This just in, it’s time for comics secrets! That’s right, fellas, I’m bringing out the big stuff early - some of it at least. For real though, I just want to talk about what makes a good comic.
While I tend to be extraordinary picky in terms of what comics I enjoy, that doesn’t mean what might not suit my taste is a good comic, so I’m going to throw personal preference out the window to an extent for now. A good comic tends to break down into three things (from most to least important): Readability, understanding, and appeal.
“Hey Jayme, isn’t “good art” important to making a “good” comic?” …Not really, it just affects your audience and initial attraction. Just because you’re a phenomenal illustrator does not mean comics will be easy for you and vice versa. Comics and illustration are both mediums that happen to intersect. I’ve seen many amazing illustrators with comics that just happen to be incredibly hard to read, not make sense, or just have not the best writing skills. Comics are a form of visual storytelling; it’s important to know how to tell a good story first and foremost.
Let’s backtrack to the most important part: readability. If nobody knows where to look when reading your comic then you need to work on where to lead the reader’s eye through composition. The gutter (general space between panels) can be a great asset to showing your reader where to look through how far apart you space your panels. The further apart a panel is between another, the more time is implied to have passed between them. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ALL EMPTY SPACE MAKES SENSE. Giving the reader a sense of direction is important, otherwise they will not know how to read your comic physically. Other ways to lead the reader’s eye can be through contrast, color, or speech.
As for “understanding”, let’s talk about story in the writing sense. A story of any length should have a beginning, middle, and end. This can also be translated into: Exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution (or denouement if you want to be fancy/ french) Let’s look at this through a simpler lens of an A-B structure. Hypothetically, if we’re making a two panel comic two separate things should happen: a setup and a conclusion.
For our setup in panel 1 a character is raising a fist at another character who looks surprised. To conclude the comic in panel 2 we see a close up of the character’s hand in front of the other’s face, fist unclenched and revealing a ring or something. Setup → unexpected conclusion. How can we make it more interesting though…? That’s where appeal comes in.
In order to make the story make more sense and be more appealing simultaneously, why not add a panel or two in between the two for emphasis to make the setup more impactful and the conclusion more dramatic/silly. Here’s the hypothetic comic all together down below.
TADA - a comic that subjectively has it all. Even a conclusion with a lightly ambiguous ending! Will they accept the ring and be fated to just… stand there forever? Or will they deny the proposal as they prefer the idea of sitting on the hill together to standing? OR will a comet come and knock them off the hill altogether? Find out in the thrilling sequel which I will never make.
Seriously though, all appeal is subjective so try to focus on communicating the important parts of your story that make it click! That’s all for this week, and I hope you have a lovely day!
-Jayme