Interesting. I don't disagree, now that you've both mentioned it, but I saw the "flow" immediately. I don't know if it's in the panel arrangement or I just automatically assume that it reads like (English) text. There's probably a good psychological (or "user experience") study, there. I imagine it's a "forest-or-trees" issue of some sort.
Or maybe the books I started reading didn't have that affordance. You've mentioned that it mostly started as a Kirby thing, and I've usually avoided both Kirby's work and that of most of his direct imitators. Don't know. As I said, it's a point of disagreement that strikes me as interesting, and I'm sure a product design student could have a field day with it.
What drew me in, though, was that I could see the story in each panel, which is something I've only rarely seen...and then only in much-maligned pencillers like Mike Sekowsky. I worry less about (and probably look for less of) the inter-panel continuity, since down that path in less talented hands, lies (shudder) "decompression," the horrifying idea that comics should be directed like movies with long sweeps of nothingness...
(And Mistah Spammah, to adapt Joseph Conrad, he dead. Banned by every measure, and threads removed. Until the next one shows up, "he dead," I mean.)
