You can call it a comic book page, you can call it a page from a graphic novel, you can even call it sequential art, your assignment is to tell a little story in panels on a single page. You may include empty word baloons to fill in later, but no words should appear on this assignment when you turn it in. You may use symbol-signs, like a question mark above the head of a confused character, if you like, but a good storyteller won't need them. You may add as much detail as you like, but I'll be far more interested in how you arrange the shapes of each composition, so I strongly recommend that you start there..
Your shapes and their arrangement will communicate your story more effectively than any of the details you will add later. Your shapes will also communicate the feeling of the story through aesthetic experience: do the shapes and arrangements feel playful, violent, relaxed, moody, or some combination of these? If the feelings of your characters change, then so should the way that you present them!
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The characters can be anything you like: people, animals, animate objects, but I want you to pay more attention to their shapes than their surface design. It's okay if you leave your figures blank, but they should be made of solid shapes and not stick figures.
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It will help to concentrate on the shapes if you stick to black and white. You may use grey tones but please limit your greys to shapes and don't get into a lot of shading. Doing as much as you can with limited means is a part of the assignment.
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Your assignment should be done on a 9 x 12" sheet of drawing paper, which is a quarter of a standard 18 x 24" pad, with a one inch border on each side. (So, you'll be working within a rectangle of 7 x 10".) You must include at least four different panels, but they can be shaped any way you like and they can overlap. Draw your page in pencil, and then go over it again using any kind of ink you like. You might enjoy using a brush, but a black gel pen or even a sharpie will be fine. If you make a mistake while inking, it'll be okay for you to cut panels out and glue them onto a clean new sheet, but it should be done cleanly enough that a person standing on the far side of our classroom wouldn't know.
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If you're absolutely blank of ideas, you may borrow the story of any of the pages I gave you in class, but your version should be arranged VERY differently from the original. Have fun!
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(Image: a page from The Death of Speedy, by Jaime Hernandez)
