It's The World They Live In That Does It

I mentioned in the reviews last week that I had some thoughts on Jefte Palo's art I wanted to pursue, so that's the focus for today.

Thing about it is, all the faces Palo draws look, "hardbitten" is the phrase that comes to mind. They're lined, or scratched, and most notable to me is that you almost never see a character's eyes. it's as though they were squinting very hard. Actually, in some cases I look at the faces and think that they have no eyes, that they've been burned out of the sockets. But I believe there's a point to that. This is a fairly dark story. The woman Jake Lockley rescued is the daughter of a Mexican drug lord. She was in prison for protection, because she planned to turn evidence against ther father, who is the one who hired Lockley to "rescue" her. The criminal (Gilberto Alcantra) planned to have Lockley killed after the rescue, then kill his own daughter to impress some Russians mobsters who are coming to open a partnership. So there's that, plus someone going around, butchering Alcantra's men for reasons unknown, and using their blood to leave what I'm guessing are Aztec symbols on the ground or walls. Plus, there's the Punisher, which means people are dying.

There's nothing pretty here, very little that's bright or shiny. Everything is dark, and the colors reflect that. The backgrounds are mostly blacks and blues, with perhaps some dull red sprinkled in*. Even when Lockley meets with Alcantra to discuss the job, in what Alcantra describes as 'God's country', on what is supposed to be a bright, sunshiny day, the colors are muted, as though we're viewing them through a dirty haze. Perhaps it makes a mockery of the idea of this being 'God's country', given the current state of things. The characters themselves look dour, frowning, at odds with what is supposed to be beautiful country.

The only times bright colors dominate the background is during moments of violence. In #26, the background goes from black to red in the moment where Lockley throws his first punch in the bareknuckle fight he's in. After that, narrow yellow lines are set against the black background (which returned swiftly after that punch) to show the movement of Lockley's attacks. In #27, the bright red returns as Lockley learns he's been double-crossed, with a gun pointed at the back of his head. It's the signal for more violence, but this time, as the violence begins, the backgrounds don't go back to black. There are yellows, blues, some dull oranges, which is curious since those occur when there are slightly brighter orange lines denoting bullets set on those same panels. Why use variations on the same color, instead of setting the bullet tracks against a darker, more different color?

I've yakked a lot about color, but there's a point. Most of the story through two issues has taken place in darkness, either at night, or in places that aren't well lit, such as lousy hotels, strip clubs, bars, places where bareknuckle fights happen. In a dark world, eyes can only do so much good. Look at things that live in caves all their lives, like the Grotto sculpin. If a species lives in darkness for enough generations, they gradually lose their eyes (or the eyes are present, but don't function), because they aren't serving any purpose anyway. In this world Lockley finds himself in, eyes don't do you any good, because you can't see anything anyway. One of the rare moments when can see Lockley's eyes, his pupils even, is in #26, when he's considering whether to take the job. Ostensibly, I think the panel is meant to show him thinking about it, and considering what I proposed, I think it shows that Jake was fooled. Compared to where the story started this outdoor location is bright, and Jake thinks he can see what's what, but he can't. This isn't about a rich man whose daughter was abducted by dishonest police to take revenge on him, but Jake's using his eyes in a place where you can't and so he reads the situation wrong.

There's another explanation for the lack of eyes I might as well mention. For the most part, Palo keeps the shot at a distance, even when it's a scene of two people talking, close-ups on the face are rare, and the panels that are narrowly focused on one character are usually small (the larger panels inevitably hang farther back, usually establishing location). I think it's meant to create a sense of distance between us and the characters. We are not part of their world, we are just observing, and so it's best we don't get too close. "Beware of Man" and all of that. These are dagnerous people, and they're used to the live they're in. We aren't, on either count, and if we were to venture any closer, we would be in their world of darkness, and then we'd be lost. That's how I've been reading it anyway.

* Using a pattern as if they were just letting paint drip off a brush onto the picture. Not certain as to the significance of that.