Comics/Graphic Novels

Welcome to Panels!

Paul Montgomery

Staff Writer

In addition to comics, Paul thrills to Frank Capra and kaiju movies, crime fiction, TV dramas, professional wrestling, and whatever the Muppets are doing at any given time (hopefully in combination with those other things). He tweets as @fuzzytypewriter

Welcome to Panels, at its very start. We’re a comics site and community.

Here’s how we roll. How we do.

1. We love what we love, irrepressibly.

2.We like to share what we love.
3. We’re not always going to love the same things, and that’s okay.
4. We dig all kinds of comics in many forms and genres. From all over the world.
5. We believe in the power and joy of collaboration.
6. We believe artists are storytellers, not just illustrators.
7. We color outside the lines.
8. We are often ridiculous, but always thoughtful.
9. We’re not gatekeepers and we don’t punch down.
10. We look up. Up, in the sky.

We wanted to drum up a community of seasoned comic book readers as well as novices to the form. That’s who we hope to speak to and also who we are. We looked for a wide array of voices. We found ourselves a chorus, and will continue to grow. Every day we get to play show-and-tell with our favorite new finds. We’re excited about that.

Panels is a celebration of comics, the people who make them, and the people who love them. We take comics personally, because that’s the way they’re made. Personally. By people with things to say.

[I might be leaving out elephants and gorillas with that wording. I know some of them do portraiture. If they’ve done any sequential work, please write in with details at community@panels.net. That’s the kind of thing we should probably report on. I mean, I’d read that.]

Right. The personal aspect.

For all the borrowed heroes and licenses, comics are often passion projects, true labors of love. As a trade and industry it is often grueling, the long hours and tiresome promotion arduous, the press releases hackle-raising. As a vocation, comics tends to call up some of the very best and most dedicated. There’s little sense in doing it for the money, as there’s not so much to be had. Folks make comics out of a mad compulsion. I’m drawn to that madness and all the beauty and insight that tumble along in its wake.

Here is to the ink-stained, callused of hand, and stoop-shouldered. Here’s to the peddlers and midnight oilers, to the yarn spinners keeping old Fred Wertham in perpetual mortuary locomotion.

Here’s to those who tell stories because they have to.

Welcome to Panels. Mind the wet paint. We’re a work in progress. And that’s half the fun.

Read comics. Be happy.

Paul Montgomery
Editor, Panels