This is a fascinating video breakdown of Darwyn Cooke’s approach to superhero comics layout. At first glance it seems to be a format aimed at a less-able juvenile reader who was raised on movies and TV, and who thus who needs a more ‘widescreen movie experience’ without having to weave their eye across a complex series of panels.
Yet the comic, “The New Frontier” (collected in one volume in 2015) is hailed as a classic moment in DC’s post-2000 output, and a powerful homage to the golden age of DC. I’ve never been a DC fan, but I’ll have to take look at that one. Update: comic is excellent, the animated movie adaptation is mediocre.
It occurs to me that it would be much easier for a Poser comics-maker to make a 28-page commercial comic this way. There are only three widescreen panels on each page, which means Poser scene setups would be reduced in number. Wrestling with the framing would be reduced. And when one had the finished panel pictures, all the complex layout and fiddly design considerations of the page are then radically simplified. There’s also fewer boxes and less text to add to the page, and less fiddly colouring via the Toon ID layer. The downside is it’s going to take a whole lot more pre-production story-boarding to get it right, and a restrained story script which ‘shows-not-tells’.