Page layouts

[H.W. Fluks]

Talking about arranging panels on pages:

In the mid-60s, a lot of comics (including Barks' and Murry's) only had
6 panels on a 4-row page: every third panel was page-wide. Apparently,
the editor demanded this format, because different artists (and writers)
adopted it. Was there ever any professor (or someone else) who explained
WHY this format was used?

To me it always seemed a cheap way to fill more pages with the same stories.
After all, nothing extra happened on those page-wide panels. They could
have been "normal" panels. (As proven by the fact that the editor changed
several of Barks' Junior Woodchuck scripts, either to widen panels, or
the other way around.)

Was it a first attempt to make the Disney comic look more like superhero
comics (like we have seen in Disney Comics comics 20 years later)?

--Harry.