Panel Grids: 6, 9, 16...?

[dewline]

Some comic books I've read over the years distinguished themselves by sticking as closely as possible to a "grid" system of panel layout. The "base" number of panels would vary from artist to artist, book to book, but within a book, it would almost never vary unless you really wanted an attention-getter moment in the book in question. Ditko-era Spider-Man, Watchmen, Miller's first Dark Knight series, Legion of Super-Heroes during the "Giffen-Bierbaum-Squared" era...these stand out as some of the best examples of the method I recall reading to date.

So, I've got a question to throw out to you to answer with your opinions: Is this a method of layout for beginners to stick to as a survival tool, or hardcore pros to show how they really excel under self-inflicted pressure, or both?

Comments

[jcoville.livejournal.com]

I think it's a method of storytelling. It works for keeping the process of reading the comic extremely simple. No having to dart your eyes around the page figuring out where the next panel is. It's also very effective for sucking you into the story/world. Without any fancy design stuff, you just read the story and not even think about the art so much.

Depending on how much information there is to give in the story, it can be useful to use 9 panel grids or even 6 panels.

I suspect beginners would benefit from doing a story in 6 & 9 panel grids. In short, it forces them to use the same amount of space for each part of the story. Which makes you figure out how to use that space in a wide variety of ways. EG. for a knock out punch you have to stick it in the same sized panel as everything else and still make it the high point of the story. No big splash page to "cheat" with. No long panels to show somebody flying across the room either.

It helps to handicap yourself sometimes, just to figure out other ways of doing things. The more methods you have telling a story (and the more you use them) the less stale your work will become in the long term.

[mdg1.livejournal.com]

I think it's like writing a limerick. It's both a crutch and a challenge.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Two opinions so far, both in apparent agreement on the subject.

I smell a trend here. :-)

[quietdarkness.livejournal.com]

You managed to ask this question when I was dead tired from working. I've actually had to give some thought to this one.

I suspect this is a difficult method of storytelling that isn't really easy to pull off. Note that the people who have used this method successfully are seasoned writers.

I personally like that storytelling form...it almost makes it a movie storyboard experience.

I don't know that budding writers CAN use this method well. I suppose as a challenge you could attempt it. It's probably a good exercise in trying to make a story flow, with each panel having equal importance to the previous one.

Back in the 80's, I did write a couple of comics. Never published, because the damned artist disappeared with my scripts. However, it's a real challenge just to get the information into the panels, using size and placement to make the story flow and to emphasize certain points.

I don't think the static grid is an easy thing to write.

And by the way, thanks for friending me!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. And thanks in turn for your "writer's POV" musings. Much appreciated.

[(Anonymous)]

It is obviously a great idea for beginners and a matter of taste for others. Watchmen made excellent use of the 9 panel grids. I don't mind grids at all. In fact, if you can't compose a page like Steranko or Neal Adams, you're probably better off with a grid layout.

Mike

[miraclo.livejournal.com]

I'm going to add to the press of support for a grid system. We went through a period where such structure was eschewed by many, and IMHO the results were far more negative than positive. Hard rules are always going to be problematic, but in general I'd say that beginners should stick to a standard panel grid -- the number of them depending upon the scope and pace of the tale and the economics of the situation (ie how many pages they have available to tell a tale) -- and leave it to seasoned professionals to decide when it's best to break out of it for a particular emphasis. I prefer an early or a closing splash page at a story-appropriate point, but otherwise for it to be a good, bounded flow.

The early Image-era comics were a horror of nearly every page being a "money shot" of some sort, and due to the peculiarities of the speculator market at the time we had a generation of new artists come up through it thinking that's the way it's supposed to be done. I clearly recall a short stretch in the 1970s when it was obviously an editorial mandate at Marvel to plant a two-page spread in the middle of the comic whether or not the story really benefited from it.

If nothing else, the return to at least a six-, much better a nine-panel standard layout would help us get back to having a fighting chance of having an issue's worth of material back inside a single issue rather than thinly spread out over two, three, four or more issues. The current system is producing lazy writers and appears to be mostly at the behest of the publishers, constantly looking for story arcs to be produced at trade-friendly lengths of pages. That in itself isn't a problem, but stories that should be handled inside a single issue are being turned into multi-issue arcs, and notions that the expansion are a sign of today's story telling being more sophisticated are often laughable. Too often the space is being handled poorly.