Light/Dark Metaphors
There's this idea in mainstream Western society that, metaphorically, Light/White Is Good and Dark/Black Is Bad. The most frequent explanation for those associations is that people can't see well in the dark, so we can't see dangers coming (perhaps an instinctive primal fear of predatory animals, perhaps a modern expectation of human criminals.) This metaphor does get used for racist purposes, especially in language, where "black" as in the color and "Black" as in the race are written slightly differently, but sound the same.
It's also a metaphor that appears often in art, including in The Power Fantasy. There's a whole lot of panels that use dark backgrounds to convey an ominous tone. I feel like visually, there's more of a distinction between ink-black backgrounds and Black skin (although I'm far from an expert about racism in visual art.) However, whatever your take on that issue... I feel like, by constantly using dark colors in a mostly-symbolic way to mean doom and gloom (double meaning intended), you miss out on a lot of nuance about what darkness acutally means to people. Yeah, people can't see as well in the dark, but that doesn't have to mean fear. Maybe, dark could mean rest and light could mean action (as we generally sleep at night and do things during the day.) Maybe pure black could mean unpleasant understimulation (like the frustration of insomnia), pure white could mean unpleasant overstimulation (like the pain of staring at the sun), and the colors/shades with good vibes were the ones in-between.
But TPF is being created in a culture where the main light/dark association is good/bad- in particular where dark means ominous- so that's the association it usually draws on for visual effect. It's not innovative, but it's clear and effective communication. However, there are a few notable examples that step outside the typical, highly-stylized light/dark metaphors, and treat light and dark more like we really experience them. I'm going to contrast an example of light/dark used typically with light/dark used innovatively.
...all right, that was a really long and pretentious windup for how I want to talk about why Heavy is alternately a romantic figure and a human disaster. There's some cases where illustrations of light and dark are a big factor in that characterization- let's take a look.
Here's Heavy looking dreamy, fully lit as he invites Tonya towards the light beyond the arch. He's trying to look welcoming and trustworthy, and in this one moment he's mostly succeeding.
Then he turns around, putting the visible part of himself in shadow- making himself look literally and metaphorically shady. The meaning of the metaphor is that he's mysterious, and therefore untrustworthy, bringing in both "we don't see him clearly" and "he's someone to not feel comfortable with." (If you're trying to imagine this scene as a physically real place, it makes no sense that he's turned towards a well-lit room and is now in shadow. But that's completely not the point- I only thought of that because I've spent a lot of time staring at this page, because he's pretty.)
There's the conventionalized take on light/dark- but here's one that references a real-life experience that the good/bad association doesn't capture.
Here's Heavy and Tonya in a brightly-lit room, having just had a really bleak conversation about the scary realities of their situation.
And this is them agreeing to have sex as a distraction from that fear. Accompanying that choice, the lighting of the scene dramatically shifts to put them in shadow.(I'm reading that as an artistic-license effect, rather than a change in the supposed reality they're in. It would be epically hilarious to think that Heavy has a mood-lighting dimmer switch when he's trying to get laid... but I don't seriously think that.) The conversation they're having is still kind of cynical, but the colors/shading indicate that they're getting swept up in fantasy and romance despite what they know.
The romantic tone is created partly by the hot pink backgrounds, and partly by their darkening silhouettes. These dark colors do obscure the details of how they'e drawn, but not in a depressing way. It's drama and glamor and pleasure- we know, as readers, that it's an ill-advised distraction but there's still a beauty to it. Even if the lighting effects are impressionistic, it's based in the reality that a lot of people dim or turn off lights to have sex, and that dim lighting is considered romantic in general.
Here's Heavy looking beautiful in the bright morning sunlight... but even though the visuals are nice, the bright lighting here is symbolically a de-romabticization, a comedown from the glamor of the night before. The whole point was for them to escape their problems, and here he is dumping his problems on Tonya in a really self-centered way. The escapism is over and the morning light reveals the full horror of their reality, all over again.
The first sequence of panels is effective storytelling, but the second sequence stands out, as well as being effective. As useful as conventionalized metaphors are, it's cool to see art that does different things with the symbols we usually take for granted.