Your First Graphic Novel

Sign in — you'll land on My Works. Click Create New Work and walk through the wizard:

1. Basic Info — enter a title (e.g. "The Long Way Home"); the URL slug is generated for you and checked for availability. Optionally pick the Webcomic starter template.
2. Languages — pick your default language. You can add more languages any time later, so one is fine for now.
3. Details — choose an age rating, add a tag or two, and leave Start with a first chapter ticked so the editor isn't empty.

Click Create Work. The editor opens. Full reference: Works.

The editor has four zones: the left sidebar (with Tree, Assets, and Tools tabs), the canvas in the middle, the inspector on the right, and the timeline at the bottom.

Two things in the header worth knowing from minute one: the save status (auto-save is on — you'll see "Saved …" after changes) and undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z). Details: Editor Layout.

Open the Assets tab in the left sidebar and either click Upload or simply drag your image files onto the editor. Each file shows an upload progress bar, then a short Processing… phase while optimized variants and thumbnails are generated automatically.

Details: Assets.

Switch to the Tree tab. Your work already contains "Chapter 1" (from the wizard). Right-click it and choose New Page, then right-click the page and choose New Panel — repeat for as many panels as your first page needs.

Select a panel to open it on the canvas, then drag an image from the Assets tab onto the canvas — it becomes a layer of that panel. You can stack multiple layers (background, characters, effects) and arrange them; the Layer tab in the right inspector holds position, size, and visibility settings.

Details: Pages & Panels, Layers.

Open the Tools tab and pick the Speech Bubble tool (shortcut S), then draw a bubble on the panel. With the bubble selected, use the Speech tab in the inspector to type the dialogue, pick the balloon type (normal, thought, shout, whisper…), and position the tail.

Two tips:

• Define your cast in the Characters Manager and assign each bubble to a character — bubbles then inherit that character's balloon style automatically.
• Set your work-wide default balloon look once under Work Properties → Typography instead of styling every bubble by hand.

Details: Speech Bubbles.

An interactive graphic novel isn't a strip of images — it's a graph: readers move from panel to panel along edges, which may branch. Open the Graph Editor from the Backstage sidebar (work card menu → Graph Editor also works).

Each panel appears as a node; the chapter's entry node is where readers start. Select a node and press C to start a connection, pick the target with the arrow keys, and confirm with Enter — the new edge appears. For a simple linear story, chain your panels 1 → 2 → 3.

Want a branch? Give a node two outgoing edges and add a Condition (JSON Logic) to one of them in the edge properties — an empty condition means "always follow". Use Auto-Layout to tidy the diagram and Simulate to walk the flow from the entry node. Click Save.

Details: Graph, Graph navigation concepts.

Click the eye icon (Preview Work) in the editor header, or open Preview in the Backstage sidebar. Your work runs in the real, embedded PanelWave Player — tap through it exactly as a reader would, and check that navigation, bubbles, and artwork all behave.

Details: Preview.

Click Preflight in the editor header (or open Validation in Backstage) and hit Run Validation. You'll get a verdict — Ready to Publish or Cannot Publish — plus a categorized list of errors, warnings, and info items with suggestions and Open in editor shortcuts. Fix all errors; warnings (like missing alt text) are worth fixing too.

Details: Validation & Preflight.

Once preflight reports no errors, mark your work as Published from the status dropdown on My Works, and use the works-list Export action to produce shareable output.

Congratulations — your first interactive graphic novel is finished. 🎉