Panel Discussions: Design in Sequential Art Storytelling [Paperback]

Durwin Talon (Author), Will Eisner (Author), Walter Simonson (Author), Mike Mignola (Author), Mark Schultz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2007

The struggle to tell a comics story visually requires more than a cool-looking image; it takes years of experience and a thorough understanding of the art form's visual vocabulary. Assembled in Panel Discussions is the combined knowledge of more than a dozen of the industry's top storytellers, covering all aspects of the design of comics, from pacing, story flow, and word balloon placement, to using color to convey emotion, spotting blacks, and how gutters between panels affect the story! Learn from the best, as Will Eisner, Scott Hampton, Mike Wieringo, Walter Simonson, Mike Mignola, Mark Schultz, David Mazzucchelli, Dick Giordano, Brian Stelfreeze, Mike Carlin, Chris Moeller, Mark Chiarello, and others share hard-learned lessons about the design of comics, complete with hundreds of illustrated examples. When should you tilt or overlap a panel? How can sound effects enhance the story, and when do they distract from it? What are the best ways to divide up the page to convey motion, time, action, or quiet?

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: TwoMorrows Publishing (November 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893905144
• ISBN-13: 978-1893905146
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable work for the potential comic professional, December 12, 2002

By 

Glen Engel Cox (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Panel Discussions: Design in Sequential Art Storytelling (Paperback)

There's a presumption among people that if something looks easy or simple, that it must have been easy or simple to create. Most people look at a page of a comic book and think, "Anyone could do that." But until you actually try and write a comic or draw a comic page do you start to understand the painstaking craftsmanship that is the hallmark of most comics out there. This need to actually "try it out yourself," is a reason why I have my students write a comic script (and also the reason for the existence of creative writing in the high school and undergraduate education). Although we are creating stories and scenes in our heads all the time, being able to translate that to the page is the difference between consumer and producer.

With that in mind, let me suggest for everyone who ever wanted to learn about the tricks of the comic trade to look for Panel Discussions, a series of interviews conducted by Durwin S. Talon, a professor of sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. While it shares some similarities with other dissections of the comic art like Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Will Eisner's Sequential Art, Talon's book is slightly less formal in its structure, but makes up for that in the diversity of its points-of-view. The title itself is a pun, for not only are we discussing the panels of a comic, the format is similar to a panel discussion at a comic convention. Talon goes one-on-one with some fine artists like Will Eisner, David Mazzucchelli, and Mark Schultz, and has them break down the way they structure a comic page, how they get the reader's eye to move from point A to point B, and how light and dark play into the design.

Trying to read this all the way through is difficult, like hopping from room to room at a convention without taking time out for lunch or dinner. Instead, you should space this out, preferrably by reading the artist's comments, then taking the time to check out some of their work before moving on to the next. Unfortunately, that could be an expensive task unless you have a wonderful graphic novel section in your local library (don't be surprised--librarians are getting hip to the art form and they are growing collections). With that in mind, I hesitate to suggest this to the casual reader, just as I wouldn't suggest a casual novel reader to check out Umberto Eco's commentary Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. But if you want to learn more about the underpinnings of the form, this is an invaluable text. Talon and his publisher, TwoMorrows Publishing (who are filling the gap in practical comics scholarship--as opposed to academic comics scholarship--left by Fantagraphics), are to be commended, and I'm anxious to pick up some more texts by both.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Something of a letdown, April 28, 2003

By 

PCM2 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Panel Discussions: Design in Sequential Art Storytelling (Paperback)

Lots of good comics creators are represented here, but on the whole this book suffers from poor editing and worse design. Too much space is given to talking about what attracted Artist X to comics, or how Editor Y never thought he'd be an editor when he was a kid. Who cares? I bought this book to hear professionals talk about their trade. Durwin Talon's interview style is very softball, and you don't get the impression that he's much of an artist himself. Overall, the book's text has a feel of "gee whiz, aren't these artists great?" rather than the serious discussion about craft between peers that its title and presentation would suggest.

The worst part about the book is the reproduction of the art itself, however. There are lots of pages presented here, but though there are a couple of brief color sections, the vast majorty are b&w halftone reproductions of color art -- which is to say, they've been shot from the pages as they appeared in print, rather than from the original art. Even worse, there's not a single page that was reproduced at print size, yet alone the size at which is was actually drawn. Most of the pages are reproduced at about 1.75"x2.5" -- barely large enough for the lettering to be legible. This seems a real shame for such a visual medium.

Overall, I'd say this was a good concept poorly executed. It could have benefited from the input of an experienced book designer who could have made better use of the pages available. A good, impartial editor would have been of immeasurable assistance here, too, to trim out some of the chaff in the text (and thus leave more room to display the comics themselves, which is what the book is supposed to be about anyway).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good book with few faults, August 21, 2005

By 

D. Flaws (Southern CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panel Discussions: Design in Sequential Art Storytelling (Paperback)

Very good book for the aspiring creator. I learned enough about storytelling to change the whole focus of what goes into each panel and each page. It made me realize things I might never have fiqured out on my own. I would have liked a bit more structure to the format. Like maybe asking each creator some standard, important questions and not just letting them talk about whatever they wanted. Also I wish the art was reproduced better. But over all a really usefull and important work for anyone interested in sequential art. I look forward to the next book.