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.
Panel & Ink · October 21, 2026 · 4 min read
A comic issue in Panel & Ink is narrated, so its script has to work with the pictures off. Here is the whole script of Wash & Fold No. 1, "Delicates" — eight captions, no speech balloons, eighteen words each at most — and the reads that changed it. If you are going to write your own captions, this is the shape they take.
The Comic Panels format is six to eight panels, one narration caption each, present tense, and a last panel that opens a question. Eighteen words is the cap on a caption because the narrator has to say it in the time the panel is on screen. The whole issue reads aloud in about a minute.
Before any panel is drawn, the studio hands the narration — only the narration — to five readers and asks them to retell the story. They cannot see the pictures, so they cannot be carried by them. Three things tripped the first draft:
Then we asked a harder reader, one who reads superhero books for the writing, to be unkind. Seven out of ten: the twist went unclaimed and a doorbell ending was stock. Two of its notes are now in the issue. The sting in panel 8 — I know that bag. Not that hand. — is its line, trimmed to fit. And the bandaged knuckles in panel 1 are its setup: that is how Dot knows the hand in the doorway is not his.
One thing we caught ourselves: the first draft had Dot leave a peppermint in the cape while he "thinks she never looks inside". Impossible. Panel 1 became a silent pact instead.
Fresh readers, second draft: the story retold correctly, the open question named, eight out of ten. "The peppermint reveal changes the meaning of every earlier Tuesday." That is the sentence you want to hear before you spend a credit on a panel.
Writing an issue — the script, its scoring, the cold read and the narration — is 6 credits. The panels are a credit each. If a read comes back red, you fix the words and read again before you draw, which is the cheap moment to be wrong.
Write your own first issue — 35 credits to start, no card. Drawn and narrated by Panel & Ink; the story is yours.
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.
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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.
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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.
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