Comic Strips are formatted different ways for different size requirements. The “drop panel” is a panel or tier of the strip that can be omitted because of size restrictions without affecting the gag or storyline.
For example, Here’s today’s Sunday strip (June 9, 2013) as it appears on Daily Ink and in many papers.
And here is the black and white version with the drop panel.
For those readers who haven’t seen them, here’s a spotlight on last month’s Sally Forth drop panels.
Side note: They’re black and white as I don’t have access to the color files.
May 5, 2013
May 12, 2013
May 19, 2013
May 26, 2013
June 2, 2013
Addendum:
The standardized system to format strips for newspapers was devised years ago by King Features’ Comic Art Production Supervisor, Frank Chillino (1920-2007). It helped streamline the process saving countless hours of production time (and money) for King.
Jim Keefe – Frank Chillino – Jerry Craft
Frank Chillino was my boss when I first started at King – One of the greats! The above pic is from the 1993 King Features Christmas party in New York City. For those interested, the following link is an interview from when he retired back in 1991. As mentioned in the post, it pretty much encapsulates the history of the syndicated newspaper strip, as Chillino was one of the key players…
Why is Nona’s hair blonde today?
I think it was the stress of last week’s storyline.
But seriously – I color the Sunday page, but not the dailies. I’ll check with the powers that be to see if I can’t get that fixed.
Great to see these, I started noticing the extra panels when I traveled & read the papers in some of those cities & noticed that some strips had extra panels in them.
Not that it makes for missing any of the story line, but they do add a little something in most cases.