by Drew Baumgartner

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Gary Provost

Pacing is the silent artistry of every medium, the kind of essential element that you only ever notice when it’s either poorly or remarkably well done. As such, pacing is not the kind of thing we always get to talk about around here — beyond the fact that the bulk are paced competently, comics pacing usually takes several pages to really sink in, so is a difficult point to illustrate in a short essay. But then there are comics that do it so well, they almost demand that effort. Cannibal 7 is one of those comics. Continue reading →