Write Now #12 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

INSIDE: HOW TO FIND YOUR STORY’S THEME! #

12 May 2006

$ 95 In the USA

M AG A ZI N E

EDITORS REVEAL:

HOW TO GET HIRED

M AG AZ I N E Issue #12

May 2006

Read Now!

Message from the Editor-in-Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 2

Mr. DC Interview with DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz . . . . . . page 3

One From the ’Hart Interview with Steve Englehart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 19

Breaking and Entering Department

You have great ideas and sensational writing samples—but what do you do then? How do you get someone in a decision-making position to decide whether or not they want to hire you to write for them? These three features will help you find the answers to that key question.

Writer, Know Thy Editor Paul Benjamin, former DC/Humanoids Managing Editor and current in-demand freelance writer, investigates what comics editors want to see— and brings back the information for you! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 43

Editors’ Preferences In handy, point-by-point fashion, a checklist of what 18 top editors want to see in your submission—and what they don’t! Compiled by Paul Benjamin . . .page 47

Breaking into Comics (and Staying In) for Writers From the horse’s mouth: what one top editor wants to see in your writing submissions, and his thoughts on what every editor wants to see from aspiring writers. Marvel editor Andy Schmidt talks in detail about the skills you need, how to network, the art of The Pitch, and much, much more . . . . . . .page 53

Writing Webcomics It’s a whole new world on the web for comics. Starting with the definition of “what is a webcomic, anyway,” webcomic expert (and writer) T Campbell explains what the world of webcomics is and why it might just be the place to showcase your ideas and maybe even generate some income . . . . . page 62

Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 70

Nuts & Bolts Department

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief Cover art by GEORGE PEREZ Associate Editor BOB BRODSKY Assistant Editor LIZ GEHRLEIN Designer RICH FOWLKS Transcriber STEVEN TICE Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To:

THE 18 EDITORS!!

And… PAUL BENJAMIN ALISON BLAIRE BOB BRODSKY T CAMPBELL KIA CROSS STEVE ENGLEHART RICH FOWLKS LIZ GEHRLEIN GISELE LAGACE PAUL LEVITZ ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON JOHN OSTRANDER ADAM PHILIPS CHRIS POWELL BEN REILLY JIM SALICRUP ANDY SCHMIDT STEVEN TICE VARDA STEINHARDT

Pitch to Arc Breakdown to Script: BATMAN: DARK DETECTIVE II Steve Englehart traces the evolution of 2005’s smash hit Batman: Dark Detective II mini-series/story arc. We see the pitch letter that sold the idea, his issue-by-issue outline for the story arc, and the first five pages of script and art for the first issue. Art by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin . . . . . . . .page 32

Theme: The Heart of the Story John Ostrander sheds some light on the subject that is the essence of writing: having something to say! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 37

Script to Pencils to Finished Art: PENNY AND AGGIE Pages from the webcomic by T Campbell and Gisele Lagace . . . . .page 67

Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! is published 4 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Fax: (919) 449-0327. Danny Fingeroth, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Write Now! E-mail address: WriteNowDF@aol.com. Single issues: $9 Postpaid in the US ($11 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $24 US ($44 Canada, $48 elsewhere). Order online at: www.twomorrows.com or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com All characters are TM & © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorial package is ©2006 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a shared trademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

WRITE NOW | 1

Mr. DC:

THE PAUL

LEVITZ INTERVIEW

Conducted at DC Comics by Danny Fingeroth October 3, 2005 Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Paul Levitz, Adam Philips and Danny Fingeroth

aul Levitz is the President and Publisher of DC Comics; as a writer, he is best known for his run on The Legion of Super-Heroes. Levitz was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1956, and entered the comics industry in 1971 as the editor/publisher of The Comic Reader, the first mass-circulation fanzine devoted to comic news. He continued to publish TCR for three years, winning two consecutive annual Comic Art Fan Awards for Best Fanzine. His other fan activities include editing the program book for several of Phil Seuling's legendary New York Comic Art Conventions, and he worked briefly for Seuling at Sea Gate Distributors, the original direct distribution company. Levitz is primarily known for his work for DC Comics, a company he's been associated with for over 30 years. Beginning as a freelance writer of text features, he went on to write most of the classic DC characters, including Batman, Wonder Woman and the Superman newspaper strip. His most popular writing was his thirteen years of The Legion of Super-Heroes, including an eight-year uninterrupted run, one of the longest in super-hero comics history, and on Justice Society of America. Levitz joined the editorial staff of DC in 1973 as an assistant editor, and became editor of the Batman titles before shifting from the editorial to business side in 1980. Since then, he has been the Manager of Business Affairs, Vice President— Operations, Executive Vice President, Executive Vice President & Publisher, and since 2002, the President and Publisher. Levitz lives with his wife and three children in the hills of Westchester County, New York. As one of the most important decision makers in comics today, and as someone who has deep experience as a comics editor and writer, it goes without saying that Paul would have much of significance to say to the Write Now! audience. His generosity with his time and insights are deeply appreciated. [Special thanks to DC’s Adam Philips for helping make the whole process go smoothly.] —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: Paul, you have a unique perspective. You’re the guy that sets policy for DC. On the other hand, you’ve been in the trenches as a writer and editor. I’m interested in how and why you chose this path. To start with, can you tell me a little about your background? PAUL LEVITZ: I’m a Brooklyn boy, and my dad worked at an industrial hardware place selling the nuts and

bolts and other objects that you need to hold a building together when you’re constructing it. Before she had kids, Mom had been a bookkeeper, and, off and on, other odd things, including, at one time heading a branch of the Drake Business Schools. Neither of them had particularly touched real creative industries in their work, other than Mom having briefly been a bookkeeper at an ad agency. Pretty basic working class upbringing. DF: When you were reading all these comic books, did they encourage it, discourage it, just think it was cute? PL: Mom was afraid I would ruin my eyes, which was probably a fairly accurate conclusion. My father was, in his youth, quite an athletic man, and he had taught all the kids on the block how to play ball. He was rather confused by having a kid who wouldn’t come out from under the tree and put down whatever book I was reading at the moment. “Thanks, Dad. I’m glad you’re having fun running around out there. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to do it, but if it makes you happy, have fun.” They were PAUL LEVITZ | 3

both extremely supportive at some points where they made a tremendous difference, including running around an awful lot with me in the days of fanzines, taking the fanzines to the printer, things like that that. A 14-to-16-year-old is not extremely mobile. They were very tolerant of something that probably didn’t make a lot of sense to them. DF: Were you always writing as a kid? Did you draw at all? PL: I don’t know that it was writing per se. I guess I did a certain amount of that. It was more publishing that got me. My parents had been the co-editors of the PTA newsletter when I was in third grade. In those days you printed that on horrible little mimeographs with stencil fluid and manual typewriters. It was sort of one step forward from chiseling it out of stone, but only about one. We did the newsletter on my dining room table. And, as best as I can kind of reconstruct these things in my own head, that’s where I began to be interested in the publishing process. And by a year or so after that, I was doing my own little magazine for school. DF: Was that a magazine about comics, or a general magazine? PL: It was a magazine about nothing much. Sort of the equivalent of the school magazine, but if it were more exciting and more salacious. You could call it an “underground” version or an “unauthorized” version. DF: What was the magazine called? PL: Spotlight, I think. I’ve never been a particularly great “namer” as a writer. DF: How did the school feel about the magazine?

Some of Paul’s earliest writing and editing appeared in the anthology title Weird Mystery Tales. Here, the covers to two issues he worked on, #18 (by Ernie Chan) and #14 (by Luis Dominguez). [© 2006 DC Comics.] 4 | WRITE NOW

PL: My folks were running the PTA, so the school’s reaction was pretty well under control at that point. And there wasn’t anything objectionable in the magazine. It was just a strange little outcast off in the corner. That whole process of seeing things come together into a publication is something that got into my blood very, very early on, and more, even, than writing, that really is where my passion comes from. DF: Were you writing fiction of any kind at this point, or did you pretty much see yourself as a journalist and publisher? PL: I suppose I must have written some kid fiction at some point, but not a lot of it. I never saw myself as a writer of fiction in those years. There are those who say I’m still a novice. DF: What did you think you would do when you grew up? PL: At that point I wanted to be a chemical engineer, go off to MIT, work in a laboratory with things that would blow up in some interesting fashion. DF: How did you go from chemical engineering to majoring in business? PL: When I went off to high school, I was commuting into Manhattan, to Stuyvesant High School, one of those unique and wonderful insane asylums the city runs. [Stuyvesant is a highlyregarded public high school for which applicants must pass a rigorous test.— DF ] And in the high school years, I became involved in publishing both with DC and with my own fan magazines. At the same time I was experiencing what a chemical laboratory really smells like. That was a very convincing reason not to pursue that as a career. And the practical realities of family economics meant that I would have to go to college somewhere I could commute to from home, and somewhere I could continue to work in comics to pay for school. That pretty much added up to being New York University. Columbia was too far uptown to reasonably commute to from Brooklyn. NYU fit fairly well with my compromise: “Oh, maybe I’ll go into the business side of science, ultimately sell some high tech for IBM, or something like that. DF: I guess all this time you were putting out The Comic Reader? PL: I started doing some fanzines that nobody read in junior high school. The total circulation of those was probably outnumbered by the three people in this room. Certainly outnumbered by the number of contributors who did things for it. When I got into Stuyvesant, about six months after that, Paul Kupperberg and I started Etc., which turned into an incarnation of The Comic Reader, and I stuck with that through my whole time in high school.

DF: Was Paul a high school friend, or junior high school? PL: Junior high school. We ran into each other in junior high, we discovered we both liked comics, and have been playing together ever since. DF: And you actually started working at DC while you were still in high school, right? PL: You have to bear in mind in all of this that the business was infinitely smaller then. We’re talking about the early 1970s. There probably were under two hundred people in the United States who made their living specifically in comics, whether writing, drawing, editing, being involved in production or publication, or even distribution—because there was no distinct distribution system for comics at that point. Probably at that point, there were a half dozen or so comic shops scattered around the country, something you would recognize as a comics shop today. Virtually all of those comics industry people were in New York, and they were all fairly anonymous, even to each other. Artists would receive scripts without writers’ names on them. Many of the people had met informally over time, but there wasn’t a lot pulling the industry together. There were a few early conventions in New York, and had been for a few years. But not a lot of infrastructure. The Comic Reader was really the first “TV Guide” for the industry that actually gave credits and gave reasonably good information about what was coming out in the next month—varying from time-to time—with the co-operation of the companies. This brought me into contact with pretty much everyone in the publishing and editorial end of the business, and they were willing to put up with a snotty 14or 15-year-old wandering around their offices, because they’d be able to actually know when the stories they were working on would be coming out.“ As part of that process of collecting information, I was, I think, the first kid who wandered past [DC Editor] Joe Orlando’s office one afternoon after Marv Wolfman quit writing letter columns for him. Warren Publishing had just hired Marv to be the new editor-in-chief there, and he had to quit the DC assignment. So Joe called to me and said, “Here, want to do these letter columns?” “I’m not a writer, Joe.” “Ah, I’ve read your fanzine. You know how to write well enough to do a letter column.” So I found myself a freelancer at 16 years old. It’s been an odd life. I’ve never applied for a job, never looked for a job. There’s something resembling a resume of mine on file in the HR department, because every now and then, someone in HR calls me and says, “We need one for the collection.” DF: How did you start writing comics stories? PL: I was working for Joe, I guess for about a year, at first freelance, doing text pieces, then as his assistant editor. It started when Michael Fleisher went on vacation. Michael never came back. It was a very nice vacation. He is still well, and will happily testify to the fact that I had nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t come back… he’s just left for Africa with a human rights group. Part of being an assistant editor in those days, particularly working with someone like Joe, who had a tremendous number of anthology books in his workload, was a lot of rewrite work, including rewriting people I

probably had no business taking a blue pencil to. But the circumstances required sometimes—as I mentioned to your colleagues at Back Issue magazine—that I had to take Shelly Mayer stories and cut them apart, because we were changing Black Orchid from being in the front of Adventure Comics to a back-up in Phantom Stranger. So I’d add pages and do bridges to connect different pieces of the stories and things like that. Shelly never killed me. We became friends over the years, so I guess I didn’t do it too badly. But, boy, I shouldn’t have been allowed to do that. At any rate, the process of working with Joe on editing scripts taught me a tremendous amount about writing. And, at a certain point, between my hubris and Joe’s open-mindedness, he just said, “Here, why don’t you try writing something? DF: What was the first story you wrote? PL: The first full scripts were for, I think, Tex Blaisdell, who was sort of an editor working in Joe’s orbit for a very brief time for Weird Mystery and Tales of Ghost Castle. Exciting stuff. DF: And then you just became known around the company as a guy that could write, and more assignments came your way?

DF: I was thinking more of a case where it wouldn’t be a case of an aspiring writer saying “I’m going to take the regular guy’s job,” but more a situation where the idea would be for someone to show you: “Here’s how I might handle a DC character. What do you think of how I did it? I’ll be happy to do a five-page backup.” But it sounds like the door, even for someone like that, is closed. PL: A submission like that’s not going to get read, because that’s not going to solve an editor’s problem. I might read your writing sample if it’s a published sample, but I’m not going to read a five-page story that I can’t use. I don’t mean editors are lazy. Some are, but certainly not all. But they read all day. That’s what they do. And when you suggest that they read something to consider whether or not they might want to read or buy it, that’s not a salable proposition. You have to provide a volume of material that says, “I’m good with words. I’m good with story. When you need something, when you’re open to something, let’s keep that dialogue going.” We’ll go back to Alan Moore for a moment. I have a very vivid memory of returning to my apartment in the Village to a letter from a kid in England announcing that he was England’s best comic book writer, based on his stories published in 2000 AD, and if we were ever going to do something with the Martian Manhunter, please consider him for it. That was at the very beginning of Alan’s career. And I happened to be a fan of British comics, so we had some mutual friends, and I read his Skizz stories at the time and thought, “Yeah, this guy’s not bad.” I suggested him for some work shortly thereafter. Len Wein had a very similar experience with Alan. We’re not sure which of us made the suggestion of using him first. Our memories conflict. But that’s really still the way in. DF: So being solicited is not a formal process. Could it be you meet an editor, you talk, and you, the writer, say, “I’ve got some interesting ideas,” or, “I’ve got something I wrote and published myself,” and if the editor says, “Oh, sure, send them to me,” then your work has now been “solicited”? PL: Yeah. The magic words are, “Let me hear your ideas.” You don’t have 800 page forms to fill out before you send in your ideas, but you have to have an editor willing to look at it. DF: Fair enough. Moving along, what do you enjoy reading? What kind of TV shows are you a fan of, movies both past and present? Give us a general “Paul cultural tour.” PL: My reading tends to split into mystery and sciencefiction on the one hand, and history and biography for the more serious stuff. I’m not a great reader of literary

novels. Perhaps some people who’ve read my work can guess that. Clearly, as you can see in the body of things like The Legion, I was a tremendous fan of the Golden Age science-fiction writers. They had a tremendous influence on me that shows through in my body of work. As a writer, all of this stuff is grist and is meat and it’s wonderful. I got the ideas for my Starman series out of the history of the Ottoman Empire. I launched a series in the back of one of my war comics inspired by Philip Knightly’s history of war journalism, in which he expands on the idea that in war journalism, truth is the first casualty. [For more details on Knightly’s book, see: http://journalism.nyu.edu/portfolio/books/book54.html] I’m always looking for stuff that provokes thought and leads your mind places. Best books of this summer: Friedman’s The World Is Flat and Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains (which is a great biography of a real super-hero). PAUL LEVITZ | 15

I’m much less of a movie buff. Television is kind of hard for me to get on a regular schedule with, given the way my life’s organized now. West Wing is probably my most recent appointment television, as was a lot of Steven Bochco’s material in the years prior to that. You can see there’s a commonality of that material with the type of writing I like to do, as well. In comics, I drop in and out of all the different series. I’m enjoying a lot of the stuff that’s being done today on some of the old characters I used to write, Geoff Johns on JSA, Mark Waid on Legion. I think both guys have really interesting takes on the material, so it’s been fun visiting with old friends there. A number of Vertigo titles over the last few years have been fun. There’s not one I’m particularly passionate about at this moment. Transmetropolitan, I think, is the last one I was fully involved with. Again, it was a series touching science-fiction, set in a future world, and that explored some of the issues that have interested me in politics.

Frank McCourt. He’d always been Frank McCourt, but now it was in all capital letters. Frank became a Pulitzer prize-winning author of great stature at 63. Many of his students would have cheerfully told you that the man had a writer within him. He was an extraordinary storyteller. But if he can do that at 63, it provides some hope for the rest of us.

DF: Is there anything being published by other publishers that you’re finding interesting? PL: For old comfort food, I loved the redo of Stan and Jack’s Avengers run that Marvel did about a year ago, and PVP by Kurtz always makes me smile. DF: Do you have any plans to return to writing, or is that a fantasy for when you’re on to the next phase of life, whatever that may be? PL: Writing on a serious basis is hopefully not a fantasy, but an ambition for the next phase of life. I had the good fortune to have the living lesson of my high school English teacher, who was quite a raconteur. I sent him my Legion: Great Darkness trade paperback when it was published in the ’90s. I got a note back that said: “Imaginative stuff. Not the sort of thing that I like, but good to see you doing well, boy. Me, I’m working on my memoirs. Not quite sure if anyone’ll read them. Keep an eye out. Thanks!” And a couple of years later, the next thing I saw of him was on the front Cover to the trade paperback collection of Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga. The stories (which originally appeared in LSH #s 287, 290-294, and Annual #3, were written by page of the New York Times Book Paul. TPB cover by Keith and Larry. [© 2006 DC Comics.] Review, when he’d turned into 16 | WRITE NOW

One From the ’Hart:

THE STEVE ENGLEHART INTERVIEW Conducted by Bob Brodsky via phone and e-mail 2004-2006 Copy-edited by Bob Brodsky, Danny Fingeroth and Steve Englehart

rom his vital recasting of the terminally un-hip Captain America in the early 1970s, through 2005’s acclaimed revival of his Batman: Dark Detective, Steve Englehart stands as one of the most important writers in modern comics. The son of a respected newspaper journalist, the Indiana-born Englehart began his career in comics in 1969 as an art assistant to Neal Adams. The apprenticeship with Adams soon led to other artistic assignments, including various chores at DC Comics and Warren Publishing, as well as two little-known (and quite good!) penciled romance stories for Marvel Comics. In 1971, a chance writing assignment pivoted Englehart to a staff writing and editing position with Marvel Comics. By late 1972—the beginning of Roy Thomas’ run as Stan Lee’s editorial successor—Englehart was writing three Marvel titles: The Avengers, “The Beast” in Amazing Adventures, and Captain America. Englehart attacked these assignments with a creative ferocity far beyond any possible expectations for a young writer. Steve’s creative resume includes stints at DC, including a memorable run on Batman in Detective Comics; an excellent prose novel, The Point Man; a slew of creator-owned projects including Scorpio Rose and The Night Man (which became a live-action television series); and various animation projects. In the 1980s, Steve was an early designer of video games, doing pioneering work for companies like Atari and Sega and in the ’90s was one of the writers of the online and CD “Multipath Movie”: Superman: Menace of Metallo. Most recently, Steve, often in tandem with his wife Terry, has written various fiction and non-fiction prose books, including the DNAgers adventure series and Countdown to Flight, a biography of the Wright Brothers (selected by NASA as the basis for their lesson plan on the invention of the airplane). 2005 brought Steve back to Batman, via his creative reunion with penciler Marshall Rogers, inker Terry Austin, and letterer John Workman on Batman: Dark Detective. Together, Steve and his collaborators maintained the spirit of their original late 1970s Detective Comics run, while succeeding in making their stories relevant to today’s reader. The following interview with Steve was conducted via a series of telephone conversations during late spring and early summer 2004, with e-mail updates added in early 2006. –Bob Brodsky

BOB BRODSKY: What were you reading in the ’50s, Steve? Before the Marvel Age? STEVE ENGLEHART: I read Batman, Superman. I don’t recall really reading the Timely stuff. I was too late to catch EC. At a certain point, I’d kind of “outgrown” comics. So I missed the Silver Age revival, and came back into it later, when I was in college. BB: That would have been in the ’60s? SE: Right. The ’60s was an incredible super-hero time. We had Kennedy, we had people going to the moon, we had Martin Luther King, we had civil rights, we had Vietnam. The Avengers [the TV series featuring the adventures of Steed and Peel] was on TV, Batman was on TV. Without going totally sappy about the whole thing, the ’60s was really a time of heroes and villains. We had larger-than-life heroes, we had larger-than-life villains—in real life. I think that’s what Stan and Jack tapped into. They’d been doing comics for years, and all of a sudden, in 1961, it took off. They did it by relating it to the real world, and the real world was very colorful. I mean, if you look at ’60s movies, they’re all very colorful. It was an optimistic, comic-book-colored time on a kind of subliminal level. It was a time when not only were comics starting to really sell and make a point, but they could reprint the Doc Savage, they could reprint the pulp-character the Avenger, they could reprint The Shadow. So all these heroes of the past were now reappearing for our perusal. So I read all that stuff. I was a complete comic book guy, but I also read mysteries—the classic stuff, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen—and the pulp stuff like Shell Scott, Perry Mason. STEVE ENGLEHART | 19

BB: Did you start reading comics again because other college students were reading the Marvel books? SE: Yeah. It was at the end of my freshman year, in the spring of ’66. A roommate came up to me—and I had no comic book predilection at all—and he said, “You’ve got to read this.” It was Spider-Man #30, by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. And I really liked it. I thought, “Oh, is this cool.” I have no idea why that guy showed me the book. Maybe he showed it to everybody in the dorm. But I read it and I liked it. This was the mid-’60s, and Marvel as we know it was only three or four years old at that point. Stan’s columns were already filled with how cool Marvel was, and college students were into them, and so on and so forth. So he sold me. I started hunting up other Marvel titles, then other DC titles, and then Gold Key and all the other stuff that was available in those days. There were a lot of different companies, and comics were a dime, or twelve cents. It wasn’t a mind-boggling concept to be able to buy and read everything that was out there. Now, of course, it’s a totally mind-blowing concept. I was able to read the entire range of comics. Good comics, bad comics. And so I developed critical faculties about what’s good, what’s bad, what do I like, what don’t I like. It gradually came to me that I might like to do this myself. I do think one thing that’s changed as comics have become a smaller and smaller market is that it used to be when you got into comics, there was some gravitas to the whole thing. There was a

feeling that this was a field, and you not only needed to know who Spider-Man was, but you needed to know who Will Eisner was, you needed to know about the Ray, and you needed to know about the EC comics, you needed to know about this, that, and the other thing. And everybody else did, so you could talk to other people in the business about, y’know, the Fawcett comics from the ’40s, or whatever. Now, I think, because it’s all gotten so small, there isn’t that sense that you need to know that stuff, or that it’s important. It’s like that stuff’s all ancient history and the h*ll with it, the only thing you can really follow is all the X-books or whatever it is that you’re doing. That doesn’t breed people who have much of a sense of history when they try to do comics. I’m painting with a broad brush. There are certainly good people now and there were bad people then. But I don’t think that the range of knowledge to draw upon is there. And that’s even aside from the often-made point that a lot of people who do comics now, the only thing they know is comics. They don’t have much contact with things beyond comics. But in those days, it was not only the comic book field, but it was part of the larger world of pop culture. So all of us coming into comics in those days were not only comics fans. BB: You were digging The Avengers, which you mentioned. What about and James Bond and Star Trek and all that? SE: Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. BB: How about genre, Steve? Did you read romance comics? War comics? SE: I read ‘em all. The stuff was available and I was interested. I can’t say that every eight-page story about “I Loved My Boss and Lost” riveted me, but what I liked was the serials. DC had a couple of ongoing soap operas in their romance books. And even though they were girls’ soap operas, they were characters, they were ongoing storylines, and I liked that. BB: You were a real student of the craft. Were you thinking at all about a career in comics in this period? SE: I don’t think so. When I thought, “Gee, I’d really like to do this,” I was in college, and I was pursuing my degree, which was psychology. This was Vietnam times, so when I graduated college, I went into the Army. And it wasn’t until I got out of the Army that I was even able to think about, “What am I going to do?” But in that time period, while I was in the Army, I had gone to see Neal Adams and shown him some of my work. And he had taken me on as an assistant. I was still in the Army, but I was going to New York on weekends and working with Neal.

Most fans are probably unaware that Steve broke into comics as a romance artist. Here we see the splash page to Our Love Story #15. Written by Gerry Conway, pencils by Steve Englehart, inks by Jack Abel. [© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.] 20 | WRITE NOW

BB: Steve, having known you mostly as a writer for so long, I was really knocked out by your artwork, the Our Love Story and My Love stuff. Did you ever consider becoming a full-time comics artist? SE: Well, thank you. Maybe if I’d kept at it, I would be a fabulous artist today, but it didn’t seem like that was where it was going. I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed the process of breaking the story down and figuring out how to tell it in art, which then later became the same process of how to tell a story in words. But I didn’t think that the final pencils were totally there yet. I had an option to go a different way, as a scripter, so I went that way.

something like that, make sure that any deal you sign says that you’re a part of it—whatever happens, you’re a part of it. BB: Was it a gas to see your character on the little screen? SE: Yeah! And even more so to see him in real life, because I went to the set. The first story that I wrote was filmed in San Diego, so I was able to go down to the set. There was a good-looking guy who looked like Night Man, wearing a Night Man costume, with the red eye and the whole thing. That was very cool. I was a total Hollywood geek at that point. [Bob laughs] BB: That must have been a thrill. Do you have any desire to revisit Hollywood? SE: Oh, sure. I did like being down there. I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in Hollywood for somebody who doesn’t live there.

But the connection between somebody saying, “I really liked your character, story, whatever,” and “We’re going to put it on the screen,” well, that hasn’t happened. I’ve come close a couple of times, but everybody in Hollywood’s come close a couple of times. I liked learning the rules of Hollywood. One thing that I didn’t understand was, if you want to write a comic book story about Spidey fighting his way through 53 gang dens, no problem. But if you want to do a TV show about Spidey fighting his way through 53 gang dens, you have to build 53 gang dens. And you have to populate them with 53 groups of actors, which you have to pay for. It’s totally obvious, but I had never had to consider it before. When you’re writing stories for television, you start thinking about, “What’s the minimum number of sets I can use? What’s the minimum number of actors I have to hire?” That kind of stuff. I found that fun, because it was a new challenge. “Okay, I gotta do it under these circumstances. Now how would that work?” At this time I have a large body of work, and some people like some of it, and it would be nice if it ever went somewhere, but it’s not really up to me. My agent keeps an eye out for people to connect me to—if there’s interest we do a meeting—if there’s still interest, the people go looking for money, a star, and so on. If it all keeps moving forward, I start getting involved more completely, but at the early stages I do the meeting and go home. Moving forward is up to the people I meet with. BB: I’d like to know a little more about your videogame work. I know you did the early Atari stuff, and the Superman: Menace of Metallo “multipath movie” in the late 1990s, but what other types of videogame material did you work on? Are you doing any such work now? How did your comics career prepare you for it? SE: The last thing I did in 2003 was the storyline for Tron 2.0 and the storyline for a proposed Tron 3.0, from Disney’s Buena Vista. I’ve worked for maybe a dozen companies over the years, mostly freelance— though, as I mentioned, I held down a few day jobs. The thing with many pure game designers, like pure comics writers, or pure anything else, is that they tend not to think outside their own box. I generally come in with wider vistas, shall we say, because of the comics, and the TV, and the books. But unlike my comics situation, where I at least tried to be an artist before I started working with artists, I’ve never been a nuts-and-bolts programmer. It all leads to my asking for things that can’t be done, and having to be educated… but it leads to my asking for things the programmers never thought of that can be done, too. It turns out to be very productive if people really want to go outside the box.

BB: Now you’re back at DC and have Dark Detective under your belt. Can you talk a little about how you approached the story? SE: DC came and said, “We’d like you to do this.” So I came up with a number of ideas. (A) I wanted to do a good Batman. (B) I wanted to do a

Here’s Steve’s original proposal for what came to be called Batman: Dark Detective II. Note that, while many details need to be filled in, Steve knows where he wants the storyline to start and where he wants it to end, and what he wants to accomplish along the way. [Proposal © 2006 Steve Englehart. Referenced characters © 2006 DC Comics.]

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Once the proposal was approved, Steve broke the storyline down into six 22-page issues. As he recalls the process: “Here’s my original brainstorming breakdown of the plot for the six issues of DDII, where many differences may be seen from how the actual issues turned out. I knew I had enough for six strong issues, so I laid that down as my base and continued to improve from there in my head.

“The 6-panel layout works like this: I have some ideas about what I want to do in the series. I start blocking them out, seeing where I need more material. I eventually get to the point where I have enough to make up an acceptable storyline, which is what this document represents. Then, I keep worrying away at that, seeing what feels out of place, or what's not strong enough, and when I find something like that, I make it better. But now, every time I add something, I have to subtract something else, because I had enough to start with. This process makes the whole structure stronger, and thus we move past acceptable. But those changes generally don't cause me to make a new document; I just scribble notes to myself and move into the actual scripting. “So, in this 6-segment overview, we find a subplot involving Professor Radium and Doctor Phosphorus that went to the cutting room floor, and so on.” [Storyline breakdown © 2006 Steve Englehart. Referenced characters © 2006 DC Comics.] STEVE ENGLEHART | 33

And now, here are the first five pages of Dark Detective II, issue #1. We see Steve’s script (done full-script style; that is, with panel-by-panel art descriptions written at the same time as the balloons, captions, and sound-effects) and the resulting artwork by Marshall and Terry. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

Note that, while the general story points are similar to the ones in the grid-outline you just saw, the details of the scenes, starting with this first scene, are different than, and/or fleshed-out from, the ones suggested in the outline. (Also, the “Joey” referred to in the note in the script is editor Joey Cavalieri.) [© 2006 DC Comics.]

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DEPARTMENT

THEME: THE HEART OF THE STORY by

or the past couple of issues, John Ostrander’s been sharing his important insights on key elements of writing. In DFWN #10 he shed light on story structure. Last issue, he told us all about creating characters. This issue, John expounds on one of the trickiest writing topics of all: theme. It’s what your story is really about. Read on and see what Mr. O has to say… —DF Earnest Inquiry: “What is your story about?” Smartypants Answer: “Oh, about 22 pages.” Badump-bump. But seriously, folks… Seriously, the topic we’re considering here is theme and theme is different than plot. Plot is what happens in a story, the structuring of events through conflict leading to a resolution or climax. Theme is what your story is about— the unifying topic or subject of your story. It is the ethical, moral, and true emotional heart of your story. It can reaffirm existing values or question them. It is the gateway into the writer’s soul, yet it must resonate with the reader. It’s both personal and universal at the same time. It should be mentioned from the start that not every story has a theme or needs one and not every theme is necessarily a deep or profound one. In the comic strip Li’l Abner, Mammy Yokum used to say, “Good is better’n evil ‘cause it’s nicer.” Capp was a satirist, so you can question whether or not he meant that as a theme, but it is an example of a statement of theme, albeit one that’s as shallow as a rain puddle. To my mind, a theme is not the same as a moral. A moral is usually attached to a fairytale or fable and is designed to teach a certain social or even religious value. Indeed, the entire story in that case is meant to convey a certain message about social values. The moral is that message. It’s using story as a teaching device, making a given story more like propaganda. (We’ll talk more about propaganda in a moment.)

John Ostrander

Morals are usually simplistic and, frankly, obvious. They are usually baldly stated just to make sure you don’t miss them. Themes, on the other hand, are often interwoven into the fabric of the story and ask more complex questions, sometimes providing answers some would consider amoral or even immoral. I also think themes are very personal. They require a point of view, a perspective, on the part of the author. When you receive the perennial (and sage) writing advice of “Write what you know,” I maintain it refers to this as much as practical knowledge. It’s the difference between what you were taught to believe and what your experience has taught you to be true. You may wind up with the same belief but, through questions, thought, and meditation, you’ve made it your own. Experience teaches each of us different things. Your truth may wind up being different than my truth. People who have the same or similar experiences may learn completely different lessons from it. It’s also not a matter of how much experience we have had but what we have learned from it. We all know people who seem to never learn from what happens to them. On the other hand, some people, such as the poet Emily Dickinson, can distill a lot of wisdom from what seems like a very small amount of experience. We bring (or should bring) to our writing all the experiences and lessons learned from the past. What’s important to realize that is that while you have your truth it is not THE truth. There is no one universal answer for most of the questions facing us—there is our answer. Others can be equally valid to other people. To understand lessons learned from your experiences, I think you need a certain amount of distance or detachment from those experiences. It’s hard to write about things happening to you right now because you’re still going through them. To write cogently of your experiences, you need to have some perspective— JOHN OSTRANDER | 37

you need to see the experience in the context of the rest of your life, and even the lives of others. Do you listen to the world around you? Do you hear views contrary to your own and work them into your vision and understanding of the world? When my late wife Kimberly Yale was diagnosed with breast cancer, I went through a whole roller coaster of emotions and experiences as she fought the disease. I went through more with her death, her memorial services, and the mourning period that followed. Nothing in my life prepared me for experiences and emotions like those; nothing could. I had to get past that moment before I could gain perspective on it. This is what they talk about with the phrase, “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” When you’re in amongst the trees, you can be lost—all you can see are the trees, the path (if there is one), the undergrowth, and so on. You have to surrender to what’s happening, fully experience it, and come out the other side. Only then can you really make sense of it. It’s not important to come up with answers to the questions raised when dealing with theme. I believe it

is more important to explore the questions and let the readers come up with their own answers. In that way, I may be using the term theme more in the musical sense, in which theme is a musical phrase on which the composer then does variations. A writer will take an idea or a question and then embody variations on that theme through a story’s characters. While the theme needs to draw from a personal view, it should also resonate on a universal level. I once was a guest lecturer at a college writing class. I asked the students how many of them wanted to become writers because they felt they had something important to say. A good many hands went up. I then shocked them (and, I think, infuriated some) by saying, “Who cares?” I never assume readers are coming to me because I have something important to say. I think that’s condescending to them. I think they are looking for a voice to articulate what they themselves have to say. Have you ever had the experience of reading something and come across a sentence and said to yourself, “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly right!” Of course, you must write honestly of your own thoughts and feelings, but can you do it in such a way that resonates with readers? You’re creating a dialogue with them in which you are saying, “Have you ever thought this? Have you ever felt this way?” One of the big things we ask of story is to help us make sense of the world, of life, of our experiences. We’re not just looking for what happens; we’re looking for why. I heard German film director Werner Herzog on National Public Radio talking about his documentaries. He said that he wasn’t interested in facts; he was interested in what was true. A camera set in one place will record what happens in its field of view; it gives us what is. “Just the facts, ma’am.” It doesn’t, however, provide us with much insight. It’s like reading notes on a sheet of music. Individual notes by themselves really mean nothing. It’s only when they are taken together and played or sung that they become music. As dots on a page, they represent what the music is but are not, themselves, the music. I’m not interested in dogma—either mine or anybody else’s—in a story. One of my rules is—if you want to preach, get a pulpit. Dogma states that: “This is the truth; no more questions are allowed.” As it applies to theme, dogma will leave you with a message that’s even more narrow and directive than a moral. It will also generally

Breaking and Entering, Part 1:

WRITER, KNOW THY EDITOR Paul Benjamin

ometimes, trying to break into comics—or anywhere, really—as a writer feels like screaming into the wind. You may have come up with what you think is a great new property, or a unique take on an established character. But then what do you do with it? Paul Benjamin has been on both sides of the desk, as an editor at Humanoids Publishing, and in his current incarnation, as a freelance writer. From this informed perspective, Paul spoke to a slew of comics editors and asked them what they want to see in a proposal. What he learned is extremely enlightening. Read on (and be sure to check out the Editors’ Preferences sidebars, too) and find out what Paul did.

—DF Once you’ve polished your comics pitch and you’re certain that it’s the best it can be, you send it off to a publisher, hoping that an editor there will see your story’s amazing potential. Imagine a submissions editor, sitting at a desk every day from 9 to 5, reading proposal after proposal, writing responses and dropping them into the self-addressed stamped envelopes included with each pitch. That doesn’t sound like such a bad job. Certainly there’s no reason for that editor to fail to get back to you, right? Wrong. The submissions editor as described above is about as real as an alien infant rocketed to Earth from a dying planet. Most companies don’t even have a dedicated submissions editor, in which case a book’s editor has to find time to read submissions while staying on top of the primary job: getting a high quality book out the door on time. Look at Marvel Senior Editor Tom Brevoort. He has to juggle 20 books per month. That means he’s essentially getting a book off to the printer every single weekday. When you write a proposal, your mission should be to present a concise and effective representation of your story. When the frustrated editor takes a five minute break to scarf down a sandwich before getting back to the mountain of work piled high on the desk, he or she just might grab a couple of submissions to see if any are worthy of attention. This is not an ideal situation, but it is a realistic one. Your job is to make sure you’ve given that editor exactly what he or she needs to decide whether or not your story is The Next Big Thing. This is where knowing what an editor wants comes in handy. Every editor is unique. They have different backgrounds, different philosophies towards writing and different editorial goals. In late 2005, I spoke with a wide

variety of editors from different companies about specifically what they look for in a pitch. They took the time to tell me what they want so that Write Now! could share their preferences with you; proving that editors want to find new talent and they want to read strong pitches! I interviewed editors from publishers large and small to get a broad overview of the comics publishing industry. I couldn’t talk to everyone, but this cross section of excellent editors has a great deal of useful insight. I talked to Larry Young of AiT/Planet Lar, Mike Carriglitto and Diana Schutz at Dark Horse Comics, Joe Pruett of Desperado Publishing and Chris Ryall from IDW Publishing. From Marvel, I spoke with Axel Alonso, Tom Brevoort, Ruwan Jayatilleke, Mike Marts, Mark Paniccia, Andy Schmidt and Warren Simons. I interviewed Michelle Harman at Penny Farthing Press, Lee Nordling at Platinum Studios, Chris Beranek of Silent Devil Productions, Paul Morrissey at TokyoPop, Jim McLauchlin at Top Cow (whose policies remain the same, despite Jim’s recent departure from his staff gig), Chris Staros of Top Shelf Productions and Jesse Garza at Viper Comics. DC Comics declined to participate, as they do not accept any unsolicited submissions. [For elaboration on what this means in practice, see the interview with DC Publisher and President Paul Levitz elsewhere in this issue. —DF ] Read on and see—in this article and in the accompanying “Editors’ Preferences” section—what the responding editors had to say. —PB PAUL BENJAMIN | 43

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Step One: Use your (and the editor’s) time wisely. Know who will read your proposal. When I asked editors who could send them a pitch, the answers varied based on company policy. Be sure to read the submission guidelines on publishers’ websites. For example, Ruwan Jayatilleke, Marvel’s Director of Development, Publishing, is the guy who oversees the process for reviewing written proposals addressed to Marvel’s “Submissions Editor.” Jayatilleke says, “Any sentient being (humans preferred) can send a query letter to Marvel in regards to sending a pitch. Based on that query letter, a request or a decline for a pitch will be sent. Marvel is looking for writers who have a command of the craft and the ability to pen a compelling story.” Marvel Senior Editor Tom Brevoort points out that he can only read a proposal if the writer has signed the release form available on the Marvel website. Without that release form, he can’t even look at the proposal and it will simply go in the trash. Marvel has that release form to provide the company with the legal protection that is necessary in this day and age. Respect policies like this. They are there for a reason and you won’t gain an editor’s trust by trying to get around them. So if a company says they don’t accept unsolicited submissions, how do you get them to solicit your submission? The best advice here comes from Andy Schmidt at Marvel: get to know the editor. Meet them at a convention and hang out a little. Strike up an e-mail dialogue. If you want to build a relationship, be respectful and courteous, don’t be a nuisance. Once you develop a rapport, then you can ask one simple question: “Would you mind if I send you a proposal?” Once an editor says yes, voila, your submission has now been solicited. [For much more detail on Andy Schmidt’s opinions, see his article “Breaking into Comics (and Staying In) for Writers,” elsewhere in this issue. —DF] As you approach an editor to chat, do so wisely. If you want to pitch a Spider-Man story, it’s not the most effective use of your time to get to know the X-Men editor, although that editor may help you make contact with the editor you do need to meet. Also, odds are that you’ll never be presenting a pitch directly to the Editor-in-Chief or someone at that level in a large company. Usually an editor will be championing your proposal to them. However, in smaller companies, you might have a chance to go directly to the person who makes the final decision. Conversely, never overlook the potential of a relationship with an editor’s assistant or intern. Getting to know them may be just as useful as schmoozing an editor. If they like your work, they can champion you to their boss. It can be a feather in their cap if they bring comics’ next hot writer in the door. Even if you get a chance to pitch someone, there’s a much better chance they will say “no” than “yes.” Chris Staros at Top Shelf only ends up publishing 1 or 2 of the 1,000 blind submissions he receives each year. “If you want to improve your odds,” says Marvel’s Warren Simons, “it helps to have already

been published.” Diana Schutz at Dark Horse is a big fan of the self-published, even well-photocopied, mini-comic as an easy guide to how well someone can write and handle the mechanics of telling a story. Don’t stop with one mini-comic. The more you write, the more your craft will improve and the easier it will be to get an editor’s attention. Step Two: Talk to the hand. Written vs. verbal pitches. The next time you see an editor at a convention and think about going over and telling them about your fantastic story, think again. Every one of the editors I talked to said that they want a pitch in writing. Top Cow’s Jim McLauchlin says, “Until it’s written, it doesn’t exist,” and points out another important reason to have a pitch in writing. If there’s a written document, he can show it to his co-workers if he wants a second opinion. Most editors don’t work in a vacuum. They aren’t usually the person who pays the printing bills and odds are that they need to get someone else to give a project final approval. A written document improves the odds of your undiluted message reaching beyond an individual editor. Beyond that, It’s proof to all parties of what you submitted and when you submitted it. Step Three: Living in a material world. Pitch stories that match a company’s needs. Different publishers want different material. Don’t waste an editor’s time with material that is useless to them. For example, Michelle Harman of Penny Farthing Press says, “Writers should pitch stories for original Cover to Spider-Man properties that exhibit strong Unlimited #14. Art by David writing and characterization Finch. [© 2006 Marvel and a sense of uniqueness. Characters, Inc.] We develop companyowned properties in-house, but are currently very interested in outside work.” Therefore, it’s not a good idea to send Harman pitches featuring characters owned by Penny Farthing Press. If she’s impressed with your original ideas or body of work, then she may tap you to work on an in-house project. Harman is looking for mystery and children’s titles right now, and is not interested in material that features gratuitous violence or sexual subject matter. Even if you’ve come up with an incredibly scary story that could be the most profitable horror spatter-fest of all time, don’t send it to Harman. Send her your mystery story featuring a ten-yearold protagonist instead. You only get so many shots with an editor before they decide that you aren’t going to bring them material they can use. Don’t waste a single one.

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LARRY YOUNG [Writer/Publisher] AiT/Planet Lar 1. WHO CAN SEND PITCHES: Young discourages pitches. AiT/Planet Lar only publishes 14-16 books a year. If you send a pitch, the odds of acceptance are very low. 2. FORMAT: Newer writers should send written pitches. Established writers can give written or verbal pitches. 3. LENGTH: Whatever serves your story. Young has published books from one-sentence pitches (from established writers) to completed graphic novels sent via mail. 4. MATERIAL: Original graphic novels. 5. SETTING UP YOUR CONCEPT: Hook: Yes. Young likes to know the marketing tagline and wants some idea where the story is going. An evocative title is also a plus. “Hollywood pitch style” Logline: No preference. Genre: No preference. Cliffhanger: No Setting/milieu: No need to describe; it should be evident from the context. 6. PLOT: Writers new to Young should include three paragraphs, each detailing a separate “act” of the story. The three-act structure is most common in film and includes Act I (the conflict), Act II (escalating complications), and Act III (the resolution). 7. CHARACTERS: There is no need for a separate section of character descriptions. 8. ARTIST ATTACHMENT: The approval process goes faster when a team is involved.

DIANA SCHUTZ [Senior Editor] and MIKE CARRIGLITTO [Associate Editor] Dark Horse Comics Please visit www.darkhorse.com to learn about the Dark Horse New Recruits program.

JOE PRUETT [Publisher] Desperado Publishing 1. WHO CAN SEND PITCHES: Anyone can send a proposal, but remember that Desperado is a small company with limited resources. The NEGATIVE BURN short story anthology is a great venue for new talent. 2. FORMAT: Written 3. LENGTH: 1 to 2 pages. 4. MATERIAL: Original graphic novels (or licensed properties with the rights already secured). 5. SETTING UP YOUR CONCEPT: Hook: Yes “Hollywood pitch style” Logline: Yes Genre: No preference.

Cliffhanger: No Setting/milieu: If it’s a world you’ve created, then a brief overview is useful. 6. PLOT: A brief overview is enough. 7. CHARACTERS: A simple paragraph on each main character is best. 8. ARTIST ATTACHMENT: An artist always helps, especially if it is an established artist.

CHRIS RYALL [Publisher/Editor-in-Chief] IDW Publishing 1. WHO CAN SEND PITCHES: Please don’t submit stories at this time. IDW’s slate is full until at least late 2006. Publish as many stories as possible (including mini-comics, self-publishing, and web comics) between now and then to improve your chances. 2. FORMAT: Written, preferably sent via e-mail. 3. LENGTH: No more than 1 page. 4. MATERIAL: Original graphic novels (usually published as 22-page comics then collected). For pitches based on IDW’s licensed properties, please start with an e-mail inquiry as those books are planned far in advance. 5. SETTING UP YOUR CONCEPT: Hook: Yes “Hollywood pitch style” Logline: Yes, but make it simple and relevant. Genre: This should be evident from the story. Cliffhanger: No Setting/milieu: If the environment is germane to the story, tell him about it briefly. 6. PLOT: A brief paragraph should describe the story. Also, tell how many issues this story will fill. 7. CHARACTERS: A few brief paragraphs regarding the most essential elements of the main characters can be useful. 8. ARTIST ATTACHMENT: It can help, but it can also hurt. An artist is not essential. If submitting with an artist, be sure to include pin-ups of characters and pages of sequential art. The pages can feature elements from the story you’re proposing or from other properties, but should ideally show off your ability to tell the kinds of stories IDW Publishing produces.

AXEL ALONSO [Executive Editor] Marvel Entertainment 1. WHO CAN SEND PITCHES: Anyone who signs the Marvel online submission agreement can send in a pitch. Be sure to check the website for updates. 2. FORMAT: Written 3. LENGTH: 1 to 2 pages. 4. MATERIAL: Use existing company-owned characters.

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Breaking and Entering, Part 3:

BREAKING INTO COMICS (AND STAYING IN) FOR WRITERSAndy Schmidt by

verybody wants inside info. Well, here it is—direct from a guy whose job involves evaluating writers and commissioning paying work for a major comics publisher. Things being what they are, some of this information may have a limited shelf life. But 90% of it is stuff you have to know no matter when or how or from whom you’re looking to get writing work. So without further ado—here’s Marvel Comics editor Andy Schmidt to tell you how things are. Take it away, Mr. S. —DF

ou’re reading this because you want to break into the comics industry. I’m going to try to help you gain the tools you’ll need to have a fighting chance. But, there are a few things you should know:

1. This article can only serve as a guide. There are no hard and fast rules on this subject. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another. 2. I can’t make your writing any better. I’m working on the assumption that you are talented. I can give you advice and a few tools and hints to getting better, but no matter what, you will have to do the work. 3. Following my every step won’t guarantee you success, I’ll give you notes on form and networking, but it’s up to the working professional to actually pull this off with a great story. Okay, so who am I and why should you care about what I say? My name is Andy Schmidt. I’m an associate editor at Marvel Comics. Some of my series are (from my first project to my most current) Spider-Girl, Captain Marvel, Madrox, Secret War, Alias, The Pulse, Defenders, Drax, The Destroyer, Ms. Marvel and X-Factor series. Assisting on about 15 other titles at the same time has given me a wealth of experience with creators that I’m hoping to pass on to you. I think I’m good at what I do, but I always want to learn more and hone my skills. I’ve taught courses on aesthetics and visual storytelling, so I’m comfortable when it comes to art as well. We’ll focus a lot of our attention on communication, because communicating with your editor, your artist, your colorist, etc., is possibly the single most important thing you can learn from this article. I hope you’ll take everything I say here with a grain of salt. Not everything I say is law and it won’t work exactly the way I lay it out for everyone, but these are the most efficient ways to get into the biz. So, ultimately, good luck, and I hope this helps.

The road ahead of you: The comic book business landscape is a harsh one. There are many talented writers out there who want to do the same thing as you—and twice as badly. Only a few attributes will separate prospective writers from one another—talent, persistence, and luck. You can effect change on the first two, and thereby affect the odds of the third. It takes at least two of these attributes to break into comics, so no one can say you were just lucky. That being said, yeah, you’ve got to hone your three fundamental attributes in order to get your shot at the title. We’ll talk about these attributes first, then we’ll roll into how to network and pitch, and lastly, we’ll deal with how to stay around once you’re in the biz.

I. The Tools You Need

Talent You’ve got to have skills and prove it. Here’s the thing: you may have a great story idea, but that doesn’t mean you’re a great storyteller. You have talent, maybe a little, maybe a lot, but ANDY SCHMIDT | 53

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you’ve got some—all of us do. You want to present yourself in a manner that shows off your strengths and down plays your weaknesses. But before you get to that, you need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are and how to build them up. It’s not okay as a writer to accept that you’re poor with dialogue or that your action sequences are rocky. Once you’ve spotted a shortcoming, you have to work on it until you’re confident you write the sharpest dialogue and most intense action sequences the world has ever seen. So how do you do that? First, like all good writers, you research. If you haven’t read Story by Robert McKee, go buy it right now. Put down this article and go get it. No, seriously. Go. You’re back? You got the book? Great. Now read it. All done with it? Awesome, then let’s move on. In McKee’s book, you’ll find out how a story works, what parts make up a story and hopefully, what skills you possess. Personally, I’ve found that in person, I’m good for a funny story, but on the written page, my dry sarcasm loses something (namely, all cleverness—check out my text page in the back of the recent Defenders #1 if you don’t believe me; it doesn’t work because you can’t “read” the tone of my voice). You’ll figure out where your talents are (there are books, such as The Screenwriter’s Bible or any screenwriting book by Syd Field, that can help you do this as well), and from there, you’ll need to work on your weaknesses. For my own writing, I have trouble giving my characters different voices. I struggle with it. Fortunately, I’m not writing stories for a living nor do I desire to do so. I might go insane if I did. So look honestly at what you do well and what you need to work on. Then build your skills. On top of that, always remember, when you get frustrated with yourself, that you do have skills and can learn new ones. So don’t listen to someone who says you “just don’t have what it takes.” That may be true for the moment, but you can learn the skills and how to apply them successfully to writing comics.

Persistence Keep trying; keep refining your skills. Don’t pester editors, but be persistent. Part of persistence is advancing your skills. The moment you say, “I’m finally good enough, I don’t need to improve anymore,” is the day you’ve stopped being good enough. As a writer, you must always strive to become better. A writer never learns enough. You may know everything there is about turning points, rising action, character interplay, and so on, but you would still need all the accumulated knowledge of human history to know “enough.” Writing doesn’t end with mastering the craft—that’s where it begins. Be persistent in your pursuit of knowledge and skill. Be persistent in your pursuit of a job. When applying for writing work at comic companies, remember a few key things. Before you write your cover letter, ask yourself who your audience is and research that audience (told you research was going to come in handy). If it’s Marvel or DC editors you’re writing to, don’t ask for work outright. I recommend asking for an informational interview with the editor to get to know what he or she does. I address this further below. If you have already published something, send it along. At the very least, published material shows editors that you can carry the ball down the field. If the Books Andy mentions in this editor likes what you’ve article. Story: Substance, published, then you’ve Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by got a shot. Until you Robert McKee [© 1997 Robert know an editor has read your work, your McKee]. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; attempts at getting freelance gigs are futile. A step-by-step guide from When you get a concept to finished script by response from an Syd Field [© 2006 Syd Field]. editor at Marvel or DC, The Screenwriters Bible: A don’t let it end there. If Complete Guide to Writing, you don’t get a Formatting, and Selling Your response from either Script by David Trottier company, check to see [© 2006 David Trottier]. if your materials were received. Try to continue the dialogue. Wait a day or two (if by e-mail) to reply. That’s not to make you look less desperate, but rather to give the editor time to get some work done before dealing with you again. If you start demanding too much time too fast, you’ll irritate an editor, and that’s not good. While networking, which we’ll talk about a little later, be persistent enough to follow up with people. And ask the people you meet to introduce you to others who could give you advice. Don’t leave an encounter with a comics professional empty-

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he idea of “webcomics” is an irresistible one. People like comics. People like to do stuff on the Web. And so… webcomics! But what exactly is a webcomic (this week), and how do you break into the field, get noticed, and maybe even make a few bucks doing them? T Campbell, who knows about such things, is here to give you the lowdown. Take it away, T. —DF

The World Wide Web is either the greatest publishing opportunity to come along since Gutenberg, the most efficient means of wasting time ever produced, or both. Depends on how you treat it and what you expect. Writing comics for the Web can be a A panel from the lot of fun and good for your career. webcomic Rip and But it's not for the timid. Teri, written by T A “webcomic” is generally Campbell with art by considered to be a comic created for Jason Waltrip. online consumption. This definition is [© 2006 T Campbell pervasive but not universal. Some and Jason Waltrip.] webcomics artists take their lead from sentiments in Scott McCloud’s book Reinventing Comics and claim that true webcomics are those difficult or impossible to reproduce in print. These “purist webcomics” might include sound, animation, hypertext or interactivity, or they might simply be twenty feet high. We’ll discuss those more at the end of the piece, but our focus is on printable webcomics. But “printable” covers a lot of ground. Is a printable webcomic a comic strip, a comic book, or a single gag cartoon? Yes, yes and yes… it can fill the needs of any of those formats. At first, writing webcomics may seem like a dream come true: all of the benefits of independence with none of the drawbacks. No worries about whether circulation will justify your continued existence—outside of hosting costs, you and only you decide when your comic stops. No DC, Marvel or Image to navigate around—they have Websites, but they don’t really compete in the same space as online comics, at least not yet. No hours wasted at a signing nobody comes to or a convention table everyone passes. No printing bills. No distributors’ cut. (Newspaper comic strip syndication giants like King Features and United Media do have significant web presences, but they are to the kind of webcomics I’m discussing here as Paramount and Columbia are to independent filmmakers who show their work at Sundance.) 62 | WRITE NOW

T CAMPBELL

But do webcomics also mean no money and no audience? Well, there is some of each. Of the two, the audience is the easier to get. The monthly audience for webcomics consistently beats out the monthly audience for comic books—people cried hallelujah when All-Star Batman and Robin #1 sold 261,000 direct market copies, but Sluggy Freelance, not even the most popular webcomic, gets 300,000 readers every month. Only newspaper comics can compete with that kind of circulation, and you can only guess what percentage of a newspaper’s readership actually reads a given comic strip. And unlike newspaper publication, online publishing is a growth industry, with an audience projected to double between now and 2009. Now for the reality check. The audience is there, but so is the competition. At the top of the virtual heap are established players who’ve spent years gathering an audience loyal both to their properties and to them, personally. At the bottom—well, any fool can publish online. All you need is a Web address, a host, an FTP program and a scanner. As for the money, most of the established players are grizzled-cartoonist sole-proprietors, presenting only their own work, who have achieved the highest level of success of which “webcartoonists” dare to dream—they make a living. Unlike in print, the Web’s most successful selfpublishers make more than the highest-profile cartoonists at Web-publishing labels, and even members of those publishing labels always own their work. The two biggest “publishing labels” (i.e., websites) in webcomics, Keenspot and Modern Tales, are moderately impressive as businesses and a nice windfall for their most popular contributors. [Contributors’ pay is determined by their traffic as a percentage of the overall site traffic, multiplied by half Keenspot’s profits (or half Modern Tales’ revenues) from ads, merchandising, donations, “premium” subscriptions and print.] Below those folks are an untold number of hobbyists. Not every cartoonist on the Web treats cartooning as a business, and though these hobbyists might sell sketches to cover hosting costs, they don’t seriously compete for dollars. But they do compete for readers’ attention, without which dollars cannot flow. With this in mind, there are two reasons to seriously consider writing comics for the Web. (Needless to say, you’ll need to be or to work with an artist, but since this is a magazine about writing, I’m focusing on that aspect.) One is that you’re making an investment. Building an audience and gaining experience online today may help you get into the print comics field tomorrow. The other reason to consider the Web is that you’re making an immediate career move. If

their relationship to grow over the years, people will beg you, plead with you, to have them “get together” by the second month. It doesn’t matter if you point out that that’s what killed the 1980s TV series Moonlighting. They want instant gratification—and they want it right now! In my early days of doing webcomics, way back in 2001, I had two characters who the readers really wanted to see catfight. I did give them what they asked for, but I did it my way… instead of a wacky, sexy, fanservice-y fight, they got a violent one with upsetting consequences. You have to stick to your guns—but still be ready to be called a sellout, regardless. I see some of my friends get [character-]assassinated for no reason by… usually a 12-year-old who doesn't know why he's not writing X-Men, and he will now torture you. —Brian Michael Bendis

you’re fed up with the direct market and ready for a new environment with new rules, or if you want a new environment for that one passion-project for which the print market doesn’t seem to have a place, the Web could be the place for you. Let’s talk a little about these reasons… Everyone’s A Critic The Web’s ability to give instant feedback is its blessing and its curse. Writing and drawing are lonely occupations. When your work goes online and people from around the world talk to you about it less than five minutes later, it feels really, really good. But mind how you listen. The Internet has been a source of comics commentary back since the days of USENET discussion groups with names like “rec.arts.comics.misc.” But be careful about taking chatroom chatter and message board postings as accurate indicators of what the webcomics audience wants. As Peter David once noted: Jim Shooter, correctly I think, observed that fans keep saying they want to see modern opera, but what they really want to see—or at least what they’ll most eagerly support—is the 38th production of Carmen. This talk-versus-reality disconnect is true of all media audience feedback, so why should the Web be any different? That doesn’t mean the Web doesn’t provide an eager audience for new ideas. It does! If I had to name the most popular comics genre on the Web, it’d probably be “gamer comics” (which focus on video games or tabletop role-playing games—either the people who play those games, or characters and situations from them). Also commanding a lot of attention are action-adventure, comedy, pop-culture parody and slice-of-life, with plenty of overlap between them. Superhero comics, crime comics… they won’t be booed off the stage, but they don’t own the stage. This isn’t their turf. However, you will find that if you introduce, say, a romance strip featuring a “will-they-or-won’t-they” couple and plan for

You absolutely cannot win an argument with your readers. You can’t do it. If they don’t like a character, your scripting style or your mother, you pretty much have to sit there and take it. I cannot emphasize this enough: anything you say in your defense will make them think you’re even more of an a-hole. Focus on the next strip; let other readers do the defending for you. (The only exception to this point is if the criticism comes from an established cartoonist—but if that happens, you’re already in the advanced class.) If you have a relatively large readership (say 5,000 readers a day), and no one’s defending you, then it’s probably time to take stock. And if you actually tell them you agree with the criticism, you can win a lot of points by conceding the point. Healthy ego abounds on the Web; humility is regarded—rightly—as water in a desert. Speaking of popularity, you may be wondering how to get ”circulation figures” for your webcomic, and what those figures mean. There are many different programs on the market that present “traffic reports.” Shop around for such a program and ask others to share their experiences with it. The figures to pay the most attention to are pageviews and visitors: how many times any one of your pages is viewed and how many people came to view them. Obviously every visitor to your site viewed at least one page while he or she was there. The ratio of pageviews to visitors tells you how many pages the average visitor viewed, which tells you if you’re bringing in new and curious readers or a loyal base. It’s also useful to look at these figures over the course of one day and over the course of one month. Readers aren’t dollars—the flimsy assumptions of the dot-com boom were founded on that assumption—but between 1 and 10 percent of a webcomic’s audience will buy its T-shirts and posters and printed editions and such. Webcomics are also in a better position to negotiate with advertisers than their independently-published print cousins: their audience is younger, tech-savvier and less fixed in its tastes. “Pay-to-read” models have not been spectacularly successful online (more about that later) and I’d urge most cartoonists, particularly newcomers, to look at building an audience as a long-term investment. It’ll take time. Just because Sluggy has 300,000 readers this month doesn’t mean you will next month. But on the Web, no one can cancel you except you, you are tapping into a growing readership, and you have months or years to figure out how to build your audience one step at a time. T CAMPBELL | 63

Celebrity Poker Showdown

STRIP FIFTEEN

1. Party’s goin’ full blast. Karen walk Karen: Aggie! Karen: I’m glad you came! Aggie: You… are?

s up to Aggie with a seemingly since re smile.

2. Karen rubs the back of her neck . She is so good here, we might actua lly believe what she’s saying. Karen: Yeah! I feel terrible about the cold shoulder I gave you guys . Karen: I was still really insecure, and I just couldn’t… 3. Karen’s hand gestures to a grou p of guys who really seem more the beer-and-pretzels type than the political-discussionand-protest type. Karen: Make yourself at home! Karen: We have pizza… you can pick off the pepperoni… and I’m sure these guys would just love to hear about African politi cs! 4. Karen walks off with a nasty smir k. Aggie looks at that group of guys , and is hurt. Karen’s right: she IS out of place here, and this time it matters to her. Karen: You’ll find your place.

Celebrity Poker Showdown STRIP TWENTY-FIVE 1. Karen sets the book down, gently. Penny looks

innocent.

l. Karen: I can smile without an instruction manua Penny: Some people need one.

is that Penny has the initiative here, so 2. Several crowd reactions. The general feeling the outcome than Karen’s. Rich keeps to the Penny’s supporters are feeling better about if Penny is talking about him. back, nursing a beer and vaguely wondering Penny: They get what they want… cocktail dress, it.

hot guy, full house… and forget to enjoy

’s face is so unusual for her, one might 3. Karen’s seen from behind. The look on Penny lly faked humility, at any rate. carefu Or ty. humili it: ize recogn to take a second Karen: You’d know. Penny: Oh yeah. I’m real bad. Don’t be like me. is watching the Penny-Karen 4. View from slightly above. Almost everyone “conversation” now. This round to Penny. Karen: … ne, right? Penny: You do know how not to be like someo

On this page and the following two are T Campbell’s scripts and Gisele Lagace’s pencils and inks (and letters, too) for a couple of episodes of their Penny and Aggie webcomic. [© 2005 G. Lagace and T Campbell.]

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