Broken Frontier

Here you are introduced to the story at the moment of the great breath, the inhale before the furious sprinting, the fleeing, the run, running away. 

When THE LIGHT spreads, it does so very, very quickly.  The pace of the book moves accordingly, and it for the most part doesn't slow down for two issues.  Over five issues the book indeed moves with increasing terror and fury, but the pace of action slows some after these first two issues, yielding more dialogue, more character development, more interaction.  

I find this a unique dynamic to the plot of THE LIGHT.  The reader is rushed in furiously and will soon become tangled in the web of character, emotion, and desperation.  So here is the rush--here is the onset of the infection. 


Page 8

When I sent Brett the complete script for issue one, he wrote back "I'm going to knock page eight out of the park!"  It was a joke, but then...he did.  Brett added something real to this page with the faint scratchy texture and the red bony words.  This is Coyle sleeping; he's on the couch, napping after losing his job.  It's a rainy day outside.  Evening has fallen since he's fallen asleep.  To me, this looks just like looking through one's own eyelids.  The red after-images--here, echoes of sound, but interpreted as light-echoes, feel just like when you close your own eyes. 

The original script simply said "four evenly spaced black panels" or something to that effect.  This may seem a waste of space but it's an important pacer to the book as well as a scene-transition.  Using these black panels we achieve three things.  First, after the opening scene, we have the right breath of air to pace us into the next scene.  Second, we can build the tension toward sudden onset of mystery and horror that is coming.  And thirdly, we introduce the theme and really the character of darkness. 

Page 9

Suddenly, Coyle wakes up.  Have you ever had a dream where you hear the alarm clock in the dream as a car horn or a siren until you wake up and realize it's the alarm clock?  This is a period of waking/sleeping called parasomnia, a state where your mind isn't quite sure what's real and what's imagined.  This to me is a very frightening state because of its uncertainty, and here, Coyle wakes up with the echo of a cry for help in his mind.  Even when he steps out into the street, and sees Ray running up, you can imagine that he's still not sure. 

The reader, after page eight, will hopefully feel that something has happened here.  Something is different.  In terms of the art, the light is different.  When you go down for a nap in mid-day and wake up in twilight, it's a little disturbing.  Somehow the world is totally different from the one you feel asleep in.  In Coyle's case here, this is true in a terrible way.

Page 10

Coyle is still half asleep, obviously still in his work clothes (including welder's goggles) when the man who fired him just a few hours before runs by, raving, screaming, terrified.  It's useful to have this minor character--who we saw in the first pages of the book--as our first victim, because we can see the transition fear has caused in his personality, and that adds to the suspense.  Something serious is going on. 

Coyle, as you can see, is just not too sure about it, but he knows, again, that something is up if the man who kicked him out of his office earlier in the day suddenly acts like a completely different person, and seems not even to remember the fact that he fired Coyle who now stands on the street, looking away at the buzzing streetlamps which are just coming to life. 

Page 11

At the end of Page 10, Coyle is left with a choice.  He can dismiss Ray as drunk, or craz--and thus likely be immediately infected--or he can find out what the hell is going on.  Coyle is a bit too upset to leave it alone, despite the fact that he really hates this man right now.  Ray's fear and strange behavior is momentarily far more important  than the social rift between them.  Coyle recognizes that a basic human dynamic is at work, and is the result of some significant event.  Coyle pushes away his personal grievances for a moment--his aggravation, his frustration, his alcoholism, his failures--and runs after Ray.  This is to become a theme in the book: that the event, the cataclysm strips the characters down to just their humanity and their reactions to the fear and thus equalizes them as only great times of duress and tragic disasters can do.

This is most distinct in panel five, where Coyle, still completely confused, still not understanding, recognizes Ray's very real fears and covers his eyes (I think in the printing revision we actually changed that "cover your eyes" in fact).  He doesn't think, he doesn't stop to figure out, he simply reacts.

Something that Brett is doing here that is both clever and effective--and is a difficult challenge--is showing only indirect light in the environment.  Save for the streetlamp which is starting to turn on above them, until panel five (and this goes for the previous pages) we see no direct light sources.  And yet Brett has evoked the real mood of the what the light means to this book.

Page 12

Whether before, someway back, or just now under the glowing streetlight, Ray suddenly feels the flush of heat beneath his skin, the coursing of static electricity in his veins, which now glow across his face.  His eyes are burning.  His hair is scalding off.  Sweat steams out of his skin.  Coyle for a moment can only watch in horror, but as the heat grows, and Ray can no longer speak, Coyle wisely steps back. 

What we know now about the infection is that it attacks its poor victims quickly.  As Ray is reduced to breathless, staggering unfortunate soul, Coyle's world has suddenly turned into something new and from which there will be no return. 

Page 13

I absolutely dig panel one of this page.  The sputtering bits flaming person that are arcing out of the dying Ray--pockets of oil popping, arteries bursting--are such a horrific and revolting idea, yet Brett's blend of muted primaries makes the scene actually beautiful, a fireworks display of death. 

Coyle, as the reader is sure to be, is stunned, watching Ray's demise from a short distance.  But then the heat grows, and Ray actually begins to burst, and Coyle's trance is broken and he runs. 

It may seem an odd brief moment that he sits, looking at his goggles for only one panel--you might ask why he doesn't corner up somewhere, why we don't explore this moment more deeply--but we don't want to break away from this action for very long.  What comes next must come immediately--but of course we need to see Coyle for a moment pausing to decide if he's awake or not, to try and break the nightmare.  And to realize that it was pure chance that somehow kept him alive. 

Page 14

The up the stairway shot: a classic horror moment, suspense brought on by a simple angle.  Coyle retreats into his house hoping that Avery, his daughter, is still asleep in bed--a refuge she retreated to earlier in tears from fear of her father.  Coyle has no time--or perhaps no ability--to be gentle, nor to explain anything to Avery before he yanks her from her bed, and covers her eyes with his hand.  Coyle in fact doesn't even know why he's going this.  Only two facts ring in his head: there is danger, and it comes from looking.  They surely don't make sense to him, so why bother trying to make them make sense to Avery?  Yet he is rough with her, violent, and this is part of his nature, a deadly virus around them or not. 

His mother, with whom they both live, is quickly eliminated from the story.  We see her demise only briefly, but it is enough to know that this virus is hot on their heels, burning behind them.  They can feel the heat and smell the melting flesh as they run for the window. 

Page 15

All I have to say is, this is where Brett becomes a master.  The choppy, real, quick and simple panels of the previous page suddenly fall away to this beautiful, almost cosmic dance of spinning bodies and glass.  We hold our breaths for a moment as they fall out onto the roof.  Brett's choice of palette continues to be masterful, the light creeping behind them at a slow but ever-steady pace. 

And then we have the first real interaction between Avery and Coyle.  Her reaction is hopefully understandable, especially when you consider Coyle's history of abuse and erratic behavior: Avery sees nothing yet save for her father's failure to be everything a father should be.  He tries to explain to her what only the next page can...

...and for that, you'll have to pick up THE LIGHT #1!