Reading Comics: Panel Layouts

Now tell students that as well as guiding the reader’s eye through the page, how the panels in a page are arranged can affect how quickly or slowly we read and what we notice, and can even be part of the story themselves.

Have students access the student chapter Panel Layouts or display the Course Presentation on a screen or digital whiteboard.

Explain that the panel arrangement on the first slide – a grid with all panels the same size – is often the default choice if you don’t have any particular effect in mind.

• In some cases the grid may be the best choice because of how the comic will be shown. For example, most webcomics use a four-panel grid so that the whole comic can be read on a phone screen.

Go to the second slide and show the first variation, where one panel is wider than another. Explain that in general, the bigger a panel is the more we pay attention to it and the more time it seems to take.

Next, go to the third slide and explain that we can also vary the vertical size of the panels.

Explain that as with the Daredevil page you studied earlier, most pages will contain a mix of larger and smaller panels. Panels that stretch the width of the page are fairly common, while ones that stretch the full length from top to bottom are less so because they make it harder to read the flow of time on the page.

Go to the fourth slide and point out that there are also some less common arrangements like overlapping panels.

Go to the fifth slide and say that sometimes one panel will be fully inset into another.

Advance to the sixth slide and explain that one fairly common technique is a bleed, where the panel has no lines around it.

Go to the seventh slide and ask:

How are the panels arranged on this page?

• They are almost (but not quite) a perfect grid – the third panel is slightly wider and the fourth slightly narrower.

How does it affect how you read this page?

• The repetition makes the joke work because the “camera” stands still while Nancy walks up the wall and onto the ceiling. But the panel where she starts walking up the wall is slightly wider because that’s the one that “breaks” from what’s possible in the real world.

Advance to the ninth slide and ask:

How are the panels arranged on this page?

• The first panel is a square inset in the larger rectangular panel.

How does it affect how you read this page?

• It makes it feel like everything is happening very quickly because all the horizontal lines flow together.

What other ways can you think of that this panel layout might be used?

• Obviously there is no right or wrong answer here, but you can point out this layout could be used to show that two things are happening at the same time or to highlight something important (for instance, a close-up inset into a medium shot or a wide shot).

Advance to the eleventh slide. Explain to students that the page is from a comic about a European man who took a totem pole away from a Haida community and that the artist is a Haida artist from British Columbia.

Ask:

How are the panels arranged on this page?

• It’s two pairs of unequal vertical panels. The eye in the middle means the top left or right corner of each panel is sloped.

The artist, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, has said that “If you look at Haida art… you’ll see a centre line, and a left side and a right side and they should mirror one another.” How does this page reflect that?

• The layout of the page is mirrored, but the panels on the left are much more full than the panels on the right. This makes the composition feel unbalanced.

How does it affect how you read the page?

• It makes you read the two left panels first, then the two on the right, following the curve of the “eye” in the middle. and then ending with the totem pole being taken away.

How does the page layout help tell the story?

• The page layout recalls the design of a Haida totem pole at the same time as it tells the story of a pole being taken from its community. It shows the importance of totem poles to Haida communities but also the resilience of Haida culture.