Hello everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. This week I want to turn our attention to the power of small moments in time that gives comics so much poignancy and power when dealing with time. When we last talked about paneling, we mentioned that panels often serve as a moment or snapshot, allowing you to skip a lot in between.

However, the opposite is also true; panels can be moments you do not want to skip, such as in the case of today's comic, The Sagas of Seelhoe. The deliberate choice of where to “pause” for a panel can carry much weight, and in a page full of such moments, the first stands out the most.

The Sagas of Seelhoe is a comic by Roberto Fabris. We're looking at page 22 of “Faeriequest, Phase One.”

The panel in question:



The page becomes a romantic interlude, and while the page uses panels to set up little stolen moments, such as the kiss of the final three panels, what stands out most to me is the second panel of the page, where Esin steals that glance. There is a lot of existing character history and background here, obviously. While I am not fully familiar with the comic, I was immediately drawn to the subtle nature of that second panel. The panel is completely silent and relies on the clear depiction of her glancing at him at the moment, and it works incredibly well.

Even if these are drawn characters, there is a kind of acting choice here between the creator of the comic and the character in use. Taking time out of a page to handle a small moment such as this, which implies so much, is a good use of time within a comic.

If you want to find earlier editions of Panel By Panel, click here.
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