Literacy educators might advocate using graphic novels to develop students' visual literacy skills, but teachers who lack a vocabulary for engaging in close analysis of visual texts may be reluctant to teach them. Recognizing this, teacher educators should equip preservice teachers with a vocabulary for analyzing visual texts. This article foregrounds three analytic concepts preservice teachers can use to examine the role issues of design play in eliciting their response to images--specifically, those in graphic novels. To demonstrate how the concepts function, the author applies them to his own reading of panels excerpted from a critically acclaimed graphic novel for adolescents. (Contains 6 figures.)