Using Black

            R. Kikuo Johnson’s Night Fisher begins with a film-like quality: the setting is established by a series of technical maps, zooming out to show that the maps are in a book held by our main character.  Suddenly, a massive explosion – a wave? a volcano? The source remains ambiguous – silhouettes the main character, a purely black figure rushing across the explosion.  The energy of the two large action panels is abruptly stopped by a two-page title spread, a peaceful black sky with stars over the ocean, much like the opening credit of a film.  The cinematic quality of this introduction highlights the most striking qualities of Johnson’s work.  One of these qualities is his ability to develop his narrative without the use of dialogue (frequent sections of the story are told using only images), a quality made possible by what I consider the most striking element of Johnson’s book: the artwork and, most specifically, his use of black.

            Johnson’s work is incredible in both its detail and creativity; his images work to develop the mood of the story while also fleshing out the personalities of the characters.  How Johnson draws the character Jon is an example of this: Jon first appears in images over his shoulder, focused more on the drugs than his person and surrounded by black darkness – an indication that his dark character will be dominated or influenced primarily by drugs.  Jon is then shown only from mid-waist down, his face completely in darkness, tattoos, drugs and gut exposed.  Jon’s eyes are consistently hidden in the black shadow from his hat, adding to the shifty and mysterious nature of his character.  Johnson’s creative drawing is also exhibited in one scene with Jon on page 55.  While Johnson could have easily made the page a series of action-to-action panels of Jon removing the tire form the car, he chose instead to alternate images of Jon with diagram-like sketches of “how-to-remove-a-tire” (these sketches appear periodically throughout the book).  Although the images of Jon alone do not make clear what is going on, the images reveal the action that the reader cannot see from where he is situated – but also removes the audience from Jon.

            Most striking is the ways in which Johnson uses black.  The silhouetted Loren on page 7 is the first use of negative-positive coloring, but it is a theme that carries throughout, such as on page 18 where Loren is depicted in a sea of blackness, altering the pages so that the gutter space becomes black instead of white, indicating the flashback/dream-like nature of the panels.  This choice of the black gutter is used again on page 48 when Loren first trips, and on 85 when he fantasizes about Lacey.  Black is also used to great effect on page 75 when Loren and Shane are sneaking through the woods, two black figures surrounded by abstracted black leaves, a visual scene dream-like in quality.  The color black also takes on a narrative significance on page 118 in the close-up of Loren’s hands, cuffed and covered in black ink, a stain of his misdeeds, the black incriminating him.  Perhaps most striking, however, in terms of black-and white, is Loren’s glasses.  Even when his character is depicted in full black silhouette (page 37, as an example), his glasses are drawn as eerie white circles, eyes hidden, in some ways an odd reversal of the invisible man image.

              What else could Johnson’s use of black symbolize?  I am not entirely sure what the black is meant to do at times, but it seems clear that it is used to some intentional effect.