Comics / Spotlight / Knowledge and Scholarship

Comic Book Storytelling

By Hervé St-Louis
October 2, 2010 - 13:30

A good comic book should engage the reader from the first page

In a great comic book, the visuals and the writing flow as one. They don't compete against one another

Good comics introduce the main plot, characters and conflicts without any necessary background story

The art of storytelling in comics has been ignored and forgotten

Comic book storytelling is not focused on the story nor the artwork

Comic book storytelling is based on how well the reader can read a story visually and understand the action

A good way to tell if the storytelling works is to built a story without captions and speech

silent comic books, those without captions or speech are difficult to create

silent comics force the artist to become a writer and tell the story visually

Marvel comics did a silent comics month a few years ago and the results were mitigated

During the Marvel silent comics month, writers such as Chris Priest relied on captions and signs on objects. It's not really silent

John Byrne was great at silent comics. He did a few for Batman in the 1980s

Some of the best silent comics writers are the world of comic strips

Comic strips have some of the best storytellers in the business

Because of the limited panels, comic strip cartoonists have to pack their message in as little words as possible

The best way to learn storytelling is to force oneself to tell a story with a predefined amount of panels.

By limiting the number of panels, the creator has to cut the crap and extra information in his comics

After having drawn his story into many panels, the creator should reduce the amount of panels by half

Reducing the amount of panels by half forces the creator to cut more extra material not needed for his comic book

Storytelling really is a lost art, but once an artist realizes the power it packs, there's no turning back

One of the best visual storyteller is Keith Giffen

Keith Giffen can pack a lot of story into as few page as possible while keeping everything dynamic

Keith Giffen also uses the nine panel grid layout. The nine panel is the most storypacked layout for comics

The nine panel grid is less popular in comics, because artists prefer to show more artwork in less panels.

Watchmen was built around the nine panel grid and proves that it's great for tight stories

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12