A Marvel Illustrator Talks Adding Emotional Heft to Static Pages

In this week’s episode of Strip Panel Naked, host Hass Otsmane-Elhaou continues his conversation with Marvel illustrator Chris Samnee. This week, the pair focus on Samnee’s work on Marvel's Thor: The Mighty Avenger, a series made along with Roger Langridge and Matthew Wilson. The page at the center of this episode follows a very simple set-up and payoff: Thor’s sidekick/cinematic love-interest Jane Foster (soon to become future Thor herself, though that’s a longer story) takes a call at her desk and hears a commotion outside her office. That’s it. But through small details and masterful layouts, Samnee’s able to add character and life to this opening page.

Samnee talks very plainly about plotting out straightforward scenes. “Ideally all I’m doing is putting myself in the character’s shoes,” he explains to Strip Panel Naked. “That’s all I was doing on this one. I’d read the dialogue and figure out how she would move and then figure out where the camera needed to be.” He goes on to describe what he thinks of pages without high action, “The people talking…that’s easy.” To get the emotions of Jane right for this page, Samnee gets physical. “I act out all the emotions, but I do that with a fight scene, too. I act it out in my office. I do all the beats to make sure it can physically work in a fight scene and I do the same thing when somebody’s talking on the phone for six panels.”

In the end, it's all about connecting with the reader for Samnee: "What am I going to have to do to make an emotional impact?" asks Samnee. "That's not exactly the scriptwriter's job. It's part of my job, it's one of my requirements, and it's something I take pride in doing."

Watch the entire video breaking down Samnee's seemingly simple page below:

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