A redrawn page from the first volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s Number Five. I made a few mistakes in reproducing this one, got lazy in places, but Matsumoto’s ink style is really fun to replicate.
Anyways, look at this layout. Look at the way the angle of the black hole and the shape of that first panel (remember, right to left here) lead you into the page, and the way the word balloons show you in exactly what order you’re supposed to read those first five panels. Don’t forget the sound effect in panel two, which bring you all the way across the page before the second balloon beckons you back towards the right.
Then the last five panels work, at least for me, as a kind of collage. Small shots establishing mood, tone, environment, meant to be absorbed both sequentially and all at once.
Matsumoto uses these crazy layouts fairly sparsely in Number Five, and as here they’re always very purposeful. He knows what he’s doing.