I'm not the biggest fan of decompression in comics.

Y'know, decompression?

It's that thing in comics.

Dialogue and action are prolonged. Usually for effect.

But the dialogue can turn into empty chatter.

And the action just becomes action for action's sake.

And the page count. So...many...pages... And pages don't always equal story.

And yet, sometimes dialogue needs its space to help illuminate character. Decompressed dialogue can read more like real life conversations, since people don't usually get to their point in a single sentence. An extra panel of silence can create suspense or lend weight to a character's words.

Movement becomes more natural. A drop kick doesn't just magically become an uppercut. Intricate movements can be broken down second by second. Motion, or the potential for motion in the case of characters standing still, is excitement and cinematic.

These thoughts came to me while I was working on the script for KYUSS and I realized a scene would benefit from some decompression. By allowing a scene to play out over a couple more panels, I was able to better illustrate (so to speak) the emotion of the scene.

KYUSS will probably have more decompression in it, as its genre works in decompression, largely because of the settings traditional to the genre.

But really, it's about what feels natural. We live in a decompressed world. True compression would reduce existence to a minimal amount of one's and zeros. Life isn't binary. There are plenty of binary questions out there, but often we can find a third path in these situations. The details and complexities of life need to be considered in any decision, and by exploring them, we open new doors for ourselves.

But sometimes the answer isn't obvious and requires we talk something through or take something step by step. And sometimes we're sharing a story and we need to lay the foundation for the point we're trying to make in order to illustrate its nuances.

Y'know...decompression.