The Table Scene

It’s the ultimate horror.
You are trapped with your very own demons.
You cannot escape- you will not be excused.
You will need to look at them, as they look back at you, and do a reckoning.

At least until dessert.

In my opinion, in all creative writing/art mediums, the table scene is the one where the characters really put themselves on the map, both in terms of their own personality and how they feel and act towards the other characters in the cast.

Forcing them to sit across or around a table and have to interact gives the artist (especially in visual mediums such as comics and film, but also in novels) the ability to bring brewing or underlying emotions, grudges, affiliations but also manners of manifesting it all to the forefront.

And it begins immediately! Just from them sitting down: where they pick to sit down, or forced to sit down in a rectangular table (which I think is the best type for such scenes) immediately implies a power structure or power grid between the characters. Likewise for the characters that for whatever reason opt not to sit down at all, or are forbidden to. The nuances and the impressions are endless!

And of course, after a table scene, the audience is far better informed about your cast that participated in it- and most likely have already formed emotional bonds and even possibly identified with one or more of them.

Because who hasn’t been part of a tense, awkward or chaotic table scene?

So have you employed a table scene in your comics to offset the relationships between your characters or even to flesh them out?