What 200 Four-Panel Comics Taught Me About Storytelling

Five big lessons from very short comics

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve read almost 200 comics—each with only four panels.

I’ve been reading so many comics because, along with fellow Minneapolis cartoonists, Jason Walz and Trung Le Nguyen, I created the I.C.E. Out Comics movement. It’s a call to artists asking them to make comics about the impact of I.C.E. on their communities and themselves.

We gave them perimeters of using a specific blue color, dimensions (3:4), and only four-panels each. The comics community has responded in an overwhelming and supportive way with incredibly moving comics coming in from all over the country.

While it’s often painful and heart-breaking to read these comics, we believe it’s an important way to document, spread the word, and process the horrific things we’re seeing in our communities because of I.C.E.

Reading all these four-panel comics has also been a lesson in storytelling. What I see working in short comics also applies to many types of stories—whether novels, film, or graphic novels.

Here are five lessons in storytelling from these short four-panel comics:

1. Keep it focused

In many effective four-panel comics, they stick to making a single main point. Where I see a lot of stories fall short is that they try to do too many things at once and lose track of their core message so the reader isn’t clear what to focus on or what to feel.

Here’s an example of a comic by Drew Brockington that sticks to its deceptively simple message and is so poignant as a result:

Art by Drew Brockington

Brockington starts the above comic by having his Dad character holding a sign saying “We love our neighbors” and at the end he connects back to the neighbor theme. In the panels in between, we have the Dad talking to his kids about how Alex Pretti was shot, but he isn’t named and very little details are given. It’s just the essentials of what you need to understand the pain in the final panel which packs a powerful punch.

2. Lead the reader through an emotional arc

As humans, we like to read about people who change. A book is (usually) boring if the protagonist stays the same throughout. Showing change in big or small ways is a baisc storytelling technique, but so very important.

In the following comic that I created, I experience a different emotion in each of the four panels:

In panel 1, my characters starts out as excited to be skiing and away from the troubles of I.C.E. in Minneapolis. In panel 2, we’re driving home and I’m happily reporting that I can finally relax. But then, in Panel 3, I’m confused, noticing the unusual formation of vehicles. By Panel 4, I’m startled and chagrined as my spouse points out that the cars were likely I.C.E.

In just a few panels, my character goes on an emotional journey, while moving through different landscapes as well.

3. Don’t tell the reader what to feel

“Show, don’t tell” is an often repeated storytelling maxim for good reason. Letting the reader think and feel for themselves, and not telling them what to think or feel, allows the reader to imagine their own feelings in a situation and feel more emotionally connected as a result.

This comic by Julian Deyo does this extremely well:

Art by Julian Deyo

Deyo writes about horrific things in places they used to frequent, but their tone is fairly neutral. That voice, in addition to the artistic choice of only showing objects (and not people) allows the reader to better embody the experience for themselves and imagine how they would feel in the same situation—making it more alive for them as a result.

4. Sensory details are powerful

Using senses beyond vision, like sound, smell, taste, and touch, are all extremely effective at bringing a scene to life for the reader in a more visceral way, as demonstrated here by graphic novelist, Jason Walz:

Art by Jason Walz

In Walz’s comic we have the sounds of rubber bullets, the smell and weight of tear gas and smoke, and the textual detail of Molly’s hands still shaking as she tells the story. These all make the already terrifying story seem more real and present.

5. The final panel matters the most

I’ve been making four panel diary comics for years and landing the last panel is always something I’ve struggled with. You want that final panel to show change, be funny, reveal a twist, or simply be poignant.

It’s so important to get the final panel right that I will spend days trying to figure out that last panel, as I did with this comic from a scene I witnessed earlier this week:

For the above comic, I realized I need to give context to the scene in order for the final panel to land in a similar way that it landed for me when I saw it and started sobbing.

So I gave those details about the man first—that I thought he was unhoused, that he wasn’t wearing gloves on a winter day, and that he was carrying a booklet. I had to give that context to lead up to the disturbing reveal that he’s carrying his passport as he walked along the side of the road.

If you want to read more I.C.E. Out comics, search #iceoutcomics on Instagram. There are so many moving comics being made every day with each creator sharing their unique voice.

Bonus tip: Make your text large enough and legible! If people struggle to read your comic, they’re already being taken out of the story. Here’s a post I did on other tips for improving lettering since this is something I see cartoonists struggle with frequently.

If you want to read about my progression with the I.C.E. Out comics, here are my past three posts. It’s not been the January I anticipated, but I’m proud to be doing this powerful work.

I.C.E. Out Comics Posts:

• Week 1: What Comics Can Do When the News Is Your Neighborhood

• Week 2: The Power of Community—and Cartoonists

• Week 3: A Week in Minneapolis in Comics

• Week 4: What 200 Four-Panel Comics Taught Me About Storytelling (this post)

• Week 5: How to End a Project When the Story Isn’t Over

Let me know in the comments: If any of these lessons resonate with your own creative practice, I’d love to hear about it. Or any lessons of your own that you notice from reading short comics.

Leif Love

Here’s my spouse and our dog, Leif, during their skijor race last weekend. It’s hard to see, but Leif is sporting the Minnesota flag on his back. I love that he finished next to the only other vizsla in the race.

Take care and keep creating.

-Katharine