- Comic creators often talk about "flow" through the composition of comics pages, but little work has actually studied it. So, our newest paper explores what flow is and how it works, which I’ve summarized in a more accessible way in this post: www.visuallanguagelab.com/2025/12/goin...
- Neil, in this example of the first panel's flow, I tend to disagree with you because our initial impulse is to SCROLL DOWN to the bottom of the panel, understand what it's about, and only then scroll up and continue the reading flow. The arrow pointing upwards isn't entirely accurate in this case.Jan 8, 2026 14:58
- So, here a reading path may first go down (against content direction) then back up (with panel direction) towards the next panel (following flow alignment). We look at flow in actual comics, but no one has done eye-tracking on flow in comics, so it's never been confirmed whether this actually occurs
- The blue arrows here show the directionality implied by the panel contents, not of an expected path of the reader. We define "flow" as alignment of the implied direction of the panel contents and the layout direction of the subsequent panel, which people then assume guides readers through the layout
