

For more on Sean Wang, visit www.seanwang.com.