Daniel Klos wrote to ask…
For much of his career, it seemed that Jack Kirby mostly used a six-panel grid in his page layouts. But when he returned to DC in the mid-1980s for issue 6 of that New Gods reprint mini-series, as well as the Hunger Dogs graphic novel, his page layouts became much more experimental, largely eschewing any underlying grid system. Did Kirby ever discuss this change and why he made it?
Yes. He said DC had asked him to saying that his simple grid layouts were "old-fashioned." He didn't like it but to make the company happy, he tried some different panel arrangements on some pages. I don't have an exact quote for you but he said (to me) something like, "A good artist can make the contents of the panels interesting. Anyone can divide the page into weird shapes."
