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Suspended Animation Classic #637
First published March 11, 2001 (#10) (Dates are approximate)

Wake
By Michael Vance

A clutch of spaceships and alien mind readers search for planets to colonize, and find a jungle-infested one and a savage girl named Navee. She was shipwrecked as a baby and orphaned, just like Tarzan. Wake is the name of the alien convoy that threatens her world and titles this new adventure series from NBM publishing and Frenchmen Phillippe Bucket and Jean-David Morvan.

The art in this reprinted European title is magnificent. For the sake of brevity, everything is technically done right, and the artist's style is distinctive and dynamic. Especially impressive are his panoramic jungle scenes, and this artist can draw banks of gadgets and gaggles of robots as easily as the banks of rivers and gaggles of geese. That degree of versatility is a rare talent.

The writing on Wake is no less impressive. For the sake of brevity, everything is technically done right, and the writer's style is distinctive and dynamic. Especially impressive are plot twists that elevate this series beyond "just another homage to Tarzan", characterization that ignores stereotypes, and crisp, believable dialog.

In the wake of such praise, is there no weakness, no flaw in Wake?

Navee looks thirteen years old, and jumps and swings across these comics pages naked except for a loincloth. That is considered child pornography under American law and business as usual in France. Therefore, a black strip was added across Navee's chest for the American edition. It may surprise readers who know this reviewer is Christian that he suggests the strap is both silly--and welcomed. This self-censorship is silly because Navee's nudity is no more salacious than a photograph of a naked baby. It is meant to suggest her innocence. That strap, however, is welcomed because all of her readers are not innocent and, necessary or not, it does nothing to detract from the graphic novel.

Wake is highly recommended for truly mature readers who can discern between lust and artistic license.

Wake/48 pgs., $9.95/sold in comics shops, at nbmpublishing.com, and in bookstores.

My wife and I brought home our second child this past week - a 6 lb., 1 oz. little girl named Ellie. I'm thrilled, of course, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that I now have a new subject at which to direct my lens...

For this shot, I used a black sheet which I purchased some time ago to act as a black background or to satisfy some other need with regard to photography. I cut two slits in the sheet, just large enough for me to put my hands through. I then threw the rest of the sheet over my head and stood there like a classic ghost but with human hands.

Before doing this, I set up two Nikon SB-600 flashes on light stands and with shoot-through umbrellas. I positioned the umbrellas on each side of my eventual subject and placed them in close proximity to the scene (about 3-5 feet away). Each flash was on Manual Mode and was set at approximately 1/2 power with the 'left' flash set one tick higher than the right, as this was ultimately the setting which gave me the right amount of light. I tried several test shots with varying degrees of light power from the flash units but landed on this power setup.

My Nikon D700 was placed on a tripod approximately 5 feet from the subject and at 'head level.' It was set to 1/250th shutter speed, which is the maximum sync speed available with the flash units I was using. The ISO was set to 200 which is the default setting I use unless I'm working in low-light situations and the aperture was set to f3.5. The 3.5 gave me enough depth of field to keep the head and my hands in focus, but it naturally blurred out the feet and the rest of her body.

I had my assistant (wife) help to position the two of us, as I had the black sheet over my head and couldn't see anything. I also had her trigger the camera when we were in position so I guess, technically, she took the photo...

She looks so peaceful when she's sleeping, except, of course, for when the flashes pop and her eyes squint - something she'll quickly get used to...