Wham! Pow!

What comic book story has been made without a few fight scenes peppered in here and there? (Well, quite a few actually.)

What I mean is, like any dramatic medium comics once in a while do have to convey conflict. Sometimes a conflict has been stirred up to such a peak that the fists come out:

It's up to the artist to show one combatant lashing out. Striking a blow. Throwing a punch.

The question is: how do you sell it? Like the 'almost kiss' I talked about two weeks ago you have to pick the right moment in time.

Surprisingly, most often it's the moment just after connecting the blow that sells the punch the best. In fact, what you're doing as the artist is showing the result of the blow; you're showing what's happened to the victim, the punch-ee more than the thrust of the arm of the punch-er.

Otherwise, what you have is Batman who looked like he super-glued his fist to the jaws of the bad guys, and to compensate the artist might add a lot of speed lines, shakes, squiggles, and other visual ephemera.

Also, having an exclamation point after the sound effect is wrong. The reason for this is because an exclamation point is reserved for a living thing making an utterance. Fists aren't living things, therefore the sound of their landing shouldn't have an exclamation point.

It's not always the 'victim's damage' -the result of the blow- that sells the punch. An inanimate object can do the same thing, like a table. The table soaring through the room, breaking apart tells you that some huge force was at play.

(Images courtesy of the Steampunk comic Dustbowl, download here for FREE for newsletter subscribers like you!)

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