Honestly a really good PSA when it comes to making comics.

Oh hey, I remember this one. Good ol comic fundamentals

... a lot of people on the internet get very confused (thus illustrating your points).

Nice explanation but what do you do when you want to show that the two characters are talking at the same time? Some persons don't believe in letting the other a chance to talk and or waiting their turn to talk. I am pretty sure that one of my previous boss though that either all other voice were background sound or that all employee could listen and follow multiple conversation at the same time.

I'm not a comic book artist. But i recall two tactics.

One is the interjection. Where one person's word balloon ends abruptly with a '-' and the other person's balloon starts with '-'.
This conveys the first one's speech is being interrupted by the other person. Also popular for when characters finish each-other's sentence.

The other is to not use a balloon at all. Very popular with crowds murmuring, rabbling and whatnot, but i do believe i've also seen it used in small groups just speaking loudly at the same time. Just don't use it for important plot-relevant text....

Another way to to cram both characters' dialogue into the same balloon. If it's not important that you actually understand them, overlap the dialogue

One technique I've seen to good effect is to have the balloons overlap, blocking some of the words, thus visually simulating how people talking over top of one another can be hard to understand.

There's a few comics I read that could benefit from seeing this

Extremely valuable advice for any comic creator!

tyvm

Ah yes, comic logic :3

I would say this post insults the intelligence of people. But I work in a public-facing job and know how important idiot-proofing is in every possible respect.

You should have seen the last time he uploaded this. Comments were full of people howling that Rick was stiffling their creativity or something.

Honestly it was another great example for why idiot proofing is important, because some people don't even understand that nobody is forcing them to follow the given advice

Never underestimate the power of stupid people, especially in groups.

I bet they were the ones who actually committed the errors shown here. I cringe reading some comics here for the same reasons he illustrates.

And I don't want to get started on missing punctuation. >.<

Thank you for this. It's a good guide for those who make mistakes in comics.

Now I wanna do a comic that uses water balloons.

I have seen comics that do not follow this rule.

I wonder how well this works with other languages, specifically ones that might read in different directions.

Still, an excellent method of 'show not tell'! I also wonder what funny stories could be made with recaptioning this.

This made my head hurt.

You have our gratitude.

Handy.

One tip I've heard for print format, you always want big dramatic moments on the left-hand page. That way there's no spoiler as you inevitably see the right page first when turning to the next, and when your eyes drift left you get metaphorically slapped with it, especially when it's a full-page panel.

oh wow, thank you! Definitely worth remembering.

Question: why would the crossing tails confuse the reader if the points are going to whos speaking?

people tend not to look immediately at the balloon tails, and will naturally assume that balloons are aligned with their speakers. The moment the reader realizes their first assumption was wrong creates dissonance

a well thought out and informative explanation, thank you

How dare you break my brain so perfectly!

I think, the top left panel setup is somewhat culture-dependant. The baloons there are over lapped and it's an old-school way to show their order. But not everyone would read that way.

I remeber mercenry Schlock had used fast transition in last panel quite a few times. But it was a single-panel transition, next page may continue within original location.

That actually covered all the comic "peeves" I have when people try writing a comic and they are guilty of these sins.

Excellent professional comic drawing advice you have given here, with illustrated examples of good and bad . Thank you very much for sharing!