Hi everyone!
Today I want to talk about “Show, don’t tell” in comics. I was prompted to write about this because I’m in the process of putting together the majority of the New Year, New Stories 2026 comic anthology.
I have a different way of writing comics compared to many people, because I did not go through formal training – I learned by doing. I did have a mentor of sorts, who gave me feedback and showed me techniques to handle issues I encountered.
One of his most common pieces of feedback was “Show, don’t tell.”
Putting together New Year, New Stories, I have had some submissions (which I’m not going to reject just because I would do it a different way!) that rely heavily on writing. anywhere between one third and two thirds of the page are writing.
I think that if you’re writing and drawing a comic, you should be trying to tell more of the story through drawing than through writing, as much as possible. As a result, I do my best to ensure that the panels contain the story.
How do I “Show, don’t tell”?
My aim is always that you could “understand” this comic without reading any of the words. I’m fortunate in this area: I have a four-year-old son, who can’t read many of the words in my comics yet. If I can show him the comic and he can understand what’s happening, I know that I’ve succeeded.
That’s got me into the habit of writing the comic in a script, giving it to the artist and then the letterer, and then doing an edit on the writing that I originally expected to be there.
I’m not always perfect, but I work very hard to minimise and reduce the dialogue, because I tend to overwrite the comic even now, even though I’m thinking about reducing the “tell” all the time.
And that’s my point, really: it’s okay to do it wrong and then edit it to be better. Don’t be afraid of writing what you need to write in order to get the job done, and fixing it to be even better than when you wrote it.
New Year, New Stories 2026 will be on Kickstarter in January 2026, and will contain 14 new and unique comic stories that you have probably never seen before. It will include parts of Cascade 2 and Demon Sword as well!
Don’t forget to check it out, and keep an eye here. I’ll let you know when it’s time.
– Ed