I don't think the toytown thing is so hard to grasp. It's a little ambiguous, but I reckon it would be pretty easy to explain visually. There's a vast library of cultural cues that you can use from Neuromancer to Tron to Mario Brothers that would flag that Toytown is a virtual space.
I would definitely be very conscious of how the panel where we first flick to the real-world is written though. Visually, you could explain Toytown in a oner here with a long panel that segues from Toytown on the left into a pixelly breakdown that leaves us with Batman on the right hand side. You could even go as far as having Batman casting off and stepping/leaping out of his bat-avatar, as it disintigrates and disperses behind him. I think it would be a better idea to have this transition happen in-panel, rather than be suggested in the space between.
Remember that the comic panel is a bit weird in that it actually contains a passage of time within it as it takes the reader a second to make their way from the left to the right. If somebody pulls a gun panel-left, you can have the reaction to it panel-right. The two aren't ever really the same moment. If you want a fantastic, and very handy example, look at FQ's rocket sound-effect from the Batman and Robin preview page. That's got absolutely everything you need to know about it right there. You could meditate on that one for months.
So if it were me, I'd put Toytown on the left, all dayglo and cell-shaded. Sewers on the right, all slimy and green. And in the middle - bridging the two, this big pixelly explosion and dispersal as Batman ejects from the Bat avatar. Maybe with it trailing up and off of his cape, to really tie it together. If you were doing this, make sure Batman is more to the right of panel, to show that he has entered Meatspace from Toytown.
Reading on now, but also, watch for things like...
and the only reason Wayne Tower’s in such good shape is because it was made to withstand a nuclear blast
That's never going to show up on the page and it's not useful information for an artist, if anything it's adding in information that might knock other, more vital parts out of their reading. Use whatever tricks you can... lyrical, poetical, descriptive, metaphorical... to get your ideas across to the artist, because ideally, the art can be any of those things in execution. What the panel descriptions are to the finished comic is an invisible scaffold that are holding up the ideas of the artist.
Just make sure that you are ONLY using those words to get across what is right there on the page. If Wayne Tower is made to withold a nuclear blast and that's important then there has to be some definite visual indicator of this that you should be describing. If there isn't, then you really don't need that there and it's only taking up space on the page and in the mind. |
