What makes a good action scene?

Being in a movie, or TV, or any medium other than comics (and books).

being drawn by david law

http://www.lambiek.net/artists/law_david/law_berylperil.jpg

Anytime super-people fight on the beach, the intense heat of their fisticuffs must turn the sand into glass.

No action scene is complete without ...

http://www.meteorcity.net/images/kirby/mc_kirby_giantfighter.gif

THE KIRBY REACH!

TS: manga fites vs. US/UK spandex fites FITE!

i.e. actual choreographed sequences vs. POSES

Make stabby!

Moo.

It's a skill some artists have and some don't. A bit of imagination helps - every FF fight has new ideas in it, new ways for the Torch and Reed and so on to use their powers. That's part of the reason why he was the best ever at it, and the template for most of what we've had since. cf Sal Buscema, with his routine hero swinging fist, bad guy knocked backwards with mouth wide open panel - there's a fight scene in the Gerber Defenders with I think nine panels like this on a 12-panel spread.

Being able to tell what is happening. You can't get involved with a fight scene if you're thinking 'hang on, what's supposed to be going on here? Whose fist is that?' This is why for instance Neal Adams was sometimes lousy at them.

Dynamism: choosing the right instant of the movement to depict is the key skill here. Some people don't have it, and the scene doesn't work at all.

Pacing is vital - this is a problem even with Kirby comics, in that fight scenes have too many words, with characters speaking several sentences before the next punch is thrown. Pacing can work like Kirby or like Kojima, who can spread a short fight over 20+ pages - it's mastery of your medium, he says vaguely.

Hmm, no time for a really long answer - I think it's interesting to deeply analyse why some work and some don't.

But the frequent incongruity between respective paces of dialogue and action are part of what makes comics beautiful!

Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that it should be abolished, but it does slow down the reading of a fight scene, which I think leaves the artist more work to do to keep it exciting. You look at Lone Wolf & Cub, and it's much more naturalistic than the superhero style, its pacing is entirely different and there aren't long conversations between blows. When you take ten, twenty seconds to read each panel because of the dialogue, it means that three or four movements that might in 'reality' take a second can take a minute to perceive, whereas in Japanese comics, the average reader spends 1.5 seconds on each page, so 20 pages of fight might be read in 30 seconds. It makes a difference to what you can do as an artist.

I hope it doesn't sound as if I'm saying this is an indication of superiority - I don't think Kojima's fight scenes are better than Kirby's, nor do I think the general standard is higher in Japan (it's not something I'd try to judge, since I see only things that someone thinks are the best of Japanese comics). I do think the demands and opportunities and problems for the artists are very different.

Another point: thinking about what you are doing. Some artists are rubbish at making different characters fight in different ways (look out that Buscema example I mention, from the Sons Of The Serpent story), while others grasp this very well. One of Miller's strengths on DD was that he had clearly thought deeply about his fighting style, and you can see the results of that in the fight scenes. Actually my favourite polar examples of this type of thought are not in a fight scene, but I think the principle is identical. There's a Dave Wenzel Avengers, in the Shooter Michael story, where all the Avengers ever are waiting for a computer result for several panels, and every one of them takes up an identical pose, that legs apart arms spread one (and their relative positions vary from one panel to another, which means they must be shuffling around in that posture! See understanding what is happening, above). In contrast, and citing an artist I don't like, there is Starlin's Avengers annual (#7? the Warlock one), where the Avengers start on a stormy night in the mansion, and you have Wanda hanging on the Vision's arm, the Beast holding up a book with his toes, and so on. Nothing extraordinary, but it has at least occurred to him that these aren't a bunch of identical people with different looks, they are different people who behave differently.

And I've just remembered a Spider-Man cartoon I saw not long ago, where among the guest-stars was Storm. Faced with the Lizard, she fights him by flying at him and kicking him in the face. Again, no one bothered giving the slightest thought to who they were depicting.

Trouble is, it is easier to show what's wrong with the dreadful examples than to analyse the difference between competent and good here. If I have time over the weekend I might try to do this - I'm quite enthused at resurrecting some of my comics-critic brain pathways! I might search out some examples or something. The Morrison JLA might be a good case study - Grant's good at that thing of coming up with new ways of using powers in a fight, but the artist doesn't make the most of much of it.

Excellent points.
One thing that bugged me, and I don't know how often it occured, was the whole every page a splash phenomenon of the early/mid 90s, specifically in the Death of Superman issue and the Guy Gardner vs Hal Jordan/Parallax issue of GG. THe DoS, I can almost say "Okay, blah blah, how often does Superman die, do something big and different, fine," even though, actionwise, Supes v. Doomsday was sorta rub. GG vs HJ, on the other hand, wasn't just sorta rub, it was total rub. I don't know of any other examples of this, but it seems like a giant waste. I mean look at Perez's Crisis, where EVERY ISSUE was Earth-shattering (literally, nearly!) and yet it was full of tiny little panels that were full of cosmic goodness and a cast of thousands!

Best splash page battle sequence ever - THOR VS. THE MIDGARD SERPENT. Thor #380. ALL splash pages. Look it up!

Yeah that one is good.

I can't find it! Post it!

Would if I could. Maybe I'll hunt for it.

There was an early issue of Savage Dragon that totally bit that issue of Thor, even going so far as to put the main character in a bit of a sticky wicket at the end.

Part of the classickness of the Thor / Midgard Serpent hoedown is that the Midgard Serpent spends the previous issue disguised as FING FANG FOOM!

And talking to Thor on a park bench IIRC.

My newsagent never got the splash page issue in :( it was years after when I read it, the cliffhanger the issue before really got me too.

"Part of the classickness of the Thor / Midgard Serpent hoedown is that the Midgard Serpent spends the previous issue disguised as FING FANG FOOM!"

That sounds like the best thing ever. Was Fing Fang Foom the Midgard serpent all along?