HOW TO: Comic Book Storytelling: Pt1 Relating Panels.

Have you ever heard a comic fan say something along the lines of, "I don't mind if the art is bad, as long as the story is good"? I've heard this claim a lot of times, and it frustrates me a bit. I think that it shows a misunderstanding of how comics actually work.

Ugh. I still hate looking at this page.

The idea that you can separate the art from the story itself is a misconception. It's understandable. As readers people are taught to accept the idea that the 'prose' part of a story is the story. But that's not strictly true. There's a big difference between the plot and the dialogue and the story as a whole.

A brilliant idea in a prose story that's badly described, is a bad story. The same is true in comics. the difference is that in comics the story is described by pictoral art and prose working together, not just by prose. A well written script can be destroyed by badly drawn art that doesn't convey what the script is trying to get across. Likewise a mediocre script can be propelled into a much higher status by really good art.

Today I thought we'd take a look an example of comic book storytelling done very poorly, and how it can affect the quality of the story as a whole -- how a badly laid out page can damage what a writer is trying to say. To be fair to other artists out there, and to give me an excuse to redraw a page I'm not happy with, how about we use a page from my own comic as an example? You might want to open that page in another window or another tab so you can refer back to the image more easily as we go through.