What Are Words For, When No One Listens Anymore?

It’s been over two years since I blogged about lettering in comics. Unfortunately, it’s still the same today. Nobody cares when it’s good, and everyone notices when it’s bad.

Normal comic book pages (unless you’re in Japan) read left-to-right, top-to-bottom. When James got my script for Pretty Vacant: Final Repose Part I, he decided to spruce up Page One to grab the reader (as if Gigi being sedated via injection-by-needle wasn’t attention grabbing enough!). James spruced it up all right, but he placed the second-to-last panel directly above the last:

How is the reader supposed to follow the story when the sequence is challenging? If you remember my post regarding conversations I’ve had with Neal Adams, controlling the eye is key for a comics page. In this case I carefully positioned word balloons which guide the reader to the correct panel:

I don’t mean for this post to be a tutorial, and I certainly hope it doesn’t come off as a rant. Sometimes you just have to make things work. Sometimes it even turns out for the best!

Kudos to you if you remember the song that had the lyric in this post’s title!