WiP 10/10/2019 (Patreon)

Behold, the dreaded nine-panel grid. I am about to get boringly technical, so only read on if you care about such things.

Nine panels is a big number for any one page - you're essentially asking the artist to do nine separate detailed drawings, which is clearly a lot of work. At the same time, it's about as small as you can make all the panels while still cramming in some dialogue, so they have to leave room for words, too - and probably figure out how to do so nine separate times!

However when you do it right, the result is amazing. It's about as much "comic books" as a single page can bear the weight of, and it's a delight.

Absolute masters of script-craft like Alan Moore will make extensive use of nine-panel grids in their work because they can get a ton of storytelling done in one page (although of course somebody like that doesn't have to contend with deadlines so much, because editors will take the work when they can get it).

Let it be known that I actually scripted this page the first time with six panels. This is because I realize that when producing a comic page, you have to consider a budget of space, detail, and how much time and effort the artist can afford to put in while still producing it in a timely fashion

However, Psu is a hard worker and was the one to say this would work better as nine panels. I agreed, and here we are. Just jammin' as much into one page as possible.