Page Layouts in Kaare Andrews Iron Fist Series

Kaare Andrews run on Iron Fist deeply engages with issues of whiteness, capitalism, loss, revenge, and more. These are all extrmemly important themes that, at some point, I want to write about in relation to the series. Today, though, I want to continue the discussion I started in my previous post about the ways that Andrews’ Iron Fist engages us as readers, making us active collaboraters in the narrative process. Andrews accomplishes this in various ways, from the positioning of the reader as an interviewer asking Danny Rand questions on the opening page of the series to the construction of panels throughout the series. This latter aspect is what I want to briefly explore in this post.

I’ve written some about the ways that Andrews’ work, through its lack of clearly defined borders, showcases movement and causes us as readers to engage with the images and text in a different manner. Through this, Andrews involves us within the space that the characters inhabit, sometimes showing their movement across the page or panel and somethings showing them in different spatial places in the scene through the panels and layout. One specific example of this occurs when Pei runs from Davos’ minions in the hospital. This page has numerous elements that warrant examination.

At the top of the page, Andrews deploys shilouttes, a technique used throughout…