Okay--I've been surprised a few times from artists that I'd think knew better --so let me walk you through this--if you've heard this before please bear with me.

At left is a modern comic book art board. The right attempts to show how to use it.

The interior orange box is for non-bleed art. That's for art that you don't want to extend to the edge of the printed page. Letterers are instructed to keep all lettering inside of this box regardless of bleed.

Here's a non-bleed page in action. The art is fully contained within the smallest interior box.

In this case--elements in panel one extend to the farthest outside line. These will be cut off at the trim line and anything in the bright yellow exterior field may not see print.

Often pages will be a fixture of bleed and non-bleed panels. Be careful NOT to have bleed areas on butting pages extend toward each other at the spine--or you risk creating an accidental double-page spread, where background elements align and seem connected.

Art that bleeds should extend to the farthest outside line. Be aware, however, that all art beyond the trim line is likely to be cut off, so don't put anything vitally important in that area. Ideally, nothing too vital is outside the interior box.

I've had numerous artists draw panels which were supposed to be inset along that trim line. This--can't work. That can't be an inset panel because everything outside that line is trimmed off. At best you'll see a black line at the edge of the paper and that's not a good look.

Full page pictures, of course, extend to the farthest outside line but not beyond. Everything you see in the outside yellow area was trimmed off in the printed comic book.

Here's an example of bleeds done wrong. The artist put the inset panels on the trim line instead of within the interior box. The workaround for print was to shrink the entire page and NOT have the pages bleed.