Quote Originally Posted by Boogastreehouse View Post
I don't recall ever seeing a character in this comic conveying a look of such utter horror as when V's casting passwall.

Maybe Elan's face and posture here comes close, but V really looks to be on the brink of sanity in this strip.

Quote Originally Posted by ti'esar View Post
No, I'd say Elan is the more horrified. V is more accurate described as panicked.

(And isn't it great how we can actually debate this kind of thing with stick figures?)
Quote Originally Posted by zimmerwald1915 View Post
It is indeed great, but it's not like we have no basis for these characterizations. The parentheses-like eyebrows indicate that a character is disturbed or purturbed in some way. They've been knocked out of their comfort zone. The more eyebrows, the greater the magnitude of the purturbation. Boogastreehouse is on to something when he says V's more horrified than Elan - he's taking his cue from the eyebrows. V has three eyebrow markings, Elan has two. V is more purturbed than Elan.

You, meanwhile, are trying to identify the characters rather than the magnitudes of Elan's and V's respective emotional states. Elan is horrified, V panicked. This cue can be gleaned not from their eyebrows, but from their mouths. Elan's lower lip bends upward in the middle, while V's mouth is hanging as wide open as possible as she shouts her incantations at the top of her voice. Of course, there are contextual cues as well, such as Blackwing - who, being empathically linked with V is in a position to characterize her emotional state with confidence - calling V's actions motivated by panic. But it's there in the art too.

The Giant knows perfectly well what he's doing. The art is minimalistic, true, but there is enough there so that he can show us these cues and we can come up with analyses based on them. And yeah, that's a great thing.
Quote Originally Posted by ti'esar View Post
That's my point - I think it really says something about the Giant's mastery of his art style (and I would call it a style) that said basis exists.
I'm pretty sure the extra lines around the eyes are a relatively new addition to the stock set of facial expressions. I haven't seen it used before Elan's horrifying birthday present (though it could be that I'm just overlooking it).

It really does add something powerful, doesn't it? I think that because the characters are so minimal, our minds are free to fill in all sorts of subconscious information.