Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Greatest Graphic Novel Masterpiece J.M. Matthews has ever made in his life: I give it 1-Star. Terrible. Ce La Vi

My 1-star 41 page Graphic Novel bande dessinee hardcover Tome, is jam-packed with everything I've ever hoped to get to see in a comic book, to the point of almost 50% of my graphic novel being comprised of aspect shots. Out of the 41 pages of narrative art, 20 of the panels in those pages were aspect shot. The majority of them almost, if not half of the pages. It's the first American comic to go the Maya Deren aspect shot route on a more extensive basis, perhaps to its detriment. None of my Amazon reviewers seemed to even pick up on that aspect and instead labeled my intensive theoretical effort “amateurish” and “lazy”. But the execution, although widely ignored by my readership and reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon, lived up to my expectations and went well beyond them. I'm thrilled with how End Times: Blaque As Hell turned out. It's a graphic novel that uses more aspect shots, or aspect to aspect transitions than any other American comic book has in the history of American comics.

Storytelling Self-Sabotage: Aspect Shot Overkill

Aspect-To-Aspect. In my 20s that was all I wanted to draw. Until it took over my entire panel transitioning style.

That was the mistake I made. I used aspect shots too much, to the point where it's been interfering with my comic book storytelling ability. Even One Piece uses fewer aspect shots than I do.

The transitions I need to make happen are:

  • Moment-to-Moment
  • Action-to-Action
  • Subject-to-Subject
  • Scene-to-Scene

Too many aspect shots interferes with the storytelling. It looks cool, but should be used sparingly in my storytelling arsenal. I've gotten so good with avant-garde aspect shots, I just assume that's the kind of shot I'm going to draw, when it shouldn't be automatically or necessarily, just every so often.


To be honest, in my early minicomic days, I could easily tell a story. I didn't use any aspect shots. But I was so obsessed with aspect shots, those types of camera shots made the style of storytelling I was using too abstract, to the point where I had abandoned moment shots and action shots entirely. Even Hiroaki Samura uses SOME moment and action shots.