Hello, everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck.

This week I wanted to look at a comic that was brought up in the comments of my previous post when discussing framing of panels. It's always a fun opportunity to write about a comic shared in the posts' comments.

The comic in question is Adventures of Sena, by user edniz. We'll look at some examples of framing in comics, drawn from the initial comment that caught my attention and what I picked out.

First, the comment; edniz provides a couple of links, and then the following:

I tend to use the ornaments when I am in “storytelling mode”, which gives a more dreamy/magical feeling that complements the text. I feel like it helps make it flow better, preserving that feeling you may get reading a book. It takes away from the more static rhythm of regular panels. When I go into dialog however, or any casual part of the story, I go with regular panels. I believe that this gives a nice balance to the flow.

So, let's look at this in action. The first example comes from page 3, ‘Shun Fei’.



The framing presented here, the squared-off, stylized swirls, provide a lot of texture to the page and present a storybook context. They are a fine addition, lending the page's narrative a more fantastic feel. You could almost call the presentation through the framing “fableistic.” It's especially neat how they feel like a companion and extension to the clouds in the first panel of the page. It's quite an excellent addition to the page.

The second example edniz provided came from page 12, 'Mom?":



The principles of the framing style here are similar to the previous example, but the texture of it all is different and provides a unique feel. Again, many little flourishes exist in the designs of the frames, but in this case, they feel more grounded. The textured element feels almost like gilding or carving - something solid. It contrasts nicely against the previous examples' more abstract, cloud-like framing.

The more “grounded” elements here also frame a more “grounded” drama. The prior example felt mythic and drawn back, like the establishment of a fairy tale. Here, we are in the midst of an exchange at a smaller scale between a child and their mother. Excellent work here, as well.

The thing I noticed with both of these, almost like a possible rule, was how they are tied to narration. The framing changes as we return to a more omniscient approach to conveying the story. Based on these examples, that is what I expect as I read - flourished panels are tied to narration.

The problem is that expectation was not met. An example of this comes on a later page, page 21, ‘The Avatar Has Abandoned Us’.



While the context is the whole page, I picked out a couple of examples where the panel frames have signs of flourish, even if they are slight. In this case, the flourishes feel off to me because I already expected flourishes to have the context of the narrative mode of omniscient narration. In the context of a page, we're seeing an assembly in what is ‘real-time,’ and thus, we have no ‘outside view’ of the situation that the change in framing can signify. It makes the flourishes here extraneous and inconsistent with prior pages we've seen. It also stands out from surrounding pages in the sequence where the flourishes are not present.

So, I suggest limiting those unique frames to moments where the narrative takes a step back, where narration kicks in, rather than adding them in what feels like more random spots. It makes them more effective overall, more mythical and creates a unique visual language for the comic overall.

But those are my thoughts. Thank you, edniz, for sharing your panels in the comments, and I hope you continue the great work. For everyone else, please check out the Adventures of Sena.

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