Comics Forum [hot] - Jab

One of our favorite running arguments here is about the gutter (the space between panels). Newer artists treat it like a wall. Veterans treat it like a doorway .

Forum Mod Squad Section: Craft & Theory

We’ve seen a wave of artists coming from storyboards trying to make comics look like movies. They use wide, horizontal panels. Lots of "camera" movement. Zoom. Pan. Dolly. jab comics forum

What happens between Panel 1 (a gun aimed) and Panel 2 (a body falling)? The gutter is where the reader commits the murder . The most violent panel in comics is always a blank white line.

The best modern layouts (think Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith or Step by Bloody Step ) use the grid to create a . They break the panel only when the emotion breaks. They merge panels to merge moments. One of our favorite running arguments here is

Think of your last "bad" reading experience. Did you have to scan the page twice to find panel three? Did your eye accidentally read the bottom-left panel before the top-right? That’s not a reader error. That’s a layout failure.

When you force the reader to fill the gap, you make them complicit in the story. That’s magic. Forum Mod Squad Section: Craft & Theory We’ve

We spend a lot of time on Jab debating the big stuff: inking styles, color theory, decompressed storytelling, and whether a six-panel grid is "boring" or "classic."