As I mentioned before, I'm currently working on a pitch titled The Chosen. It follows a team of US special operations forces and CIA analysts who have discovered and are using alien weapons technology. On their first mission, the team has to track down a set of the alien weaponry that's made its way to less-than-friendly foreign government hands.
One of the literary devices I use in the series is to have a POV (point of view) character who is not from the military side. Rather, the main character is a behavioral scientist from the CIA who has a military liaison assigned to her. The reason for this is that as the military liaison is explaining stuff to her, it allows the audience to also learn how the military special operators work.
I was recently watching the movie Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In this movie, they use much the same technique by introducing the character Ariadne played by Ellen Page. She's new to the team and hired as an "architect," someone who "builds" the elaborate dream worlds they all visit. Because she's new, DiCaprio spends a good amount of time explaining how the dream realm works and, consequently, the structure of the story itself. This allows us as the audience to learn right along with her.
If this technique is done well, it flows organically and doesn't open the curtain to show the hand of the writer behind the dialogue. It can be a tricky balance. You want to make sure the audience is tracking, but you don't want to spend page after page, or panel after panel, doing nothing but explaining. You have to make sure you're advancing the action and keeping the reader, and the characters, moving forward.
We'll see if the technique works in my case, but I think I've got a good blend of action and expository dialogue. And in this case, since I'm only creating 9 pages of completely produced art along with a synopsis, I have a short amount of space to balance both action and expository dialogue/explanation. We'll find out if we pulled it off as well as I hope.
If you can know of other techniques to keep the action moving while allowing the audience to learn about the world you've created, I'd love to hear it.
Matt