Panel (comic strips)

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A panel is a single-drawing cartoon published by a newspaper, by a magazine, or on the Internet. A panel consists of one drawing that depicts a single moment. Often, a character in the cartoon speaks a line, which is usually printed in a caption beneath the panel itself. Many panels are syndicated and published daily, on a newspaper page with other syndicated cartoons that are collectively known as comic strips. Major comic strips in panel format include The Far Side, Dennis the Menace, The Family Circus and Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Panels are contrasted with the more common comic strip format, which consists of an actual "strip" of multiple drawings that tell a story in sequence.

A panel may also refer to an individual frame, or single drawing, in the multiple-panel sequence of a comic strip or comic book. The customary sequence in daily newspapers is four panels, as in Doonesbury or For Better or For Worse, or three panels, such as Garfield or Dilbert. In a comic book, multi-panel frames of many different sizes and shapes can be found. Examples of this are Batman, Spider-Man, Cerebus the Aardvark, Quackup, and many others.