Jolene and Melanie’s only sexfight, back in 2013, turned into a spectacular battle of the boobs. Melanie was hoping to put an end to Jolene’s record-breaking seven Sexfighting Championship Title defenses, but the Champ prevailed and would go on to defend her Belt once more. Tonight, Mel hopes to show Jolene what a difference four years can make.
Look…this is a PERFECT example of comic book storytelling and the advantages it provides.
If you compare various forms of media and the streams of narrative information they provide you’ll find that comics offer MORE. For example; novels only provide two streams of information (Narrator and dialogue), and film/television provide three (visual, dialogue, and sometimes narrator), while comics provide visual, narrator, dialogue AND internal monologue. You’re getting four streams of information that add to the storytelling.
This is one of Entropy’s best uses of the medium. Consider the staging of this scene…from even the first image. Usually when Entropy does the pre-fight preambles (which is where he gives the fights context and establishes the stakes, either tangible or emotional) as seperate images, but in this one he chose to do a split screen with a gutter line dividing the image…because there is a underlying theme of Jolene and Melanie being mirrors of each other. You see this kept up through the entire story; notice how the pole of the Octagon is always positioned directly between Jolene and Melanie…dividing them the same way that gutter does in the first image. And how the camera is always held in the same static position, keeping them in plain profile…facing each other. This creates an effect where it looks like they are reflecting each other in a mirror.
Consider the subtext of this…Melanie and Jolene are both blondes, both busty, and both natural…but Jolene is everything that Melanie wishes she was, with all her anxieties and body dysmorphia issues. Not only that, but with Jolene flaunting her engagement ring, we see that she is also a mirror to Melanie’s relationship with Don…another way in which Jolene is similar to her but, in Melanie’s mind, BETTER. Jolene is everything Melanie wants to be and also HAS everything that Melanie wants.
If we also look at the dialogue VS the thought balloons, this is a very effective storytelling tool that is common to Entropy’s work; the way he contrasts the outer with the inner. Entropy creates these dramatic contrasts were all the characters say things that are counter to their internal feelings. I actually find it interesting when Entropy DOESN’T give one of the characters an internal monologue because he’s created this atmosphere of every character being an unreliable narrator. We cannot trust anything any of the BWL characters SAY because we know how they really FEEL, and it’s almost always contrary to what they try to project.
From a kink perspective…I have to say that Jolene using her engagement to mock and humiliate Melanie is a kink I didn’t know i had. ^___^;;; I don’t personally prescribe to marriage as being the ultimate goal of any relationship, but society HAS given marriage that weight and Melanie, being an ol’ fashioned country girl from the American south, obviously DOES hold these views (whereas Don may be more liberal for all we know, and doesn’t seem marriage as a litmus for the success of a relationship, even as I do believe he is a loyal partner to Melanie and does really love her in a way that most of the other BWL males are more emotionally aloft…but that’s just my reading). Because Melanie gives it significance, and because she looks at Jolene as a mirror to heself, this gives Jolene and her engagement ring power of Melanie and becomes an effective tool of humiliation against Melanie, who is a big bundle of insecurities looking for constant affirmation (which is why she’s a favorite character of mine…like Megan and Prudie, she’s very complex).
Though this staging may seem simple, it adds a layer of subtext to this fight that informs on Melanie’s character.
This was a GREAT piece. I am seriously impressed.
Great work as usual!