[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #45 - September 2007 [spoilers]

[Martin Phipps]

On Nov 9, 3:07 pm, Tom Russell <milos_par... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The other kind of suspense arises out of dramatic irony: the reader
> knows something the character doesn't.  We know Oedipus killed his dad
> and boinked his mom while he doesn't know this, and when he rails on
> about capturing the killer and avenging the death, we know he's
> talking about himself-- and each time this happens, it ratchets up the
> dramatic irony, the sense of dread, and the anticipation-- i.e., the
> suspense.
>
> It's the same sort of suspense at work in cross-cutting.  Building on
> fire, hero on his way, beams falling, hero on his way, children
> screaming and smoke getting closer, hero's horse breaks a leg and hero
> starts running, mother starts to pass out-- WILL HE MAKE IT IN
> TIME????!!!?, et cetera.
>
> The use of this sort of montage, incidentally, generally works really
> well in film, fairly poorly in comics, and very poorly in prose, and
> that's because of the physical space required by both comics and
> prose.

That sort of suspense doesn't work very well in comics because you
have no control over how quickly the reader turns the page.  To build
the equivalent amount of suspense, comic companies might consider
gluing together the last two pages of the book, forcing the reader to
carefully tear them apart in order to find out what happened next. :)

Martin