Comics as an art form has few rules. If you can make something work, then it works. But I believe a cartoonist should never do a few particular things in comics. I’ll discuss one of them in this post.
Comics produced in North America are read in the same direction that text produced in North America is read—from left to right and from top to bottom. This reading direction is supremely important to know when you’re designing panels on a comics page.
Here’s the rule that I wish all cartoonists working for North American publication would follow: Don’t stack panels on the left side of page. Avoid this when you’re planning the layout of a comics page.
Here’s a diagram of what I mean:
Why should you avoid this panel layout? Because it defies clear communication.
Now, clearly the first panel to be read is the one on the upper left. But then, which panel is the second one? Is the reader supposed to read to the left? Or is the reader supposed to read down?
Well, I can’t tell you which is the second panel. There’s no way to know for certain. So I would never create this layout on a page. Don’t you do it, either.
I find instances of this layout again and again in published comics by professional cartoonists. When I do, I often have to read the panels in both sequences—both left to right and top to bottom—to figure out which one is correct. That necessity pulls me directly out of the story, and that’s exactly what you don’t want to do. Do not pull your reader out of the story.
This problem has some solutions that try to make the best of a bad situation.
Solution #1. You might be able to solve it with the lettering, if you
have a speaking character continue dialog from panel one into the next
panel by using an overlapping word balloon. But if the letterer is
someone other than the artist, instructions to the letterer have to be
communicated clearly and the work has to be double-checked. Below,
you can see that Solution #1 leads from panel one to the lower panel
on the left as panel two.
Solution #2: Another possible solution is to use arrows leading from one panel to the next. The arrows clearly tell the reader where to go. But using arrows is awkward, distracting, and went out of style decades ago. Once in a while, I'll see an arrow in a professionally published comic these days, but I advise you to dispense with arrows. Use clear, well-planned panel layout instead.
Solution #3: A third solution uses numbers to indicate the order that panels should be read. I think this is a terrible choice. They're ugly and confusing. Yes, if the reader follows the numbers, the story works, but the sense of entering the world of the story is destroyed. Numbered panels were a convention of early comic strips, but I don't see them used today. With good reason.
The example of Solution #3 below, as you can see, also uses an arrow. The cartoonist seems to realize that the number system doesn't work very well, so supplements it with an arrow. Confusion is added by the word balloon in panel three, which overlaps with panel one. (I'm sorry to say that one of my instructors in art school drew this page. It's early work of his. By the time he taught me, he'd had decades of experience as a professional cartoonist and would not have advocated these techniques.)
Solution #4: Here’s a fourth solution. This choice works best of the so-called "solutions" I've proposed. It doesn’t confuse the reader, because the panel sequence flows left to right, no matter where the eye may be led within each panel. That's because the bottom panel on the left sneaks an arm between the first panel and the panel on the right. That bottom left panel becomes the only choice for the second panel because it lies in both reading paths that lead from the first panel. (So, it's not truly an example of the problematic layout I'm urging you to avoid.) Technically, it works. Still, I’d be reluctant to use this solution, because that little upright arm of the second panel might escape the reader’s notice.
Here's a second example of Solution #4. This example uses a much thicker arm sticking up between panels one and three. It works. But the reader's eye has to travel backwards in the second panel, so it still doesn't create an ideal flow.
So, those are some clumsy solutions to this problem. Use them at your own risk. I think the best choice is never to design a page with this sort of confusing panel order. Never.
HOWEVER—
—as I said at the top of this blog post, if you can make something work in comics, then it works. Maybe you can find a situation to turn this confusing panel layout into a strength. Maybe you’re telling a story about alternate worlds and you want to show those worlds splitting off into two different timelines from a single timeline. Panel one is the original timeline. The other two panels are the other two timelines and since neither panel has priority, you’ll be showing that neither alternate timeline has priority. If you can do something clever and clearly communicative with this panel design, more power to you. But that’s the exception to the rule.
Copyright © 2025 Eric Shanower. All rights reserved.
