The book makes frequent deliberate use of silent panels, focused on imagery with the narrative moved forward by the characters' actions. Riel's "despairs over the decisions he makes" are expressed through pictures, as Brown had come to believe that historical comics had been too "narration-heavy". He wanted "Louis Riel" "to show what the medium is capable of", and made use of greater panel-to-panel continuity. While the grid of panels gives a feeling of page symmetry, the pages are not composed as a unit—scenes change anywhere on the page with little regard to page layout.