<<How does the story in validate the story if the complaint is over the way something was drawn?>>
damn, i HATE when i mistype. i meant to say you put such an emphasis on story it invalidates the ART.
and strictly speaking, a comic book could NOT exist as a novel. the pictures add a great deal -- in fact, they DEFINE the medium. without the pics, it wouldn't translate into a novel -- at least not a coherent one. there would need to be a much greater level of detail - ie - the story and that scene would have been much more well defined. it wasn't because, as in all comics, much of the story is RENDERED and CONVEYED in the illustrations. pics show the emotions of characters for instance, at least as much as the words do, along with conveying too much additional info (not conveyed in words) to bother even trying to relate. it's why i say in this medium, BOTH (pics AND words) are essential. if you blanked out all the illustrations in a comic, the story would be missing huge parts and some books may be utterly incomprehensible without them while most others would simply be . . . incomplete stories.
to say illos are not essential to a comic book . . . well, i'd say you would almost certainly find yourself in the minority with that particular thought.
ps-just watched stealth (in lieu of war of the worlds) actually not bad . . .