From "Volare" comes this easily-answered question…
In comic books, I keep hearing the term "splash page." Just what is a "splash page?"
It's one of those terms that has been corrupted from its original meaning and now has a fuzzy definition. The original meaning dates back to the days when comics were sold exclusively on newsstands and publishers believed that folks browsing those racks made their purchasing selections based on if a story premise or situation grabbed them.
Mort Weisinger, who was the editor of the Superman titles, was considered the master of putting some intriguing scene on the cover which would cause browsers to say, "Wow! I've got to buy this so I can read it and find out what happens!" But the practice pre-dated him.
It was also usually applied to the first panel of any story. They would show some interesting moment from later in the tale as a kind of flash-forward teaser, again to snare the person standing at the newsrack, flipping through the comics before deciding which one to buy. The actual story would then start in Panel 2.
If the first panel was one of these flash-forward teasers, it would be referred to as a Splash Panel. Sometimes, it would be a panel that took up two-thirds (or thereabouts) of the first page. Sometimes, especially on a longer story, it would be a full-page panel. If it was a full-page panel, it would sometimes be called a Splash Page. The idea, I guess, was that you were opening the story by making a big splash.
Over the years, stories in comics got longer and it became rarer to see Splash Panels that weren't full pages…so the term was used less and less. Also, more and more comics began to start the story with that first, full-page scene. This was a trend that Marvel popularized in the sixties, along with longer and even continued stories.
One of the "whose idea was this?" issues where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby concurred was that it was Jack's idea to start stories on page one instead of flashing-forward to preview an interesting scene from later in the narrative. Jack felt that any creative person should be able to come up with an interesting way to start a story without resorting to that and, in effect, wasting a page. Jack also had a lot to do with the practice of having a full-page panel (or even a double-spread) in the middle of a story. People began to refer to any full-page panel, even one in continuity, as a Splash Page.
So what that term once meant was a panel that previewed a scene from later in the story. And what it now refers to is any a full-page panel, regardless of content. Original art dealers also have had a lot to do with changing the meaning because "Splash Page" sounds more important (and therefore, desired) than "full-page panel."
