To me, as a cartoonist, one of the greatest things in creating comics is how you can use its format in favour of the narrative. You don’t have to limit your work to its own boundaries, the panels’ lines. And if you do, you can reinvent the way it is supposed to limit you. You can also use the lines and the panels themselves as part of the narrative and give them a role in your story. And of course, what I write down here is nothing new for any comics creator or reader. But I’d like to make a point to explain my little problem with strip #65.

It’s probably one of my favourite ones so far. Firstly, because I like silent strips. I think it’s great when you say a lot with wordless panels. Second, because I could use the panels and its boundaries in favour of my narrative and it worked.

So you’ve got three hockey players, the ONE Line, a forward line, passing the puck to each other before the last one of them shoots it down. On ice, these kids would probably be in linear formation, so Nobre, the centre, passes down to Ohara, the left wing, the left wing makes a longer pass to Evans, the right wing, and then the right wing shoots it.

I have my main posting format, the comic strip format known as box, a roughly square format. It’s the format I post in here and on other blogs and also some webcomic hosting services. And most important, it’s the format I plan, I script and I draw every comic strip, panel by panel.

But I also have my own domain, hockeywebcomics.com.

As you can see, the layout is pretty simple. As I’d like it to be displayed without a scrollbar, so the reading will be easier, I cannot use the box format for my website because it’s not responsive. So I use the more traditional horizontal strip format.

Then I have my box-shaped comic strip and I just adjust the panels on a linear formation. Pretty simple, eh?

But not for strip #65.

I had to do minor changes to fit my website “wide strip” format.

It ended up that even the story itself passed by slight changes. The player that made the attempt, the right wing (Evans), now starts the play. The one that previously started the play, the centre (Nobre), now assists the left wing (Ohara). And the left wing was the one that originally made the assist, now he’s the one to shoot on goal.

The right wing and the left wing had the be redrawn. The centre and the goaltender didn’t need a redrawn, but their panels had minor changes on the puck line.

I think it was the first time in more than one year that I had to redraw things to adjust the comic strip for my website. Probably it won’t be the last time though.

That’s the price of posting in different formats. It’s quite challenging, but ends up being a little bit of fun.