Double-Wide Doctor Strange, Day 5: Hmmm, Subbie never has an extra cup of tea at home.

Double-page spread from Doctor Strange v.2 #2 (August 1974), co-plot and script by Steve Englehart, co-plot and pencils by Frank Brunner, inks by Dick Giordano (!!!), letters by John Costanza
(Click picture to what the sam scratch was Dick Giordano doing at Marvel???-size)

Double-Wide Doctor Strange, Day 4: Most impressive juggling act, ever

Double-page spread from Doctor Strange v.1 #182 (September 1969), script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Gene Colan, inks by Tom Palmer, letters by Jean Izzo
(Click picture to finite-earths-size)

Double-Wide Doctor Strange, Day 3: Another successful Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce ad campaign!

Double-page spread from Doctor Strange v.1 #181 (July 1969), script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Gene Colan, inks by Tom Palmer, letters by Jean Izzo
(Click picture to hey isn't this the run where they had Doc wearing that goofy mask?-size)

Double-Wide Doctor Strange, Day 2: My Little Hellhorse: Friendship is Irrelevant

Double-page spread from Doctor Strange v.1 #170 (July 1968), script by Roy Thomas, pencils and inks by Dan Adkins, letters by Irving Watanabe
(Click picture to Morpheusize)

Double-Wide Doctor Strange, Day 1: Wasn't this the cover for a Yes album?

The Mid-Day Matinee this week, all week: Double-Wide Doctor Strange! If there's a superhero whose cosmic adventures demand the true widescreen experience, it's Stephen Strange, M.D. (Magical Doctor). All this week we'll take a peek at some of the mind-blowing, senses-shattering, left-arm-tingling-and-tasting-copper events that pitched Stephen Severus Strange against his greatest enemies, like Baron Mordo, Mindfreak, Penn (not Teller), and David Copperfield (Not The One From Charles Dickens). The Doctor is in...for Double-Wide Doctor Strange Week!

Double-page spread from Strange Tales v.1 #162 (November 1967), co-plot and script by Jim Lawrence; co-plot, pencils, and inks by Dan Adkins; letters by Sam Rosen
(Click picture to Tales From Topographic Oceans-size)

Double-Page Spreads, Day Five: Galactus loves eating Italian

Double-page spread from S.H.I.E.L.D.* v.1 #1 (June 2010), script by Jonathan Hickman, pencils and inks by Dustin Weaver, colors by Christina Strain, letters by Todd Klein
(Click picture to Ellisize)

*Some Highly Intellectually Educated Latin-speaking Dudes

Double-Page Spreads, Day Four: Thank yuh. Thank yuh verra much.

One of many awesome double-page spreads from Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. #11 (February 2007), script by Warren Ellis, pencils by Stuart Immonen, inks by Wade von Grawbadger, colors by Dave McCaig, letters by Joe Caramagna
(Click picture to Ellisize)

Double-Page Spreads, Day Three: What if they gave a party and Death arrived? Without a hot dish?

Double-page spread from Super Powers v.1 #5 (November 1984), plot and pencils by Jack Kirby, script by Joey Cavalieri, inks by Greg Theakston, colors by Carl Gafford, letters by Ben Oda
(Click picture to Apokolipsize)

Double-Page Spreads, Day Two: Hawkman cosplay gone horribly wrong

Double-page spread from Marvel Presents (Guardians of the Galaxy) #10 (April 1977), script by Roger Stern, pencils by Al Milgrom, inks by Bob Wiacek, colors by Janice Cohen, letters by Irving Watanabe
(Click picture to condor-size)

Double-Page Spreads, Day One: Shoot that poison arrow through my heart

The Mid-Day Matinee this week, all week: Double-Page Spreads! When the action is too big for one page, why not fill up two pages with your excitement and adventure! Especially if you're getting paid by the page? They're widescreen, they're mammoth, they're big-ass, they're Double-Page Spreads!

Double-page spread from Captain America Comics #16 (July 1942), script by Stan Lee, art by Al Averson
(Click picture to Allied-size)

Recolored and remastered version printed in Captain America #600 (August 2009)
(Click picture to anniversary-size)

Here's even more 1940s Cap double-pagers!

Widescreen Wilson

As we saw last week in this post, John Byrne stretched out the screen in Uncanny X-Men and gave us some sensational double-page spreads throughout his run on the book. But of course Byrne didn't pioneer the technique, nor did it end with him. I could spend several weeks running down comics' greatest vista-riffic double-spreads, but tonight let's spotlight an artist I like an awful lot and who I think doesn't get his fair share of acclaim: the great Ron Wilson. It's probably no surprise to you that my choice for Ron's greatest work is his 1980s run on The Thing, my fave character of the Marvel Universe. Perhaps not coincidentally, a good percentage of that run was written by John Byrne himself. Did Byrne's sweeping scripts demand that Ron give more shoulder room to the key moments of Mister Ben Grimm's adventures? The world may never know, but what we do know is that Ron gave us some magnificent widescreen shots. Here's a finely-detailed Doomstadt, Latveria (or at least its simulacrum on the Secret Wars' Battleworld):


Double-page spread from The Thing #13 (July 1984), script by John Byrne, pencils by Ron Wilson, inks by Joe Sinnott, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Michael Higgins
(Click on all images to Grimm-size)

Weirdly enough I'm especially fond of Wilson's scenes of immense, intense destruction. Here's the aftermath of a battle through a hospital lobby, as Alicia Masters fearfully picks her way among the wreckage. Hey, quit lyin' down on the job, you guys!


Double-page spread from The Thing #9 (March 1984), script by John Byrne, pencils by Ron Wilson, inks by Joe Sinnott, colors by George Roussos, letters by Jim Novak

But for my double-sized money, there's no two-page Ron Wilson spread that can beat this one from The Thing #6: a Vista-Vision Cinemascope Technicolor birds-eye view of exactly what happens when titans clash: a whole lotta Manhattan gets broken. Who ya gonna call? (Damage Control, I hope!)


Double-page spread from The Thing #6 (December 1983), script by John Byrne, pencils by Ron Wilson, inks by Hilary Barta, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Rick Parker

Hoo boy, now that's some cinematic devastation, huh? Don't worry, Manhattan-616 fans, I'm sure it was all put upsy-daisy by the next issue. (It always is.)

Ron Wilson has done a heckuva lotta work for Marvel and other comics publishers, and I'm familiar with some but not all of it. He's one of my favorite Marvel artists: more than just these wonderful double-page spreads, he draws powerful superheroes and ordinary Joes with equal skill, and his action sequences are always clear, dynamic, powerful and dramatic. His Marvel house style may be out of fashion into today's world of photorealistic-comics-art, but the Marvel of today would benefit from his clear and crisp style and the strength and sublety of his pencilling. Here's to you, Mister Wilson: may Dennis Mitchell never harass you.

Double, Double, Byrne and Bubble

Hey, I'm back! Let's get back into the swing of things with something simple but spectacular...or should I say uncanny?—John Byrne's double-page X-Men spreads!:


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #115 (November 1978), script by Chris Claremont, co-plotting and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Francoise Mouly, letters by Rick Parker
(Click on all images to Colossus-size)

You may make fun of John Byrne (I often do!), but you can't deny the man has a sense of spectacle: long before Byrne turned the FF topsy-turvy in the sideways Fantastic Four #251, and waaaay long before the X-Men themselves went widescreen with the "Marvelvision" sideways format of Uncanny X-Men Annual 2001—heck, even long before Gambit sullied the name of the most uncanny team of them all, Byrne brought the periphery-fillin' Cineramascope-aspected thrill of fully double-page spreads to the X-Men.


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #116 (December 1978), script by Chris Claremont, co-plotting and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Tom Orzechowski

Aided and abetted by Chris Claremont's stories, Byrne turned out panoramic vistas for our misfit mutants to maraud through in the late 1970s, as X-Men was capturing the the hearts and minds of comics fans and sales were climbing up the charts. It's hard to remember a day when there was only one X-Men title, but when you could rush down your your local 7-11 and pull this off the spinner rack, the wait between Xavier-xploits didn't seem that long:


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #118 (February 1979), script by Chris Claremont, co-plotting and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Ricardo Villamonte, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Tom Orzechowski

To be fair, Byrne didn't pioneer double-page spreads, not even on the X-Men. Here's a very innovative spread from X-Men #61 by Neal Adams, an artist whom Byrne counts as one of his influences:


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #61 (October 1969), script by Roy Thomas, pencils and colors by Neal Adams, inks by Tom Palmer, letters by Sam Rosen

The late 1970s globetrotting escapades of the X-Men were a perfect era to spotlight Byrne's double-page action-stuffed vistas, but the book shifted into truly top gear with the return of the X-Men to Salem Center, the rise of the Hellfire Club, and the genre-defining debut of Dazzler, Claremont's dense and expansive scripts left Byrne little space to "spread out" and insert a full two-page spread. It isn't until the double-sized X-Men #137 (by coincidence the first ish of X-Men I ever bought—talk about jumpin' in the deep end!) that there's space for a cinematic two-pager:


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #137 (September 1980), script by Chris Claremont, co-plotting and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Tom Orzechowski

Byrne left the book after issue #143, but he still managed to sneak in one last double-wide spread in #139, an issue which had a little room to grow as it was mostly set-up for the next batch of adventures. Still, there's nothing throwaway about this lovely panel, one I consider the archetype of the pre-Shi'ar holographic Danger Room:


Double-page spread from Uncanny X-Men #139 (November 1980), script by Chris Claremont, co-plotting and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Terry Austin, colors by Glynis Wein, letters by Tom Orzechowski

In the early eighties there were a handful of John Byrne art and interview books published which I eagerly snapped up. I don't have the books anymore so I can't quote verbatim, but I remember Byrne speaking in an interview about however impressive a two-page spread was, he was wary of overusing them because they advanced the storyline by precisely and only one panel. I can sorta see his point..but what a panel. If Claremont's plotting and writing on X-Men opened the way to longer and more involved storylines with more deeply-characterized heroes, then Byrne certainly brought the Marvel Eighties Age to a head and started the trend of visual spectacle and wonder, much in the way Kirby did with FF in the post-Galactus Trilogy issues. We can complain today about comics with immense splash pages or double-spreads and how decompressed storytelling leads to comic books that take five minutes to read, and if you're being testy you can partially lay that at the feet of Byrne's big double-page spreads. But to be fair, every panel mattered in these early X-Men, and Byrne's spreads were not simply to speed up the pace or to take up room, but instead provided us with a widescreen panoramic snapshot of the amazing, spectacular, and uncanny world these troubled four-color heroes occupy.