
Earlier than that, the moment that made your hero trust the betrayer.Īll of these are turning points and points of conflict something changed that bends the plot, even if the audience does not quite understand that yet. Earlier, the moment their betrayer makes a decision to betray.

The moment your hero realizes they have been betrayed. In character development, or changes, etc. The moments you want to capture are the turning points and points of conflict. I think a comic is much like an illustrated storyboard for a movie.
#Simple comic panel to panel tv
WandaVision is arguably better in the first 3 episodes while it is subverting the well-known language of tv sitcoms, than in the later episodes where it becomes a 'normal' MCU show that un-ironically fits the format of episodic television. There is no need to explain the concept to viewers, since deconstructing the 'expected' formulaic sitcoms immediately tells us the story is more complicated than what is on the surface. That allows the show to tell 2 stories simultaneously, one in which the things we are shown are both familiar and obviously untrue, while a second story about psychological trauma and manipulation is being teased. The situations don't need explanation, it's a language that already exists in which the audience is very familiar. The artificial (almost inane) conflicts of the world-within-world TV shows are an inherent fabric of family television. He (literally) illustrates concepts from how faces are depicted to how words are represented, and how they inform the reader and influence the story.Īs an analogy to this inherent language of comics, the Disney+ comic-to-tv adaptation WandaVision deconstructs the historic language of episodic television comedies, as Wanda invents her fantasy family on a template of sitcom re-runs. The Rest of McCloud's book is packed with examples we recognize, but have taken for granted – far too many aspects to list, often several revelations per page. Readers subconciously know how this is suppose to work My describing this effect in words does not have the same effect as experiencing it as a combination of turning the printed page, the implied narrative tension of a gap in the storytelling, and 1st-hand meta-experiencing the idea at the same time it is being described.īy extrapolation, any number of blank pages could be between the missing panels, implying many narrative concepts: amnesia, government agency redaction, a 'glitch', a traumatic experience the character has disassociated, fading memories and identity, censorship or an in-story disagreement with the publisher, etc.

The empty space is emphasized because it is also the end of a page, and the reader is required to turn the page to continue, only to find a similar empty space where the first panel of the new page should be. On pages 81-82 of my edition, McCloud shows an example where the panels drop out entirely, leaving empty space where a panel should exist suggested by the established regularity of panels coming before.

These concepts are easier to understand when you see them in action – hence the entire essay is also a comic. It is sometimes heady and philosophical since it is analyzing art and story methods that are subjective. Understanding Comics is told entirely in comic form. But in Japanese manga – specifically Osamu Tezuka from the 1950s – the idea of sequential action is often replaced by an Eastern narrative concept of 'being there', experiencing a feeling over time, or settling into a realization or conviction. McCloud says the Western mainstream idea of comics as sequential actions comes from the extremely influential artist Jack Kirby in the 1960s. In chapter 3 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, McCloud discusses many different narrative properties of the space between the panels – what he calls the 'gutter' – can depict, and how readers perceive what is implied by those spaces. Minimum number of required panels on a page is 0 Once again i strongly recommend Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, where the language unique to comics is explored and explained in depth.

You need to look at some actual comics, rather than trying to imagine the 'rules' that comics must follow to adhere to an idea of how comics should emulate a movie. They do not need to depict a film's concept of a 'scene' (ie: a character at a location saying dialog).
