comic book panel analysis: how to open a scene

In this analysis I wanted to focus on looking at a few comic book pages and understand how they organize their panels and pages to open a scene. Here we have the first panel establishing the scene of the story, its a wide shot and we know people are on the island by the word balloon positioned over the sky. 

Next we see two female figures next to a turtle floating in the water, this has much more of a illustrative storytelling feel than the others because its another drawing that sets the scene again, now we know who is talking and what they are talking in relation to. Next we get three panels that get smaller as they go along showing the passage of time as the two figures talk. I would imagine that after this it would be followed up with a much bigger panel on the next page or perhaps a series of smaller panels.

In this next comic page we get something that is very similar, a shot that shows us the character in relation to the huge mountain in front of him that sets the scene. Followed by a drawing that breaks the panel in the form of steps in the snow. Below that we have a midshot of the figure standing in the midground looking off to the distance and a final close up of the figures face. The key here is the sense of mystery that is created in the scene. We dont see the characters face until the final piece and even then his face is shrouded in mystery and shadow.

In this next one we can see it almost as a reverse of what the previous pieces did. We see characters walking towards the camera, one of which has no facial features in the first panel which helps suggest the idea that they are further back into he picture and only come into focus in the second panel where we see the face of what we assume is the protagonist. We then get a grand shot of the mountain and clouds stretching across a landscape in front of the two figures. We then get a close up reaction shot with the name of this newly discovered location in front of him. 

Another scene showing us  a progressively tighter and tighter shot as we start out from outerspace, the outerspace colony, the figures approaching one another and the final stern look on the orc like mans face at the end which breaks the panels. We can see in all of these that there is a rhythm established by the size and position of the panels that is 100% dependent on the effect the artist wants to create. We can tell by these that getting close up shots of the face of characters is a good way to communicate emotion and to get us emotionally invested in the story, that we have to set the scene properly by letting certain elements breathe.