SHOW DON'T TELL, PART 2, WRITING FOR COMICS
In the second of his series of looks at sequential storytelling, Marc Deering examines the writer's part in the storytelling process.

'Writing' for comics can be defined as the conception of an idea, the arrangement of image elements and the construction of the sequence of the narration and the composing of dialogue. It is at once a part and the whole of the medium. It is a special skill, its requirements not always in common with other forms of 'writing' for it deals with a singular technology. It is closest in requirements to playwriting, but for the fact that the writer, in the case of comics, is also the image-maker (artist). --Will Eisner, COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART

"Stan's scripts, were really only page-by-page synopsis' of the story"

Writing for comics is a tricky thing. For years the style and formats of various scripts and stories has been debated to death. I think Stan Lee started it all when, in launching Marvel, he only gave his artist a bare-minimum story and left the rest up to that artist. That says a lot for the old King himself, Jack Kirby. Kirby took those ideas and using the skills he'd learned from years of storytelling with Joe Simon and Will Eisner, formed and molded the Marvel Universe characters we know today. And then some.

But when it came to telling a story, the actual writing part of it all, that was an entirely different animal all together. Stan's scripts, were really only page-by-page synopses of the story. A paragraph per page, if you will. Fast-forward 40 years to the comics writers of this day and age and things are very different. The scripting styles of each and every comic writer out there are so varied and different that there is no set style anymore. There is no 'company oriented' way of doing things. It's left completely up the writer and his artistic team.

Which, might be said, is where things started to fall apart. See, writing for comics is totally different than writing novels, per say. Novels being the more popular, because of the wide acceptance and money involved. Writing for comics is more closely related to playwriting and screenplays in that you, as the writer, are responsible for relaying what is happening in each scene and what is said. The difference being, that you are working with still pictures instead of moving ones. But you still have to make the story flow, and move so as to keep the readers attention. As long as you know what you want to say and how to describe it to your artist (unless you are the artist) then storytelling can be fairly easy. In theory anyway.

No one writes a script quite like Alan Moore. Chris Sprouse (Tom Strong, Supreme) said that Moore's script for issue #1 of TOM STRONG; " The description for the first panel was one page long and said all this stuff about doors but then, by the time you got to the bottom of the page, Alan said to forget everything he had previously said and just draw a regular door." Get it?

Dave Gibbons, I was told, used to go through and just highlight the parts that were important to him while drawing WATCHMEN. Moore puts more description and thoughts into his scripts than anyone else in the industry. And that is a fact. Ask anyone.

"Moore puts more description and thoughts into his scripts than anyone else in the industry."

Warren Ellis has developed his own style that is nothing short of, well, fun. His scripts are fun, easy, and good. As Phil Jimenez has said, it's like reading a story unto itself. He has taken, what people call the Marvel Style, and warped into his own vision of how he wants his story to look. Since much of his early work was at Marvel, this is no surprise, but to look at his scripts, its almost like looking at a new world. They simply explode with new possibilities and wonders. (I'm a little biased here, THE AUTHORITY is my favorite book on the shelves today, and I would pay handsomely for an original script from an issue.)

Devin Grayson's scripts are very well laid out. She tackles her work much like her predecessors in that she knows what she want to see and puts that in the script. It's not so much that she doesn't trust her artists, but that she wants there to be very specific things in each panel and page.

I can safely say that Kurt Busiek has distinguished himself as a creator that has a firm grasp of characterization. But that is not necessarily apparent in his scripts. If you go out to your local comics store and ask for the AVENGERS VOL. 3 #1 ROUGH-CUT, it will have a copy of his script for AVENGERS #1 with George Perez penciling. There you will see that Kurt has firmly established himself in the Marvel Style. There are only rough paragraphs for each page. The rest is left up to George Perez, no slouch when it comes to drawing. He puts a great deal of faith in his artists, which is usually a good thing because his artists are some of the best in the business.

Styles vary and forms are different, but they all want the same end result, a good comic. Despite the fact that some writers sometimes want to distance themselves from the artist, the fact remains the same that there must exist some sort of trust between the writer and the artist or the comic may suffer. There are some writers that this sort of thing comes very easily for, whereas for others, usually artists-turned-writers, it is long, complicated process that can take months (despite collapsed lungs, and long hours at the video-game console). Take your scripting of comics carefully and think out everything you want to see on the page, then write it down. Be thoughtful, direct, and precise in your storytelling, the good stuff will follow.

Marc Deering is a regular contributor to PopImage.

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