Comic Strip Spread

Difficulty: Easy
Note: This spread works best with decks like the Diary of a Broken Soul or Surrealist Tarot because they display scenes rather than pips and do not use reversals.
The Comic Strip Spread is a simple nine-card chronological spread that looks like a page of a comic book. This method should be used to get a glimpse of the future as it would pan out naturally. It may be insightful to use this spread in coordination with biorhythms. The spread is easy to read as a storyboard, just like a comic strip.
The main subject is apparent in the first card, while the story plays out through the following tarot cards.
It is important to pay particular attention to the cards and the relationships with their neighbours. Notice which directions the cards are facing, and how they interact.
Your Comic Strip Reading
The Tower![]() |
10 of Swords![]() |
Page of Swords![]() |
6 of Swords![]() |
9 of Wands![]() |
6 of Wands![]() |
8 of Wands![]() |
Death![]() |
The Swamp![]() |
Card 1: The Tower
10:00 – Card 4
Male, Earth, Libra.
Failure and Loss. Defeat and ruin. The higher it's built, the harder it falls and the more it crushes when it does. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't worth building. Defeat can be accepted and the ruins left behind in favour of greener pastures, or one can start to rebuild. The latter is more difficult, but often more rewarding.
Card 2: 10 of Swords
Classic iconography. Classic significance: Absolute destruction.
Card 3: Page of Swords
Chaos is dangerous to both belligerents. If you have all the arms and all the thorns in the world, you're just as much a danger to yourself if you don't keep track of them.
Card 4: 6 of Swords
Something has to make the rain come down. It got up there but once there's enough of it, it falls back to Earth. It's not enough just to let it happen, if you want to understand you have to observe.
Card 5: 9 of Wands
Thank you Mario, but your princess is in another castle. Besides, this one's blocked by a cypress tree fence. Lofty goals are nothing if you can't get to them.
Card 6: 6 of Wands
If you're stuck, the first step to freedom is to examine what's holding you in place.
Card 7: 8 of Wands
The means by which you arrive are not necessarily the means by which you'll stay.
Card 8: Death
Card 9: The Swamp
8:00 – Card 1
AKA Temperance in the traditional Tarot. Male, Earth, Scorpio.
Stagnation, nothing moves, nothing changes. Barriers block every effort to improve or change, not that rock has anywhere to go. The elements and life move around it, grow from it, decay upon it, but it goes nowhere.