Reading comic books and comic strips in the newspaper has been a fun pastime for many. Have you ever tried drawing your own comic? In this post, we have free printable templates to make it easier for you! We’ll also give you some tips and suggestions on how to practice writing a good comic strip.

Even if you don’t see yourself as an artist, but want to do the writing part of a comic, these templates can still be helpful! Check out this post on how comic writers can be most helpful to their artists. You can use our templates to give your artist a general idea of the layout you want, and make their job a little easier.

Three-panel comic template

You can use a three-panel template to set up a three-act story structure. Act 1 begins the story and gives the set-up. Act 2 introduces a conflict and shows the character(s) responding to it, and Act 3 resolves the conflict.

To download the above template as a PDF, click here.

Four-panel comic template

A four-panel comic template can still have a 3-act structure. You simply use the 2nd and 3rd panels to create the conflict.

To download the above template as a PDF, click here.

Four-panels with speech bubbles

Our next two templates have speech bubbles incorporated so you don’t have to draw them yourself. Simply draw your character in the blank space, and then write the dialogue in the bubble.

To download the above template as a PDF, click here.

Three-panels with speech bubbles

This template has speech bubbles in every panel. To set up a three part joke, you’d write each line of the joke in each of the speech bubbles. (Common jokes like this start with ‘What do you call a…?”)

To download the above template as a PDF, click here.

If you don’t want to use these templates and prefer to create your own panel layout, use our dot grids here or here. These can be used to make completely unique layouts.