Reading a digital comic panel archive without losing the gutter

Digital viewers sometimes zoom a single panel until the gutter disappears. For archive work that is a problem: the gutter is how we know a new action started.

In briefings we pinch out until two panels sit side by side, then name the gutter aloud. Visitors who catalog at home can do the same. If a splash eats the whole screen, we note “splash interrupt” on the sheet so the next page is not mistaken for panel four of the previous grid.

NFT comics inherited print habits: caption boxes in the top strip, sound effects painted into the art. Those painted words are not our indexing sound effects; they belong to the page. We transcribe them only when they identify a character or location needed for a spotlight claim.

A paper index still wins when the app rotates. Write the drop title, then the panel count, then the beat. The screen can sleep. The sheet keeps the place.