Question: What is a "Throw Away" Panel? Answer: It is a panel at the start of a Sunday comic - usually containing the title of the feature and an image somewhat related to the current Sunday comic but never integral to the story line. These panels can be included or "thrown away" at the discretion of individual papers. True to their title, in almost all formats the throw away panel is now being "thrown away" more often then not. With the continued shrinking of comic sections, most papers no longer run them. It used to be you could see them on Daily Ink, but with the launch of King Features Comics Kingdom - the panels have now been thrown away in all digital/web versions of King's strips. For a lot of artists, this is not a big deal - producing these panels just eats up extra time and generally it is the same art every week anyway. John is one of the few comic artists still doing a different "throw away" panel every Sunday. Piers Baker of Ollie and Quentin is another. From time to time I'll be posting the missing panels if I feel they are particularly interesting. Above is the panel for 6/21/09.
