Coming Soon: How To Read Comics The Marvel Way

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I love a good primer. And with three young boys, all of whom love Marvel heroes, I am all about rediscovering the joy of comics.

But how to teach the technique of reading panels? Word balloons? Navigating the gutter?

Marvel.com’s T.J. Dietsch hit the nail on the head (with Mjölnir) when they posted:

Image: Marvel.com

Longtime comic fans tend to forget one important fact when trying to introduce newbies to the wonderful world of sequential storytelling: they can be a tiny bit tricky to decode at first! On April 15, Christopher Hastings and Scott Koblish will present a comic in comical (yet educational) fashion for fans of all experience levels in HOW TO READ COMICS THE MARVEL WAY!

Some tips to hold you over until the uber comic arrives.

Image: Marvel.com

• Panel Persuasion
  With the exception of splashes (single-page images) and spreads (double-page images), each page of a comic book usually gets broken down into a series of panels. Think of these as snapshots of action—or frames of a film—that tell the story, giving the appearance of movement and action in static frames…
• 99 Word Balloons
  Along similar lines to panels, the word balloons can complicate the reading process. The same cultural sticking points can come into play here, but the more word balloons in a panel, the more the eye tends to wander…
• Thoughts and Minds
  One of comics’ greatest strengths is the potential to combine visual and written information at one time. Additionally, the writers and artists can convey what a character is doing, saying, and thinking all in a single panel!
• Get Your Head in the Gutter
  The space where two individual pages come together in a comic is called the gutter (where the staples live, in other words). This might seem like unnecessary information, but depending on the number of pages, it might hold important information!

Dietsch’s full description of HOW TO READ COMICS THE MARVEL WAY is fascinating. So, be sure to check it out and look for the book in stores on April 15.

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