Back when the Watchmen movie was about to unleash it's mediocrity on viewing audiences world wide, I knew more than a few people who picked up Watchmen in a bookstore and made it their first graphic novel. Because I love to talk about comics, these people asked me the same question, and they had nothing to do with Watchmen's complex alternate history, how Doctor Manhattan viewed time, or Alan Moore's beard.
Do I read the words first, or do I look at the picture first?
I had never thought of this as a problem. After I first learned to read The Cat in the Hat all by myself, I moved right into comics. (Let it be known that I was so damn good that my rendition of The Cat in the Hat made my father cry.) My dad was reading comics during the late sixties and into the early seventies, and he saw nothing wrong with them during my formative years. During the third grade, he bought me a paperback of the first 6 issues of Amazing Spider-man that is still on my bookshelf. I'll get to how important that was in my life another time. Comics have been a regular part of my literary diet since then, and I read them as easily as I digest the New York Times. I've had to read quite a bit to understand my comic reading instincts. Allow me to share what my studies have taught me.
I have a sexy example of how to read a comic involving Ben Franklin. Please bear with me.
The short answer to how you read a comic is this:
1. Go one panel at a time.
2.Look at the picture in each panel.
3. Read the text from top left to bottom right.
4. Look at the picture again with the writing in mind.
5. Next panel, repeat 1-4
There is also a much longer answer. It's not how you read a comic, but it's how the comic is made. Scott McCloud calls comics "the invisible art" because your eye should be led from image to words without you realizing it.
This first panel has Ben's arm reaching from off panel towards the candle. Your eye follows the action of his hand reaching for the flame. Along the way you read Ben's dialog because it's been placed along the path of action.
The bottom left corner of this panel also juts out slightly in the second panel pointing to Ben's hand putting out the flame. Ben's sentence has also been divided between these two panels creating a distinct moment that successfully blends words and pictures. It doesn't really matter which comes first because the two are working quite well together.
The final panel skips a few things and gets right to Ben Franklin about to kiss his lady friend, Clea. Your mind is supposed to fill in the blanks of him walking towards her. The most interesting part to me is the placement of the word balloon. Instead of putting it in the blank spot over Clea's head, it was put in the bottom right hand corner of the page. It draws the reader's eye from the candle across the two lovers and down to the text. It also creates a reason for you to turn the page, but this may only apply to the Ben Franklin slash fiction fans that I will never, ever Google.
The long answer also cannot ignore the creators because it's their talent that made this possible. This page was from Doctor Strange vol. 2 #18, and it was the specific choices of it's creative team that gave this scene its flow. Allow me to give credit then to Steve Englehart (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Petra Goldberg (colorist), Denise Wohl (letterer), and Archie Goodwin (editor) for their good work with the completely insane idea that people wanted to read about Ben Franklin getting promiscuous in a Dr. Strange comic.
It takes talent and skill to properly direct the reader across a comics page; if the team does it well, it's an easy read. If they do a poor job, you can always ask me to help you decipher it.
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