Write Now #19 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

INSIDE: SECRETS OF

THE DARK KNIGHT

MOVIE!

695

In the USA

Fall 2008

MILLAR & HITCH’SS FANTASTIC FOUR MAX ALLAN COLLINS

82658 27765

DENNIS O’NEIL

ALL ALL ABOUT ABOUT DC’S DC’S

ZUDA COMICS

BENDIS & YU’S SECRET INVASION

DINI & NGUYEN’S BATMAN R.I.P.

M AG A Z I N E Fall 2008

Issue #19

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief .....................................................page 2 Writing The Dark Knight Reflections by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer ................................................page 3 The Denster Returns Interview with Dennis O’Neil ............................................................page 8 The Essential Batman Encyclopedia Robert Greenberger tells how he compiled the Dark Knight’s data........................................................................page 14 Man of Mystery Interview with Max Allan Collins ..................................................page 24 Spotlight on Zuda Writers of DC’s online imprint tell how and why they chose to go digital............................................................page 41 Amazing True Stories Jim Ottaviani on how he writes non-fiction comics ..............page 56

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief Managing Editor ROBERT GREENBERGER Consulting Editor ERIC FEIN

Writing about Comics Evander Lomke explores the world of writing books about comics ............................................................page 67

Proofreading ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON

Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers (including a cartoon by Marc Bilgrey) ........................................page 71

Designer DAVID GREENAWALT

Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: DETECTIVE COMICS #849 Pages from “Batman R.I.P.: Heart of Hush,” by Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs ..................page 10 Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: SECRET INVASION #6 Pages by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu ........page 19 Script to Pencils: FANTASTIC FOUR #560 Pages from “The Death of the Invisible Woman,” part 3, by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch ..................................page 37 Script to Sketch to Pencils to Finished Webcomic: STREET CODE Pages from “Awful George,” by Dean Haspiel ........................page 54 Script to Thumbnails to Sketches to Finished Comic: BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS, AND THUNDER LIZARDS Pages by Jim Ottaviani and Big Time Attic ..............................page 65

Transcriber STEVEN TICE Circulation Director BOB BRODSKY, COOKIESOUP PRODUCTIONS

Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: MARC BILGREY ALISON BLAIRE TOM BREVOORT MAX ALLAN COLLINS KIA CROSS F.J. DeSANTO DAVID GREENAWALT DEAN HASPIEL DAVID HYDE JACKIE KNOX PAUL LEVITZ MIKE MARTS JIM McCANN JEFF NEWELT ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON CHRIS POWELL ELLA ROBINSON ALEX SEGURA VARDA STEINHARDT AUSTIN TRUNICK MICHAEL USLAN STEVEN TICE

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 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $26 US ($44 Canada, $60 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 ©2008 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

WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT:

NOLAN, NOLAN, AND GOYER SPEAK! by Danny Fingeroth

alk about Darkknight Detective work!

When we were unable to get exclusive interviews about the writing of The Dark Knight movie (busy jet-setting Hollywood folks and all that), we did the next best thing: scouring the web for nuggets in press conferences and interviews where the writers of the TDK script revealed precious tidbits about important aspects of writing movies in general, and of writing The Dark Knight in particular. Think of us as crusty old miners panning the media rivers for the best and brightest nuggets of information and advice from screenwriters Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer. —DF

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN is the director, cowriter, and producer of The Dark Knight. He co-wrote and directed the groundbreaking 2005 Batman Begins, as well as Memento, Insomnia, and The Prestige. JONATHAN NOLAN is the co-writer of TDK’s screenplay, and was the story writer of the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for Memento, as well as the mystery thriller, The Prestige.

DAVID GOYER is co-writer of the story for TDK, and was the co-writer of Batman Begins. He was the screenwriter of Blade and Blade II, and wrote, produced, and directed Blade: Trinity. He was also cowriter of DC’s Justice Society comic series.

ABOUT THE MECHANICS OF WRITING THE SCRIPT: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: I think the big challenge in doing a sequel is to build on what you’ve done in the first film, but not abandon the characters, the logic, the

WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT | 3

tone of the world that you created for the first film. So there are elements the audience will expect you to bring back that you need to bring back. You also have to balance that with the need to see something new and to see something different and that’s been the challenge through the whole of making the film… I think that what makes a good sequel is a film that feels inevitable and that when you go back and see the first film you completely understand that the story had to continue with a second film. … The pitfalls are simply repeating yourself but on a bigger scale. And that’s something we’re not doing at all. We’re really very much creating a second half to the story…. JONATHAN NOLAN: David and Chris went off and butted heads for a while and came up with this story, a really great story…. They handed it over to me and let me take a crack at the first draft. Chris is always going to take the last pass on his scripts going in.

DAVID GOYER: It became apparent as we were talking fairly early on that Harvey was actually the protagonist of the movie. The Joker doesn’t change and Batman doesn’t really change. But Harvey is the one that changes as a result of his interaction between the Joker and Batman. Obviously, he changes in a tragic way and that means the movie has to be a tragedy. JONATHAN NOLAN: The arc of the film is the tragedy of Harvey Dent, which is, in a sense, the origin of the villain Two-Face. Which, I think, we’ve told [as] a more complete story. DAVID GOYER: The jumping off point [for the story] was the last scene in Batman Begins. We knew we were going to tell a story about escalation, and we knew we were going to tell a story about The Joker…

Christopher Nolan, his brother Jonathan, and David S. Goyer all freely acknowledge Batman Begins and The Dark Knight owe a lot to the tone and sensibilities established in Batman’s comics, especially The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: The Killing Joke. [© 2008 DC Comics.] 4 | WRITE NOW

stantial outline. They really figured the story out, so for me it was a pretty straight-ahead job of just taking it and building it out into the world. Chris always takes the last pass of the scripts before he goes into production… The script is always an evolutionary process to it. Chris has a confidence where he can play around with things a little bit as he gets into the production, but for the most part he wants to have it nailed away before they start to film… It felt like a very easy job—one of the easiest I’ve had because these guys [Goyer and Chris Nolan] nailed it right out of the gate with this incredible story…

ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF BATMAN: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: I think he is a more complete version of himself as it were. I think he is, he has moved on, and he is less tortured by his distant past, so we get to torture him more with fresh [problems]. He’s never entirely free from torture one might say…

The TDK movie poster image of Batman (Christian Bale) set against a building with a burning bat symbol indicates to audiences that this film is as much about Batman’s legacy in Gotham City as it is about the Joker’s campaign of chaos and murder. [Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. TM & © 2008 DC Comics]

I think that there are elements from The Dark Knight [comics series], elements from The Long Halloween, elements from The Killing Joke. But it’s not like we were specifically adapting one specific comic book or comic book arc. I worked with Chris for about a month, and Chris and I wrote a treatment together with the beats of the story. Then we gave that to Jonathan and he did, I don’t know how many drafts you did. JONATHAN NOLAN: These guys gave me a really sub-

He can’t mope, he can’t have a selfindulgent angst. He has to be substantial. We tried to tell a story in the first film whereby he did confront and overcome various aspects of what drives him, of the angst, and let others hang. So in this film we try to have Christian Bale’s character start from the point of he’s not sitting around moping over that his parents were killed etc., etc. We dealt with that in the first film. But he’s nevertheless a very dark character. JONATHAN NOLAN: A lot of the stuff that in the film feels contemporary, Batman wrestling with the questions of how far is too far in trying to catch someone? They are as old as stone in the books. They have been there since the very beginning. That question of Batman as a vigilante and what’s appropriate, what’s legal, what’s not legal, what does he do? CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: Batman definitely much more easily in this story assumes more of a detective role. There was something that was important to get in the first film, we got it in in a small way, but in dealing with the origin and in dealing with all larger aspects of the character it became very difficult to get that in.

WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT | 5

THE DENSTER RETURNS: DENNIS O’NEIL TALKS ABOUT WRITING THE DARK KNIGHT NOVELIZATION Interview conducted via e-mail September 16, 2008 by Danny Fingeroth

ennis O’Neil is the writer of the novelization of The Dark Knight (published by Del Ray). But that’s just one of his many accomplishments. Denny is one of the most highly acclaimed writers and editors in the comic book industry. For more than 40 years, he has crafted groundbreaking stories for both Marvel and DC Comics. At DC Comics, he had some of his greatest successes. He wrote the groundbreaking Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, illustrated by Neal Adams. Also with Adams and editor Julie Schwartz, Denny helped to bring Batman back to his essence as a “Dark Knight detective” and creature of the night. Denny was for many years Group Editor of DC’s Batman comics line. He also wrote the novelizations of the epic comics storyline Batman: Knightfall and of the first Christopher Nolan-helmed Batman movie, Batman Begins. He’s the author of the original DC novel Green Lantern: Hero’s Quest. I caught up with Denny to see what he had to say about adapting the Nolan, Nolan & Goyer screenplay to prose form. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: Dennis, Can you speak about the differences between a film script, a comics script and a novel manuscript in broad terms. What needs to be emphasized in each, and what is lost (and/or gained) when you translate a story from one medium to another? DENNIS O’NEIL: The first, and most obvious thing, is that the essential visual information in the movie has to be translated into verbal information. This entails a process of selection—do we really need to know what the third thug looks like? That’s going from movie script to novel. Much the same process is involved in going from movie to comic, but in reverse: comics are a very compressed storytelling form and, back in real life, there’s usually about twice as much story in a movie as in a comic, which means the writer has to 8 | WRITE NOW

choose, carefully, which movie scenes are essential to the plot and even which lines within the scenes move the story along. Going from movie to novel, the writer has to add, rather than subtract material, because a two-hour film doesn’t have enough pure plot to make a 75,000-word prose piece. But you can’t just add scenes at random. They’ve got to be an integral part of the story being told, somehow. For me, that often means adding backstory to characters. DF: What would you say the differences between adapting Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to prose were? Was there any difference in your approach to this script from the previous one? DO: It seems that every time I do a book, I’m faced with new problems. But the process in doing the two adaptations was about the same: add the things that novels are good at, like background and interior monologues and, since film does action so much better than prose, see if some action scenes might work as dialogue scenes. And flesh out the character’s back-

Hush, the villain with a lifelong grudge against Bruce Wayne, was brought back for a new storyline by writer Paul Dini and penciler Dustin Nguyen in Detective Comics. The pages seen here are from issue #849. Inks are by Derek Fridolfs. The solicits for the issue tell us that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Batman: R.I.P.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; tie-in! In this penultimate chapter of the 5-part arc, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Heart of Hush,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Batman tears his way through Gotham City's underworld to reach his dangerous adversary. But after the Dark Knight learns what his childhood friend-turned-villain is really after, will Batman be able to survive what Hush plans next?â&#x20AC;?

PAGE TWELVE Panel One Hush hurries over to where the masked and gowned doctor is standing. 1 GOWNED DOCTOR: Someone inside... 2 HUSH: Good! Panel Two

Diniâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s script for page 12 call for just three panels, giving Nguyen plenty of room to design the page for maximum drama, especially in tthe half-page confrontation between Hush and a disguised Batman.

Hush runs in to see the door to the stairwell closed. The gowned doctor has quickly moved to the side. Even as Hush takes this in, he knows he has been set up. 3 HUSH: Noâ&#x20AC;Ś Panel Three The â&#x20AC;&#x153;gowned doctorâ&#x20AC;? fires a familiar black boot into Hushâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s midsection just as the villain instinctively spins and fires. Hush is enraged, less from the pain and more by the knowledge that he has been played by BATMAN, who is, of course, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;gowned doctorâ&#x20AC;? in disguise. 4 GUN SFX: BAM! BAM! 5 HUSH: NO! 3/-%/.% ).3)$% '//$

Nguyenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cover painting to the issue.

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[ÂŠ 2008 DC Comics.]

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THE ESSENTIAL BATMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA:

WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT CAME TO BE by Robert Greenberger

atman’s adventures have been in ongoing publication in countless comics for 70 years. There have been so many Batman stories, you’d need an encyclopedia to keep track of the Dark Knight’s continuity. By an amazing stroke of luck, such a book exists, and Write Now!’s own managing editor, Bob Greenberger, is the author of that book—the recently published Essential Batman Encyclopedia. Here, Bob tells us how such a mammoth undertaking came about, and what it was like researching and writing such a tome, while keeping it entertaining as well as informative. —DF

Back in the 1970s, comics fans were entirely reliant on fanzines and the occasional letter column for any sort of background information on characters not regularly published. Heck, even information about older stories was scant unless the particular tale had been reprinted. As a result, the arrival, in 1976, of Michael L. Fleisher’s Batman Encyclopedia was an amazing achievement. Suddenly, there was at least some information on every single Batman story from Batman, Detective Comics, and World’s Finest Comics between 1939 and roughly 1968. Yes, by the time it saw print it was already many years out of date and it ignored the Dark Knight’s appearances in The Brave and the Bold and Justice League of America, but it remained a significant achievement. Paul Levitz, when he was editing the Bat-titles, once commented to me that the book could help him come up with story material for years and years.

Since then, we’ve had the various Who’s Whos that explicate the DC Universe and its characters, but at the same time, we’ve also had an explosion of Batappearances throughout the DC Universe along with revisionist and contradictory information about char-

acters and events. The coming and going of the multiple universes and revisions to the timeline only served to muddy the waters of the “official” Batcanon. Online writers have tried to assemble it all and make it make sense, but (needless to say—it’s the Internet!) they aren’t entirely in agreement. With that background, it was inevitable that DC itself would one day want to set the record straight. So it’s not surprising that DC decided to—with Random House’s DelRey imprint—publish entirely new encyclopedias on DC’s bestknown heroes: Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. In September 2006, I was invited to write the Batman book that would kick off the three-year publishing event, with the first volume timed to come out in time for The Dark Knight movie. Interestingly, a number of decisions about how to approach the book were left up to me, largely thanks to my experience not only a writer on Who’s Who, but also as having been one of the writers on DK’s 2004 DC Comics Encyclopedia.

Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, were killed by Joe Chill on Gotham’s Park Row, known to most as “Crime Alley.” A smaller handful knows that occurred on June 26 at 10:47 p.m. However, the twopage origin in 1939’s Detective Comics #33 identified none of those elements. The wealthy, unnamed parents were gunned down by an anonymous criminal at night, leaving young Bruce, age unknown, an instant orphan. Other details of the origin story were added or modified over the decades. Approaching the material this way meant that future writers, editors, (and fans) could see for themselves how and when elements were introduced, so, should creators feel a need to retell or modify stories, they would know the sources of the original details. In too many instances, contradictions have crept up in stories because writers and editors missed details by looking at an incomplete run of a title or just one retelling of events.

The writers on the other books in the series—Phil Jimenez on 2009’s Wonder Woman and Martin Pasko on 2010’s Superman—had differI tried to imagine how to ent reactions to the editorial make this vital to readers who format I provided. Phil was could just as easily look up the Cover to Detective Comics #33. where Batman’s enthusiastic, while Marty origin first appeared—six issues after the character’s (although agreeing in principle information on a fan site or debut! Art is by Bob Kane. [© 2008 DC Comics.] Wikipedia. Of course, one key with my approach) was underdifference would be that, havstandably ready to hang me for ing the data in a DC-produced publication, would forcing him to try and put the Man of Steel’s evenmake it “official.” Beyond that, one of the first things more-convoluted-than-Batman’s mythos into a format settled in my mind was that it needed to put every a mass audience could comprehend and enjoy. incarnation of Batman into context, fully addressing Fortunately for me, DC agreed with my approach, and the “multiple Earths” concept. For each character for Marty has forgiven me (I think) for coming up with it. whom there were versions on more than one Earth, I Doing the research was fascinating, since I had the would begin with their chronological incarnation, Fleisher book for starters, but opening up the entire most often that of Earth-2, which chronicled the pubDC Universe so as to include any appearance of lished exploits of the heroes from 1938 forward. Batman characters anywhere meant thousands more Along the way I’d have to begin paragraphs with “In comics needed to be researched. Now, my memory the world after the Crisis on Infinite Earths….” and then included entries on the necessary cosmic events. for the broad strokes of most DC material is pretty darn good, but an encyclopedia demands citing actual issues and facts. Enter: John Wells. John is an ace Second, it needed to identify the elements of the researcher and has maintained meticulous character Batman mythos as they were added or modified lists. He has proven to be the go-to guy for more than through the years. This way, people could get a sense a handful of creators, from Mark Waid to Brad of the world-building that occurred, and of the many Meltzer. John and I have been online pals for years, hands who contributed to the initial work of Bob and he graciously made his lists available to me. That Kane and Bill Finger. After all, today we know Bruce THE ESSENTIAL BATMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA | 15

Here is some of Brian Michael Bendis’s script and Leinil Francis Yu’s pencil art from issue #6 of Marvel’s big crossover event, Secret Invasion. (Cover art, at left, is by Gabriele Dell’Otto.) The issue begins to bring events in the eight-issue mega-event to a climax. We pick up on page 15, at the end of an action sequence.

Page 151- Ext. Street- same Big panel. Over the shocked shoulders of the ESU students, Nick Fury and his young team actually took down the Skrulls. The intersection is trashed but they did it. A couple of turned over cars. People are stunned. The Skrulls unconscious, or maybe dead, bodies on the ground at their feet. The heroes are looking to the sky and taking each others back making sure there are no more coming. Nick, gun up, thumbs at the students. PATRIOT Ok, so, we should get out of here. STONEWALL Took 'em down. Well alright! THE DRUID Great, only eight thousand more to go. STONEWALL A win is a win. GAUNTLET Except it takes ten of us to beat on one of them. THE VISION Cassie, you should shrink back down, you're too big a target at your larger size. NICK FURY And you kids get back to the dorm. Or better yet get the hell out'a the city. 2- The students are standing and shaking and stunned. Only Sara still has her angry wit's about her. SARA POE Oh yeah, man... Why don't you leave the city?? You fascist. PAUL Oh man, are you, like, Nick Fury?

SARA POE They're he re to chan ge the worl d. What ar e you here 3- Over Ca ssie, Patr for?? iot, and Qu between bu ake's head ildings. A , looking huge white sky. From up an lightening this odd an bolt shoots d in gle you ca n't see wh up into th ere its or Spx: BOOM e iginating from. CASSIE LANG Uh... 4- High lo oking down , Fury and Avengers an the Comman d The Init does and th iative look e Young up in awe. PATRIOT Is that li ghtning? 5- Tight on Fury. Stee ly eyed.

NICK FURY Let's move .

Stay close and stay to gether.

Bendis calls for a big panel to let readers get a sense of the damage resulting from a major battle in the storyline. The next four panels are tightly packed at the bottom of the page, and serve to convey information to the reader. But Yu—interpreting Bendis’s art directions—makes the scene visually exciting as well. SECRET INVASION NUTS & BOLTS | 19

Page 161- Ext. New York city- Same

Page 16 is oddly constructed but effectively designed to get in the large amount of visual information the script calls for. Note that, for this page, Bendis goes to a modified screenplay format as he switches from scene to scene (“Ext. New York City/ central park–Same,” etc.), probably to make sure Yu knows exactly where each panel takes place in the potentially confusing rapid crosscutting between locales.

Tall panel. Wide of the city. From over the trees on Central park... Another huge lightening bolt crashes up to the sky. It doesn't hit anything. It just shoots up to the heavens. Spx: boom 2- Ext. Camp Hammond- Same High looking down, Jessica Drew, Hank Pym and other Skrulls step out of the war room and look to the sky. SPIDER-WOMAN What was that? 3- Ext. New York city/ central park- Same

Again, as in any strong writer-artist collaboration, Yu takes liberties with the script instructions. The last panel, for instance, implies (“still kneeling”) that Thor’s entire body should be seen, but Yu opts for a dramatic tight close-up of his face.

Profile. The hammer of Thor hits the grassy ground. Hard. Thor's hand swinging it down. When the hammer hits a massive lightening bolt shoots right out of it.

Spx: boom 4- Ext. Skrull ship- Same At an angle. Agent Brand and the Avengers look out the front window. All mouths drop. The reflection of the lightening The heroes see him. THE WASP Is that? ARES Aye! Its him. 5- Ext. New York city/ central park- Same Big panel. Thor, on one knee, hits the ground with his hammer, and the insane lightening shoots up to the sky again. His hair blows back. Spx: boom Reads: THOR, GOD OF THUNDER 6- Ext. Camp Hammond- Same Small panel. Same as 2, but tighter, high looking down, Jessica Drew, Hank Pym and other Skrulls look to the sky. SPIDER-WOMAN Gather the ground troops. All of them. This- this too was written. 7- Ext. New York city/ central park- Same Small panel. Thor still kneeling looks right at us. The wind whips from the weather energy around him.

THOR Who are thou supposed to be?

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MAN OF MYSTERY:

THE

MAX ALLAN COLLINS INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail June-August, 2008 by Robert Greenberger

ou can hardly pass a bookstore without seeing Max Allan Collins’ name on some detective thriller or cross-media novelization. Longtime comics fans also fondly recall his work with Terry Beatty on Ms. Tree, the trendsetting female private eye series. Since he’s written comic books (including Batman), movies, novels, novelizations and more, we figured it was high time to find out how he does it all. Bob Greenberger got the info. —DF ROBERT GREENBERGER: Hey, Al, so good of you to be available. Let’s go into the Way Back machine and see how you sold that first novel in 1976. What got you interested in writing? MAX ALLAN COLLINS: I was always interested in storytelling. My mom read to me at night, and my earliest memories are her reading me the Tarzan books published by Whitman in the 1950s. I think a key thing is that, at an early age, I got hip to movies and TV shows coming from novels and comics. Like a lot of kids, I saw George Reeves as Superman on TV and went out and read the comics accordingly. But I also went another step–I don’t think every kid who saw the Topper TV show went out and found the original novel by Thorne Smith! RG: What led you to publishing your first novel in 1976? MAC: We have to go way-er back than that–I actually sold the first book in 1971. It and a sequel were published together in January 1973 by Curtis Books, Bait Money and Blood Money. I was at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, that famed citadel of creative writing (as opposed to uncreative writing, I guess), first as an undergrad from 1968 through 1970, then as a grad from ’70 through ’72. RG: Wait a minute. Tell me about the Iowa program. MAC: I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa, just about 35 miles from Iowa City–still live in Muscatine, by the way–and I 24 | WRITE NOW

knew Kurt Vonnegut was teaching up there, and other big-time writers. I was under the sway of crime fiction– Hammett, Chandler, James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane– but also the so-called “Black Comedy” writers like Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. So I got in, but Vonnegut had just left–he did come back and do a seminar, and read to us from his next as yet unpublished novel… little something called Slaughterhouse-Five. But I ran into lots of resistance at the Workshop, since the teachers and students saw themselves as artists where I was obviously “just” a mystery writer, an entertainer. As it happened, a major literary writer, Richard Yates, was teaching the one section of undergrad study

that the Workshop offered. Despite some initial misgivings about my mystery writer’s bent, he saw merit in my work and took me under his wing. Interestingly, even weirdly, Yates’s most famous novel, Revolutionary Road, is currently being made into a film by Sam Mendes, who directed the film of my graphic novel, Road to Perdition. I’m sure Mendes has no idea he’s adapting a book by the mentor of the guy who wrote Perdition. Anyway, I worked closely with Yates, and he helped me land my first agent, Knox Burger, a legendary, crusty character who had been the editor at Gold Medal Books, where many of my heroes like Richard Stark, John D. MacDonald, Richard S. Prather and Donald Hamilton had been published. I remember vividly that Yates wrote Burger saying that he’d discovered a new Hammett, and sent him my novel, Bait Money. Burger wrote back and said, “Well, not Hammett, but a young W.R. Burnett maybe.” And W.R. Burnett, who wrote The Asphalt Jungle and Little Caesar of course, was good enough for me. Burger took me on. Bait Money was one of three novels that comprised my thesis for my Master of Fine Arts at the Writers Workshop. The premise was that a small town in Iowa, based on my hometown Muscatine, could serve as the setting for three different kinds of crime novels–that you didn’t have to write about New York or L.A. The novels were Bait Money, No Cure for Death and Quarry (published initially as The Broker). Book series grew out of each one– Nolan, Mallory and Quarry. Bait Money reflected my strong comics interest, by the way–Nolan’s co-star, Collins’ Road to Perdition went from three-part Paradox Press miniJon, was an aspiring cartoonist and pop culture series to a big budget feature film from DreamWorks. [RTP script copyright © 1998 by Max Allan Collins, art copyright © 1998 by Richard Piers Rayner. Movie hound. poster: Pulse Advertising/David Sameth TM & © 2002 DreamWorks L.L.C. and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.]

RG: That’s pretty impressive to turn college work into the beginning of a career. Now, all of your original works tend to deal with rugged individuals–Mallory, Nolan, Heller–what’s your take on them? MAC: I’m like pretty much like all mystery writers–the protagonists are idealized versions of myself, and I am hardly rugged though probably an individualist. Many of the characters appear in first-person narratives, and I think writing is similar to improvisational acting–Heller is me filtered through his background and times. Quarry, in some ways, is closest to me, and he’s a hired killer–but his nasty, cynical outlook is me at my darkest. Mallory, a small-town mystery writer, was blatantly me, and I lost interest in him quickly, not surprisingly. Nolan, who appeared in Bait Money and seven subsequent novels, appears in third-person narratives, and the secondary character, Jon, the aspiring cartoonist, was more my portal in the story. I set up Nolan as an “old” man, a tough guy at the end of his road–he was

fifty. Suddenly that doesn’t seem so old…. RG: You’ve written almost exclusively original crime fiction, what’s the appeal? MAC: Early on, I used to get what I call the Mickey Spillane Question–why did you choose to write about sex and violence? The answer is a Mickey Spillane one, too–it was easy: sex is love and violence is death, and those are the two big human topics. It’s really pretty much what we all care about, with some greed tossed in, also a common element in crime fiction. And life. I do like the tough hero, the avenger. It’s funny that I grew up on Ayn Rand and right-wing vigilantes and emerged, if not leftist, certainly left-leaning. But until I got a growth spurt going into high school, I was a bookworm kid with glasses who got picked on, and the idea of getting even, through a tough hero or anti-hero, MAX ALLAN COLLINS | 25

appeals. Related to this is the central notion of mystery fiction, pretty much all mystery fiction: the protagonist solves a problem and brings some order at least to a chaotic world.

on Mike Gold, who was my Ms. Tree editor at DC, was also a big help on research and just getting the Chicago feel right. In the first novel, True Detective, one example of just how much George did is the background of Heller’s father and grandfather–he pretty much devised that. I wrote the chapter from his notes.

RG: Your Nathan Heller novels, all wonderful, have required massive research. How much do you do and how much do you rely on researcher George RG: When you wrote True Detective, did you have any Hageneur? idea this was going to the best received of your series MAC: For the uninitiated, I should or that it would last a dozen novsay that Nathan Heller is a els? Chicago PI in the 1930s (and MAC: I knew I was stepping up later ’40s and ’50s) who becomes to the plate and doing someinvolved in some of the great thing special, something bigger unsolved or disputed and more ambitious than the mysteries/crimes of the 20th cen50,000 word replicas of Gold tury–the assassination of Mayor Medal novels I’d been doing. Cermak, the Lindbergh kidnapHeller had been devised some ping, the disappearance of Amelia years earlier, initially as a comic Earhart, the Roswell incident, and strip idea, and I had the basic so on. They are big novels, some idea of setting a private eye in of the longest private eye novels the context history in the early ever written, and the first one ‘70s, pre-Chinatown, but knew I won the Best Novel “Shamus” wasn’t writer enough yet to tackaward from the Private Eye le it. I did not know, at first, that Writers of America and really Heller would be a series. changed my career. They’ve been Obviously, with a PI as the main very well received–a year or so character, you know that’s a posago the PWA gave me their Life sibility, which is partly why I Achievement award, the Eye, made him young, mid-twenties, mostly for Heller (and somewhat in the first novel, knowing that if for Ms. Tree). And I’ve just signed there were more I’d want to age a contract with Tor Books that will him as the years passed. And take Heller into the 1960s and the first book was originally plotthe JFK assassination. ted to include the Dillinger Collin’s Road to Purgatory, his 2004 prose George Hagenauer, who I met material that eventually became sequel to the Road to Perdition graphic novel. [Copyright © 2004 by Max Allan Collins. All rights through comics fandom, is really the second novel, True Crime. reserved.] a collaborator on those books. Once I realized I couldn’t cover We haven’t done one in a while, everything in True Detective, I and I’ve done a few historicals with him participating in knew a second novel was a strong possibility. a lesser fashion–the new book, Red Sky in Morning I had no idea I was dooming myself to a lifetime of under the “Patrick Culhane” byline, was researched by homework and research. Thank God for George my other right hand, Matthew V. Clemens. And I did the Hagenauer, to share the research load and help me research on Strip for Murder, the recent mystery about carve my way through the various jungles. Al Capp and Ham Fisher, myself. Red Sky, incidentally, For the record, I consider Heller my life’s work, my is based on my late father’s experiences during WWII most important and potentially lasting achievement. as a young lieutenant in charge of a huge contingent of The Perdition books grew out of Heller, were a sidebar black sailors loading ammo and explosives in the of sorts. Pacific. But the Heller and Eliot Ness novels were heavily RG: When writing a series such as Heller, how much of the timeline do you map out? What sort of continuity impacted by George’s research and also by his creativinotes do you create for yourself? ty–we have spent many hours on the phone kicking MAC: At first it was haphazard. After the first three, the around ideas. The Heller novels are odd, because you so-called Nitti Trilogy, I began to take extensive notes, have the constraints of history, and the plotting has to and fashioned a timeline–tried to make sure I didn’t weave in and around, and not contradict, reality. Early 26 | WRITE NOW

Fantastic Four #560 Death of the Invisible Woman Part Three of Four Script By Mark Millar Art By Bryan Hitch and Andrew Currie Final Draft: 14th August 2008 23 script pages Page One 1/ Cut to 500 years in the future and a nightmarish vision of society where ecological and environmental problems have created an eternal, freezing, barren night and things are pretty fucking horrible. Mankind has been decimated, but there’s still billions of us out there. This should be a big, wide shot with a well-known landmark in the background (anything except the Statue of Liberty). CAPTION

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: “Well, let’s start with the good news. The good news is that the Earth DIDN’T die in the early part of the twenty-first century. : “It actually survived another five hundred years, thanks to the efforts of Doctor Reed Richards.

The team of writer Mark Millar and penciler Bryan Hitch gained notoriety with their work on The Authority and then The Ultimates. About halfway through their commitment to Marvel’s Fantastic Four, this sequence kicks off issue #560 (the third chapter in a four-part story arc) and begins with a panoramic establishing shot. Note how this is marked as the final draft with a date to avoid any confusion to both editor and artist over which version of the script is to be used.

Note also how Hitch put the “well known landmark” (the Empire State Building) in the foreground, not, as described in the script, the background. He moves the details of the “nightmarish vision of society” to the next pages, figuring the dramatic shot of the ESB—with supports that seem to be needed to keep it upright—combined with intriguing dialogue captions would make any reader want to turn the page.

FANTASTIC FOUR #560 NUTS & BOLTS | 37

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THE WORLD OF ZUDA ONLINE CREATORS ON MAKING WEBCOMICS

Comics launched its major web initiative, Zuda Comics, in 2007. Run by Director of Creative Service and Online DC Comics, Ron Perazza, it’s been a much talked about and visited web destination for a year now. Along with editor Kwanza Johnson and DC SVP-Creative Director Richard Bruning. Ron is boldly taking DC where no mainstream comics company has gone before. Ron is deeply involved in every facet of Zuda’s development. In the online world, he’s something of a veteran, having served as Project Manager: Online at Marvel before coming to DC. On September 18th, Ron kindly gave me e-mail responses to some questions about this brave new virtual world. —DF

RON PERAZZA DANNY FINGEROTH: What would you say Zuda’s “mission” is, Ron? RON PERAZZA: That’s easy–find and make good webcomics. DF: What makes Zuda different from other webcomics sites? How is it similar to any? RP: That’s a tricky question–there are so many sites with such variety. I’d like to think that we add something to that larger pool and because of that bring value to the whole thing. DF: What’s the appeal of webcomics in general? Has their time finally come, in terms of being a major part of the comics landscape, after all these years of people trying? RP: I don’t think there is a “time” for webcomics in a way that means that time has passed for other comics or anything like that. I think artists’ options have expanded and comic storytelling has grown because of the technology. It’s been a slow build for the last ten years or so, but its kind of growing geometrically–the bigger it gets, the bigger it can get. The trick then is maintaining quality. I like to think that Zuda offers a pretty unique combination of user submissions, community involvement and editorial input that works toward that goal. DF: Since DC is so high profile, any ballpark idea of how many site visitors are new to webcomics and just came to the site because it is part of DC, and how many are regular readers of other comics sites? RP: There’s really no way for us to know that–we don’t

Richard Bruning, left, Kwanza Johnson and Ron Perazza, of DC Comics and Zuda.com. [Richard Perry/The New York Times]

collect that kind of “Where did you hear about us?” information with any sort of scientific accuracy or anything. In some ways it doesn’t matter–if you’re a longtime comic fan or a comparatively new reader it’s all good. We’re trying to have enough diversity to appeal to a lot of different types of readers. DF: Zuda is a free site. At this point in time, is it seen as an R&D site for new properties, or an exploratory site to test the online comics waters? Or something else altogether? RP: In a lot of ways this all an experiment–but that’s not to say there’s not a plan. DC Comics has a history of leading the way with new formats–like taking a leadership role with Collected Editions and the bookstores for example–so this is a continuation of that general philosophy. We’re interested in new styles, new genres and some of the unique storytelling and reader collaboration that comes from being online. It’s a long game and fortunately we’re in a position to play that long game and see where it takes us. THE WORLD OF ZUDA | 41

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DF: Do you have a model for revenue from ads? If not, is there a revenue model in place, or one you’re thinking of for the future? RP: It’s interesting to me how everyone is interested in how we’re looking to make money from this. My chief concern is how to make quality comics. We have ads on site, we’ve played around with the idea of sponsorships, we’re definitely interesting in collecting the webcomics for print volumes–so I guess you can say we’re taking an organic, multi-tiered approach to generating revenue. DF: If not revenue, how would you define “success” for Zuda? RP: There’s a lot of ways we can define succes–first and foremost is making good comics. Creative success is my main concern. I don’t know how you measure that quantitatively but I think if you’re on the right track then people take notice. We have a lot of series on site that I really believe in–like Bayou, Street Code, High Moon and SuperTron. I could go on but I think that will be the mark of Zuda’s success–the quality of our books. DF: Does Zuda/DC own the material it puts up on the site, or just certain rights? RP: Zuda’s contracts are very consistent with the creator-owned contracts for DC Comics’ other imprints –like Vertigo or WildStorm. It would be lengthy (and likely boring) for me to even try to get into that all here, but we offer all of our contracts on the site for anyone to read, take to their family, friends, lawyers or what have you. We strongly encourage people who are thinking about sending us a comic for the site to do

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this well in advance of sending us anything just so they are informed if nothing else. You can find them here: http://www.zudacomics.com/submission_agreement http://www.zudacomics.com/rights_agreement http://www.zudacomics.com/services_agreement DF: Being on the web, do you find yourself concerned over language, sex, violence or moral issues in the strips? Is there any material you wouldn’t put on Zuda? RP: Yeah, obviously being available to the general public and not requiring any kind of registration to simply read the comics we have to be more mindful about what we publish. DF: Is there any style of material you wouldn’t run, even if the content was acceptable? RP: I can’t imagine what that might be–we’re actively encouraging style and genre diversity. DF: Would you ever take a submission from a writer and then pair him or her up with an artist, or do teams have to submit complete packages? RP: What we’re interested in is actively including the readers in the selection process and not creating those matches internally then presenting them to the reader. We offer message boards in order to help artists and writers seek each other out if they don’t already have a creative team, but our primary interest is to see what stories creators are interested in telling and giving them a way to get those stories to us. DF: At this point, do you need to go searching for talent or are you flooded with submissions? RP: We’ve got a steady stream of submissions. DF: How many staff people are dedicated in whole or part to Zuda? How would someone apply for a staff job there? RP: We’ve got a full-time editor in Kwanza Johnson. Nika Denoyelle is our assistant. Dave McCullough oversees the online group, which does a tremendous amount of work with Zuda, as you might expect, and then there’s me. We all report into the Senior Vice President/Creative Director of DC Comics, Richard Bruning. He reports right into the President and Publisher, Paul Levitz.

DF: How does one edit a webcomic versus a print comic? RP: That’s a very complex question,

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especially given the nature of how submissions come in. Generally speaking, for our ongoing series, it’s not too much different from a print comic. We’re interested in creator-driven storytelling and we’re not interested in getting in the way of that or trying to bend the creators to our will or anything like that. So very broadly speaking, it’s like being there to bounce ideas back and forth or get an impartial opinion. There’s some nuts and bolts things like proofreading and scheduling as well. It’s very collaborative. DF: Do your writers submit outlines or scripts in advance to check for questionable matter? RP: For ongoing series, yes. Like I mentioned in the previous answer there’s a lot of back-and-forth between editorial and the creative team during the series–a lot of it pretty casual with e-mail and instant messaging–to help craft the best series possible. DF: Given the web is fluid, why limit the artwork to a fixed set of dimensions? RP: It’s like with a print comic, anything can happen on that page. It could be a splash; it could be a hundred little panels. It might be part of the story to break every page into a standard nine-panel grid. But the paper dimensions don’t change. It’s sort of like that. In part we want to offer creators a known “page size” and give them infinite freedom within that page. We also want to offer our readers a consistent reading experience that doesn’t require any scrolling or specific monitor, computer, or plug-in requirements that can vary from comic to comic. DF: What’s in the future for Zuda? RP: More good comics. DF: Oh, yeah—maybe I missed this—what does “Zuda” mean, anyway? RP: Everything–from Z to A. :)

DEAN HASPIEL Interview conducted via phone Sept. 25, 2008. Transcribed by Steven Tice Copyedited by Danny Fingeroth and Dean Haspiel

Native New Yorker Dean Haspiel is the creator of the Eisner Award-nominated Billy Dogma and the webcomix collective Act-i-Vate. Dean is also a founding member of Brooklyn’s Deep6 Studios, and the editor of “Next-Door Neighbor” at Smith Magazine. Dean has drawn superheroes for Marvel and DC Comics, as well as Michael Chabon’s The Escapist for Dark Horse, and is best known for his collaborations with Harvey

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Pekar on The Quitter and Vertigo’s relaunch of American Splendor. This summer, Dean launched Street Code, a semiautobiographical webcomic for Zuda. This Fall, Vertigo published The Alcoholic, an original graphic novel collaboration with author Jonathan Ames, and Francoise Mouly’s Toon Books published Mo & Jo: Fighting Together Forever, Dean’s cover to his and Jonathan Ames’ Haspiel’s collabo- graphic novel The Alcoholic [© 2008 ??.] ration with underground comix legend Jay Lynch. For updates, please visit http://man-size.livejournal.com/ Dean took some time to tell me about how he’s come to be writing and drawing Street Code for Zuda. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: What made you decide to do webcomics, Dean? DEAN HASPIEL: I was working on several projects that wouldn’t see the light of day for at least a year and that can be a struggle for an artist, especially one with an ego that wants people to see their stuff immediately. I had a bunch of friends that moved to California and they started blogging, which is how I discovered the blog culture. But they really were blogging about their lives. They weren’t promoting. So I would blog the same thing, and then after a while they would ask, “Show us what you’re working on.” So I would show little sneak peeks online and I realized that would get more responses when I would actually show artwork. So, after a couple of years of doing that, I saw other cartoonists showing their stuff off online and I wrote a private e-mail to a bunch of friends and a couple other people I hadn’t met that were showing off their stuff on a regular basis, and I said, let’s try to do webcomics online, that we control and own, on a weekly basis. Not only would we then be working on a side graphic novel online while working on our regular projects for print, but we would also be engendering response, THE WORLD OF ZUDA | 43

STREET CODE: "Awful George" SCREEN 5 5,1 Jack’s horrified expression centers the page while panels of each caption as described below surround his terrified head. Bloody towels and bowls of water with archaic metal instruments of varying degrees of horror were strewn about the space.

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Crowding the space were metal cages housing two-to-three cats in each one. The cats were either halfway to heaven or halfway to hell.

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Some cats were missing an eyeball or a tail. Others were missing a limb and/or teeth. All of them were in pain and suffering greatly.

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Bikes and boxes of valuables were sitting safely in the back of the basement. Nothing had been stolen from the premises, only added to.

Dean Haspiel writes and draws Street Code for DC’s Zuda comics website. Dean works in a variety of ways, depending on the project. For Street Code, he prefers to work in full-script mode, describing each panel and then doing a thumbnail sketch to see how the text and art will work together.

Dean then pencils the strip and, in a nod to a nearly lost tradition, actually pencils in the dialogue and captions. As writer and artist, he is able to make sure each copy unit goes in exactly the spot he wants it. The inks are also by Dean.

Zuda’s stories are presented screen-by-screen. The screens each have the height to width proportions of half of a standard comic book page. These proportions are more or less those of an average computer screen.

54 | WRITE NOW

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AMAZING TRUE STORIES:

WRITING NON-FICTION COMICS by Jim Ottaviani

im Ottaviani has been writing comics about true facts and real people for a long time. He has the gift of making history and science—and the history of science—come vividly alive for his readers. Some of his many works include Suspended in Language, Fallout, and BoneSharps, Cowboys, and ThunderLizards. Here, Jim tells us how he does it—and how you can, too!

—DF [Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true.—Jim Ottaviani] Write Now! EIC Danny Fingeroth has asked me to write about telling true stories (history or non-fiction if you’re a civilian, historical fiction if you’re a real life historian) in comics form, but because we’re talking about a visual medium, and because in my previous life I was an engineer, I should show rather than tell. So here’s a flowchart that shows how it’s done:

If you believe that, I can skip the research steps on my future books, since you apparently don’t need something to look like a duck (much less walk, quack, paddle, fly, and eat stale breadcrumbs) to believe it is in fact a duck. To torture the metaphor, most readers, regardless of whether they know it, do in fact require an incredibly lifelike simulation of a duck, though. So here’s what the process, or at least my process, really looks like when broken down into its component parts, beginning at the beginning: 56 | WRITE NOW

You may think I’m kidding, but after that initial idea you do have to decide to be a writer. If you don’t, you likely won’t get much further into the process, much less to the end, and the process is where the fun is. Like you, I had ideas galore before making this decision. Many came from that background I mentioned above, and that’s why I write about science. In the process of getting a bachelor’s and master’s degree in nuclear engineering and then working as a researcher and consultant to the electric power industry, I learned plenty of science in class and on the job. Outside of class and work, I enjoyed reading biographies of scientists. I also read a lot of comics. I’m pretty good at math, but pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so it took me another ten years to put one and one together and merge these two interests. Our first cliché: I’ve just described the classic “write what you know” scenario, and I recommend it. The only caution I would add to that is that if all you know is video games or comics from the big two superhero industrial complex manufacturers, you have a lot of competition in between you and your goal. Lucky for me, I wanted biographical stories about scientists in comics form by the time I decided to start writing them. If you can find your own, wide-open field like this one, you’ll also find yourself with many more options for getting published.

Jim’s book about Niels Bohr and his work, Suspended in Language, features art by award-winning artist Leland Purvis, and illustrated short pieces by Jay Hosler, Roger Langridge, Steve Leialoha, Linda Medley, and Jeff Parker. [Suspended in Language © 2004 Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis. Cover © 2004 Leland Purvis Courtesy G.T. Labs.]

you’re a genius multitasker (I’m not) only after writing down the new ones you encountered along the way.

From there on out the process gets messy, but fun, because if you do true stories, you get to do research. And because if you’ve decided to go down this path it means you have many loves: you love reading, love visiting unusual places, love writing letters to people you admire, and love doing this repeatedly. You like Wikipedia, but don’t love it. (See sidebar: “What’s Wrong With Wikipedia?”) You love your library and books and reference lists/bibliographies at the backs of books, and love following trails and paths that lead you far away from your original idea. And you love returning to that original idea you had, but unless

All of that sounds like another, though more extended, cliché, but I’ve found that for non-fiction work there is no substitute for reading stuff, digging up original sources, and whenever possible talking to the people who were there. The project I’m working on now, a book about the space race, is a case in point. When the publisher accepted the proposal, my wife immediately suggested that we watch the acclaimed HBO series From the Earth to the Moon. Tempting, but exactly the wrong thing. For one, I don’t want to unconsciously swipe imagery from someone else. For another, as good as I know this series is, accepting someone else’s condensation of such a sprawling story by passively absorbing it through TV can’t substitute for actively engaging the original material that would excite my visual and storytelling imagination. So it’s off to the library, out to Building 12 at NASA’s Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and plenty of time working with primary sources. Going straight to the source will provide you with the best possible original ideas WRITING NON-FICTION COMICS | 57

and imagery for your script—you’ll be amazed at what other writers chose to leave out. And you’ll be amazed at who will be willing to help you out—next time you see me at a convention I can tell you about seeing “Aldrin, Buzz” on my voicemail… As you accumulate more and more information, at a certain point you also have to know when to stop. Many of us collect things—comics, books, action figures, art—and the quest for more in these realms never ends. The hunt is fun! But when it comes to script-writing you can indeed get enough. As Fred (Action Philosophers) Van Lente put it so aptly in Write Now! #14, you can’t include everything you found out. Any person’s life, or any topic, will prove too rich for you to include all of it. Storytelling means picking your moments, and even though comics are as flexible a medium as any out there, economics—even if it’s simply the economics of reader attention—will place limits on the length of your story. So you have to make decisions, and they’ll be hard ones. Sorry.

I didn’t arrive at this step right away, but it’s become one that I can’t live without. It’s about writing dialogue snippets, some panel descriptions, and some scenes. And most importantly, it’s writing the biography of each of your characters, fictional or otherwise. You don’t want them to all sound the same, or sound like you, so writing a one-page life story for each (what religion do they practice, their favorite food, where they went to school, etc.) will help you determine how they will act, and react to each other. It will also give them the individual voices they need to stand out from each other in your mind, and for your artist, and eventually for your readers.

Remember hard decisions? Well, here’s another one: you know a lot of stuff now, but at this point you’ll no 58 | WRITE NOW

doubt find that you don’t know certain things you need to. You can fudge a little—I did that with Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards—and I’m not telling you where—but too much messing around with the facts, or chronologies, and you’ve crossed over into the realm of fiction. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and I wouldn’t try to stop my sister from dating a novelist. But that’s not the kind of writing you’re doing—so back to the research.

Here’s the biggest diagram of them all, and it has the most white space staring back at you. There’s a whole lot of blank… whatever… in front of you now, and you have to fill it, starting with Page 1, Panel 1. (Or wherever you start. But start!) You’ve read enough issues of Write Now! to know that there’s no One True Format for your script, and you can see some examples of mine on the pages that follow. However you do it, though, plant yourself in a chair, face down that blank page or that blinking cursor, and start writing.

Cowboys and Dinosaurs

Page 7 (Splash, with two insets in the lower right) Panel 1 Big panel, with Barnum now in the baggage car and standing over the box holding the Cardiff Giant. It’s packed in with straw all around it, and looks sorta dumb. And obviously fake. But, if you please, don’t make it so ludicrously bad and caricatured that we can’t visually refer to it in some way all the way at the end of the story (P136)… Anyway, in one hand Barnum’s waving around his cigar, whose smoke is filling the car from the ceiling on down. In the other he holds the crowbar he used to pry open the box. CAPTION (upper left): And so… BARNUM (launching into full Barnum-esque font, a la Walt Kelly): Behold, the !!Cardiff Giant!!, miracle of the age, exhumed directly from the hunting grounds of the !fierce tribe" of the Onondaga! BARNUM (still huckstering): concrete proof and demonstration of the physiognomy of early man, from an era when !!giants!! walked the earth. BARNUM: He is the !one and only reminder" of a race that history has left in its wake! MARSH (off): Ahem. Sir, I must tell you…

Art to the cover of Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards is by Mark Schultz and Big Time Attic. [Script © 2005 Jim Ottaviani. Interior art © 2005 Big Time Attic. Cover is © 2005 Mark Schultz and Big Time Attic. Courtesy G.T. Labs.]

Panel 2 Close in on a smug Marsh, waving away the cigar smoke. MARSH: What you have there is most decidedly a fake. MARSH: Even worse, it is a lackluster copy of a fake. Panel 3 Marsh, still smug. MARSH: I myself am an expert on antiquities and I have examined the original, if you want to call it that. MARSH: This… this “Cardiff Giant” upon which your crude reproduction is based, is a humbug.

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Here we see some of Jim’s script and thumbnail sketch, as well as the artists’ rough and finished art for a page of one of his stories. Here’s what Mr. O. has to say about the process: “Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards: A Tale of Edward Drinker Cope, Othniel Charles Marsh, and the Gilded Age of Paleontology is a tale, by which I mean by the time I finished researching the story I decided to put some fictional frosting on the cake of fact.

“So looking back on this book, it’s interesting to see how much the pages changed as well, even when I thought they were done.

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WRITING ABOUT COMICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF THE POP CULTURE WRITER by Evander Lomke

vander Lomke was the editor on my non-fiction books Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent. A seasoned publishing professional, Evander has edited—from inception to finished book— an extremely wide variety of nonfiction manuscripts. While writing about comics is perhaps not as glamorous as writing comics, there’s what seems to be endless curiosity about the making and understanding of comics—and of all pop culture. And why not? We spend so much of our time devouring the popular culture of our (and earlier) eras, it makes sense we’d be curious to hear what “experts” of various types have to say about it. As editor of those experts, Evander is his own kind of expert—and here he shares some of his inside info with us. —DF

You walk into your favorite comics shop or bookstore, and you can’t help but see the plethora of books about popular culture, including comics and graphic novels. These books aren’t comics or GNs (with a few exceptions such as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics), but are about them. If you’re a writer, the thought may occur to you: “Wow! Someone’s taken their obsession and made it into a book that someone else was willing to pay them for and to publish. Writing books like that seems like it might be an enjoyable way to spend some of my time. After all, I have a lot of opinions about the comics I read.” But after that realization, there come the inevitable questions: • How do I find a publisher—and how do I know if that is the best publisher for my book? • Should I write a book and submit it, or work with an editor to develop an idea into a book? • What kind of advance and royalties can I expect from doing that kind of writing? Must it be a labor of love, or is it a career path of any kind?

• What kind of audience is there for such books? Is it only college professors and other academic types, or is there a chance my book could be seen and read (and bought!) by a significant number of people? You want and need to be armed with important information before embarking on writing one or more of such books—or, for that matter, articles with similar content. Once you have that information, you can decide if writing non-fiction, critical works is for you. I’ve spent a long career as an editor of academic and trade books for more-or-less well defined sets of audiences. My office desk, shelves, and floor are amazingly cluttered. There are manuscripts and proposals of all WRITING ABOUT COMICS | 67

shapes and sizes. The days of legendary editors like Max Perkins wading through a crate and discovering Thomas Wolfe’s latest work, a manuscript that cries out for editing to find the hidden masterpiece within, are probably gone forever. But a book editor’s job has not changed much. It is one that calls for keen judgment with no time to spare for error. Which of these manuscripts and proposals in my large pile or today’s mail has what it takes to get by committees of marketers, publicists, salespeople, and even other editors and into the hands of readers? What distinguishes the successful project from the one that is returned to the author? What do editors and publishers look for? Mainstream book publishers may have been slow to pick up on the world of scholarly writing about the history and impact of comics and graphic novels. But as the graphic-novel universe has expanded into the book trade (trade publishing means the dissemination of books found in chain bookstores, on the New York Times Bestseller lists, and are probably those in the largest number in your home), so have academic and trade publishers jumped in, finding there is a large and expanding audience for books about these books— about their authors, their subjects, and what these subjects tell us about our cultural psychology. In addition, think about what a large industry media about other media is. Just about any TwoMorrows book or magazine—including Write Now!—is media about media. There’s even an NPR show called “On the Media.” For many years, there have been a handful of presses that specialized in popular culture. One is Bowling Green University Press. Bowling Green has published on pulp-fiction writers as well as the history and significance of the pulps themselves—which is interesting, considering how few people these days read pulps! Many publishers, both university presses and for-profit enterprises, publish about the serious side of pop culture. These presses include Syracuse University, Wayne State, Columbia, California, and others. Book publishers of all sorts are keen to promote these interests further. The publishers attend annual conventions from the annual Modern Language Convention (MLA), traditionally held between Christmas and New Year, to Comic-Con International in San Diego each summer, and the New York Comic-con, a new entry that meets each year in late winter or early spring. You can meet representatives of such publishers at these and other venues. The authors of these publishers’ accessible yet schol68 | WRITE NOW

Evander edited Write Now! EIC Danny Fingeroth’s non-fiction books Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent. Cover art on Couch is by Mark Bagley and Scott Hanna. Drawn figure on Disguised is by Bagley. [Couch © 2004 and Disguised © 2007 by Danny Fingeroth. Photo © 2006 Varda Steinhardt.]

arly books on pop culture come from several walks of life. Not surprisingly, some are from the “publish or perish” world of academia. Others, more interestingly (I might argue), came out of the comics profession itself. These authors have hands-on experience in comics and/or write regular columns in newspapers and magazines dealing in popular culture. The subjects are as diverse as the writers themselves: superheroes, manga, comic strips, “literary” graphic novels—and the usually submerged sociologic, psychological, even religious impact of comics on our lives. As far as, “Can I make a living—or even a decent supplementary income—writing these kinds of books?”, the answers are all over the map. I would say that, with rare exceptions, such as well known movie critics who also write books, the income derived from writing a book about popular culture varies but is usually not beyond several thousand dollars in the first year of