“These Savage Shores” is a slow but deeply engrossing comic, one whose story is best experienced issue by issue, with artwork and coloring that sings and words and lettering that captures the time, place, and feel of every character. And of expectations, broken in ways that fix. Of words that obfuscate the true nature of a person while secretly revealing that which they so desperately try to hide. Of visuals that are a feast for the eyes while also capturing the melancholic and troubled nature of life in a world of hungry predators. Perhaps it is the sum of the whole, of each moment cascading off of the rest. And when a splash page is utilized, its presence commands our attention, blowing up a singular moment instead of breaking down a series of actions, transforming the page from a series of paragraphs to one singular statement. Without the constant knowledge of where the lines of demarcation are, their disappearance holds less weight. Without the regular, these tiny moments lose their impact.

There are pages that break the predetermined pathways, such as the hunter’s torch or two bats, while others emphasize the rigidity of the grid, widening the gutters to further emphasize the nature of the grid as a prison. However, it is clear that the creative team is not married to the modified grid nor the confines that it creates. It provides a varied regularity that, even reading three issues in a row, does not begin to bore as Napier suspects, although, three issues does not a trade make. The same is true of the gutters: thin, ever-present, and always shifting but along predetermined paths. In “These Savage Shores,” the border is ever-present, thin, trapping our characters within its bounds but giving them as much room to maneuver as they can. Many have panel bleed to the edges, taking advantage of modern printing techniques, while others use the page as a panel, insetting the rest of the comic onto whatever is beneath it. There are few comics nowadays that still utilize the border of the page.

Now with that out of the way, let’s talk the grid, or, more specifically, let’s talk borders and temporality. Breaking down the of the use of the grid in a variety of comics, with a special spotlight on its use in “These Savage Shores,” Napier’s article does a better job than I ever could of expressing the interplay between form, function and narrative and the ways the creative team utilizes it. Before I begin this, I must direct you to an article that I have no doubt many of you have already seen: Clair Napier’s article “Do I Hate the Nine-Panel Grid or Do I Just Resent Watchmen?”, over at Women Write About Comics.

These savage shores