UNTIL YOUR HEART STOPS v4.9
by Brian Domingos

U Got Me Dyin’ Out Here…

August 4th, 2004

Gah.

The temperatures around here have gone from upper fifties to nineties in the last seven days and ohgod it’s killing my body. Throw in the air conditioner and forget it. How can it be humid and dry at the same time? It’s terrible.

So I’m filled up with head junk and halfway between bed and the grave. But, you know, we go on.

Over the weekend I (finally) finished reading Greg Rucka’s QUEEN & COUNTRY script book. It covered the full scripts to the first four issues, as well as sketches by arc artist Steve Rolston and a handful of annotations by Rucka himself. Those were particularly interesting, as he explains why he chose what he chose at certain times, and he even cops to some mistakes me makes, giving characters the wrong dialect or not explaining something completely right. With a book like Q&C, those little research things are important and you can see that they matter to Rucka. He laments his errors and downplays his hits. It’s a stellar introductory story arc and there’s nothing to not be proud of.

I bought the book on the basis that I dig script books. I’m queer for them. They are the ultimate extra for a book. I don’t mind sketches, but, really, all you get there are characters with different haircuts and ohmaybehe’staller which isn’t all that important.

No, the script books are the bare bones of the comic. We get the first look at what each writer’s initial thought was. The scripts are never as pure as this. Then there’s the artwork that comes with it and each artist brings their own POV to the project, tweaking layouts and adjusting the pacing a bit. That’s the acting, the directing, the editing, part of the book. The script, though, is the initial inspiration.

In writing my own work, I try to surround myself with as many samples as possible.

I find Brian Michael Bendis’ POWERS SCRIPTBOOK to be very helpful. The first eleven issues are laid out in all their glory and you can see Bendis and artist Michael Avon Oeming getting more and more used to each other. The scripts become less descriptive and flow a bit easier. Issue by issue, there were more and more connections between their two brains until it’s the work of one machine turning out killer issue after another.

POWERS is a great example of a script driven story with dialogue mingling as part of the artwork. It wouldn’t be the same book if Bendis didn’t have such strong characters. It’s also a great testament to Oeming as an artist because, Jesus, there’s a lot of talking but he makes it so engaging.

Larry Young released the script for the first ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE mini series along with about a hundred extra tid-bits.

Young writes with a casual tone and tries to throw some fun into his words. His panel descriptions are pretty open, as he trusted his artists Matt Smith and Charlie Adlard, and he has often comment on how they always do something special with the scripts. The dialogue pops, too, which is always fun when reading a script. The book is very action orientated with strong characterization so it needs to be fun. A script that trudges though a brooding plot is really little fun to read on the backend.

The ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE script book is a great example of an idea built from the ground up into a clever and inventive and, most of all, entertaining story. You can learn a lot from that guy.

About Comics has released a pair of script collections aptly titled PANEL ONE & PANEL TWO. Each book contains nine scripts by ‘top writers’ that are all almost completely different.

The term “script” is used rather lightly in this case, because out of the nine in PANEL ONE, only seven are full scripts. There’s a Marv Wolfman plot style script for an issue of THE MAN CALLED A-X and a rough layout of the first issue of Jeff Smith’s ROSE.

The same goes for PANEL TWO, the Mike Baron NEXUS script is all a layout with cursive dialogue (which is almost impenetrable). Mill Mumy’s TRYPTO plot is just pages of ideas and the artist, Miguel Ferrer has to do his best. There are rough samples of the work after the script and it doesn’t look too bad. Judd Winick’s BARRY WEEN script starts as an idea and some dialogue and he paces it accordingly. If you’ve read BARRY WEEN, you know that it usually works out okay.

I’d have to recommend the first one because it has samples from Rucka, Neil Gaiman, Kurt Busiek and Dwayne McDuffie, each who have a very specific style and their scripts are particularly interesting. They are stronger than the rest and are easy to follow, which is very important. PANEL TWO was a little less fun for me, as the only script I actually was interested in was Gail Simone’s first issue of KILLER PRINCESSES. It was as good as I thought it would be, injecting all the fun and humor Simone could muster. It’s also a good example of someone working out the kinks as at the time, she’d only written a handful of scripts before.

It’s also important to point out how insane Scott McCloud is: He was doing a two part story for his book ZOT called “Getting to 99” and he was going to have trouble meeting his deadline because he was getting married. So, he had the artist Chuck Austen draw the issue for him.

However. However, rather than just giving Austen a detailed script, McCloud gave him the whole thing in a tight layout for him to redraw. The thing is, McCloud is only about a step or two from completing the story himself. He was so pressed for time, he drew the whole issue himself. He’s a loon, I tell ya…

The most important resources that I think any writer should have at his disposal are the following.

British writer Mark Salisbury released his book WRITERS ON COMICS SCRIPTWRITING where he interviewed fourteen writers and gave an exhaustive look at their craft. He spoke to everyone from Warren Ellis to Chuck Dixon, from Frank Miller to Devin Grayson, from Grant Morrison to Todd McFarlane and more.

Salisbury breaks it all down for the reader, getting the subjects to spill their guts on ‘the process’. They give up all their trade secrets on layouts and pacing and dialogue. Salisbury also includes script samples for most of the writers, which is very helpful to paint a complete picture.

The book itself, regardless of the scripts in interesting for the fact that each writer came into the medium with a different point of view and they all have such different backgrounds and Ideals that it is just a fascinating read. Under one cover you get Morrison talking in-depth about THE INVISIBLES, his alien abduction and what that has to do with JLA. You get Ellis talking about Vertigo’s editorial retraints, artist horror stories and then McFarlane going into detail of how he does issue layouts by drawing the pages in order and then rearranging them to where they might look better.

The real joy of this book is the sheer range of the creators. Gaiman’s mixed in there with Miller and Joe Kelly and Mark Waid and even the full plot style of Dan Jurgens. It’s a mish-mash, but it’s brilliant and it’s a really useful resource.

This next book changes it up a little bit, as it’s not aimed at writers. Sequential Artist Durwin Talon, has done work for DC Comics and Oni Press and his book PANEL DISCUSSIONS might just be the most important resource a writer hasn’t read.

Talon interviews fifteen artists and gives them the Salisbury treatment, getting them to give up the artistic goods. You won’t find Mike Mignola or Brian Stelfreeze or Mark Chiarello talking about this stuff anywhere else. If you’ve ever wondered why these greats do the things they do, the answers are here. Mignola’s books have a specific look to them because of his layouts, taking everything into consideration from pacing to mood. You won’t look at HELLBOY the same way after you’re done with this.

Since there is most to the artwork than pencils and ink, Talon included some color reproductions of the pages they talk about in the beginning of the book, so you don’t have to imagine what they are referring to. It’s all right there for you.

I’ll tell you, it’s an invaluable tool for someone writing a script, as it tells you all the things artists don’t convey through their pictures. It’s the thought and the time and skill all laid out for you in an easy to swallow capsule.

See, now I’m going to go reread these books because there’s so much insight there.

Upcoming
Books of note shipping August 4, 2004…

JUN040039 MILKMAN MURDERS #2 (Of 4) (MR) $2.99
JUN040187 BATMAN: 12 CENT ADVENTURE $0.12
JUN040199 BIRDS OF PREY #71 $2.50
MAY040366 COMPLEAT MOONSHADOW TPB (MR) $39.95
JUN040814 LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, VOL 2 TPB $14.95
JUN040949 LUCIFER: MANSIONS OF THE SILENCE, VOL 6 TPB (MR) $14.95
JUN040317 MAJESTIC #1 (Of 4) $2.95
JUN040952 TRANSMETROPOLITAN: TALES OF HUMAN WASTE, VOL 11 TPB $9.95
JUN040810 WILDCATS VERSION 3.0 #24 (MR) $2.95
JUN042891 DEAD AT 17: ROUGH CUT #1 (MR) $3.99
MAY042849 QUEEN & COUNTRY #26 (MR) $2.99

Mixed bag of work this week. There might be some good stuff, though. Give me a yell back at what you thought was good and what was not.

 

Brian Domingos is the Columns Editor at Popimage.com. Questions? Comments? Love Notes? Email him via brian@popimage.com.


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