Drama is action. You can’t have drama is nothing is happening. In fact, the word “drama” is an ancient Greek word that *means* “action”.

Here, you have a panel of a hand gripping a throat. Since we’re in a static picture medium, you can’t really show the act of grabbing. All we’ll see is some guy’s hand on a throat, assuming we can even recognize whose hand and throat those are in a close-up shot.

And really, we can detect the same problem throughout the whole comic: shots that are void of drama, shots that fail to advance the plot, to show any action whatsoever.

Just in this page:

Panel 1: People standing around instead of advancing on the two young vampires.
Panel 2: Reggie smiling and
Panel 3: Reggie baring his fangs – Why not do both at the same time?
Panel 4: Reggie running towards Ezekiel – Finally! Something’s happening!
Panel 5: A close-up during a fight

Pet peeve: Close-ups shouldn’t happen in fights unless you’re showing an important detail that could be lost to the reader in all of the manic action that’s going on. There’s none of that here.

Show someone DOING something. You need movement, expressions and surprise. Because drama also comes from tension and tension is produced by creating expectations that are then dashed. You’re at the end of an odd-numbered page here, just before a page-turn, so create an expectation that you can blow on the next page.

People are expecting a fight? Set up a fight. Cut short on Reggie’s bravado, have him charge at Ezekiel and then end you page with the shock between the two vampire.

Page 7
Panel 1: The vampire gang circling the two guys like a wolf pack.
Panel 2: A bit of well-worded bravado by Reggie in a combat stance while the pack still circles them
Panel 3: Reggie barreling towards Ezekiel
Panel 4: WHAM! Reggie connects with Ezekiel with a tremendous shock!

Page 8
Panel 1: But what’s this? Ezekiel has Reggie by the throat!

See how there’s basically the same sequence of events except now we have some action. And where there’s action, there’s drama.

Final note: Sorry for the lateness and not being my usual long-winded self. I’ve come down with something and it’s really eatin’ into me noggin’.

Yeah, this needs a lot of work.

Thank you for the look. This probably will get a re-write or get turned into a completely different story.

Thanks again.

MARK: I miss my family.

MARK 2: I want to go home.

REGGIE: Damn.

Panel 3: A close-up of Reggie’s hand on Mark’s shoulder. (Connor, what is this panel doing?)

REGGIE (op): I’m sorry.

The panel is doing nothing but wasting space on the page? Could just have his hand on Mark’s shoulder in panel 2.

Here goes: Three problems.

1) There is a character description for Mark. This should be in a different document.

2) “looking up at the snow lightly falling to the ground on a winter night” is prose writing.

3) The famous question: “Where is the camera?”

So lets answer that question: you did say “side view”, but didn’t specify “close-up”, “medium” or “wide”. Since this is page 1, panel 1, this panel should (among other things) serve as an establishing shot. So lets go medium or wide. And on top of that, as a bit of personal flair, with him looking up, I think an elevated or birds-eye might be a bit better. In addition, a medium elevated shot shows enough of the world around him to show that he is alone, and does a pretty good job of setting the “lonely” tone that I think you were going for.

So here’s my take on the panel.

Panel 1: Medium, elevated shot, night. Mark sits on a swingset in an abandoned playground. He looks up, an introspective look on his face. It is snowing.

39 words down to 25, all the relevant information is still there, plus some extra stuff that will help your artist.