Marvel lost their soul when the stockholders started running the business.

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It's the difference between "Let's make money telling stories!" and "Let's make more money than last quarter, no matter how."

The problem arises, in movies and comics, when the line is crossed in distinct shots, as on that THOR page. Like I said, the impression is that he's turned around.

The first time I was made aware of this effect was in a comic featuring a group shot, several characters at a funeral. In the first shot, one of them was facing to the left, talking to the others in the group. In the next panel, tho, she was facing right, while continuing the conversation. There was a moment of disorientation, as if she had turned to speak to someone entering from the right.

Again, it's a mistake I've made myself, more than a few times (tho I hope less and less over the span of my career), so I do not offer this as any kind of pontification. Merely a warning to young artists of something of which they need to be aware.

•••

You seem to have accidentally mixed your terms there, Eric. The 180 degree line is at right angles to the eyeline. The eyeline, or sightline, is the direction in which the camera is "looking." (I've sometimes wondered why the 180 degree line isn't called the 90 degree line! Perhaps because it extends 90 degrees from both sides of the camera.)

This can get confusing, of course, because the eyeline can so describe the path between the eyes of two people who are looking at each other -- and that's often at 90 degrees to the camera's "eyeline".

Basically, the rule is to prevent the camera making moves that would not be experienced by normal vision. Is we are looking at those two people sitting at the table in real life, we can walk around the the other side (as a camera can move), and there's no confusion. But our eyes can't jump to the other side of the view, so there can be confusion.