About Panel Borders, Part 1 of 3:

Introductions and Wolverine insane in the Brain.

I want to talk about my use of wild panels borders and the logic behind my madness. I intend to do it in a little 3-part post covering an Introductions, Swamp Thing and finally Wonder Woman earth one. Let’s Go.

Part 1: Introductions and Wolverine insane in the brain

Part 2: Swamp Thing

Part 3: Wonder Woman earth one

INTRODUCTIONS

It’s been somewhat a personal obsession to take advantage of the story telling tools unique to the Comic medium, perhaps to justify its singular existence amongst the other art forms and save it from becoming a mere stepping stone to Movies. Comic has its own set of devices, and its Panels and panel borders are just one example of them. Sure, it traps whatever in it as a single beat, breaking linear time as a set of captured moments. But I want to talk about my personal use positioning them and most importantly the shape of its gutter.

I remember reading comics in the 90s and being impressed by Whilce Portacio who would use panel Border to Highlight special moments, like explosion or extreme emotions. For these Panel to keep their surprising impact they must be use somehow rarely so they won’t become boringly common (they sadly did by the end of the 90, where the mere mild character emotions triggering them)

For my first 15 years of works, I kept the rule simple. For a while most pages had a bleeding left first panel and a bleeding right last panel. like entering and leaving a page with bleed wormhole.

Young X-men ( Ray snider on inks and Rob Schwager on colors) and two Ultimate X-men pages ( Serge Lapointe on Inks, Stephane Peru on Colors)

Wolverine Weapon X: Insane in the brain

In 2009, Jason Aaron gave me a great 4-parts story of Logan being trapped in a wicked mental institutions and being progressively turned mad by the evil maniac in charge. Like logan reality being unsound, I made every panels slightly off and eventually totally skewed when at the paroxysm of his madness

Eventually, Wolverine is snapping out of it, before falling back into insanity. It’s a subtle process, but hopefully readers subconscious would have pick up on it and the sudden shift a sound footing 90-degree panel corners would register as a relief.

To this day, that Wolverine story is one of the things i’m the most proud of. Jason Aaron on script, Michel Lacombe on Ink and Nathan Fairbairn on colors. You should check it out: Weapon X #6 to 9 or as a trade: Here on Amazon

in the final scenes, Wolverine his back in control with regular 90 degree panels. Hey, still doing that old in and out of page bleed i see!

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Next stop, Swamp Thing, where these border shenanigans get rather crazy and obvious ——- >

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Have a great one and, as Always, You guys are the best .