How do Comics Work?

A comic strip uses a combination of art and words in order to tell a story. It may look somewhat strange, but its really fun to read. The page is split into panels, and each panel tells a detail of the story, whether its a character's actions, thoughts, or own words. Some panels may not have words at all, but its still telling part of the story. But the cool part is, there's no set order in which these panels are placed, our brains just know in which order to read the comic.

This reminds me of when I was a little girl, and my favorite book to read every night was Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. In the book, there was comic strips on almost every page, and even as a 10 year old, I was able to know which words to read first. Here's an example of a page-

We see here that its natural instinct to read the word bubbles from left to right, and no matter who you are, that's how you would read it. But this is easy. There are some comics that are set up in a more complex manner, like this -

This cartoon outline is more complex than the other one, having more boxes, and not being in a straight line. But yet somehow, our brains still know how to read it. Its known to researchers as the "z path" method. Our brains just know to go from left to right then start again from left to right on the next line. But sometimes this isn't an option...

But then there are really complex comics, where an inexperienced reader really may not know where to look. Studies have proven that in this case, readers will abandon the "z path" and sometimes may even move vertically rather than horizontally.

There is so much artistic freedom when it comes to comics and that is why they differ than regular novels. A comic can tell the same story as a novel using fewer words, since we can actually visualize the story.

Really thinking about going to look for my old copy of Diary of a Wimpy kid after all this comic talk..

<3 Berta