Panel Layout Appreciation
You know, people are always praising the story and the art in comics, but I rarely see genuine love for the Panel Layouts.
The paneling of comics is incredibly important. Bad paneling can ruin the pace, immersion, and even narrative of a comicbook. While creative panel layouts can elavate a story immensely and make the whole thing super fun to read.
So I'm gonna start sharing and celebrating amazing and creative comic panels, where it is absolutely clear that the Artists had a great time making it!
Starting with:
Midnighter and Apollo (2016-2017)
Art and panel layout done by Fernando Blanco, who was praised for his ambitious and complex layouts during this run.
This is one of the very first things you see in this run, and it just grabs your attention. And you immediately get a sense for the types of tricks Blanco uses. The movement is broken up with smaller, floating panels that continue throughout the run to emphasize details and certain motions. And the layout of the train is unbroken, only the characters move inside it.
This is one of the more ambitious layouts. Midnighter has to fight his way out of layers in a bunker and the way this round layout works to emphasize that point is absolutely peak. It feels claustrophobic and brings this sense of desperate hurry with it.
This is my favorite layout of the entire comic I think. It's less busy but it uses those floating panels perfectly to bring out the movement and it looks so clean and well thought out. I just love this one so much. Blanco owns my soul for the whole run tbh.
Same as with the train, the scenery doesn't change, only the people inside the scene change, giving this super cool effect of how people move throughout the scene. The small floating panels brings emphasis on just how narrowly Midnighter makes it, as the candle going out meant he would not have been able to return. (Also I live for the yellow coloring in the bottom)
A simple 3x3 grid for a simple conversation. But bringing the image through the full bottom row and the last most image of the second row makes the whole thing feel more dynamic, and Neron (the devil) takes up more space and thus looks and feels more like a threat.
I'll probably do more of these for other cool uses of panel layout I find, but I felt the need to share how amazing the comic medium is thanks to panel layout!









