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WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Bolero #1.
Comic books and the multiverse are quite comfortable partners, inspiring other mediums to follow quickly in their footsteps. So often, though, these reality-jumping tales center around beings at some sort of power nexus, such as Spider-Man or The Justice League. Image Comics’ Bolero, however, focuses on spanning the multiverse not to save it but to find love.
Centering such a difficult-to-balance premise requires a deft hand. Bolero has several with the writing skills of Wyatt Kennedy and Luana Vecchio’s art. Through the strength of its visuals and recognition of every panel as priceless, Bolero manages to balance fine detail, backgrounds, and character art to weave a balanced slice-of-life trip across the multiverse.
Image’s Bolero Has Beautiful Details that Define a Sexy Multiverse
The story centers around Devyn Dagny, a Korean tattoo artist living in LA. The first panel showcases the story’s bright beginning and the character’s “rosy” world by focusing tight on a floral pattern on her arm. These minute details weave throughout the story, showing important aspects of the universe and hinting at story beats.
As with Into the Spider-Verse, Bolero presents subtle details to reveal the alternate reality landscape. Take, for example, Devyn and her love interest Natasha sneaking into a Drive-In. The marquee in front announces the film La La Land, starring Michael B. Jordan and Emma Watson. For many, this immediately reveals Devyn’s world as being a distinctly different place than our own.
Bolero’s Backgrounds Carry Subtle but Important Meaning
This alternate take on La La Land fills up the background during the first shared kiss between Devyn and Natasha. It has the effect of mirroring and silhouetting the two central characters to emphasize the moment’s intimacy. Up to this point, the two share a subtle galactic background motif that shows their being alone together while hinting at the incoming sci-fi reality hopping. The background visuals continue like this throughout the first issue. The framing of the characters is busy or straightforward as the story needs.
The calm, pastel background shifts into a series of bright pink panels when Devyn and Natasha meet their soon-to-be best friend, Amina Laviolette. Thin lines fill the frame, showing the immense details behind the characters. The feeling changes from intimacy to a chaotic concert frame. That is, of course, until the moment recenters on Devyn’s magical experience of catching Amina’s shirt, a moment shared with Natasha that brings back the galactic motif. Next, the background shifts again with a pleasant conversation between Devyn and Natasha set against a detailed blue backdrop. Finally, their sex scene unfolds against a sparse, bright pink panel.
There’s an acute sharp contrast between this love scene and the walk down the street that Devyn takes after Natasha breaks up with her. The galaxy motif continues, but it is snow rather than stars. The panels that once had space only for the two lovers fill with details that draw the eye away from Devyn. The new blue-gray world she inhabits only leaves room for color when Amina enters. She’s a bright force, freshly engaged to her boyfriend, courting Devyn’s disdain with her delight. Warmth and intimacy attempt to break into the story before Devyn’s state drag the panels back into the crowded blue-gray.
Bolero’s Character Designs Show and Tell
Devyn goes to Amina’s concert/engagement with eyes wide and panicking. The entire frame of the character changes after finding out that Natasha and her new girlfriend are present, too. Devyn’s body contorts into a series of sharp angles and dark colors. A coat covers her trademark tattoos. A shawl of shame of sorts, it belongs to a man who just bought her a drink. It drapes Devyn, symbolic of his attempts to claim her and her inability to stay sober. Devyn is losing herself. Natasha, in turn, withdraws when near Devyn.
After Devyn leaves with the stranger, the sex scene between the two seems very different from the inter-dimensional nakedness that follows. In this scene, text covers Natasha’s body, rendering her barely visible. When the stranger shows her to a pocket dimension, her nakedness shifts, leaving her completely exposed and vulnerable.
At this point, all three aspects of the art — the fine details, the backgrounds, and the character design — come together. The new dimension is bright red with yellows, colors not in the book until the new dimension’s introduction. Capgras, a sentient inter-dimensional cat and a facilitator of Devyn’s dimension-hopping is at once incredibly detailed and obscured, with colors that could be the pastels of Devyn’s world or the red of his own. Even his shape is both pointed and angular at the head but smooth and soft at the arms and chest. The flyer that he gives Devyn carries the colors of a vintage comic book cover, with bright blue, red, and yellow set against the bluish-white background of a comic book sky.
Devyn walks openly toward the door to a new reality, which deposits her into a new world. Here, her tattoos shift subtly, and she wakes up to see Natasha across from her in a sparse, galactic-accented room. As Devyn looks at herself in the mirror and realizes that her body is now that of a man, though, the background once again fills with detail that is only sparse around Devyn’s chest, drawing the readers to realize that she is no longer the same Devyn she was.
This first issue of Bolero uses subtle tricks and blinding detail to make the reader feel as close to the characters as possible. In addition to Kennedy’s wild and soulful story, Vecchio uses the artistic space not just to accessorize the tale but to complete it. Using every panel as an intentional aspect of storytelling, Vecchio’s work on Bolero becomes a masterclass in foreshadowing and visual storytelling.
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