Max Allan Collins on writing a story strip as a gag strip

COLLINS: ...The last week that I wrote a couple of days ago, there was essentially a gag in every day. And in fact, the only way that a story strip can be effectively written these days is to write it essentially as a gag strip. You have to write adventure strips toward the gag strip mentality and by that I mean that with the restrictive space we have for both pictures and words, it has to be constructed in such a way that it can be read at a glance-it has to have the impact of a gag. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a set-up and a punch line every single day, although usually a cliff-hanger of sorts is at least a parallel to the punch line or a joke.