Title:
Watchmen (1986)
Author: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
Layout
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons used nine-grid layout for the whole book with some variations such as combining two, three, four or even six consecutive panels to form a single big panel as below example. The consistent nine-grid design helped readers read the story quickly and smoothly from one page to another. The varied combinations of panels made the story more visually interesting and this method also helped to highlight the important scene through a bigger panel. As readers normally stay longer on the big panel, it provides readers more time to think and digest that giant panel. As a result, the important information will be delivered effectively. For example, after the long conversations between Danny and Hollis Mason, and then Rorschach and Danny, the big scene with Danny sitting next to an Owl costume implicitly tells the reader that Danny was one of the mask adventurers. Therefore, the book do not need to explicitly tell reader who Danny is.
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| Page 20-21, Watchmen |
Panel transition
This comic book uses all six categories in panel transition as below. During the conversation between Danny and Rorschach on page 20, Rorschach was in the same position but Danny's face was turning from left to the middle and then looked at Rorschach. The turning and changing facial expression is a moment-to-moment transition. On page 48, the authors used action-to-action panel transition to show how the Comedian tried to rape Sally when they were young. On page 13, the authors showed the tools that Rorschach used to climbed to the crime scene. This is a subject-to-subject panel transition.
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| 1. Moment-to-Moment transition (Page 20) |
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| 2. Action-to-Action transition (Page 48) |
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| 3. Subject-to-Subject transition (Page 13) |
On page 25, the authors showed a high-rise building with conversation clouds pointing to the highest floor, then showed Rorschach was talking to Veidt in the next panel. Readers has to use deductive reasoning to believe that they are on the highest floor of the building they just saw on the previous panel. This is a
scene-to-scene panel transition.
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| 4. Scene-to-Scene transition (Page 25) |
On page 13, The authors illustrated a big moon on top of Rorschach's hat, and then showed Rorschach's shadow on the next panel. This
aspect-to-aspect transition creates a mood for the readers to get involve in the scene, and understand the time and space that the authors wanted to illustrate. This method is intensively used by Japanese comic books but seldom used in traditional American comic books. However,
Watchmen applied this method a lot.
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| 5. Aspect-to-Aspect transition (Page 13) |
On page 43, the panels of the whole page keep shifted between two places, one panel showing Laurie visited her mom in California, then the next panel showed the details of Comedian's funeral in New York, and the next panel went back to conversations between Laurie and Sally in California. The method showed readers that the two events were happening at the same time but in different space with different characters. This
non-sequitur transition was seldom found in American comic books but it was used frequently in
Watchmen.
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| 6. Non-Sequitur transition (Page 43) |
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