How the third issue of a comic series was made: the writer cut its best beat, so we put it back on the storyboard and fixed a raincoat that changed colour.
Panel & Ink · October 21, 2026 · 5 min read
Issue 2 ended with the phone ringing at 4 a.m.: a bus rattling past on the line, then Silt saying Walt was asking for her. Issue 3 is the night ride that follows. It's also the issue where the studio took the most liberties with our script, so this is mostly a story about getting it back.
Same comic, same cast, same look. We added two places to the comic's world first, the river bus depot and the inside of the Number 9 night bus, so the writer and the drawings would describe them the same way every time. Places are free to add.
Then the issue: Dot closes early for the first time in thirty years and takes the Beacon's cape. She knows that rattle on the phone was the Number 9, Walt's route, and rides it to the end of the line. Silt is standing guard at one dark bus. Walt is inside, alive, his light nearly out. She wraps him in the cape. He asks for a peppermint, and she gave her last one to Silt in issue 2.
The peppermint matters. In issue 1 Dot learns where hers went. In issue 2 she gives her last one away. In issue 3 the man who always gave them away asks for one, and there's none left. The test reads said that was the beat that made the series build instead of repeat.
We gave the writer eight captions. It came back with seven panels and no peppermint. You can't add a panel once the issue is written, so we rebuilt the story in seven on the storyboard:
The studio's cold read, which hears an issue on its own, caught two lines. "I've never once closed early" was heard as Dot not closing, so it became "I've never closed early before. Tonight…". And the ending didn't make clear that the man asleep on the bus is the real Beacon, so the last line names him. Every edit was free, and every caption kept to eighteen words.
Seven panels, one take each. The pictures were right, but two had the same problem: Dot's raincoat was grey in the first panels, pink in panel 5 and green in panel 7. A comic reader would notice before the story did. One note on each, a plain dark grey raincoat, and both retakes matched.
The narration was recorded and the captions lettered in, and the issue finished at 48 seconds. It ends on the question the next issue has to answer: someone in a cape is flying over the harbor, but the Beacon is right here, asleep in the bus.
22 credits: 1 to turn our notes into the issue's idea, and 21 for the issue (the writing, seven panels, two retakes, the narration and the finish). Rebuilding the script on the storyboard and re-running the cold read cost nothing. A plain issue runs about 20 credits today (about 25 in a premium look), and a new account starts with 35 credits.
Issue 1, "Delicates" is where the peppermints start. Drawn and narrated by Panel & Ink; the story is ours.
Start with one idea of your own: your first issue is covered.
Start with one idea. Panel & Ink turns it into a comic series.
How a comic issue is made, step by step: one idea about a laundromat, a cast of three, eight panels and a cold read, and what each step cost in credits.
October 21, 2026 · 5 min read
How the second issue of a comic series was made: a new villain on the cast, a script the writer rewrote and we put back, two retakes, and what it cost.
October 21, 2026 · 5 min read
A comic script example, panel by panel: the eight captions of a finished issue, eighteen words each, and the three fixes a cold read made so it lands by ear.
October 21, 2026 · 4 min read