As the Secret Knots webcomic enters a new year, I’d like to share some thoughts about things I’ve found out, through trial and error, in the years I’ve been drawing my stories. Beginning with something I’ve called my One Weird Trick for webcomics. Actually, it’s How I Begin a Long, Heavy-text Comic and Try Not to Lose Readers in the Process, but that’s an even worse title.

This is how I began a comic back in 2010:

And this is the first “panel” of a comic from last year:

There are a couple of telling things about the different times when these comics were drawn: the older example is a landscape oriented panel, it also has a smaller and more intricate font. It was thought from the beginning for large computer screens. The second one alternates words and pictures right out of the bat; sentences are shorter, the font and disposition of art are planned to be phone-scrolling friendly; there’s even a visual cue (the cicada trajectory) that hints “scroll down to read”. While the start is somewhat minimalistic, the comic will feature some larger text boxes later:

But the comic opener scene is planned as simple and immediate it can be, in order to engage the reader and get them to the meatier parts later.

As Scott McCloud pointed out in Understanding Comics, the special thing about comics reading, the odd brain reconstruction of actions, movement and sound, happens between panels. This illusion sparks when you move from one action to the next, when the combination of images and words lead your eyes as smoothly as possible across the gutters, the separation between comics frames.

That’s one of the main principles of what counts for montage in comics. In scrolling comics, I want to get there fast, because that’s when things get good. So nowadays, in the era of constant distraction, I try to keep this rule of thumb for the first panels: to try to get the comic reading moving forward as quick as possible.

With webcomics, there are a lot of casual visitors who come to your piece by recommendation or algorithms. What they have in common is how fleeting their attention is. Most people will look at one or two panels, and briefly decide if they’ll be up for the ride. (or the scrolling). In Tumblr, the only social media where I can post full stories, my comics get automatically a “long post” cut. In that context, I’ve found that it’s much more engaging to begin with a clear visual cue than with a heavy text box. It flows much better, probably because before you know it, you are already on panel two or three, and the comics reading brain magic is already happening.

As you may know, The Secret Knots comics are complete, short stories, and often need a lot of exposition somewhere; sometimes a single scene may end up having a big block of text. There is no precise standard for this; Alan Moore said once that there should be a maximum of 30 words per panel, and that of course is for print comic books. It’s a sound rule, but circumstances may vary. With webcomics, I get to spread the text in portions and treat these balloons as accents, or rhythm cues along the strip. Long text and dialogue can be split in scrollable chunks: balloons can be placed outside the panel boxes (in the gutters!). Additionally, this text division allows a use that’s also present in traditional comics, when it serves as a connector for different scenes. Remember when Mulder and Scully talked on the phone, and they used that conversation to change scene / locations? It’s something like that, but with drawn text balloons.

Since my stories frequently feature heavy exposition at some point, avoiding the text bombs at the very first panels is the rule. That’s my “one weird trick”: start with something visually interesting, short sentences, and move forward as quickly as possible. This is another example from older comics, but I think this one achieves immediacy, while still being an intriguing first establishing shot:

I don’t rule out exceptions, of course. It’s totally possible I try out a “compressed” narrative for the next comic, depending on the particular experiment. Moreover, none of this is to say that this is a universally better way, or that we should always aim for efficiency above depth of reading. I see it more like taking advantage of the unique features that scrolling comics have to offer. Maybe somewhere along these experiments in different types of comics lies a chance to discover new tricks for this art.

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Thanks for reading, and may you have a nice 2026.

Juan.

For most Secret Knots comics, I make a post with sources, references, and bits of world building. This is the dossier for the comic Abyssal.

Inspiration

Two things, mainly, inspired this plot. One is this anecdote about a director and a producer, who first met and teamed up because they both used to rent the same niche movie. I heard that story on a podcast, and now, as if I had dreamed it, I’ve been unable to track the source and check who they were.

The second idea, perhaps a main theme in the story, is the appreciation of weird art. By weird art, I mean the kind of thing that’s hard to classify and is rarely featured in awards: movies that are unfairly low rated on IMDB, semi-known pieces that deviate from genre conventions and narrative mathematics. I feel we need unusual art more than ever. Even the studio movie industry needs it; after all, it feeds from fringe ideas to expand the range of what’s possible. The appreciation of weird art also means accepting imperfection. Strange is often irregular, almost always flawed in some way. Sometimes it’s ugly, awkward, or annoyingly sweet and beautiful. Too much, too little; too loud or eerily silent. I’m sure this means different examples for different people, and I don’t really want to drop names or make lists, because it has a lot to do with personal appreciation in the end; sometimes with the things that resonate with a specific person, at a given time.

Now, the world of “cult” appreciators who make niche works a part of their personality, is prone to snobbery and gatekeeping. In that sense, the fight between the two fans in the comic is not entirely surreal.

It was also the part that I found most difficult to draw (maybe I had too many poses and preconceived ideas in mind), and it even led me to discard some drawings:

Having these characters sing the praise of stranger stories meant the comic had to be a little odd too, and probably that’s why the deer clerk is left unexplained. The deer itself comes from a vague source of inspiration: years ago, I saw on Tumblr a video of a deer inside an empty church. I remember it was whimsical and reverential at the same time. The image felt strangely pagan and meaningful, even if I had no idea of what the exact meaning was. I wanted to channel a bit of that feeling, specially in the ending of the comic, without giving a clear narrative reason behind it. It’s the door that’s left open in the story. Later, though, someone tagged the comic on Tumblr saying Love is the answer, and I guess that’s a completely valid, even satisfactory, way of wrapping things.

References and concepts

I shared before the full cover for the Crater movie, but here it is again, just in case.

This is the streetview snapshot of the actual place where my Blockbuster was. I kept the background building in the drawing.

Luckily, there was a ClipStudio 3d antlers model, because my first-hand knowledge of deers is poor (inexistent, actually).

Head canon

Things that were considered, could be happening, or are definitely happening, in the background of the story

• Crater is an independent film, about an alien that convinces a college theater company to perform a play that’s a poorly remembered version of a classic from its planet. The group is infiltrated by a government organization that believes the play lists key details of an invasion. It ends with the realization that a few of earthling drama classics come from the same extraterrestrial source. (Also, the government is right about the invasion).

• Abyssal is about a town underground, a community of tunnel excavators that have developed a religion around telluric energies. When explorers find evidence of multiple cultures from the past gone hiding underground, the community is divided among those who want to persevere in their own faith and customs, and those who want to join past refugees in the inner layers of the planet. The main characters keep digging, and find the people below. The ending is a psychedelic segment a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s a small Easter Egg: a scene where the community seems to be watching the play from Crater.

• The deer is indifferent to most movies, except for Christmas movies, which he hates.

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I hope you enjoyed this post! Thanks a lot for your support and your patience, because this comic took a while. Thanks too for the great feedback the story has had. I hope you have a lovely end of the year season.

Juan.