Nick Spencer, Comicdom's Answer to Ingmar Bergman, part 4

Iron Man 2.0#12, page 2; This time, Spencer is joined by writer Will Pfeifer; artists listed for this issue were Carmine di Giandomenico, Andy Troy, Ariel Olivetti and Mirco Pierfederci. It's a Choose Your Own Artist Adventure! I can only be certain this page wasn't produced by Olivetti: Yep, another splash page turned over to a single action: the action of War Machine rescuing a falling woman in mid-air. This is rendered with the hero and damsel in distress at the centre of the page at a wide angle, emphasizing depth, I suppose. And yet, the artist has angled this tripod shot so War Machine's back is to the tripod, with the fire from his jetboots so intense it almost completely covers up his figure. Good thing there's a speech balloon saying "gotcha" in a War Machine font, lest we think she was being rescued by, I dunno, Mothman? Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer? If this action required a full page, why couldn't it have zoomed in on the action of War Machine rescuing the woman? So long as the distance between them and the pavement was still established the peril would have been kept clear. How about framing this from the worm's eye viewing, looking up at the characters from the ground level?

I'm not even going to start discussing the standard comic book physics problems of rescuing falling people mid-air; death of Gwen Stacy aside, comics almost always get it wrong. It is a pity, though, to note the damsel in distress here is Suzi Endo, a superhuman woman who doesn't normally require someone else to save her. Happy 2012, strong female characters!