6 Pages is not Enough

Hello. I’m 35 and on a whim I decided to see if I could write a comic book with zero experience. After doing some initial research, which I either imagined or disregarded (both have the same result), I set a target of writing a script for a 6 page comic book.

My first draft of the script was roughly 600 words. Most of which was dialogue. I had no idea if this was enough or too much for 6 pages. I figured the only way to tell was to lay out frames on 6 pages. I aimed for a layout that could be used for any story.

Then I went back and matched up the script to the individual frames. Turns out 600 words of dialogue is a lot for a 6 page short.

I trimmed the word count down to around 300 which I have a sinking feeling is still too many. Only time will tell.

So then, like most nights I read or reread a comic book. I paid more attention to the layouts. More nights were passed. More layouts were studied and I came to the conclusion that two of my pages needed some serious attention.

My intent was to have a layout that included a 2 pages with an uncomplicated grid of equally sized frames, similar to a few of the pages in The Killing Joke. Only I had misremembered the number of frames used in The Killing Joke. I thought it was 12 frames on a page, but in the real world there is only 9. In other comic books I studied, 8 frames seemed to be the extreme.

To solve my layout problem, I decided to convert the two 12 frames pages into 2 page spreads. Going from 6 to 8 pages wasn’t a complete deviation from my target.

One problem: the first spread wasn’t on an odd numbered page which is a requirement for a 2 page spread. So I had to add an extra page before the first spread. This brought me up to 9 pages. Wait 9 pages means there is a blank page at the end. For some reason this didn’t sit well with me. So now I’m at a full blown 10 pages.

And now that I think about it, if it is printed as a booklet 10 pages will still have 2 blank pages.

Here’s the updated 10 Page layout for those who are interested. Still a work in progress as there is one page that is completely blank.