Milt Caniff on "shifting camera angles" in comics

SABA: You say that you're auditioning every day, and that's obviously what's kept you in the business for so long.
CANIFF: Yeah, and I haven't lost my enthusiasm for it, for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that the kind of work do is no repeats. It's not like a bookkeeping system where you have to do the same thing over and over. That would just drive me nuts. And all the years that I've been at this thing, I've never drawn two panels the same. Ever.
SABA: Not that you know of, anyway.
CANIFF: Well, it doesn't occur to you at the time, but when you have two people talking, you still shift the camera around, so to speak, so that it isn't dull for the viewer, and it also isn't dull for you.
SABA: This is one of the things that you're justifiably famous for. You really initiated that technique of being able to have a lot of dialogue go on in a comic strip by shifting the camera angles, as they're called. I don't believe that was done at all before you came along, or at least, not to any extent.
CANIFF: No, it wasn't, generally speaking. I was seeking some device, something to make it noisy, and to make a grab for the audience. Part of it was the heavy blacks. It made the thing just look noisy on the page, and draw your attention that way. The other thing was, when you started to read it, you weren't riveted to one point of view across a horizon, you see.

...

CANIFF: It's the kind of thing that the good directors do. Hitchcock, for instance, does this very effectively, and I probably picked it up from him, or from some other director before him that I liked. And I used the movies' technique simply because the movies were accepted, and was simply trailing along behind them in a different medium. And, I would do this with storylines, too. I would read Saturday Evening Post and Colliers and things of that day, to see what was being read by people. When I came along in a different medium, I could almost play the same tune on a different horn and grab the same people.