The strongest difference that I've noted between manga layout and American comics layout is that often in manga - not all the time, of course - the visual flow is designed to drag your eye across the art as well as the text. In the American comics I read, you ahve to make an effort to look at the art in the panel as well as the text balloons. Look up at 2.6.9 - you're forced to look at the expressions on Goku's and Gojyo's faces as you go from Goku's lines to Gojyo's. Then you go across the foot, then you have to look at the Jeep. I've been reading a couple of Fables graphic novel collections, and while the art is detailed and worth looking at, there's quite as much visual interaction between the text and the art that way.
Of course, I go searching on GoogleImages to find pages that illustrate that, and there's no full Fables pages out there and all the pages I find of Hellblazer have that visual line. Erg.
Wait -- here's a good example. This is a page (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4.jpg) from some issue of Wolverine.
Here it is with the Red Line o'Doom. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4-red.jpg) You can see that in the top panel, you completely skip the right half of the panel - even though the gun's pointing at Wolverine's silhouette - because that bright white speech balloon sucks attention away as soon as you hit the end of the gun. The second panel has too many lines leading away - you might go from the top speech balloons along to the gun and then back down the arm to the bottom speech balloon into panel 3, which is what I think is supposed to happen, but that bright white sucks you in, at which point you've got 2 strong lines out - the arm and Panel 3. Panel 3 is confusing at the bottom - you're supposed to jump up to Panel 4, but look -- after you read the seech balloon, the guy's arm with the gun continues into panel 6, completely bypassing panel 5! *And* there's a speech balloon close to the edge there, in the line your eyes travel to get to panel 4, which hijacks your gaze.
Here's another potential path (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4-blue.jpg). Forgive the shakiness of the line - I was using my trackball on that, and it's less-than-precise. But there's still problems with the path there, too. The artist who laid this page out is relying almsot entirely on you knowing how to read comics panels - first right-to-left, then up-to-down - resulting in way too many lines to follow if you're trying to read it following manga conventions.
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The strongest difference that I've noted between manga layout and American comics layout is that often in manga - not all the time, of course - the visual flow is designed to drag your eye across the art as well as the text. In the American comics I read, you ahve to make an effort to look at the art in the panel as well as the text balloons. Look up at 2.6.9 - you're forced to look at the expressions on Goku's and Gojyo's faces as you go from Goku's lines to Gojyo's. Then you go across the foot, then you have to look at the Jeep. I've been reading a couple of Fables graphic novel collections, and while the art is detailed and worth looking at, there's quite as much visual interaction between the text and the art that way.
Of course, I go searching on GoogleImages to find pages that illustrate that, and there's no full Fables pages out there and all the pages I find of Hellblazer have that visual line. Erg.
Wait -- here's a good example. This is a page (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4.jpg) from some issue of Wolverine.
Here it is with the Red Line o'Doom. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4-red.jpg) You can see that in the top panel, you completely skip the right half of the panel - even though the gun's pointing at Wolverine's silhouette - because that bright white speech balloon sucks attention away as soon as you hit the end of the gun. The second panel has too many lines leading away - you might go from the top speech balloons along to the gun and then back down the arm to the bottom speech balloon into panel 3, which is what I think is supposed to happen, but that bright white sucks you in, at which point you've got 2 strong lines out - the arm and Panel 3. Panel 3 is confusing at the bottom - you're supposed to jump up to Panel 4, but look -- after you read the seech balloon, the guy's arm with the gun continues into panel 6, completely bypassing panel 5! *And* there's a speech balloon close to the edge there, in the line your eyes travel to get to panel 4, which hijacks your gaze.
Here's another potential path (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/telophase/wolvie4-blue.jpg). Forgive the shakiness of the line - I was using my trackball on that, and it's less-than-precise. But there's still problems with the path there, too. The artist who laid this page out is relying almsot entirely on you knowing how to read comics panels - first right-to-left, then up-to-down - resulting in way too many lines to follow if you're trying to read it following manga conventions.