Blow Away #2: Blue and Red

Something happened on top of a mountain. Two climbers ascended and then disappeared. A photographer was in the right place at the right time to see it. Brynne’s amateur investigation is even more gripping in Blow Away #2.

Brynne takes her video recording to Sheriff Ayek as Blow Away #2 opens. Brynne is convinced that she’s seen a murder. The sheriff doesn’t agree and quickly dismisses her. Brynne continues her amateur investigation at the expense of the reason she was sent to Baffin Island in the first place. She questions town locals who aren’t interested in helping her at all. She talks about the climbers with the pilot who brought them in. And finally she accesses the Gopro footage from the climbers themselves–footage disturbing enough to convince her that something serious happened on that mountain. 

The meeting between Brynne and Sheriff Ayek immediately creates tension which lasts throughout Blow Away #2. That tension helps propel the story during its slow moments and adds extra urgency to Brynne’s amateur investigation. It also keeps the issue from slipping into procedural territory. As much as there is a mystery to solve, the story’s focus remains largely on Brynne rather than on the investigation. The issue drops in a few more hints about her background via more phone calls. It’s an efficient way to tell the reader about Brynne without Brynne’s internal monologue clumsily recalling her life for the reader’s benefit.

The continued use of a perfect grid set against a video editing background continues to be an effective way to separate the replay from the rest of the story. The single page two-by-four and double page four-by-four layout is the only place in the issue where a perfect grid layout is used. And as the extended video sequence gives way back to the ordinary action midpage, the white borders around and separating panels in the rest of the issue return. These various style choices separate the deliberate, arguably slower video footage from the issue’s more urgent, ongoing action.

Frigidity pervades Blow Away #2. Various shades of blue and blends of blue and white mark every scene set outdoors. Characters’ clothing and building exteriors contrast with that sense of cold as though those are the few sources of heat in the environment. That attention to the environment pays off especially during the video sequences where white out conditions obscure the action in those moments.

Brynne asks several locals for information about the climbers at one point. All of the locals are cast in shadow and darkness. Even in closeups their faces are largely obscured by black. The art and color choice reinforces Brynne, the pilot she talks to, and the climbers as outsiders. It’s an easy way to establish that the locals have little interest in people that come and go from their home.

Closeups in Blow Away #2 put a lot of emphasis on the characters’ eyes. For the most part the angles are from a distance–across rooms, over desks, through windows, etc. In the relatively limited extreme closeups, thoughts and emotions are communicated almost entirely by how their eyes’ width, their eye lines, and so forth.