Composition of the comic book panels

Comic pages are supposed to be read like we do when reading a book. 

Top to bottom; left to right. 

The layout of the panels needs to be put on the page so that the reader can follow the story. If the story is not being arranged in this way the story will not make much sense.

Read this article from Webcomicalliance to get a clearer understanding of this concept: http://webcomicalliance.com/featured-news/composition-101-laying-out-your-comic-page/

 Panel composition

We also read each panel in a comic page like we read books. Again, this is top to bottom, left to right. 

For example:

In this example, every piece of writing has been organised in a way that tells the story clearly.

In the top left corner is a narrative caption. The next part we read is the “Whoosh” sound effect. This is followed by reading the dialogue, which – chronologically speaking – takes place pretty much at the same time as the plane explodes. The last part of the panel we read is the second sound effect, “Whaam.”

For the dialogue of your story to be followed you need to ensure speech bubbles are organised this way as well. Here is an example showing how to arrange speech bubbles in panels where conversations take place.

 

As you can see, in each panel, the piece of dialogue we are supposed to read first is in the speech bubble that is placed highest and to the most left. The speech bubbles are then arranged so that each new piece of dialogue is placed to the right and/or below the dialogue we are supposed to read first. Our eye is thus led from left to right, top to bottom, and reading the dialogue in this order leads us to read the dialogue in the way the storyteller intended.