Write Now! #13 by TwoMorrows Publishing

INSIDE: KURT BUSIEK ON BREAKING INTO COMICS!

In the USA

M AG A ZI N E

August 2006

X-MEN 3 SCREENWRITER TELLS ALL! ADAPTING MANGA NOVEL WRITING SECRETS

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M AG AZ I N E Issue #13

August 2006

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 2

From XXX to X3 Interview with Simon Kinberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 3

Breaking in Without Rules: One Writer’s Possibly Instructive Journey by Kurt Busiek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 17

Screenplay to Novel: Batman Begins Interview with Dennis O’Neil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29

Don’t Fear the Research Novelist Bill McCay explains how doing research for your writing is necessary and can even be fun! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 57

Secret: Agent Man Mike Friedrich explains the realities of agents in the world of comics . . page 65

And Don’t Forget to Buy My Novel Marc Bilgrey talks about how he got his novel, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess, published . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 69

Feedback Letters from Write Now! ’s Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 72

Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Pencils: UNCANNY X-MEN #475 Pages from “The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire: Plan B,” by Ed Brubaker and Billy Tan

. . . . . . . . . . page 10

Synopsis to Script to Pencils to Inks: MYSTERY IN SPACE #3 Pages from “The Weird: Enlightenment!” by Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39

Adapting Manga Manga writer and editor Stephen Pakula tells how the original stories are translated for English-speaking readers . . . . . . . page 45

Script to Finished Comic: PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE Pages from the graphic novel by Steven Grant and Tom Mandrake . . . page 51

Proposal: (CODENAME) STRYKEFORCE Pages from the miniseries proposal by Jay Faerber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 61

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-in-Chief Cover art by RON LIM & AL MILGROM Assistant Editor LIZ GEHRLEIN Marketing Guru BOB BRODSKY Designers DAVID GREENAWALT with RICH J. FOWLKS Transcriber STEVEN TICE Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: PAUL BENJAMIN ALISON BLAIRE KURT BUSIEK BOB BRODSKY KIA CROSS RICH J. FOWLKS LIZ GEHRLEIN JOE GENTILE STEVEN GRANT MIKE MARTS AL MILGROM BRANDON MONTCLARE ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON ADAM PHILIPS CHRIS POWELL BEN REILLY BOB SCHRECK ALEX SEGURA ALEX SIMMONS JIM STARLIN VARDA STEINHARDT

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.

READ Now!

Message from Danny Fingeroth, Editor-in-Chief he theme of this issue is adaptation. And we’ve got the experts to tell you all about how it’s done!

We start out running with an incredible interview with X-Men: The Last Stand screenwriter Simon Kinberg! Simon also wrote such movies as Mr. and Mrs. Smith and XXX, and worked on the Fantastic Four movie! You have to hear what he says about putting comics up on the big screen! Then, Dennis O’Neil talks to Eric Fein about how he adapted last summer’s blockbuster Batman Begins screenplay into novel form. Since Mr. O is an expert in both Batman and superhero novels—among a dozen other things—you know what he’s got to say is worth reading (and re-reading)! And, still on the adapting theme, manga writer and editor Stephen Pakula talks about how manga are translated so English speakers can read ’em. It’s not as simple as you might think—and there may be ways you can make some bucks doing it, too! You say you want more? You got it: • Kurt Busiek tells you about the realities of breaking into comics! • Mike Friedrich explains the role (or lack thereof) of agents in comics! • Bill McCay talks about the importance of research to writing! • Marc Bilgrey relates the true story of how his novel got published! And if it’s how-to Nuts and Bolts you want, then you came to the right place! This issue has: • Ed Brubaker script and Billy Tan pencil art from Uncanny X-Men #475! • Jim Starlin’s script and pencils and Al Milgrom’s inks for “The Weird” in Mystery in Space! • Steven Grant’s script and Tom Mandrake’s art from their noir graphic novel Pat Novak for Hire! • And Jay Faerber’s proposal for his 2004 Top Cow Strykeforce miniseries! Next issue? I’m glad you asked. It all starts with an hilarious caricature-cover of Brian Bendis by his longtime Daredevil collaborator Alex Maleev! Behind that cover is an in-depth interview with Brian. He’s been one of the top—and most prolific—writers in comics for a long while now. Find out how he got there—and how he stays there! And then we’ve got a star-studded Spider-Man Writers Roundtable where people who’ve written the web-slinger’s adventures talk about the creative challenges involved in dealing with an icon. Participating will be Spider-Man co-creator Stan

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Lee, as well as Todd McFarlane, J.M. Straczynski, Tom DeFalco, J.M. DeMatteis, Roger Stern, Peter David, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Louise Simonson, Gerry Conway, Howard Mackie, and yours truly (who edited and wrote Spidey). But that’s not all. WN #14 will also have: • Mark Millar script and Steve McNiven pencils from the red-hot Marvel Civil War #1! • Jim Starlin talking about—and showing art from—his new Captain Comet feature (and more “The Weird”) in Mystery in Space! • Lee Nordling on adapting your comic for Hollywood! • Another great writing lesson from John Ostrander! • Fred Van Lente on how to write non-fiction comics! • And, of course, eye-opening Nuts and Bolts writing tips!

Write Now! #14 is gonna be a party you don’t want to miss! SHAMELESS PLUG DEPARTMENT: • HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT (the trade paperback collection of the Write Now!-Draw! crossover that showed how a new character is created from initial idea to finished comic) is available now! It’s got 30 NEW PAGES OF WRITING AND DRAWING TIPS! We really worked our tails off to make this a special book, and we think you’ll enjoy it and learn a lot from it! (Of course, the super-popular How To Draw Comics From Script to Print DVD (based on the crossover) is still available, too!) • My HarperKids YA novelization of X-Men: The Last Stand is still on sale! And my book Superman On the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society (from Continuum) is in a third printing, so there are plenty of copies to go around! • For those in the New York area, I’ll be teaching an intensive one-week comics writing course at NYU this summer. In the fall, Denny O’Neil and I will be coteaching an evening course there (www.scps.nyu.edu/). I’ll also be teaching in the fall at the Media Bistro (www.mediabistro.com) and at The New School, in the undergraduate Lang division (www.lang.newschool.edu/). Okay, that’s all from me. Now, read the mag and get the info! Write Away!

FROM XXX TO X3

THE SIMON KINBERG INTERVIEW

Conducted by Danny Fingeroth via e-mail March and April 2006 Copy-edited by Simon Kinberg and Danny Fingeroth

imon Kinberg was born in London, England. He was raised in Los Angeles, and went to college at Brown University, where he studied film and literature. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude in 1995. He entered Columbia University’s Film School in 1998. In his first year, he sold a screenplay to producers Ira Deutchman and Peter Newman (Smoke, Squid and the Whale). Deutchman was Simon’s professor. That same year, in another class, Simon sold a pitch to producer Edward Pressman (Wall Street). While at Columbia, Simon received the school’s highest screenwriting award, the Zaki Gordon Fellowship. While still in film school, Simon sold his original pitch Ghost Town to Warner Brothers, and worked on scripts for Disney, Sony, and Dreamworks, working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Mostow, McG and Stephen Sommers. His final thesis project for his MFA was the original screenplay Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He pitched the concept to Academy-Award winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who became the producer (and Simon’s mentor). The film went into production with Doug Liman directing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in 2004, as Simon was graduating from film school. Simon spent almost every day on set, working closely with the director, producers, and actors (and even acting in one scene). Mr. and Mrs. Smith was released in June of 2005. It grossed over fifty million dollars on its opening weekend, and has gone on to gross over $475 million worldwide, making it one of the fifty most successful films of all time. It has also garnered several People’s Choice Awards and Teen Choice Awards. That same summer, Simon had two more films in wide release: XXX: State of the Union, directed by Lee Tamahori, starring Samuel Jackson, Ice Cube, and Willem Dafoe; and Fantastic Four, which he rewrote throughout production. In 2005, Simon was named by Premiere Magazine as “New Power” Screenwriter of the Year, and given Movieline Magazine’s “Breakthrough Award” for screenwriting. Simon (with Zak Penn) wrote the blockbuster X-Men 3: The Last Stand, which was released May 26, 2006. He is also writing and producing Doug Liman’s next feature Jumper for Regency and Twentieth Century Fox. He is writing an original script for Nicole Kidman to star in and produce at Fox, and he is writing and executive-producing a Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV show for ABC. In the fall, he will adapt Robert Ludlum’s best-selling novel Osterman Weekend to write and direct. He also has the script Merlin at Paramount, and Jason and the Argonauts at Dreamworks. In addition, Simon has set up a number of projects as a

producer, including Salem at Sony Pictures, and Invasion at Universal. He also has a TV-deal with Jerry Bruckheimer and Warner Brothers Television. I first “met”—if you can actually be said to meet somebody via e-mail—Simon when I was writing the YA novelization of X-Men: The Last Stand for HarperKids books and he was kind enough to answer my voluminous questions about the screenplay. Now that the movie (and its secrets) is out, I thought it would be informative to talk to one of the men who wrote it. Simon, as you can see from reading his bio above, is one busy guy. But he made the time to answer yet another set of my voluminous questions for this interview. I think you’ll find his answers insightful and entertaining whether or not you’ve ever harbored thoughts of being a screenwriter. (Yeah—like the thought never crossed your mind.) —DF SIMON KINBERG | 3

DANNY FINGEROTH: Where did you grow up, Simon? How did you start writing? SIMON KINBERG: I was born in London, but grew up primarily in Los Angeles. My father worked in film and television before I was born. When I was a kid, I knew him as a film professor at USC. We would watch a lot of movies in my house. They were always something magical to me. I started writing prose in high-school. Up until I graduated from college, I really wanted to be a novelist. But friends or teachers would read my work, and they’d all say it felt like a movie. The dialogue, the external action, the transitions. I think I was afraid of actually admitting that I wanted to write films. It seemed like such a scary, unwieldy industry. But after I graduated, I started reading scripts (working as an intern for a production company in New York, and going to the New York Public Library where they have an archive of old screenplays), and I just fell in love with the form. DF: Your father worked in TV and movie writing, as well as being a film teacher. What did he work on? How did his career and work influence you? SK: My dad had me late in life. He goes way back, to Golden Age Hollywood right after World War II. He was a producer with John Houseman, working on great films like Executive Suite and Lust for Life. When I was a kid, there were guys around our house like Robert Wise and Ernest Lehman. At the time, I had no idea who they were. But there was always a passion for cinema. Like I said, my dad was a film professor, and he was essentially my first teacher, talking to me about story and character, feeding me good films (lots of Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick). DF: Is film school important for aspiring screenwriters? Why did you go to an East Coast film school (Columbia)? Is the Columbia program still such fertile ground for being discovered, assuming you’ve (literally) done your homework? SK: I can only speak from my own personal experience. Film school was great for me, because it was a very safe environment to try out new work, to fail without consequence. I chose Columbia because I love New York, and because the program was focused primarily on screenwriting and storytelling, rather than physical production. Beyond the lessons learned, I got my first few professional breaks in film school. A professor of mine, Ira Deutchman (a producer and founder of 4 | WRITE NOW

Fine Line Features) read one of my scripts in class, and optioned the script. Then a guest speaker, Ed Pressman, heard my pitch in class, and ended up optioning the story. So Columbia was obviously a very good conduit to the industry for me. I know there are lots of folks who have come out of the program in the last few years— James Mangold, Kim Pierce, Lisa Cholodenko, Nicole Holofcener. Their sensibilities tend to be more independent-oriented. I’m like the bastard Hollywood stepchild. DF: The screenplay your teacher, Ira Deutchman, optioned was Ghouls. How common—or uncommon—was that type of thing? What happened with Ghouls? SK: I think it’s a fairly uncommon thing. Ira was very sensitive to the situation, since it could obviously blur the lines between professorial and professional roles. Ira and his partner Peter Newman optioned the script, and sent it out to Hollywood. It never sold, partly because it was set in the same time and place as Gangs of New York, which was just going into production. But the script did open a lot of doors for me, getting me meetings with producers, and finding me representation. DF: Your theories on pitching that I read in a recent Hollywoodreporter.com interview really impressed me and struck me as useful for comics pitching as well. Can you talk about them a little? SK: I think pitching is a very different medium than screenwriting. The structure has to be different because the format and context is different. You simply can’t get bogged down pitching every little detail. If you want to sell a film, you’re selling story, situation, and character. The major transitions and act breaks need to be solid, but you don’t need to pitch out every scene beat-bybeat. No pitch should be longer than fifteen or twenty minutes, which is not a whole lot of time to tell a coherent story. So you need to focus on the big goalposts, the big ideas. DF: Most people of your generation did not read comics. How did you come to do so?

SK: When I was a kid, I was basically a reading junkie. I read everything I could get my hands on–novels, plays, poems, comics. A friend of mine turned me on to Frank Miller when Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum’s run I was a kid, then Chris Claremont’s on X-Men was an early influence on Simon. X-Men, and I was hooked. The Here’s the cover to their issue #94, cover by characters, worlds, the moral and Gil Kane and Cockrum. philosophical issues were so rich.

DF: What were your favorite comics as a kid and now?

England, the cowboy West, 19th century NYC). What’s the appeal of eras and stories like that for you?

SK: Same then and now. X-Men and Batman. Primarily Miller and Claremont. I do like some of the new X-Men books, but I’m a sucker for the classics. Writing an X-Men film was a dream come true for me. DF: What kinds of books, movies and TV (past and present) do you like? SK: I read and watch across the board, but I would say my favorite stories tend to be darker genre material, meaning action, scifi, thrillers, and some psychological horror. I’m especially drawn to genre books and films that can go a little deeper–work like Bladerunner, The Shining, Parallax View, Le Samourai, any book by Jim Thompson or Dashiell Hammett. DF: You’re a disciplined writer, to say the least. Was that natural, or did you have to develop it? Any tips for how to develop discipline? SK: I’m a fairly compulsive person, so discipline is almost a disease with me. The most important thing for any writer is building good habits. It’s like sleep or eating patterns. Your body gets into certain rhythms, so you need to train yourself. The output of pages is not as important as the amount of time you commit every day. You may spend four days staring at a blank page, but your brain is working during those hours, and suddenly you’ll find yourself writing ten pages on the fifth day. Writing is a very mysterious, elusive process, so you need to do everything you can to try to be open and available to the moments of inspiration. DF: Please talk a little about the role of research in writing. SK: I’m obsessive about research. Even if I’m working on a relatively imaginary universe like Fantastic Four or XMen, I do all kinds of research into genetic mutations, paranormal abilities. I think research is an integral part of the writing process–not simply to give you hard information, but to immerse you in the world. DF: You’ve said you love eras where “the lines between rule-makers and rule-breakers is so blurred” (Medieval

SK: I think all writers love moral ambiguity. The most interesting characters are always the one who straddle light and dark, whether you’re talking about Hamlet or Batman. The reason why tales of knights and cowboys have survived hundreds of years is their messy morality–the notion that “good guys” can be ruthless killers, and “bad guys” can simply be born into the wrong town or province. These icons and eras are so full of life, color, energy, and surprises

DF: You’ve said the action movies of the ’80s were when the genre was at its best. Why do you think that was so? Do you think audience demands and expectations have changed since then?

SK: I think the best action movies of the ’80s were truly character-driven films, whether you’re talking about Lethal Weapon or Die Hard or Beverly Hills Cop or The Terminator. That’s why they spawned sequels, because you can serialize character better than story. If you look at those films, you’ll see long dialogue scenes, a lot of character backstory, and action sequences that express emotion (rather than many of today’s action films, which use set-pieces as interruptions of character). A lot of contemporary action films build their story around trailer moments, rather than building around character. You can feel the characters making decisions that service the plot or action, rather than making human, emotional, identifiable decisions. The things you remember from those ’80s films are not the specific pyrotechnics, but the specificity of character–John McClane, Murtaugh and Riggs, Axel Foley, Sarah Conner. I would bet that most movie audiences today can’t remember the names of the lead characters in the biggest current blockbusters. In many ways, we made Mr. and Mrs. Smith as a throwback to that era, and a throwback to golden age Hollywood films like The Thin Man. We wanted to make an action film where the action was truly a metaphor for the emotional drama, where every scene was simply SIMON KINBERG | 5

about a marriage in crisis, all played out with guns and cars and bombs. DF: Why do you think they call you in to do female movie-hero rewrites (like on Catwoman and Elektra)? Is it because of your affinity for the character-driven 1980s type movies? Or is it some kind of writers’ “typecasting”? SK: I think it’s a combination of my love for characterdriven genre films and my writing a female action heroine (in Mrs. Smith) that a lot of different actresses responded to. Personally, I find female heroes more interesting than their male counterparts, because they rely on brains rather than simply brawn. And they seem to be allowed more emotional drama. I’ve just started working on a thriller with Nicole Kidman, and her character’s skill set (or superpower, in a sense) is purely psychological–the ability to read people. That’s a lot more challenging to write than some guy who can kick fast or shoot straight. DF: Please talk a little about agents and managers. What do they do? What can’t they do? SK: Agents and managers are essentially a writer’s point of entry and access to the industry. At the beginning of a career, they help break you into the business, by getting producers and executives to read your work and meet with you. Once you get established, they are the ones who bring you potential assignments, or help you set up original projects by hooking you up with the right producers or elements (directors/actors). They can do a whole host of different things, from serving as a creative sounding board, to helping you keep sane, haggling your deal, or accessing actors and directors to package your material (as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where my agency, CAA, basically put the whole film together, with Doug Liman, Brad Pitt, and initially Nicole Kidman–all agency clients). I’ve had a very positive experience with an agent, a manager, and a lawyer. While they do take a chunk of my change, they handle all the business aspects of my job, so I can focus on the creative side. I tried to balance my representation, so I have the biggest Hollywood agency representing me, with a smaller-scale manager who works out of New York. DF: Without getting too detailed, can you talk about what the difference in function is between an agent and a manager? SK: The differences vary from representative to representative. Generally speaking, managers are slightly more hands-on than agents (more of the day-to-day interactions), and managers tend to think more long-term. But my personal experience is that I talk to my agent and manager every day. Also, there are certain things that only agents can do, like negotiate deals. Generally, agents at the big five agencies (CAA, William Morris, ICM, Endeavor, 6 | WRITE NOW

and UTA), have access to more clients than managers, so they are better equipped to package projects. DF: Is it essential to live in Los Angeles to be a Hollywood screenwriter? SK: I lived in New York until about four years ago. I don’t think it is essential to be in LA, but it certainly helps, especially at the beginning of a career when you’re meeting so many new people. You want to be available for those meetings, which constantly get cancelled and rescheduled. For me, the decision to move to LA was ultimately about flying. I’m not a very good flier, and the jumping back and forth was wearing on me. I have every intention of ending up back in New York, sooner than later. DF: Can you talk about your concept of “the secret”? SK: The concept of “the secret” is something I learned from my father. He talked about a fundamental piece of information withheld from your main character. This secret is the real engine of the broader story, the main source of tension and conflict. It’s a subtle idea, and I’m still in the process of really figuring out how to execute it. But every main character discovers and explores his/her

secret over the span of the film. The film develops as the character gets closer and closer to that secret. The journey toward this revelation provides the arc of the film, so the journey is about active discovery, rather than passive exposition. For example, the secret can be subtle and emotional, like Charles Grodin discovering that Cybill Shepherd isn’t enough in The Heartbreak Kid, or it can be very literal, like the reveal in Sixth Sense that Bruce Willis is already dead. In either case, the characters are doing what we all do in life—learning about themselves, evolving into a new stage in their lives (or deaths, in the case of Sixth Sense). DF: Is The Hustler still your favorite screenplay? Why? What about its years-later sequel The Color of Money? SK: It’s hard to pick favorites. Obviously, it’s such a random, subjective thing. I have many favorite screenplays, ranging from classics like Chinatown and Network to scripts like The Insider and T2. I do think The Hustler may be my deserted island script, because the characters are so rich and surprising and constantly evolving. I don’t think there’s a better character line than “I’m not drunk, I’m lame.” I enjoyed Color of Money, but it’s nowhere close to the original. DF: Any desire to try your hand at writing comics, superhero or otherwise?

SK: I have too much respect for comic writers. DF: Can you talk about the FF movie’s writing process? Sounds like you were literally writing scenes and emailing them in as they were filming them. Was that exciting? SK: It was exciting and exhausting and terrifying. It’s always a thrill to see your scenes produced, and on FF we were definitely writing and shooting on the fly. The director Tim Story had a very specific vision for that film, and I did my best to service his vision. DF: How is writing something like an X-Men film different from other types of action movies? SK: Writing an X-Men film is truly the greatest challenge and reward for a genre writer. I don’t consider these films to be action films. I know the films are full of action and effects and explosions, but they are fundamentally

dramatic, operatic, character-driven stories. They’re emotional and complex and heart-breaking, just like the comics. When I first met Avi Arad and Kevin Feige at Marvel, five or six years ago, I told them my dream was to write an X-Men film. Then when Bryan Singer fell out of X3, they called me and said, “we’re going to make your dream come true.” For me, there are two very big differences between the X-Men franchise and other genre films: first, the sheer number of characters to juggle. You need to be mindful to service all the characters, while driving the plot and exploring the underlying themes. The second big difference to me about X-Men is the political subtext. One of the biggest reasons that X-Men has been such a resonant franchise is the political and philosophical underpinnings. I don’t mean to get preachy, but this is an “action” franchise about persecution, integration, and assimilation. As you can see in X3, we really pushed these issues to the forefront. DF: Were there any rules given to you when writing X3 or FF—things you were told you must or must not do in the scripts? SK: The only rule is this: be loyal to the essence of the source material. The filmmakers all have a great deal of SIMON KINBERG | 7

respect for the comics, so we don’t want to veer away from what made these characters and universes so durable. There are always little dictates from the studio, sometimes about budget, actor availabilities, or showcasing certain characters. But that’s true on every film. DF: How are the X-Men as a team different from the FF? SK: Well, it depends if you’re asking about the films or the comics. I’ll speak on the films, since that’s my firsthand experience. Obviously, the tone of the films is very different. X-Men is more solemn and dramatic, where FF is more goofy and comedic. As a team, I would say the XMen are more emotionally troubled and morally ambiguous, where the FF are like a funny, dysfunctional family. DF: Did you have much or any input from Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, X-Men editor Mike Marts, or anybody from the comics, when you were working on FF or X-Men?

SK: Jeff Nathanson tweaked some jokes in a couple of scenes (as a favor to director Brett Ratner), but Zak and I were the only writers from start to finish. It was a pretty great thing to be the first and last writer on a film of this scope. I really got to experience every part of the process, which is not what I was expecting when I signed on. The first two X-Men films had at least five or six writers, maybe more. And I assumed they would continue that process with X3, but I think we all made a very strong collaborative team. Given our relatively quick development period, it was important to keep creative continuity through the process. DF: Do you like writing with a partner or do you prefer writing solo? SK: It really depends on the situation. I would say that I prefer writing solo on original material. But on something like X3, with the time pressure we faced, it was invaluable to have a partner. It was my first time ever working as a team, and Zak was a great ally in so many different ways. We have very similar sensibilities, so we

SK: I spent some time with Stan on X3. And I had quite a bit of contact with Chris, because we wanted to make sure we were making the right decisions about Phoenix. Chris and I e-mailed back and forth, and he was very happy with the portrayal of his character. My single most prized possession is a photo of myself with Stan, Chris, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan standing outside the Grey family house on set. DF: With an X-Men or FF, how do you balance the needs of the hardcore comics fan audience with the needs of the civilian audience? SK: I tend to lean toward the needs of the hardcore fans, largely because that’s my own sensibility. As a writer, you need to trust your own taste, rather than trying to second-guess strangers. As a lifelong fan of the comics, I wrote scenes that I wanted to see on screen. On FF, I was really coming in at the eleventh hour, so most of the story structure was set, and I was tweaking scenes to improve them. But on X3, I was the first writer, so I could basically build the story from scratch (with some parameters established by the studio, like the fate of certain characters). DF: Will there be an X-Men 4? If so, will you be working on it? SK: I don’t know if there will be an X4. It will obviously depend on the success of X3. If they decide to move forward with X4, I would definitely be interested. I love these characters, and I grew to love the actors over the span of spending too many months on set. DF: How did you work with Zak Penn on X3? Were there other writers on the film, besides the two of you?

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were always a united front. We’ve become good friends. We play basketball together, and he’s teaching me how to be a father. DF: Any hints you can give as far as FF 2? How about future X-Films? What does it mean when they say that The Last Stand is the “last” X-Men movie? SK: I don’t know much about FF2. As for future X-Films, the studio is obviously developing a couple different spinoffs (Wolverine, Magneto). The notion of The Last Stand was really to complete this particular trilogy. Some of the main characters are lost in this film, so the next X-Men movie would feel like a new start, a fresh franchise in some ways. DF: Do you see gaming as having an influence on what audiences want in action movies? How about manga and anime—do they influence audience expectations? SK: They all have a huge influence on what audiences want to see, and what filmmakers want to create. We’re just as influenced by gaming, manga, and anime as the audience. If you look at the success of The Matrix, and all the subsequent films that ripped off that style, Hollywood is definitely paying attention to these emerging formats. Personally, I’m not a huge gamer, but I am a huge fan of anime. When we were making X3, we watched the end of Akira with John Bruno, our special effects guru, to get some inspiration.

one role-model, it would be my mentor Akiva Goldsman, who has managed to work on both big tentpole movies, and more sophisticated Oscar-winning dramas. He was the person who championed Mr. and Mrs. Smith, even after every studio passed on the project. DF: Finally, do you have any advice for people wanting to break into screenwriting, or into professional writing in general? SK: Just keep writing and re-writing. That is the only surefire way of giving yourself a chance to break into this business. All the connections in the world mean nothing without a good piece of material. One script can open countless doors. More than anything, trust your own instincts. Don’t try to write for an audience, because movies take years to make, so you’ll always be behind the zeitgeist. Just write what you love, and don’t give up. Like I said, Mr. and Mrs. Smith was passed on by every studio, some of them twice. And we just never gave up on it. DF: Thanks so much, Simon. This was incredibly informative. SK: My pleasure, Danny. Great questions.

DF: Any thoughts on why there are so many comics movies now? SK: I think there are a few reasons. First up, I think the technology of cinema is now ready to do superheroes better than ever before, whether the flying of Superman or the Phoenix effect or the Spidey webs or the Batmobile. Second, I think we live in a time where people are looking for heroes. Our country doesn’t trust its government. Athletes and entertainers have been somewhat corrupted as role models. So people are looking for someone they can trust, someone they can look up to. DF: A few wrap-up questions: What projects do you have coming up? SK: I’m currently writing and producing Doug Liman’s next film, Jumper, which we start shooting this summer in New York, Toronto, Rome, and Tokyo. I’m also writing and executive-producing the Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV show for ABC. I’m revising my script for The Lost Years of Merlin at Paramount. And I’m writing an original project for Nicole Kidman at Fox.

DF: Do you have an “ultimate goal” as a writer? SK: I don’t have any ultimate goal, except to be happy and continue writing scripts that interest me. If I had any

THE END SIMON KINBERG | 9

To go along with the X-Men lead feature and cover this issue, we’re pleased to present some of Ed Brubaker’s script and Billy Tan’s pencil art for Uncanny X-Men #475.

UNCANNY X-MEN #475 SCRIPT AND PENCIL ART

To bring you up to speed on what’s going on in the pages, this background from Marvel: “Beginning in Uncanny X-Men #475, a new team led by Professor X takes off to the other end of the universe to stop a revenge-hungry Vulcan. It's up to the team comprised of Nightcrawler, Marvel Girl, Warpath, Havok, Polaris, and a surprise member to save the Shi'ar empire from his wrath. “Spinning out of the pages of X-Men: Deadly Genesis comes “The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire,” a year-long story of revenge and redemption starting in Uncanny X-Men #475.”

l Characters, In

c.]

aracters, Inc.] ED BRUBAKER | 11

Brubaker’s working full script style here, meaning the panel descriptions are written at the same time as the dialogue, captions, and sound effects.

l Characters, In

c.]

Having all the dialogue in front of him enables artist Tan to exactly match the body language and facial expression of the characters to the words they’re speaking.

In the currently-less-frequently used “Marvel style”—or “plot first” method–of comics writing, the artist would have determined the storytelling pace and non-verbal expressions of the characters, which the writer would then have been able to play off of with dialogue. Neither method is necessarily better—they’re just different approaches.

l Characters, In

c.]

Even with full-script method, there are still many creative decisions left to the penciler. Instructions from the writer can still be interpreted many different ways. As you look at these pages, imagine how someone else might have taken the same art directions and come up with an entirely different way to tell the same story.

The underlined words in the dialogue part of the script will be lettered as bold, italicized words in the finished comic. Note that this differs from the standard indication in other forms of writing where an underlined word in a manuscript will be typeset simply in italics.

l Characters, In

c.]

Since there is no standard comics format, writers will indicate bold or otherwise specially treated words differently. Some may put words they want bolded in CAPITAL LETTERS. Other may use the word processing functions to show exactly what words they want bold or in italics or both. The important thing is that writer, editor and letterer all agree on what system they’re using.

l Characters, In

c.]

ED BRUBAKER | 15

aracters, Inc.]

For an interesting exercise, why not try writing your own dialogue for these pages? You could take an entirely different approach. For instance, you could tell the story from the point of view of one of the characters, using a lot of narrative captions. Or you could make up an entirely different story using the same images. These types of exercises are great ways to learn to use words and pictures together.

aracters, Inc.]

THE END

Breaking In Without Rules:

One Writer's Possibly-Instructive Journey

by Kurt Busiek

urt Busiek is one of the most knowledgeable and respected writers on the comics scene today. From Marvels to Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, to the current Superman and Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis he has, for over 20 years, produced a large quantity of high-quality work for many companies. He’s been the struggling newcomer, the hotshot superstar and the accomplished professional. Like everyone else who’s successful in the business, he’s always being asked, “how do I break into comics?” [Like you’d tell someone how they could get your job!] Here, Kurt gives his take on how you can figure out how to do it yourself. It may not be the answer you want to hear—but it’s the right answer. Read on…

—DF

spend a fair amount of time on the Internet, reading and posting to message boards, Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists and the like. Possibly too much time. My editors think so, at least. My wife definitely thinks so. But I do it anyway—I like the feedback. I like to see what fans are thinking, whether it’s reviews of the latest issue of whatever I’m writing, or concerns about future developments, wishes for the return of such-and-such a character, and so on.

One question that comes up a lot, in e-mails and message board posts, gets phrased a lot of different ways, but boils down to “How do I break in?” There are a lot of comics readers out there who’d like to be comics writers (for which the editor and publisher of this magazine are grateful!), and they’re not sure how to go about making the transition. They have a lot of questions—Who do I submit stuff to? What should I submit? What format should it be in? How do you organize a pitch? Do I need an artist? I followed the publisher’s submissions guidelines, and never heard back. Shouldn’t there be a better system? Why do they hire people from TV and movies, but won’t give the rest of us a chance? And so on. But the impression I often get is that what a lot of these would-be writers are really asking for is a set of rules, a map, a procedure that anyone can follow, and it’ll

guide them right up to the door of their favorite comics publisher, and usher them inside. The trouble is, there is no such thing. There never has been. And it makes no sense to complain that there should be one. The fact is, there isn’t, so the people who actually do break in are the people who recognize that fact and work around it, while the people who are waiting for the clear and easyto-follow map to their chosen destination are still waiting. Sure, there are submissions guidelines—most companies have them, and you can find them at most publishers’ websites—but let me tell you a secret: Those guidelines aren’t there to make it easier for you to get in. They’re there to make it easier for the publisher to reject you, and get back to work. It automates the process, makes it easier for one lowly-placed assistant editor in a KURT BUSIEK | 17

cubicle somewhere to shuffle through lots of submissions fast and get out form rejections. Maybe a few people break in via the cold submissions route—artists, usually, since artwork can be judged by taking a quick look at it, and writing samples have to be read—but not many. I don’t know any writers who broke in through the slush pile. And sure, there are people who happen to be drinking buddies with an editor, or the publisher’s wife’s gardener’s son, giving rise to the theory that You Gotta Know Someone. But really, that doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as people think. And if it actually was true, and you don’t Know Someone, then there aren’t any rules that are going to help, so why worry about it? But people still break in, somehow. So there must be a way, right? There must be rules.

Well, no. There really aren’t. What spurred me to write this essay—and in the spirit of disclosure, let me say that I wrote most of it in 2001, as a long, long post on an Internet forum—was the reaction I witnessed when DC Comics announced that they wouldn’t be looking at unsolicited submissions any more. Now, DC had some pretty good reasons for this—going through submissions was a lot of work, it didn’t turn up much in the way of talent, and it exposed them to legal troubles that occasionally cost them time, money and headaches—but oh, the cries of outrage! How could DC do this to the struggling creative community? How could they slam the door in people’s faces like that? Nobody seemed to notice that they hadn’t had any luck breaking in that way—they were just mad that it wasn’t an option any more. The impression I got was that people were upset that a submissions process that was not going to work for them anyway was now closed to them—not that a sure-fire way into the business that broke in people on a regular basis was closed, but that a system that gets almost nobody in is no longer being offered as a way to waste your time fruitlessly. And the cry went up, “They took away the rules! G*dd*mmit, how can I break in and be creative without rules! Somebody tell me the rules!” Even when someone would suggest something that worked for them or for others, it would be rejected as a strategy. “Not everyone can do that!” or “That’s too complicated! Tell me some other rules!” The other possibilities that were suggested, which were things that had actually worked for someone, were in fact no less likely to work for creator-hopefuls than the transom submissions, but they hadn’t rejected the transom option of hand. In fact, useless as it was, they were mad that it was gone. So why such resistance to taking another kind of chance, just as slim? It may be a waste of time—but so was the “opportunity” they were bemoaning the loss of. But that’s not the main point. The main point is this: If you need to have someone lay out a set of instructions for you, you probably don’t have the skills or imagination to be a freelance writer.

Because being a freelance writer isn’t just about writing. If you’re a freelance writer, you are by definition also a small businessman, running a company of one. You will be responsible for that company—you’ll have to find customers (editors, publishers), you’ll have to market

yourself, you’ll have to guide your career. Nobody will do these things for you—if you depend on a publisher to do them, you will either need to be very lucky, in that your needs coincide with the publisher’s, or you will be very disappointed, when you hit a point when the publisher’s needs and yours don’t match, and they go off and serve their own priorities and leave you in the gutter, muttering, “But I followed the rules...!” There are no rules. There is no map. You’ve doubtless heard any number of stories of how someone broke into comics, whether it was Gail Simone writing a humor column on the Internet that made people laugh, which got her an offer to try writing something funny in comics form, or Steve Englehart taking the train up to New York while he was in the military, so he could be an art assistant to Neal Adams, and then wound up writing instead. What those stories inevitably show is that what works for one guy won’t necessarily work for others—but that the people who break in are the people who keep trying until they find a way. They’re the people who figure out their own rules, whether it means maxing out their credit cards to make a movie or Xeroxing their own comic book to sell locally and show around. None of them have any guarantee that it will work. And for some of them, it doesn’t. But the folks it doesn’t work for either quit, or they try something else. And the ones that keep trying either figure out their road in, or they quit. Or they die still trying. I know one guy who keeps showing me his portfolio, and the guy’s got to be over 50, and he’s no good, and I doubt he’ll ever get work, but he’s still trying, because it’s what he wants to do.

breaking in won’t do you any good anyway, because you won’t stay in.

Now me, I broke in on my second submission, and I broke in writing for the big publishers, but it wasn’t because I was lucky. It was because I worked at it and thought about it and figured out what would work best for me and my particular situation. Here’s how I did it. Please note, this is not a set of rules, it’s a demonstration of how you work without them.

First off, I wrote a lot of letters to lettercolumns. I had no idea that this would help me break in—I just did it because I wanted to, and I liked writing, and I wanted to talk critically about why I liked or didn’t like the comics I read (and I was 15 years old, so “critically” was a loose, loose term). But over the course of getting about 100 letters published, I learned how to think about story structure and pacing and how much verbiage I thought was too much and how much I thought was too little, and all kinds of stuff And it’s sad for him that he’s not going that turned out to be to make it, but that’s the way it goes. No useful. And I wrote rules, no map, no guarantees. You might not Kurt’s Justice League of America #224. Art by publishable letters, and Chuck Patton and Dick Giordano. make it. But if you don’t figure out a way it turned out that what [© 2006 DC Comics] that’ll work for you, then you definitely that meant was that won’t make it—because if nothing else, once there were a bunch of you get that first job, you’re not going to get a editors in the business who associated my name with membership card and a stream of offers. You’re going to well-expressed intelligent, usable stuff—even if it was just have to get that second job, and there’s no map to that, usable in the lettercolumns. either. And you’re going to have to keep getting jobs, and it won’t always be easy, and the opportunities you do get While I was doing this, I also practiced writing (and won’t always be ones you should take. But you’ll have to sometimes drawing) comics. I talked a friend into making figure that out as you go along, and use your imagination comics with me. Before I talked him into it, he wanted to and your analytical skills and your vision to continually be a research scientist of some sort, and spent much of keep yourself on a path that works for you. And it’ll often his time drawing detailed layouts of starships. Today, he’s be a road you build for yourself. If you can’t do it, Scott McCloud, and every now and then I wonder if I KURT BUSIEK | 19

should apologize to his mother for killing his ambition to go to MIT. But in any case, I wrote comics he drew, I wrote comics I drew, I wrote comics that other friends drew. Some of ’em never got finished, lots of them were lousy, and it took an awful lot of time. But we did it for close to seven years, through high school and college, and at the end of it I’d learned two things: First, I learned that I didn’t want to be a comics artist, though I’d taught myself a lot about how comics work visually. Second, I learned a lot about the craft of writing comics, without any sort of instruction book. About three or four years into all this, another friend sketched out for me what a full script looked like, based on his memory of having seen one once, shown to him at a con by Julie Schwartz. His sketch was wrong—it was all screwed up and hard to type— but I wrote scripts in that format for the next few years. That was all the insider instruction I had. [I did get something published during that period, though. The Boston Pops put on a “Comic Heroes Night” one year as a fundraising concert, playing Neal Hefti’s Batman TV show theme and “The Flight of the Bumblebee” (better known in some circles as the Green Hornet theme) and others. One of the people on the fundraising committee had a son who was into comics and into drawing, and he pitched her the idea of doing a comic book to sell as a fundraiser. He didn’t know anything about how to make a comic book, but these two kids down the street did, so Scott and I got asked to write and lay out a comic for the Boston Pops, with the guy whose mother was on the committee doing the finished art. We had no idea of what we couldn’t or shouldn’t do, so we came up with a story involving Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch and SpiderMan—and the Boston Pops organization didn’t know this was an impossible idea, so they went and got us permission from Marvel and DC to do this one-shot comic as a fundraiser, provided all unsold copies were destroyed at the end of the evening. So we did it and it was fun and maddening and hectic and it was ultimately the second “official” Marvel/DC crossover and one of the highest-cover-price comics produced to that date (ten bucks!) and it got turned into a slide show/dramatic reading for the event by Robert Desiderio and we got to attend the concert along with a not-very-interested Sol Harrison of DC (Marvel didn’t send anyone). And it got us nowhere at all professionally, but them’s the breaks.]

20 | WRITE NOW

Along the way, my letter-writing and hanging around in comics stores arguing with people about Cary Bates and Steve Englehart got me into writing articles for fanzines, and eventually into editing for fanzines and trade magazines, which didn’t turn out to be much help in the way I thought it would be as I thought it would be, but more help in ways I never thought I’d need. Then, armed with years of practice and no idea how to go about breaking in, I had to break in. My first attempt— sending a cold submission of a lousy Hawkeye backup

Pages from two early scripts by Kurt that were deemed “perfectly usable” by DC’s E. Nelson Bridwell, but for various reasons were never used. Having never seen a real comics script, Kurt made up the format based on a friend’s inaccurate memory of one he once saw. The page at the top is from Kurt’s script for a Supergirl story, and below that is his first page of a “Superman: The In-Between Years” feature. [Characters © 2006 DC Comics. Scripts © 2006 Kurt Busiek.]

tried to sell me drugs and sex) and went and interviewed Dick the next day. I was polite and businesslike and asked him all the questions I needed for my term paper, and when it was all done, I screwed up the courage to tell him I hoped to be a comics writer when I graduated. He wasn’t one of the editors I’d ever sent letters to, but he thought I seemed organized and articulate and serious, and suggested I send in some scripts. So I did. I went back to school and over spring break, I wrote about 80 pages of samples—four full scripts featuring DC characters—and sent them in. Dick didn’t have time to read them, but I’d call every now and then to ask about them, dropping reminders to his assistant that they’d technically been “requested”—and eventually, Dick handed the scripts out to the editors of the books they were written for, just to shut me up. The editor of Brave & Bold never read the B&B script, the rat bastard. But he’s hired me since. So I forgive you, Len!

E. Nelson Bridwell read my Supergirl and “Superman: The In-Between Years” scripts and pronounced them “perfectly publishable”—with the one problem that the Supergirl series was being revamped and relaunched, and thus my script was unusable, and the “The InBetween Years” backup series was being scrapped, so my

story to Marvel, hadn’t worked. So I tried to figure out what I could do, given that I didn’t know anyone in the business above the trade press level. I was attending Syracuse University in upstate New York at the time, taking any classes I thought might help me break into comics—playwrighting, creative writing, comparative mythology, magazine publishing—and for the magazine publishing class, I had to interview a magazine publisher for a term paper. Most of my classmates found magazine publishers either locally or near their home towns, since the paper was due after Thanksgiving break, and that way they could do the interviews at school or home. I talked the professor into letting me classify “DC Comics” as a magazine, since they all carried the same ads, and further, to let me go after the editor-in-chief rather than the publisher. So I called DC, and was able to set up an interview with Dick Giordano, then the e-i-c. I figured that getting in and talking to him was at least something. So that Thanksgiving break, I took the bus to New York and stayed in the cheapest hotel I could find (a Times Square sleazepit, but I didn’t know anything about it before I got there, and I barely knew enough about Times Square to be worried when the people outside KURT BUSIEK | 21

script was unusable. But Nelson’s recommendation got me a chance to pitch Superboy fill-in ideas to Julie Schwartz. I pitched 18. He didn’t like any of them. He gave me a plot idea and told me to write it up. I did. He hated it—he thought it had way too much plot to fit into 15 pages. I told him it was his plot to start with, and he told me that didn’t matter—I should’ve argued him into making it a two-parter! In any case, I got nowhere with Julie. However, Ernie Colón read my Flash sample script, and liked it enough to ask me to pitch “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” backup ideas. I did, and he liked one well enough to assign it to me, so I wrote it, and that was my first sale. A friend of mine, Richard Howell, was showing art samples, so I got Ernie to look at them, and it was his first sale, too. We did the story together.

But the story doesn’t end there. Ernie asked us for another backup, a two-parter—but this time, he had an idea for us. He wanted us to do a slapstick-humor GLC story that was all in pantomime—there could be script to it, but it’d all be lettered in “alien,” so it’d be so much gibberish. Ernie got the idea from some manga volumes I had brought with me; he was impressed by how clearly he could follow the story without being able to read Japanese. Turned out that I wasn’t a good enough writer then to make something like that work, and Richard wasn’t an experienced-enough artist. But we were young and hungry, and we gave it our best shot, figuring that doing what the editor asks you to do is a good idea. It wasn’t. The end result was a bad job, the story was never published, and enough editors saw it and thought it stank that it killed both writer and artist’s careers at DC for several years. We’d broken in, but we were quickly right back outside again. But in the meantime, I hadn’t stopped trying. On the one hand, I was living in New York and not making much money, so I was serving as the New York correspondent and interviewer for Comics Feature, a trade magazine of the day,

and I tried to figure out how to get somewhere from that. One of the people I interviewed for the magazine was Tom DeFalco—and after the interview, I hit him with much the same kind of spiel I’d hit Dick with. I was trying to break in, any suggestions as to what I could do at Marvel? He invited me to submit plots for short Marvel Team-Up backups, and when I did, he liked one about Rick Jones and the Dazzler. So I wrote it up, and he hated it. No sale. Dead end. But I had also noticed that Jo Duffy had left Power Man & Iron Fist, and a new writer was announced. But month after month, the book featured one-issue fill-ins written by the book’s editor, Denny O’Neil. I figured that maybe, just maybe, that new writer wasn’t getting the scripts in. And maybe that meant there was an opportunity there. So I wrote up a two-page outline of a PM/IF fill-in, and mailed it to Denny with a note saying that I was already writing professionally for DC (one sevenpage story, mind you, and a two-parter that wasn’t good enough to publish, but you use what you got…). Denny needed to keep those pages filled, so he read my two pages, called and asked me to flesh it out into a spec script, and when I did, he bought it. So I pitched another. And then a two-parter. That previously-announced new writer never did turn anything in, and I ended up writing the book for a year. But the story still doesn’t end there. By the time I’d been writing PM/IF for a year, I had moved back to New England to save money (couldn’t afford New York, not on the $660/month I was making—$30 a page, and that was after two raises!), and then back to Syracuse. And I had no more contacts in the comics industry—the only guy who was buying anything from me was Denny, and just before I scripted PM/IF #100, he told me that was going to be my last issue. [It wasn’t, as it turned out, because the guy who Denny hired to replace me was almost as slow as the guy I replaced, and I wrote two more fill-ins

on my way out, because Denny needed to fill the pages and I needed the work.] So I was back in my college town and my career was dead in the water. I took another bus ride down to New York, and slept on Richard Howell’s couch for three weeks, and called editors to get appointments, trading heavily on having written a Marvel book for a year and pitching ideas whenever I got the chance. Len Wein hired me to write a JLA fill-in after I pitched a dozen ideas for JLA and Swamp Thing. Dick Giordano asked me to come up with ideas for mini-series about JLA members who didn’t have their own books, and after rejecting outlines for minis about Aquaman, Zatanna, and the Elongated Man, bought a proposal for a Red Tornado mini-series. And Jim Salicrup hired me to be a freelance assistant editor on Marvel Age Magazine, Marvel’s promotional publication, based on those trade-press credits I never thought I’d need. So I returned to Syracuse, paid my back rent, wrote the entire Red Tornado mini in order to get the money to move back to the New York area (to a cheap apartment in New Jersey) and buy a refrigerator. Over the next year or two, I wrote stuff for DC—the Legend of Wonder Woman mini, some World’s Finest fill-ins, a couple more JLAs—while working on Marvel Age and mostly getting nowhere with Marvel editors. But finally, I had enough work to quit the Marvel Age job—a mini-series and a new series featuring a character I’d created myself, both for Alan Gold at DC, and a Madame Masque mini-series for Denny O’Neil at Marvel. So I quit the Marvel Age job and got my roommate the gig in my place–and then in the same week, Denny quit Marvel to go to DC (killing the Madame Masque mini) and Alan

KURT BUSIEK | 23

Gold quit comics altogether (sending both projects I had with him into turnaround). Len Wein was buried in other work, and the editor who’d bought my World’s Finest scripts had left the field, so I couldn’t get other work. And I couldn’t get my old job back because my roommate had it. So I got a job at Burger King, and kept trying. And I broke in by increments, working as an assistant editor at a small book publisher, as a literary agent at an unscrupulous literary agency, and, ultimately, as a sales manager at Marvel, pitching comics stuff as best I could and writing fill-ins and stuff by night. Before the Marvel staff job, I wrote fill-ins for DC and the Liberty Project at Eclipse (for which I made something like $8/page, but had fun on and learned a lot), and while on staff at Marvel wrote some issues of What If, and went to conventions and talked to editors and looked for possibilities. Eventually, I had enough promises of work at Marvel and elsewhere that I quit the day job (again), because I couldn’t be on staff at Marvel and write for Eclipse, Harris and Disney Comics, all of whom had work for me, and the Marvel writing work I had (those What Ifs, mostly) wasn’t enough to build a career on. By this time, I was married, and like an idiot I compounded my original error by moving out of the area again—this time all the way to the Pacific Northwest,

where, sure, Dark Horse was based, but they weren’t offering me any work. So if what I had lined up—The Wizard’s Tale at Eclipse (ultimately published by Wildstorm, but that’s another story), a Mickey Mouse script and a (never-published) Final Fantasy mini-series for Disney Comics, Vampirella: Morning in America at Harris, and the ever-present What If—fell apart, I’d be dead in the water all over again. Luckily, I managed to keep finding work—including some Spectacular Spider-Man fill-ins for some guy named Fingeroth—and after Marvels came out it turned into steady work, and I haven’t had to worry about how to pay the mortgage for a while now. But even though I broke in on my second submission, it took eleven years before I managed to stay in on an ongoing basis.

At this point, those of you who’ve made it this far may be thinking, “But I don’t know anyone’s mom who works for the Boston Pops,” or “I can’t interview Dick Giordano for a term paper—I graduated already!” or even, “But they don’t do backups and fill-ins that much any more!” That’s not the point. Like I said way back at the start, this isn’t intended as a set of rules for how You Too Can Break In The Busiek Way. What it is, as noted, is an example of how to strategize without rules.

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I never followed submissions guidelines. I didn’t even know they existed. I had no insiders offering advice on the Internet or anywhere else. I was too chicken to talk to pros at cons. I had never met Dick Giordano before interviewing him, had never met Nelson or Julie or Ernie before they saw my samples, didn’t meet Denny until after he’d bought that first fill-in. And I wrote my sample scripts in the wrong format—Julie Schwartz, who had supposedly shown a script in that format to a friend of mine, looked at my samples and told me that first thing, don’t ever write a script in a silly-ass format like this again, and showed me how his writers actually did it. But if you read this article carefully, you’ll see that what I did was: I practiced, and I communicated, and I figured things out for myself, because nobody was telling me any rules. Scott and I stumbled along and worked out our craft skills until we knew what we were doing, at least on a beginner level.

You don’t have the same stuff to work with that I did. Everyone’s got different stuff. Scott Lobdell worked nights, so he came in to Marvel and DC during the day, got into an editor’s office any way he could, and pitched idea after idea as long as anybody would listen to him. If he sold a story, he’d write it the next morning and get into the offices again to deliver it, and, while he was there, again keep pitching as long as anybody would listen. He proved his dependability and his tenacity and his skill at writing publishable stuff, and that led to a regular gig on Alpha Flight—until he got fired from it for reasons that had nothing to do with him. But getting fired from Alpha Flight got him some emergency X-Men dialogue jobs in part because someone felt he’d been unfairly fired (he’d doubled sales on the book with that

And I looked at what I had, and used it to get me places where I could impress someone. I was in college, so I used a term-paper assignment to get into Dick’s office, where I impressed him with a sensible enough manner to get invited to submit stuff. I used the samples I did for Dick to get me into editors’ offices, where I impressed Ernie (briefly) and didn’t impress Julie. I used my trade magazine experience to get into Tom DeFalco’s office, and didn’t impress him. I used analysis and deduction to figure out Denny needed fill-ins, and pitched what he needed when he needed it, using my tenuous DC credits as a hook to get read. And so on. I used my experience working in the trade ’zines to get Marvel Age, an assignment I didn’t much want, but it got me money, it got me experience and it got me in the door. There were a lot of dead ends along the way, and a lot of wasted effort, but I had no idea which effort was wasted until I’d tried. I built on what I had, and I did whatever I could, and I eventually built that into something. But it wasn’t easy, and nobody was looking out for me (unless you count my father loaning me $2,000 when I was flat broke, and Scott paying the rent a couple of months when we were roomies in New York and I had no cash to cover my share), and I had no rules to follow. But building on what you have and impressing whoever you can manage to make contact with—and persevering—are skills that any freelancer needs, and skills he’ll probably still need long after he makes that first sale.

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“Northstar’s gay!” issue, after all, and this was the thanks he got) and in part because they desperately needed someone who could do the jobs overnight and have them be publishable. And that got him the regular gig on an A-list XMen book, and from there he became a star. He worked with what he had, he impressed people when he had a chance, and the constant effort resulted in a few breaks. And those few breaks added up to the right break. Marv Wolfman broke in a different way—including short stories for DC’s horror anthologies, like House of Mystery. Karl Kesel broke in in yet another way, through DC’s New Talent Showcase. Everyone used what they had, and did what they could and figured out a path that worked for them. So, great. DC’s not taking unsolicited submissions. Big deal—it’s not like unsolicited submissions were going to work anyway. If you’re serious about breaking in to comics, don’t worry about any formal submissions system with a set of rules to follow. Whenever there is one, it’s flooded with crap anyway, and it doesn’t get you anywhere because your submission is lost in a nine-foot-high morass of 12-part mini-series proposals that “fix” the X-universe and screenplays for unfilmable Spider-Man movies and stuff written in red Sharpie on brown-paper bags (I’m not kidding about

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any of that, by the way). The people who break in break in by finding another way. Mike Baron and Steve Rude did comics for a distributor based in their hometown that wanted to publish some comics. That’s not in the rules. Barbara Kesel wrote Dick Giordano a 13-page letter telling him everything DC was doing wrong, and how they should fix it, and got an invite to submit something. That’s not in the rules either. [And it must have been one heck of a letter, because most letters like that get introduced to the trashcan pretty quick.] You don’t need a map. You need to figure out what you’ve got and capitalize on that. Instead of bemoaning the fact that you can’t mail in something that a publisher wasn’t going to read and wasn’t going to buy, try to figure out something else, something that builds off your skills or knowledge or contacts or whatever. If you don’t have any way to get at Marvel and DC editors, try to get at someone else. Make comics, not just proposals—even making crappy comics that convince you that you never want to draw another background again in your life will teach you more about telling a story in pictures on paper than a zillion proposals in the slush pile.

You are your own business manager. You have to be. If all you can do is write, you have no future, since you will get screwed. Not by malicious editors, since they’re as rare a breed as people who broke in because they were somebody’s gardener—but by editors who use you to fill their needs without any concern for what’s best for you and your career. That’s not evil. It’s not their job to care about your career; it’s their job to care about getting their books done. It’s your job to care about your career. So develop the skills. Don’t ask others to hand them to you. Analyze the market yourself. Figure out who needs what you can do—not who controls what you want to write, but who has a specific need you can fill, whether it be Power Man fill-ins or one-page humor fillers in a local paper. And if it isn’t what you want to do most, too bad. How many people get to start out on their dream assignment—in any field? Do it anyway, and see what you can build on it. A year’s worth of single-page weekly comics is enough to fill a 48-page collection, and that’s a fine calling card. But don’t look at the great gulf of distance between where you are and where you want to be, and complain that you can’t get there without help. Look for the closest opportunity you can find, finagle or create—and go for it. Then, whether it works or not, look for the next one. And if it takes you 18 years between deciding you want to be a comics writer and actually making a dependable living at it, well, welcome to the club. That’s how long it took me, too. If you’re not willing to do the work involved in figuring out what opportunities may exist and going after them, then find a job with a salary—you’ll never survive as a freelancer.

One last note, for anyone who thinks comics should be like book publishing: Comics aren’t like book publishing. Thinking they should be gets you nowhere, so it’s a waste of time. Deal with reality, not how you wish things were. The major reason comics aren’t like book publishing is that comics editors and book editors need different things. Both of them need to keep putting out material, but after that, it just ain’t the same. To keep putting out books, a book editor needs to keep finding new authors, at least until they have a stable of steady producers, and even then the editor will usually need to find more authors, as authors die or go to other publishing houses or slump in sales. But comic book editors? They need to fill the books. And for most comics, that means a regular team. So the regular team is filling that book every month, and the editor’s job isn’t about seeking out new material—it’s about getting the book out on time, getting those regular guys to produce. A book editor’s year is usually filled with one project per writer, so he deals with a lot of writers and there’s a lot of need for new guys. A comic book editor editing five monthly books may not need to hire anyone new that year. Their books may just be full—and if they are, and the books are ontime and profitable, that editor’s doing a good job without ever looking at the slush pile. And even if he needs to bring in someone else, odds are he can choose from a crowd of experienced comics professionals, notable names from other media, and so on. Finding new people is not part of his job. Getting the books out is. The way you break in is by finding someone who needs help getting the books out, whether those books are long-running monthly titles or a slate of ten original graphic novels that only have seven spots filled, and filling his need—by helping get the books out. KURT BUSIEK | 27

Does that suck, that editors are looking to fill their needs and not yours? That they’re not out beating the bushes for the next Alan Moore? Maybe so, but it’s how things work, and complaining that it sucks won’t get you any closer to where you want to be. For that matter, they weren’t out beating the bushes for the first Alan Moore either. Alan did what he could, and found, finagled or made opportunities, and one thing led to another, and now he’s ALAN MOORE, and there’re thousands of would-be creators who want to get that break writing Marvelman or Swamp Thing—but they’re not out doing Maxwell the Magic Cat first. Alan did, because it was the door that was open at the time, and that’s the kind of thing that got him the next opportunity, or the practice to take advantage of the next opportunity when it showed up. Doug Moench wrote text for porn pictorials. Bill Mantlo did production work. Neil Gaiman wrote a book about— what, Duran Duran? None of them had a map, because there isn’t one. You don’t need one either. You already have access to more information and examples that most of the people working in comics had when they broke in, whether it’s magazines like this one, books like Nat Gertler’s Panel One: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers, Lurene Haines’s Writer’s Guide to the Business of Comics, Denny O’Neil’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, an embarrassment of creator websites, and more. What you need is to figure out what you can do from where you are. Don’t dwell on what someone else did and why you can’t do it—they had plenty of things they couldn’t do either, so they didn’t do them. They figured out what they could do, instead.

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That’s the secret. Think for yourself, and try what you think of, until something works. Don’t ask someone whether you need a penciler and an inker, or someone who can do both. Use your judgment. Craft is nothing without judgment. Careers can’t be maintained without judgment. So start practicing it now. And good luck with it.

THE END

SCREENPLAY TO NOVEL: BATMAN BEGINS

INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS O’NEIL

Conducted via telephone by Eric Fein in August, 2005 Transcribed by Steven Tice Copyedited by Liz Gehrlein, Dennis O’Neil, Eric Fein and Danny Fingeroth

n this case, the cliché is true: Dennis O’Neil 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. During this time, he helped create one of the most important villains to be introduced into Batman’s Rogues Gallery in the last 40 years, Ra’s Al Ghul. It is Ra’s Al Ghul who plays a pivotal role in Batman Begins, the movie that in 2005 successfully relaunched the cinematic life of Batman. Appropriately, Denny—whose previous DC novelizations include Batman: Knightfall and Green Lantern: Hero’s Quest— landed the assignment to turn Begins into a prose novel. Eric Fein caught up with Denny recently to speak with him about his work on the novelization (published by Del Rey) and to get his thoughts on the movie as well as on what it takes to write a novel. —DF Eric Fein: How did you get the assignment to turn Batman Begins into a novel, Denny?

Denny O’Neil: When I heard from somebody at DC Comics that the movie was being done and that a character I had created would be featured in it, I sent a short e-mail to [DC Comics President and Publisher] Paul Levitz indicating that I’d be happy to be involved in some way. And, if not, how about just letting me read the script? He got back to me a couple of days later with an offer to do the novelization and to work as a consultant on the videogame. EF: That’s great. Did you enjoy the process? DO: Yeah. I went into it a little trepidatiously because I had no idea what kind of script this would be. It is possible, if you are of an uncharitable cast of mind, to say that not all the Batman movies have been cinematic masterpieces. But as I read this, I said to myself several times throughout the process of reading it, “Wow, why didn’t I think of this?” They [director/writer Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David Goyer] really understood the character. They

especially understood the whole Batman mythos. There was a lot of emphasis on story values. I thought that they did just an absolutely nifty job of doing the adaptation— making it a movie, of course, but capturing the spirit of what I think of as the best of Batman comics. EF: Their love of Batman and his world certainly came through. DO: Yeah, they really got it. And when I say the best, it’s not only of my stuff, but going back to Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Just the best takes on that character that there have been. EF: They really understood what people love about the character. When you started the project, did they give you a word or a page count for the manuscript? DO: You almost always have a ballpark figure. They wanted it to be somewhere in the 70 to 75 thousandword neighborhood. I don’t actually know what the final DENNY O’NEIL | 29

word count was. It was something in that general area. EF: From start to finish, how long did it take you to write the book? DO: I did something I swore I would never do again—I wrote a novel very quickly. I mean, I’m retired. I’m not supposed to have to do race deadlines anymore. But I had something like three months, maybe a little more. EF: That’s fast. How many pages did you write per day? Five, ten, less?

DO: Yeah, that was a tribute to Julie Schwartz. He loved jazz.

DO: Mm-hm. And if they want to believe that, that’s fine. That was something that happened originally in a conversation between comics writer Devin Grayson and my wife, Marifran. They were talking about how maybe poor Alfred should have a love life. So, yeah, in my mind it was Leslie that he was going to go and see in the city.

EF: Right—you don’t have any breathing room, because everything has to be approved by the movie people, which takes away any extra time.

EF: Sounds like it took an incredible amount of discipline.

EF: One of the things that I enjoyed about the novelization was the little touches that you added to it for the characters. For example, you gave Alfred a personal life and had him enjoy Louis Armstrong music.

EF: And you also did something very cool with Alfred—you hinted that he had a romantic relationship with a woman who runs an inner-city clinic. Now, most diehard Batman fans would just assume that was Leslie Thompkins.

DO: You do simple arithmetic. You figure out how many working days you’ve got and how many words have to be done per day. In this case, as with the last novel I wrote under those conditions, it was about a thousand words a day. And that’s not negotiable. When you’re working on something like a movie project, you really do have to meet the deadline.

DO: Everything is on a tight schedule, and everything depends on everything else. So I got back into a mode of working that I haven’t been in for about four years, which is, at a given time I’d go downstairs, turn on the computer, and when I have my word count, I can stop.

To cite a term I like to use in the classes I teach, everything had to stick to the spine of the story. I couldn’t digress, but I did have to amplify.

EF: You added a sequence that was not in the movie, where Bruce goes to New York Denny’s novelization of the Batman Begins screenplay. tracking down the Ra’s Al Ghul [© 2006 DC Comics and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.] manuscripts, and you actually show him doing some detective work and a little breaking-and-entering. Was that in the original script?

DO: Well, it’s normal professional writer discipline. I thought I would not have to be this again in my life. But, it was not a bad experience, because it was finite. I knew “I have to work this hard for three months, and then it will be over.”

DO: No, that was all me. Since the book is written entirely from Batman’s point of view, except for the brief digressions, there had to be a logical reason for him to find that stuff out, and I thought, “Well, while I’m at it, I’ll motivate the utility belt and the detective stuff.”

EF: In your process for doing the book, did you outline? Did you make notes on the script?

EF: It made a nice bridge; it was another piece of the puzzle in his progression to finally putting on the costume. You also created a character, a librarian at a college, to help Bruce with some background information. Did you model her on the original version of Barbara Gordon?

DO: No, I never do. I read thoroughly. Part of my assignment was to amplify the script, particularly with regard to the villain’s backstory. So it was more a question of figuring out an approach that would allow me to leave the original story intact but allow for some amplification. 30 | WRITE NOW

DO: Not really. I don’t think I had Barbara in mind. I just needed a librarian.

EF: And it was a way to show Bruce interacting with someone his own age who wasn’t a love interest or an adversary. DO: Yeah. I figured, actually, that that character was six to ten years older than Bruce. But, yeah, interacting with someone outside his social set who was not a cop or a criminal. EF: The other thing that I enjoyed was the way that you worked in Ra’s’ backstory, and also had journal entries from him. Did your editors not like you breaking point-ofview and giving the villain some time, or was it just, “Okay, go with it.” DO: No, they liked it a lot. EF: Who were your editors on this book? DO: Well, primarily Chris Cerasi. He got some input, but I think not an awful lot, from the movie people. And [Del Rey editor] Steve Saffel was kind of the guy who watched out for the publisher’s interest. We all had a nice lunch, and Steve made several good suggestions. But I cannot praise Chris highly enough. He is a relatively young guy, and next to [former DC Comics Licensed Publishing Editor] Charlie Kochman he’s one of the best book editors I’ve ever worked with—in that his concern is to make it a good book, and that’s his only concern. And that is, I’m afraid, increasingly rare today. He was Charlie’s assistant, and I would have, of course, preferred Charlie, who’s a good friend as well as a great editor, to get the book, but he now works for another company, and he and Devin Grayson both assured me that I would get along with Chris, and they were absolutely right. I’m doing another book for him. EF: Another Batman novel? DO: No, this is going to be The Question. For fifteen years I’ve wanted to write a Question novel, and now I finally

have a chance to do it. Batman will be in it to the extent that he was in the original comic book series, and I may amp up his part a little bit. Lady Shiva will be in it—she was always part of the Question’s continuity. EF: It’s like “O’Neil’s Greatest Hits.” DO: Yeah, it’s very pleasant to be able to go back and revisit that stuff. EF: And then be able to do it in a new way, in a new format. Writing a novel can entail a different take on things. DO: There were a few compromises—in The Question comics series—probably fewer than in any mainstream series I’ve ever done—but there were one or two things that I wouldn’t have to do today. Comics have evolved. So I will have whatever satisfaction there is to be derived from telling the story in the novel the way I think it ought to be told. I mean, I had less editorial dicta on that series than on almost anything, but there were conventions of comic books at the time that I felt I had to honor. EF: I think one of the reasons that people like novelizations is that they are an opportunity to get into the heads of the characters. DO: Yeah. And the movie people conveyed to me through Chris that, yeah, some of the stuff I put in they might have put in the movie, except they’ve only got two hours to tell the story. EF: Speaking of Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, was it odd or uncomfortable at all for you to be writing a novel that was based on your earlier works but filtered through other people’s points of view? DO: It was a weird trip, yeah. [chuckles] They rewrote me, and I rewrote their rewrite. If they hadn’t done such a good job, I’m sure it would have been profoundly uncomfortable. I thought they got Ra’s’ essential character exactly right, and one of the things I always preach about is that a comic book is not a movie and it’s not a novel—you have to reinvent the character for each medium. EF: Did you find your familiarity with the Ra’s character a help or almost an obstacle in doing the adaptation? In the heat of writing, would you write the character one way and then have to pull yourself back and go, “No, no, no. Here, in this version of the world, he actually should be acting this way.”

DO: One of the reasons, I’m sure, I got the job, was my familiarity with the character and how that facilitated my amplifying the backstory, the stuff they couldn’t put in the movie. But it’s been so long since I’ve actually dealt with Ra’s extensively. I had written a graphic novel— EF: Yeah, his origin.

DENNY O’NEIL | 31

DO: —and I borrowed generously from that. And I didn’t find that there was any conflict between the way I conceived the character and doing honor to the movie version of it. EF: Other than the three-month deadline, it seems like you enjoyed going back in and reliving those characters and that world. DO: Yeah. And responding to what two other good writers had done with the basic material. Yeah. I mean, the deadline—I discovered years ago that I probably benefit from deadlines. I think many people do. It focuses you. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with quality. I mean, there are people who are facile, fast writers, and there are people who are naturally slow writers. And the advantage of a deadline is, it’s probably not going to be substantially better if you have an extra year to work on it, and it does focus your energy and focus your thoughts. I’ve lived with deadlines for 40 years, so going back into it for a third of a year or so was not horrible. EF: And you had, I guess, the first draft of the script. Were you getting revised pages? DO: No. There didn’t seem to have been the number of rewrites while the movie was being shot that there often are. EF: As you were reading the script, did you find that there were points in the script that needed to be clarified from a layman’s point of view, for someone who didn’t understand Batman? DO: No. I mean, I had trouble visualizing some of it—how exactly, if he falls off this, does he get there? That kind of thing. And there were one or two things that weren’t

explained. How does Rachel get back from her house to the Narrows? Stuff like that. And I completely understand why they didn’t put it in the movie— it’s not interesting and who cares? For dramatic purposes, she gets there. What’s important about that is her confrontation with Bruce Wayne/Batman, and her saving that kid’s life. But I think I used 75 words or so to explain that. EF: Right. And I think there was also a scene in the novel where Bruce is with Lucius, and they have the Batmobile delivered on a flatbed to a test track near an airfield. And that wasn’t even in the movie. It was just, “Oh, under Wayne Enterprises there’s a test track.” DO: Yeah. I don’t even remember if that was in the script. I’m sorry. It’s now been six months since I wrote the novel. EF: What I’m getting at is that, with things like that, it’s not as easy to gloss over it in a novel like you can in a movie. DO: Because a novel’s not moving as fast. The pacing of a story in a film is controlled by the director, and maybe he very deliberately does not give you time to wonder about stuff like that, because, like I said, it’s not interesting. But in a novel, I do think those particular T’s have to be crossed. EF: I remember reading in an article about Hitchcock that someone once asked him about something in his movie not making sense, and he said he didn’t care if something didn’t make sense to the audience after they had watched the movie and were walking home. He was more concerned with the audience being caught up in the moment while watching the movie. DO: And I think that’s a totally valid approach to moviemaking. Y’know, I’m 66 years old, but I’m still

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learning about the stuff I’ve done for a living virtually all of my life. This is the second Batman novel I’ve done from other material, and I’m learning some things work better in novels. Chases don’t work very well either in comic books or in prose, so if you can find a novelistic way to render the same dramatic points, you benefit. Otherwise, you do the chase as well as you can. EF: Since you brought up your other adapted Batman novel, Batman: Knightfall, which was a prose version of a huge Batman comics event/crossover, can you talk about the difference between turning a series of comic books into a novel as opposed to adapting a screenplay? DO: Well, in adapting Knightfall, I found there were way too many action scenes in the comic books. That’s the way that comic books express conflict, and it’s valid for that medium. Conflict is not as well expressed novelistically in physical action. So I turned some of those fight scenes into argument scenes or dialogue scenes. There was a lot more of Knightfall to compress. It was also tricky because the ending of Knightfall hadn’t been written when I started writing the novel, so I was doing this juggling act of writing some of the comic books, editing the entire project, occasionally giving advice to the BBC people who were simultaneously doing a radio adaptation, and, at night, writing the novel. As I’ve said several times, it was a really interesting mountain to climb. I would never want to do it again. I mean, as an experience, it was nonpareil, but once in a lifetime was plenty. EF: You’re talking about more than a thousand pages of comic book story… DO: 1,165 pages of comic book made into a 100,000word novel against an unforgiving deadline, and in the middle of it Marifran and I were in a major car wreck. I was not able to work for two or three weeks. Every Saturday morning, Marifran and I would meet Charlie Kochman and give him pages. He edited it as we went along, and we were down to the wire. I think I made the

last change in the novel about an hour before it went on the press. EF: That’s cutting it close. DO: For the final week, Charlie came to where we lived in Brooklyn, and we put in three 12-to-15-hour days, with Charlie and me sitting at my desk, and Marifran appearing every three or four hours with cookies or lemonade, doing the last edit like that. Monday noon it had to be on the presses, and I think Charlie called me at 11:00 am with one last question. That is a conscientious editor. I’m sure not one reader in 100,000 would have noticed any problem, but you either decide to do it as well as you can, or you don’t. Batman Begins was in many ways a lot easier than Knightfall. I started with a script. I knew exactly where the story was going. I knew pretty much what I had to add. It was not the frantic, desperate event that Knightfall was. I mean, one of the things that made Knightfall so interesting was that we weren’t sure we could bring it off on any level at all. Whenever you do a big comic book stunt like that, there’s always the fear that there’s some horrible inconsistency at the very heart of the story, and I’m not seeing it, and I won’t Denny’s Knightfall novel, adapting 1,165 see it until everything comics pages into a 100,000-word book. is in print. The last time we went [© 2006 DC Comics.] through that was with DENNY O’NEIL | 33

No Man’s Land, which was an even bigger project. And there were a couple of minor glitches, but nothing that would invalidate the story. So you are never really aware, when you’re doing something like that, that it’s going to work. Well, here I had a good movie script to start with. I knew what the deadline was, and I pretty much knew what they were expecting of me beyond the film script, so the main thing I had to worry about was getting a thousand words a day done, and I was smart enough this time to not wreck a Pontiac in the middle of the process. EF: [laughs] Now, a thousand words a day, that’s about five pages, six pages of manuscript. DO: Something like that. When I’m doing comics, I do think in terms of pages and not words, and I ask five pages a day of myself. EF: So you don’t force yourself to write a 22-page comic book story in one day? DO: I did that once, once in all those years. It was not a great story. Of the stuff that I think was pretty good, I once did 15 pages of Question at one sitting after working an editorial job all day, taking a tai chi lesson, and then walking across New York with my girlfriend. And then I sat down and did 15, and I don’t remember why I did it—but —that was the only time. Y’know, you can’t coddle yourself and do too little, but I’ve found that trying to do too much, I’d be burned out for the next day. So, as I tell my writing classes, you find out for yourself over time what works and

what doesn’t. For me, five pages seemed to be about the right amount. If I was under deadline pressure, I could do more. I seldom wanted to do less. If I’m going to sit down and do it at all, let’s do five pages. EF: How do you approach a prose novel script compared to a comics script? DO: Well, it’s a process. I had done so many comics scripts, that I had a process that I trusted. I did a Green Lantern novel a couple of years ago. But a little ways into GL/GA novel, I realized, “My God, I haven’t written a science fiction novel in 30 years! I don’t have a process for doing this! I have no idea how to do this, really!” So it took me about three weeks of walking around a lake near my house and kind of groping into it. But that’s usually my way of working—once I get the parameters of the assignment established, I try to walk a little bit every day before going to work and just think about, “Okay, I’ve got to do this scene today. This scene has to accomplish what?” Right now for The Question novel, I’m trying to figure out what tone to take—should this be first-person, third-person, some mixture?—to answer those questions for myself before I begin to parse out the plot. I had to give the editor an outline for the Question novel, but it was cursory. It was, like, thirty pages for a 75,000-word novel. I think that means Chris trusts me, and I’m flattered. But, for me, even with the comic books, Marifran and I would walk every Sunday afternoon and I would talk out my plot with her, and then Monday I could start writing. EF: So she’s kind of your creative partner, your sounding board? DO: She has functioned as an editor in that, while she’s not a professional writer, both my son and I are, and she’s in that way married to it and she’s also written a lot of puppet show scripts when she was back in St. Louis. So she knows what the story-making process is, and is able to ask the right questions. I was stuck about halfway through the Green Lantern novel. I knew what kind of terrible mess I was going to get my hero in, but I didn’t know how to get him out of it. So we were driving back from visiting Mark Twain’s house in Connecticut, and I was explaining my problem, and she said, “Well, the thing that you established about the Guardians not understanding storytelling, wouldn’t that be a way out of this?” And I thought, “Absolutely!” So, while that wasn’t the whole answer, it got me started on the answer. That’s the kind of thing that having somebody like that in your life can do—not hold your hand, but maybe sometimes ask the right question or make the right observation. She’s done it with comics, and she’s done it with two of the books I’ve written.

EF: So it’s important to do some sort of prep work before you start writing. DO: It would be interesting to sometime just

sit down and start typing and see what came out, but I generally have to know what kind of story I’m going to tell and roughly where it’s going. In plotting out these elaborate comic book continuities, which we used to do every few years, sometimes my assistants wanted more detail. They wanted us to stay on the writers and editors retreat until we had pretty much figured out all the beats of the story. And I thought, well, we have to know where the story is going, we have to know what it’s about, but, to some degree, if you’re working with good writers, you have to trust them to fill in the blanks. When I’m working as a writer with an editor, I think they are well within their rights to ask me, “What kind of story is this going to be? How’s it going to end? What’s it going to be about? What are the conflicts?” I don’t necessarily want to have to tell them every incident, both because my mind doesn’t work that way and because it makes the writing process a little more interesting if you have to make some of it up as you go along. EF: Some people say it’s the journey of the story that counts, and others will say it’s the end—the destination—so you should at least have the end in mind so you have something to write towards. DO: Sure. But then, if you have a better idea halfway through, you leave yourself permission to go with that idea, provided you’ve talked with your editor and say, “I’ve rethought the ending of the book; this is what I’d like to do.” You don’t want the editor to be surprised, thinking he’s getting a story about black and you deliver a story about white. But I’ve never worked with a good editor who was not amenable to having a phone conversation about ideas I’ve had.

movie that I got to know Sam. I offered him a comic book writing gig. It turns out he was an old comic book fan, so he was happy to do it. And he created Ducard in that storyline. [END SPOILER ALERT] EF: Do you read stories you’ve written when they come out? DO: Not any more, not for years. I hate reading published work. Mostly it’s ego. I will see what’s wrong. It’ll jump off the page and slap me in the face, and it’ll be too late to do anything about it. EF: Well, you’ve said that you’re pretty happy with the way the Batman Begins novelization came out. Is there anything that you wish you had room to put in it, or something that you wish you’d changed? DO: There probably would be if I reread it. I stopped reading my published work years and years ago. I still enjoy writing, and I still enjoy the process. I don’t know what my life would be without it. But at this point, going back is just an act of masochism. With the Question novel, Marifran reread the three years of the comic books, and she has already been my reference on some things that I’ve been thinking about. We were childhood sweethearts who didn’t see each other for 30 years and got back together. One of the things that I sent her when we started dating again was The Question. So she has developed an affinity for that material. In fact, it’s her that’s cheerleading my doing this book. She had all of the comics bound, and will be my reference person on it. I’ll

EF: Right. Because writing, even doing a novelization, is about that creativity. They hired you for who you are— the writer and editor of Batman for many years—and also for what you bring to the characters. DO: Presumably. And even if you’re a novice writer, your editor has to have enough faith in you to think you’ll be able to do the job, that you’ll bring something to the table. EF: And, speaking of endings, what did you think about the surprise revelation at the end of Batman Begins? [SPOILER ALERT:] It was Ducard who was really Ra’s Al Ghul, and—something they seem to have lifted from Batman: Year One—the Joker is running around loose. How did you approach these scenes, as you wrote them, to gain the maximum emotional impact? Because, basically, most of the readers are probably people who have already seen the movie. Or do you not even worry about that, you just try to tell the story? DO: When I was reading the script for the first time, I was taken by surprise, so I thought that it was an effective device, especially since there was a Ducard in the continuity. He was created in some Batman comics by Sam Hamm [co-screenwriter of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie]. [A three-part story in Detective Comics #s 598–600.—DF] It was right after the first Burton Batman

DENNY O’NEIL | 35

probably forget characters’ names and stuff like that. EF: I think not remembering details of their own work is something that a lot of writers go through. There’s the famous case of Raymond Chandler. When his novel, The Big Sleep, was being filmed, the filmmakers discovered he forgot to include who killed the chauffeur, and the film’s director, Howard Hawks, sent Chandler a letter asking who it was, and Chandler responded, “I don’t know.” [laughs] DO: Yeah. First they asked Leigh Brackett [the film’s coscreenwriter], and she didn’t know, and then they asked Chandler, and he didn’t know. I may be completely wrong about this. It doesn’t seem to me to be terribly healthy to go back and kind of fawn over one’s past work. Among other things, writing comics has been a job. It’s not something I wanted to do as a child, it was something that I kind of fell into. And I’m grateful. I can’t imagine having a better life, given my talents and my limitations, than the one I had as the writer and editor of Batman. It was really interesting. But it was also my job, and what I always had to be concerned about was the next big project. EF: And you were a freelancer for part of your career, so you had to keep the money coming in to support yourself. DO: Dick Giordano and I once compared notes and found that, even after we were established, we still felt that, “Gee, if I blow this one, I’ll never get another job.” So I always felt that. “I have to hit this deadline!” That probably was not a terribly healthy way for me to approach it, but it did have the advantage of making me a reasonably reliable guy, and if they weren’t going to get genius, at least they were going to get it by Thursday. EF: At the same time, though, as you said, under the 36 | WRITE NOW

parameters that you set up for yourself, you knew you had X number of pages to complete in X number of days, and then that assignment would be over, and you could move on to the next one. DO: And if you’re as insecure as I was, it was, “Well, I’ll get on to the next one before they realize how terrible this one is.” I’d do that for decades on end. So as unhealthy psychological mindsets go, that’s one of the healthier ones, because at least it keeps you productive. EF: When you actually saw Batman Begins, how did that compare to how you envisioned the movie in your head? DO: I was surprised at how different it was. And different does not mean worse, just different. For example, I visualized the monastery as looking way different than it did, and some of the stuff in the Narrows, too. That’s one of the things that made watching the movie interesting, to see how off my visualizations were. I think my visualizations would have worked okay for the movie, but theirs were probably as good or better. EF: I wanted to talk about the actual process as far as how you take a movie script scene and kind of flesh it out for a novel. If in the script it says, “Batman swings down from a building and jumps into the Batmobile,” what do you do with that scene if it’s an important scene in the book? DO: Well, for one thing, you have to add a lot of physical detail, because the film script will just say, “He swings down.” Something that [science fiction writer] Poul Anderson talked about years ago was to try and get as many senses into a novel scene as possible. What does it smell like? What is the character hearing? Is it cold? Is it hot? You can add those kinds of details. Provided your structure allows it, you can get inside the character’s head.

Is he scared? Is he elated? Is he stoic? You can add those kinds of details. In the film, you get them from the actor, and a good actor will give you that. Generally, directors don’t like too much of that kind of detail in a script. Rightfully so—it’s their job and the actors’ job to add that stuff. EF: Right. Directors do not want to be told what to shoot. On the other hand, animation scripts are highly detailed because everything has to be storyboarded and designed. DO: Yeah, film directors basically want a master shot and dialogue in the script, and what the action beats are. It’s very different writing for animation, where they do want a lot more detail. I always thought that was kind of interesting, that an animation script for television is generally much longer than a live action script, and yet, even now, animators are not part of the Writers Guild. I found it harder to write animation than live action. Anyway, getting back to your question. Yeah, you get inside the character’s head, provided the structure of the scene allows it, and you add sensory details, visual details. That’s it. You always try to suss out—“what is the work that this scene has to do?” Harrison Ford, who was married to a writer for many years, said that his job as an actor is to look at a scene, find out what essential piece of action the scene conveys, and then figure out an amusing way to deliver that information. Well, that’s not a bad description of what writers should do, too. And, of course, if the scene doesn’t do something essential for the story, it shouldn’t be there. The exception to that can be, if the scene is just so tremendously amusing in and of itself, well, then, maybe you don’t get really all picky about whether or not it sticks to the spine of the story. But don’t do that much. EF: So, it’s okay once in a while, because it actually helps with the pacing—especially if you’ve come off a big, intense scene… DO: Well, you need to change pace. Where I basically got this idea, is from William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. His example is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There’s a great variety of scenes in the screenplay—melodrama, action, humor, romance—and every one of them eventually puts those two guys under the guns of that militia at the end of the movie. EF: Right. So everything has a purpose pointing them in one direction. DO: If it were easy, anybody would be able to do it. [laughs] EF: Is there anything else you wanted to add about writing the novelization? DO: I think we’ve pretty much covered it. It’s still something I’m learning to do. I consider myself, at best, a journeyman novelist. I’ve written five or six of them in my life, and each one has been different. They say that when you’re past 60, you have to keep your brain working, as

well as your body. Well, not quite knowing how I’m going to write this next book any more than I quite knew how I was going to write the last one keeps those brain cells percolating. [laughs] EF: Would you want to do the novelizations for the sequels for Batman Begins? DO: Well, that’s three years down the line, and God knows what’ll happen three years from now. Sure. It’s been, overall, a very pleasurable experience. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t want to repeat it. EF: Thanks, Denny. This was a blast. DO: Thank you, Eric. Eric Fein has been a professional writer and editor for over 15 years. He worked for Marvel Comics (editing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, and Web of Spider-Man) and DC Comics (editing storybooks). He coedited (with Denny O’Neil and Danny Fingeroth) the first team up of Spider-Man and Batman. His writing has appeared in series such as Marvel Comics Presents, Godzilla, and The Batman Chronicles. He has also written more than 40 nonfiction books for children and young adults. Currently, he works as a freelance writer and editor.

THE END DENNY O’NEIL | 37

Welcome to modern society, where superhero culture has become the METAPHORICAL prism through which we see--and live--our lives.

& Scott Hanna. Cover art by Mark Bagley

What is it about superheroes that speaks to us, that cuts across boundaries of nationality, race and gender to entrance us?

“Danny Fingeroth has produced a readable and socially insightful consideration of the superhero. His analysis of society’s solution to its dissatisfaction with the protection provided by standard law-andorder systems makes it important and current. Stan Lee’s ‘excelsorial’ foreword is an enjoyable addition.” —Will Eisner

paperback

$19.95 available now

38 | WRITE NOW

In Superman on the Couch, DANNY FINGEROTH, longtime Marvel Comics writer and editor, and editor-in-chief of Write Now! Magazine, digs deep into our cultural psyche to explore just what we see reflected back when we look at superheroes.

“In Superman on the Couch, you’ll explore subjects that may make you reconsider preconceived notions and perhaps bring you greater appreciation of the superhero stories.” — From the foreword by Stan Lee

“…With humor and a touch of comic book hyperbole, the author capably mines the genre’s cultural morphologies and the societal changes it reflects - a subject largely overlooked by contemporary pop psychologists and academics…” — Publishers Weekly

In the next issue of Write Now!, Jim Starlin will tell you about how his exciting Mystery in Space project came to pass. The comic features the Starlin-written “Captain Comet” as its lead feature. The regular backup feature is “The Weird,” written and penciled by Jim, with inks by Al Milgrom. In this issue, we present the first six pages of Jim's script and pencils, as well as Al’s inks, for “Enlightenment,” “The Weird” installment in MIS #3. [© 2006 DC Comics]

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Here’s some background from Jim on “The Weird”: “The Weird was a four-issue miniseries Bernie Wrightson and I did back in 1987. The character died at the end of the series. The Justice League was in the story. I'd suggested doing a Weird series to Dan Didio some time before Mystery in Space came up. When we lost Adam Strange for MIS, Dan decided on Captain Comet and the Weird acting as Adam’s stand-ins.” [© 2006 DC Comics.]

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Here’s Jim’s synopsis of “Enlightenment” that he gave to editor Bob Schreck: Weird meets the Deacon of the Eternal Light Corporation, who tells him about the church, tries to convince the Weird that he should join their sacred cause. Silent monks (hooded telepaths) are always in the background. The Deacon is convincing because telepaths are working on the Weird’s mind. The Weird sees religious visions: salvation and kinship. He gets confused, drops through the floor and finds himself in a lab with a charred human body and more silent hooded monks. They lead him back to the Deacon. The Weird experiences an epiphany, rapturous visions. He’s staggered but recovers and decides to join the Eternal Light Corporation. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

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Because Jim both wrote and penciled this story, there’s not a lot of detail in the synopsis on the previous page, and no detailed plot or script at all. Editor Bob trusted proven-pro Jim to expand the story clearly and excitingly as he drew it. The script that accompanies the pages consists of captions, dialogue, and sound effects for the editor and letterer to read. This is how the script in a plot-first (“Marvel style”) done story would look—except that there is no written plot. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

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JIM STARLIN | 43

For the full story on how Jim writes Mystery in Space, and more about “Captain Comet” and “The Weird” (featuring more Starlin script and art, as well as “Captain Comet” art by Shane Davis), be here next issue! [© 2006 DC Comics.]

THE END 44 | WRITE NOW

ADAPTING MANGA! I

by Stephen Pakula

t’s no secret that manga is hot. Just walk into any Barnes & Noble or Borders and you’ll see row after row of manga paperbacks, many of them published by Central Park Media. Stephen Pakula worked for CPM for five years, adapting many of the volumes you see on the shelves. He’s here now to share some important insights into the mangaverse, including how you might be able to become part of this fascinating world. —DF

MY STORY: In early 2000, if you had asked me what manga was, I would have looked you in the eye and given you an answer that only a well-educated and culturally knowledgeable person such as myself could have given: “Huh?” But I had to quickly familiarize myself with it when I was fortunate enough, fresh out of college, to land a job at Central Park Media, a New York-based distributor of anime and manga. Like so many other people in the industry, I’ve been a comic book lover since I was kid. And when I graduated college I was faced with a cold, hard reality that many graduates know so well: I needed a job. But not just any job. I needed the right job. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I had a pretty good idea of what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to do the temp thing, floating from job to job every few weeks, and I certainly didn’t want to work anywhere boring. After seriously thinking this over, I decided that I wanted to work in comics. “Why not?” I thought. I’ve always loved them, I knew a lot about them, and I majored in English in college. I am a laughably poor artist (although my stick figures will knock your socks off), but I knew that I could do something on the editorial side. Ultimately, I knew that what I really wanted to do was write comics. So I sent my resume to a number of comic publishers in New York to see if they had any job opportunities. Some (Marvel and DC) were obvious. Some (like Central Park Media) I’d never heard of. And it was this company that actually called me back. The job was for an internship in the comics department. Before the interview I did as much research as I could about the company and the comics they published. It was then that I first encountered manga.

read? How come they’re not in color? Why were the characters’ eyes so big? And wait, you’re supposed to read some of them backwards?! I’ll be honest, I grew up reading nothing but superhero comics. I was all capes and secret identities back then, and I was not the least impressed with the manga that I was being introduced to, but I figured that working with unfamiliar comics was better than not working in comics at all, so I eagerly went for my interview.

My first thought was, “What the h*ll is this?” I learned that manga were Japanese comics translated into English. But why did they look so different from the comics that I

Now, before I actually did it, I used to think that script adaptation was about the most uncreative thing I could be doing, and not at all what I really wanted to do, which

I didn’t get the internship. But I did manage to get a full-time job in the sales department as an assistant. I figured that I would work in sales for a bit, learn what I could, and then somehow move into the comics division. Eventually, that is exactly what happened, and some years later I found myself as the Production Manager/Editor for CPM Manga, the publishing arm of Central Park Media. The job entailed many different responsibilities, but ultimately everything was done with one goal in mind: to take Japanese (and eventually Korean) comics and adapt them for American readers. One of the most creative and fun parts of this process was—believe it or not—adapting the script.

STEPHEN PAKULA | 45

was to write comics. I mean, let’s face it, these were basically reprints of already published material. All I was doing was making sure they were in English instead of Japanese. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I found that working with the translated scripts was just as creative as if I was making them up myself. It’s true that you are working within certain bounds when it comes to adapting manga. The story is already there, and you really shouldn’t deviate from it too much. The creativity, and the challenge, comes when you are within these bounds. Can you make the story work with the material that you have? It’s very similar to the debate about whether or not continuity in American comics hinders creativity or not. Some people think that continuity creates too many obstacles and barriers, and gets in the way of telling good stories. They think that a character’s long history inhibits the possibility of writing the kinds of stories that they want to write. I disagree. I don’t see any reason why you can’t be equally as creative within the bounds of continuity. There is always a way to make a story work, and only by challenging yourself can you find the right way for you. Think of it as a puzzle, and you have to fill in the pieces. But only certain pieces will fit, and you have to find the best solution possible.

seem like such a big deal nowadays, but back then manga hadn’t reached mainstream status yet.) It can seem weird at first, but it’s pretty easy to train your eyes and your brain to read the Japanese way. (Prior to my working for CPM, and at a time when the manga industry in America was in its infancy, CPM would flip the images and change the page layouts before publishing a manga, so that the comic could be read left-to-right. It made the comic more accessible to American audiences, but as time went on and manga became more mainstream, CPM, as well as many other companies, decided to maintain the original right-to-left Japanese orientation. This made the book seem much more authentic, and closer to its original foreign roots.) After I had familiarized myself with a book, we would send a copy of the original book to a translator. They would translate the text into a Word document and number each unit of dialogue, as well as every sound effect. Then they would photocopy the original manga and write numbers on every page where words appeared (the

But let’s get down to brass tacks. Here’s… THE MANGA ADAPTATION PROCESS: Let me run down the basic steps to taking a manga straight from Japan and turning it into an Americanized graphic novel. There might be other ways that other publishers do it, but this is how I worked with the books at CPM Manga. The first step of any script adaptation process would be to read the original Japanese graphic novel. But since I don’t speak or read Japanese (it’s all just squiggly lines to me), by “read” what I really mean is “look at.” I would do this for a couple of reasons. The first is to just see what the story is about and familiarize myself with characters and actions. The next, and most important, reason was to see if I could follow the story by just looking at the art. My first impression of the comic would be made purely based on the artwork, and I would see if it conveyed a story that I could relatively follow without words. Could I tell what happens in the story just by looking at the images? Sometimes I could, but many times I could not. The panel structure was unlike anything that I was used to, and the sound effects were written in Japanese, so they couldn’t help me either. But the most obvious hurdle was that manga is read right-to-left. So not only was I unable to read the words, but now I had to relearn how to read! Growing up in America, it’s easy to forget that not everyone in the world does things the same way that we do. So when I first looked at a manga, it felt very unnatural to read from what I considered to be the back to the front. (It may not 46 | WRITE NOW

On these pages are the covers to manga stories adapted by Stephen Pakula. Here’s Kung Fu Jungle Boy by Jae Kyung Uhm and Choong Ho Lee. [Original Korean version “Kakoong 1” © 1996 Choong Ho Lee, Jae Kyung Uhm. English edition published by arrangement with Content Wide in Korea. English version copyright © 2004 Central Park Media Corp. All rights reserved.]

numbered pages are called “balloon placements”). These numbers would correspond to the freshly translated text in the Word document, and would be the basis for script adaptation. Next we would send another copy of the book to a freelance retouch artist. This artist would carefully cut every page loose from the manga and scan it into a computer where they would erase all foreign dialogue. If the original art for a specific comic was available, we would scan that into the computer, but many of the books that we reprinted (especially when I started) were years old, and the original art was not obtainable. Eventually we started publishing more contemporary graphic novels, but even with these the original art was not always available. When the retouch artist would scan the pages, they would turn them into high resolution images that could be digitally enhanced, making them just as valuable as original art. After tweaking the images so that the art was crisp and clear, they would send us back the digital pages with the dialogue removed. Once we received all of these elements, I would take the translated document and, using the balloon placements, would go over the text line by line to change whatever needed to be changed, whether it was the wording or the formatting. My goal would be to help the comic make sense (if it didn’t already), and to make it

flow and read more easily. We’ll get into the details of this in a moment. After the script was read over and adapted, we now put together all the various pieces and created super cool manga graphic novels. Piece of cake! Once I familiarized myself with the book, then it was time to send it out for translation. Once it came back, then the fun really started… THE WORK ITSELF: When it comes to actually sitting down and adapting manga, there are a few guidelines that should be followed: It’s okay to change the way something is said, just not what is being said This is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. When adapting words from another language, we have to remember that the story does not belong to us. Someone else wrote it, and we must always respect that. That being said, we must also understand that sometimes what was originally written might not make that much sense in an exact translation. Translating text from any language to another is a tricky thing, and sometimes the exact meaning might get lost along the way. If we’re adapting a comic from another language, it’s our job to

shape the text into something that can be easily read and understood by Western audiences. Consider this example: Our freshly translated text has a character saying, “Use the chair and sit down while I talk to you.” Translated literally from Japanese, the line might technically be correct, but it has a kind of stiffness to it that sounds unnatural if said out loud. But if we change it to “Take a seat and listen up,” it reads much more colloquially to an American audience, while still maintaining its original meaning. Give each character their own distinctive “voice” Ideally, if the page were blank except for word balloons, we should be able to know who is speaking just by reading the words that they say. Our “mind’s ear” gives life to the characters, and if there is nothing to tell them apart, it can get confusing—especially because manga creators sometimes do not use balloon pointers. In many books, there are just word balloons floating all over the page with no way to tell which character they belong to. Believe me, that can get real confusing real quick. One way to eliminate the guesswork is by making sure every character has their own way of speaking. For example, let’s say that one of the characters in a book we are adapting is named “Bo.” Maybe he is teenager with a bad attitude, and maybe he’s not that smart. One way to show this through dialogue is by never having him pronounce the “g” at the end of certain words. He’d be runnin’ and fightin’ and boozin’ all over the place. And anytime we see words like that, the chances are pretty good that they come from Bo. Maybe another character uses big words, or always ends each sentence with “sir.” The only thing that we wouldn’t do is add pointers, or “tails,” to the balloons. That would change the artist’s drawing, and we would try to avoid doing that at all costs. There are plenty of ways to make characters sound different from one another. Next time you’re on a crowded train, or walking down a busy street, listen to the people around you. It’s a great way to learn about how voice patterns sound. This leads directly into the next guideline, which is: Format the script to show inflection and emotion Take a look at a comic (any comic—it doesn’t have to be manga), and pay close attention to how the words appear in balloons and captions. Some of them appear bold, some italicized, some underlined, some bigger than others, and some really tiny. What these variations do is let our mind’s ear hear the words (or sounds) in a specific way. When you’re adapting a translated script, it’s your job to add a little flavor and emotion to lines that might not have any to begin with. For example, “Watch out. That giant robot bird is shooting lasers out of its beak, and they’re coming right towards us,” reads a lot differently than “Watch out!! That giant robot bird is shootin’ lasers out of its beak! They’re comin’ RIGHT AT US!!” Depending on the context, both versions could be correct, but I know that if I were the target of bird-lasers, I’d probably be freaking out and sound more like the second line. This part of script adaptation was always my favorite, and to me, the most creative. It’s almost like directing actors in a movie to perform a certain way. By giving the readers visual clues while reading, you can steer them towards the way that you want the characters to sound. 48 | WRITE NOW

Now that’s power! Write for your audience There are tons of different genres of manga for people to enjoy, from sci-fi to romance, action/adventure to comedy, detective stories to military dramas, and everything in-between. Go to your local Barnes & Noble or Borders and you’ll see manga in its very own section, confirming that it is definitely more mainstream than it ever was. And when we adapt manga, knowing what our story is about and who the intended audience is goes hand in hand. If it’s a romance for young girls, we won’t use the same tone and the same words that we would use if it were a crime drama for adults. This might seem like common sense, but it can be pretty easy to lose sight of the fact that each story has an individual “sound” to it, especially if you are working on more than one book at a time. Some of my favorite titles that I’ve worked on are great examples of how different each graphic novel can be from one another. A typical morning would have me adapting Hard Boiled Angel, a tough, in-your-face R-rated crime drama, while the afternoon would find me working on Duck Prince, a romantic comedy with lots of slapstick humor. The Sword of Shibito was an exciting supernatural samurai story, but it was wildly different from Nambul: War Stories, a decade-old tale about war in the

Middle East and Asia. Make the stories accessible The way manga graphic novels flow is very different from American comics—not necessarily worse or better, just not what you might be used to. Working with manga over the years has helped me learn about different ways that a story can be told. For example, in some manga, the passage of time is represented in an odd way—a panel filled completely with black. No caption that reads “One hour later…” or anything. So imagine how confusing it was to read a book like that for the first time, even with a translated text. The only way that I knew what the black panel meant was because a Japanese coworker let me in on the secret. (It goes without saying that if you can’t read

or speak the language that you are adapting from, it sure helps to know someone who can!) What this meant was that the adaptation had to convey information that the art couldn’t. Throw in a line or two referring to the passage of time and you’ve solved the problem. The goal, remember, is to give the reader everything he or she needs to enjoy the story. After all, not everyone who reads manga has access to someone that knows that a black panel means a time change, or even that a big teardrop drawn over a character’s head means that they are sad—not that it’s raining! They should be able to get this info from the book itself. Now you know how it’s done. Now, how do you get somebody to pay you to do it? In other words… HOW CAN YOU DO THIS FOR A LIVING? So now you’ve decided that you want to adapt manga, and you have a pretty good sense of how to do the job. The next part is finding that job. How do you do it? Is there a surefire way to get hired by a publishing company? The short answer is “no,” although there are things that you can do to raise your chances of being noticed, and finally getting that gig you’ve been hoping for.

Go to conventions Conventions are the best place to meet editors, writers, artists, and publishers. It used to be that in order to find manga publishers, you had to go to manga-specific conventions, but thankfully that is no longer the case. With manga firmly planted in the mainstream, you can go to any comic book, video game or animation convention and you’ll be sure to see a huge manga presence there. (Because many manga are based on video games and cartoons, and vice versa, where you see one form of media, you will definitely see the others.) Go to these conventions and introduce yourself to as many people in the business as you can. Look and act professional, and let them know that you are serious about the business. Give them professional looking resumes, and if you have any samples of comics that you’ve created yourself, bring that too (we’ll talk about that in more detail in just a minute). A good cover letter never hurts, either. If you don’t have published work, find out how people want writing samples submitted. It’s generally not a good idea to load an editor down with writing samples at a con. Odds are they’ll end up, unread, in the editor’s hotel trashcan, for the simple reason that no one has the time to read them at a con or the desire to haul them around on a plane. It’s this professionalism that could mean the difference between the editors The Sword of Shibito #1 by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Missile Kakurai. [Original Japanese remembering you and your skills or having version “Shibito No Ken volume 1”© 2002 HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI/MISSILE KAKURAI, them forget you as just one of the many Originally published in Japan in 2002 by GENTOSHA COMICS INC., TOKYO. English faces that they see at a con.

STEPHEN PAKULA | 49

Duck Prince #1 by Ai Morinaga. [Original Japanese version “Duck Prince Book 1” © AI MORINAGA 2001. Originally published in Japan in 2001 by KADOKAWA SHOTEN PUBLISHING Co., Ltd.. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA SHOTEN PUBLISHING Co., Ltd., Tokyo through TOHAN CORPORATION, TOKYO. All rights reserved.]

Learn how to translate This isn’t essential, but certainly won’t hurt. Chances are that you’ll find more opportunities translating a text than adapting one, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do both at the same time. If you’re multilingual, you stand a much higher chance of getting work from a manga publisher. There are thousands of foreign graphic novels out there just waiting to be published in the U.S., and the first step in any adaptation is the translation. If you can translate a text and adapt it for an American audience at the same time, you’ve just made the editor’s life that much easier, and that is what freelance work is all about. Do the job well, make the editor happy, and he or she will be more than happy to send more work your way. Before hiring a new translator, I would give him or her a test that consisted of a short eight-page story that needed to be translated. Invariably, I would usually hire the ones that not only translated the script properly, but also adapted it into something more along the lines of what we were looking for. I’d still need to go over the script and make some tweaks here and there, but for the most part, they would be minor changes because the translation read so easily the first time. Read, listen, watch, and then read some more I’m sure you’ve read it a thousand times before: if you want to be a writer then you need to read. The reason you always hear this is because it’s true. The more you learn about the different ways that words can be combined to create different things, the more you will have to offer when you seek out assignments. In the case of adapting manga, I especially recommend reading plays and books on playwriting. This will give you a good sense of the rhythm and flow of different kinds of dialogue. Make your own “American manga” Many manga graphic novels that are being published today aren’t from another country at all—they are being created right here by American writers and artists. These books are heavily influenced by Japanese manga (most notably the art), but retain many American comics 50 | WRITE NOW

qualities (like being able to read it left-to-right). If you have the drive and the ability, find an artist and create your own manga-influenced comics (and if you can draw them yourself, that’s even better). Creating your own books serves many purposes, the first and most important of which is that it allows you to be creative and productive. Another reason to make your own books is that it is the perfect thing to hand an editor along with your resume. If the editors see that you have experience with comics, and that you’ve made your own to look professional, they will be more likely to give you a call when they need someone. A FEW FINAL WORDS (AND PLUGS): I was with Central Park Media for five years, and eventually felt that it was time for a change. I wanted to take what I learned from working on manga and use that knowledge and experience on new projects—some comic related, and some not. Currently, I’m an editor for The Penguin Group, an international publisher of everything from kids’ books to New York Times bestsellers. We are just starting to publish our first graphic novels, and I’m really excited to be working on them. These are original creations, and I’m using everything that I learned from manga to make these books as cool as possible. Keep your eyes open for the first one coming out early in 2007. It’s called Dead High Yearbook, and it’s by some of today’s hottest up-and-coming independent comic creators, chock full of manga flavor and plenty of comic book goodness. I’m also the co-founder of Section B Films, LLC, a New York-based independent film production company. Working on manga scripts became an incredibly valuable asset when I began to make my own films. It taught me how to make dialogue fit in places where it might not seem like it could. For example, let’s say that I’m editing together some scenes that I recently shot when I realize that they run too long, or the story moves too slowly. If I can’t reshoot the scenes, I need to work with what I have and try to have things make sense. I can write and record new voiceover narration, or new lines for my actors, and mold the words to fit the action on screen. Editing scenes, adding and deleting lines and basically working a script through production was made so much easier because of the adaptation experience from manga. And finally, I’m also a contributing columnist for www.Sequart.com, a website devoted to the sophisticated study of comic books and graphic novels. The bottom line is that what used to be an underground phenomenon has become mainstream in a big, big way. Manga is no longer something to be read and enjoyed by the most die-hard of fans. It’s available for everyone to experience, and getting it is as easy as going to your local bookstore. If you’re looking to begin a career in comics (and specifically in manga), I hope that this article gave you some helpful tips. Go out, make some calls, introduce yourself, and get your name out there. There are plenty of opportunities available, and with persistence and the desire to get what you want, you can make things happen. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to work!

THE END

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout

pools of deceit a man

your age, I’d say. Prett

could drown in?

5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t figur ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

wearing sunglasses.

SMITTY 12 She asked if Pat was still in

business. I think she’s

MALONE 13 She shows up again, tell her he

got a job for him.

moved to Michigan. Okay ?

6. Malone’s mood has chan She’s now a bit annoyed, ged as she takes a paper bag (with the sand wiches in it) from Smit stern. Smitty looks mildl ty. bag sullenly, like he'd y embarrassed, but chee look at some lowlife beat rful. Pat glowers at the ing a woman. MALONE 14 What’s the damage on the sandwiches? SMITTY 15 Hell, Malone. You know Nova PAT 16 I want a bacon cheesebu

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue

k eats free here, after

rger with onion rings.

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout

pools of deceit a man

all he did for my uncle

And a Pabst.

your age, I’d say. Prett

could drown in?

5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t figur ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

wearing sunglasses.

Here are five pages of script and finished, lettered art from Moonstone’s Pat Novak for Hire, written by Steven Grant with art by Tom Mandrake. It’s based on a 1940s radio show that starred Jack Webb (Dragnet’s Joe Friday) and Raymond Burr (star of the TV series Perry Mason and Ironside). The scripts are done full script style. The premise is this: Pat Novak, once San Francisco's toughest PI, now wiles away his retirement on his houseboat, under the watchful eye of his granddaughter. All that peace comes to a sudden end when his past, a case involving a dirty senator who ran a deranged sex cult on the side, comes back with a vicious vengeance. With enemies old and new to contend with, Novak must use his relentless crime solving skills to undo his greatest case—and destroy his reputation! No stone will be left unturned! [© 2006 Moonstone.]

STEVEN GRANT | 51

On this, and the next two pages, are Steven’s comments about the story, from an interview with Lori G on the Moonstone website. “I thought about doing a story set in the Novak stomping grounds of the radio show, which would have put it in the late ’40s. But way too many crime stories in comics these days are set in the ’30s and ’40s, which is getting a bit remote from us, it’s mainly a way for writers to layer on familiar clichés from movies and play against them. At the same time, I didn’t think simply taking the Novak character and transferring him to modern times was the right way to go; a ’40s style wisecracking pseudo-P.I. would just be too much of an anachronism. [©2006 Moonstone.]

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout

MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue pools

your age, I’d say. Prett

of deceit a man could

drown in? 5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t figur ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

wearing sunglasses.

SMITTY 12 She asked if Pat was still in

business. I think she’s

MALONE 13 She shows up again, tell her he

got a job for him.

moved to Michigan. Okay ? 6. Malone’s mood has chan She’s now a bit annoyed, ged as she takes a paper bag (with the sand wiches in it) from Smit stern. Smitty looks mildl ty. bag sullenly, like he'd y embarrassed, but chee look at some lowlife beat rful. Pat glowers at the ing a woman. MALONE 14 What’s the damage on the sandwiches? SMITTY 15 Hell, Malone. You know Nova PAT 16 I want a bacon cheesebu

52 | WRITE NOW

k eats free here, after

rger with onion rings.

all he did for my uncle

And a Pabst.

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout

MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue pools

your age, I’d say. Prett

of deceit a man could

drown in? 5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t figur ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

wearing sunglasses.

SMITTY 12 She asked if Pat was still in

business. I think she’s

MALONE 13 She shows up again, tell her he

got a job for him.

k eats free here, after

rger with onion rings.

all he did for my uncle

“Then I got the idea of Novak as a man in his ’70s —I was thinking Kirk Douglas as he got older but could still project that image of a tough guy—living in modern times but still behaving like it was the ’40s or ’50s. (I had to monkey a little with his timeframe to keep him from being too old.) [©2006 Moonstone.]

And a Pabst.

Prett SMITTY 9 ‘bout your age, I’d say. around, lookin’ for Pat. Right. Hey, girl came

MALONE 10 could drown in? pools of deceit a man e Were her eyes deep blue sion, like he can’t figur es over at her in confu glanc ty ges dourly, and Smit 5. Malone's mood chan ns. mea out what the hell she SMITTY 11 wearing sunglasses. Uh… dunno. She was SMITTY 12 she’s got a job for him. still in business. I think She asked if Pat was MALONE 13 igan. Okay? tell her he moved to Mich She shows up again, Smitty. sandwiches in it) from a paper bag (with the takes glowers at the she as ged chan sed, but cheerful. Pat arras emb y 6. Malone’s mood has mildl looks stern. Smitty She’s now a bit annoyed, ing a woman. look at some lowlife beat bag sullenly, like he'd MALONE 14 the sandwiches? What’s the damage on uncle SMITTY 15 after all he did for my Novak eats free here, Hell, Malone. You know PAT 16 And a Pabst. rger with onion rings. I want a bacon cheesebu

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout your age, I’d say. Prett y. MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue pools of deceit a man could drown in? 5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

figure

wearing sunglasses.

SMITTY 12 She asked if Pat was still in

business. I think she’s

MALONE 13 She shows up again, tell her he

got a job for him.

moved to Michigan. Okay ? 6. Malone’s mood has changed as she takes a paper bag (with the She’s now a bit annoyed, sandwiches in it) from stern. Smitty looks mildl Smitty. bag sullenly, like he'd y embarrassed, but chee look at some lowlife beat rful. Pat glowers at the ing a woman. MALONE 14 What’s the damage on the sandwiches? SMITTY 15 Hell, Malone. You know Nova PAT 16 I want a bacon cheesebu

k eats free here, after

rger with onion rings.

all he did for my uncle

And a Pabst.

Prett SMITTY 9 ‘bout your age, I’d say. around, lookin’ for Pat. Right. Hey, girl came

MALONE 10 could drown in? pools of deceit a man e Were her eyes deep blue sion, like he can’t figur es over at her in confu glanc ty Smit ges dourly, and 5. Malone's mood chan ns. mea out what the hell she SMITTY 11 wearing sunglasses. Uh… dunno. She was SMITTY 12 she’s got a job for him. still in business. I think She asked if Pat was MALONE 13 igan. Okay? tell her he moved to Mich She shows up again, Smitty. sandwiches in it) from a paper bag (with the takes she as Pat glowers at the ged chan arrassed, but cheerful. emb y 6. Malone’s mood has mildl looks ty stern. Smit She’s now a bit annoyed, ing a woman. look at some lowlife beat bag sullenly, like he'd MALONE 14 the sandwiches? What’s the damage on SMITTY 15

54 | WRITE NOW

“Novak, in his head, is still the tough guy he was in his youth, but it’s a question whether he can pass on reputation or whether age will get him killed, because he learns he’s not quite up for what he used to be, as a mob boss and a mysterious woman from Novak’s past try to stop him from turning over old rocks and uncovering an unsuspected conspiracy that has been going on for decades.” [© 2006 Moonstone.]

And in his “Permanent Damage” column at www.cbr.cc, Steven adds: “I like the book. It gave me a chance to play, disrespectfully, with private detective motifs, to do the sort of modern noir I love to write but is so hard to find a place for among current publishers, and to work again with Tom Mandrake, who some of you may remember from Martian Manhunter, The Spectre, GrimJack, and so many other comics.” [© 2006 Moonstone.] [Text in this caption © 2006 Steven Grant.]

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou

nd, lookin’ for Pat. ‘bout

MALONE 10 Were her eyes deep blue pools

your age, I’d say. Prett

of deceit a man could

drown in? 5. Malone's mood chan ges out what the hell she mea dourly, and Smitty glances over at her in confu sion, like he can’t figur ns. SMITTY 11 Uh… dunno. She was

wearing sunglasses.

SMITTY 12 She asked if Pat was still in

business. I think she’s

MALONE 13 She shows up again, tell her he

got a job for him.

k eats free here, after

rger with onion rings.

all he did for my uncle

And a Pabst.

SMITTY 9 Right. Hey, girl came arou

figure

wearing sunglasses.

till i b

I thi k h ’

j bf

THE END STEVEN GRANT | 55

DON T FEAR T H E

RESEARCH

by Bill McCay

or a lot of writers, doing research is like homework— something that has to be done so you can get to the fun stuff. But research can make your work better, and can be enjoyable in and of itself. Acclaimed novelist Bill McCay stops by to give you his two cents on the subject and to show you why you, indeed, don’t need to fear the research.

—DF

tarting this past January, a University of Pennsylvania English course uses a comic as required reading—Alex Simmons’ graphic novel Blackjack: Blood and Honor. The press release explained the choice of the graphic novel this way: “the historical backdrop and references, coupled with the plot and characters, gained it favorable attention in the educational and entertainment marketplaces.” Alex is justly proud, and so am I, since I helped research the historical backdrop receiving such praise. Having Alex ask me to work as editor on Blackjack came as no surprise. We both worked for a small publisher producing dozens of book series, and I’d edited several novels he’d written. The reason Alex gave me was interesting, though—“Whenever a question of history or geography or weapons or mayhem came up, you either had the answer or knew where to get it.” In other words, research—and my ability to do it—got me a job. Reference is a way of life for comics artists. Some artists are only as good as their reference files, and whenever professionals get into shop talk, you hear stories of people who didn’t get jobs because they couldn’t draw horses, or pirate ships, or whatever. On the other hand, someone like John Severin, who knew his hardware, had the ability to draw accurately down to the rivets on a tank or the buttplate on a pistol, depicting the people using this stuff (and their horses!) in outstanding action. His realism could turn a so-so war or Western script into a story that popped off the page. So what does reference do on the writing side? Well, consider the advice every aspiring author receives: “Write what you know.” In the action/adventure field, that would mean getting previous experience in either the military or law-enforcement fields. Otherwise, you need research on weapons, how they’re used, combat techniques, training, tactics, strategy, perhaps a little history to get some perspective—and that’s just for a start. Movie watching may help with some visual research. Just remember to take the Hollywood version of anything with a grain of salt. Maybe the best use of films is to get a sense of place—

Bill McCay (standing) and his frequent creative collaborator, Alex Simmons. Photography by Louis Chisena.

although even there, Hollywood can be misleading. Folks who actually live in Forest Hills howled at the way Peter Parker seemed to step clear across neighborhoods in Spider-Man, sometimes in the same scene. At least the movie succeeded in conveying a sense of quiet outerborough New York life. Why is a sense of place important in writing? Some years ago, an Off-Broadway musical poked fun at a geographicallychallenged European songwriting team by having performers sing about “Chicago by the sea.” A little research can help keep your writing from being just as unintentionally funny— especially when you’re writing about places you haven’t been. My third book was a series novel set in Tokyo, somewhere I’d never visited, and the advance and deadline wouldn’t allow for a fact-finding mission. This wasn’t a research job that could be handled with a quick look at a Godzilla movie. I ransacked libraries and bookstores for tourist guides and travel books, especially ones with lots of photos. Then I tracked down anyone I could find who’d been to the city and asked lots of questions. As an editor I once had an author hand me a dreadful outline. The guy always wrote prize-winning prose, but at this point in his career, he had problems setting up a plot. This was another series book, a mystery set on South Padre Island in Texas. The basic storyline worked, but the plot development faltered about halfway through. That’s where my author put in a literal cliffhanger, with a hero dangling from a 50-foot sheer drop—a problem on a barrier island barely rising above sea level. I spent half a day in the library learning about the locale and figuring how to get the heroes

BILL MCCAY | 57

into perils with local color—luring them onto an abandoned naval firing range full of live shells, for example. I even managed to keep in the cliffhanger, though the site became an unfinished building after I read about the construction boom going on in the area. Knowing something about a setting can help inject a little reality into a scene, even if it’s just mentioning a street name or intersection. Some years ago, a spy novel used a well known piece of Washington statuary as a message drop. If I recall correctly, someone retrieved a cigar tube tucked into a crevice in the statue’s base. A fan of the author happened to be in the area and checked out the site. There actually was a crevice, amazingly with a tube stuffed inside and a message either from the author or another fan—something on the lines of, “Pretty cool, huh?” Weapons and hardware, the way they work—and maybe even more importantly, the ways they don’t—can become important plot points. As an editor, I don’t know how many times I had to tell authors that revolvers don’t have safeties. Consider some obvious hardware questions like: How many shots does the hero or villain have? How does he or she reload the weapon? Either can add a bit of suspense to an action scene. One of the most interesting parts of background research on Alex’s Blackjack was a visit to a film weapons master and actually getting to handle a Walker Colt (the hero’s signature weapon). This was a huge, old-style six-shooter. While getting a lecture on how the gun worked and fired, I marveled at the simple heft of the thing. As a last resort, you could use the Walker as a club and probably brain whoever was on the receiving end. Physical research doesn’t just mean dealing with things. It can also help a writer in describing actions. Some years ago, just as paintball was taking off, I did a mystery using the sport as background. I read a lot and bought paintball sporting magazines, but the best research took place on about 40 wooded acres while I actually played the game. Essentially, it’s like Capture the Flag, except you shoot people with a messy projectile moving about 200 mph (I researched it!) instead of tagging them. I got to go out with a local team that competed for cash prizes, following squads moving and fighting with almost military precision—quite the eye-opening experience. Then there was the incident that made it into the book, when I stepped out from behind a bush and nailed an “infiltrator” just yards from his goal. The shock of taking a paintball propelled by a full charge right in the chest literally froze him in his tracks. Now, paintball players are supposed to acknowledge that they’ve been hit, usually by removing the bandanna marking their team affiliation. Until they remove that bandanna, they remain live targets. Only when I jacked the next round in my gun and aimed again did he come back to life and announce that he was dead. That bit of reality, somewhat heightened, became a very good comic scene, with the protagonist being shot several times before her shocked brain finally remembered what had to be done. It wouldn’t have been in the novel if I hadn’t been out in the woods. When the movie The Mask of Zorro came out, I got the assignment of writing several novels to continue the adventure. That meant swordplay, and while I had done some stage sword-fighting in college, my editor put me onto 58 | WRITE NOW

Alex Simmons’ BlackJack: Blood and Honor graphic novel, edited by Bill. Cover art by Brian Stelfreeze. [Copyright Dark Angel Productions, 2000.]

a fencing academy devoted to historical swordsmanship. I learned that the movie at least paid lip service to the Spanish style of sword-fighting that came to full flower in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Remember the raised practice area with the concentric circles in Don Diego’s “Batcave”?) However, Hollywood reality soon raised its head. Zorro’s flashy dueling style was actually based on Hungarian saber fighting, developed 6,000 miles to the east and 40 years after the setting of the film. More to the point, I put in several months of classes, not just learning the technical terms a fencer uses, but acquiring a muscle-deep understanding of the basic movement vocabulary involved in sword-fighting. That really helped when it came to describing the dueling scenes, especially since my fencing master worked out the fight choreography for two books’ worth of sword battles based on my story outlines. The only drawback was that he needed a sword in his hand to think his way through the fights. It meant being chased at swordpoint through the man’s house, but I got the benefit of his expertise and a series of rip-roaring fights that boosted the reality and the excitement in those stories. The case of Zorro also points out another sort of reference required—when you’re setting a story in a different historical period. The history of the Mexican California era (as opposed to the Spanish California era, the time of the original Zorro) turned out to be fairly thinly covered. From the date of Mexican independence to the American invasion of 1846 and the subsequent Gold Rush, there’s just not a lot of stuff available. I was lucky to have a friend in California track down some works of local history (most of them out of print). With those seven volumes, plus a two-inch binder filled with excerpts copied from library books, I managed to fill in some of the blanks beyond the old Disney TV series. An American traveler’s tale mentioned an unfortunate experience with a prickly-pear cactus that became a funny scene in my first Zorro novel. A later sociological study described how the old-time Californios conducted bear hunts. Riders set off into the brush and lassoed the animals,

and then the gentry, male and female, would ride up to the trapped, enraged animal, firing single-shot pistols. That data served as the basis for a pretty suspenseful scene in my second Zorro novel, where Señor Bear got loose. Good research helps to build a better story, as well as giving the writer the thousand-and-one details that add verisimilitude. What kind of stuff would folks eat at a big fiesta? What would you call the local mayor? How did they conduct trials in those days? What kind of guns would the Commandante’s soldiers fire at Zorro? How accurate were they? Similar considerations of historical accuracy arose while I worked with Alex on Blackjack. The comic series was set in the 1930s, featuring a globetrotting soldier of fortune who just happened to be African-American. Alex had pretty thoroughly researched the domestic social situation for his hero. But it’s a big world out there, and I remember thrashing out all sorts of questions. What policies were the British pursuing in the 1930s Near East in general, and with Egypt and the Tuaregs in particular? What were the Japanese up to in Manchuria? Were there Japanese politicians who stood against the march to war? Turns out there were, so I had to find out what techniques the growing military dictatorship used to assassinate them. How could we bring this big picture down to the comics page in a way casual readers could understand? Then we had the usual mechanical stuff, like discussing the fine points of the classic Walker versus the Navy Colt. Upon mature consideration, Alex decided to arm his hero with the Walker. Alex and I are working together again, collaborating on prose mystery novels—The Raven League series—set in Sherlock Holmes’ London. Doing the series required an agreement with the Conan Doyle estate because we’re using characters from the original Holmes stories—most notably Wiggins, the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins who served as Holmes’ eyes and ears around London. Like the Irregulars, the Raven League is a group of kids from London’s poor East End, trying to scratch out a living on the streets of the city. Unlike the Irregulars, however, they have more personal reasons to investigate crimes. Alex originally wrote a short story where Wiggins approached Holmes to solve the murder of another Irregular, a boy who died because he and Wiggins poked their noses into a fatally dangerous piece of underworld business. From this start, we developed a pair of novels with plenty of plot twists and turns, often suggested by the research we did along the way. One of the requests from our editor was to make the stories “edgier.” Looking at the genre of the Sherlockian pastiche (the creation of new adventures for the great detective), I was struck by the cozy, Dickens-having-a-jollyChristmas tone that creeps into many writers’ takes on Victorian London. You can see part of the reason in the primary source—the Holmes stories themselves. Holmes and Watson live a comfortable, upper-middle-class existence, with dinners at Simpson’s (a landmark of restaurant respectability, still serving meals to Londoners and tourists today) and evenings spent at expensive concerts. Cases involve duchesses, bankers, business owners—the respectable British world. Today, people don’t necessarily pick up on the darker side—the class-consciousness, snobbery, racism, grinding poverty, the relentless social

Darwinism existing as unspoken background for a Victorian reader. When you learn what people earned, what they ate, and how they lived, there’s enough grit in there to make sandpaper. Our problem was how to get hard facts across without becoming a social tract or beating people over the head. One way was to portray the Baker Street Irregulars as a street gang. In fact, the opening of the book shows a rite of passage carried on by gangs today. Gang initiations often involve severe Stargate: Rebellion, one of five Stargate beatings for prospective prose novels written by Bill. [©1995 Roc, a members. Beatings are division of the Penguin Group. Stargate is a also administered when trademark of Le Studio Canal + (USA).] people want to leave the gang—or get thrown out. What better way to show that the Baker Street Irregulars have gone rogue than to start with Wiggins, their former leader, being beaten out of the gang? Interestingly, the original stories themselves suggested this situation. The Irregulars appear in the first Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet.” There are six boys in the group, and Holmes offers them a reward for certain information. The next time the Irregulars appear in a story, there are a dozen of them, and Holmes explains the whole deal all over again, almost word for word, offering them a reward for info. Now, as someone who has worked in series fiction, I realize that this is merely Conan Doyle bringing new readers up to speed. But couldn’t it mean that this is a new group meeting the great detective… and maybe the Raven League is the seed of that new group? There are only four members in the Raven League as we start out, but that number could grow in subsequent adventures. And what happens to the old Irregulars—the ones who threw Wiggins out? Our research into the real world of the time, as well as examining the Holmes continuity, enabled us to introduce new and intriguing “what ifs.” When you’re dealing with a mass of stories known as “the Canon,” it’s fun to figure a way to fit into it. Still, Alex and I faced the problem of trying to get a handle on a world that’s 120 years gone. To do that, I ransacked both my personal library and several branches of the public one. Alex even contacted friends and associates in England. I wound up with two maps of 19th-century London, one from the 1840s, the other from the 1880s. It’s amazing to see how the city grew in that time, but the main use of the maps was to plot characters’ journeys across the cityscape— not to present a boring itinerary, but to use various street names evocatively. I collected about a hundred pages of text excerpts from various books—descriptions of neighborhoods, landmarks that are gone, true crime cases. I also filled an art portfolio BILL MCCAY | 59

One of The Raven League prose novels, written by Bill in collaboration with Alex. Illustration by Kevin Sprouls. Photograph by Yoshihi Tanaka/Getty Images. Design by Marci Senders. [©2006 Sleuth/Razorbill, a division of the Penguin Group.]

with as many pages or more, so I could see what street traffic looked like, what was displayed in shop windows, what the different classes wore. Along the way, I stumbled across an interesting fact as I looked at pictures of street children of the time. In art references from the period—an engraving from the Illustrated London News or from a period magazine carrying a Holmes story—the street urchins wore shoes. In photos, they often didn’t. Okay, barefoot boys might hang out in some rural setting with Tom Sawyer—but in the middle of the biggest civilized city in the world at that time? Here was a telling detail about poverty that cried out to be worked into the story. Even Hollywood played its part in researching these stories. The grim Whitechapel settings in Murder by Decree, the Holmes/Jack the Ripper movie, offered some great visual cues for describing the rundown East End of London. It seems almost counterintuitive that one of the best windows into the Victorian era should be today’s Internet. However, there are a lot of Victorian enthusiasts in the world, including people fascinated with Holmes and Jack the Ripper, so there are enough websites to provide an embarrassment of research riches. I was able to access muckraking descriptions of the London slums, now a century out of print, as well as maps of London’s Underground system at various stages of its development. Online research got me quick pictures and descriptions of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, showed me which parks and cemeteries were closest to the crowded East End, and offered pictures of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee parade—locales and events that play a big part in the plots of our two novels. Someone has even devoted a website to the “London poverty map” developed in the 1890s by early sociologist Charles Booth. A graphic representation of where the poor people could be found, this map was indispensable in helping to establish where our characters should live. 60 | WRITE NOW

In some cases, however, the Internet turned out to be very much like a giant library with no catalog. Our second book involves the 1887 arrival of the traveling extravaganza Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in London. Both Alex and I had an awful time digging up solid information on the show. There were some newspaper accounts, generally about how Queen Victoria loved the show and the Prince of Wales couldn’t stay in his seat. Details, however, were sadly lacking, no matter what keywords we input into various search engines. Reaching out to a British friend in hopes of locating some information a bit closer to the source, Alex got an e-mail directing him to the British Amazon.com website, where a 275-page book was being offered on the subject. Searching for Buffalo Bill’s British Wild West on Amazon’s American version, I located a copy at a bookstore in Manhattan, rode into town, and had it by evening. It proved darned useful in fleshing out a lot of descriptions of the show and the camp where the performers lived. How did I miss it? In my hours of Googling, I never thought to couple the word “British” with “Buffalo Bill.” Maybe Google wasn’t the tool to use. Note to myself—and other would-be researchers: Look into the benefits and shortcomings of other search engines. Other advice: get to know your local library and the local librarian. You want these people to help you. If there’s a large public or university library nearby with specialist librarians, cultivate the ones responsible for your areas of interest. Finally, develop your own library, starting with basic reference works and building from there. I’ve had the advantage of more than 30 years in a city rich in bookstores, collecting such esoteric works as The Illustrated History of the Machine Gun. However you go about it, research remains an indispensable writer’s tool. You can discover sidelights and situations that can be adapted into a story and generally increase your storehouse of details and descriptions that keep your narrative interesting and grounded in reality and offer the reader a strong sense of place. Maybe it’s my editorial background, but I lose interest in books where I suspect the authors don’t have a real command of their material. It threatens the willing suspension of disbelief, that unwritten contract between reader and storyteller. When a person has to fake details, the writing itself is usually weaker. Being able to spice your narrative with a judicious dash of reality can help establish your own confidence as a writer—and boost the reader’s confidence in you, too. After all, a person has paid money in the belief that you know what you’re talking about. If you don’t know, or you’re not sure, it’s better to learn before you start writing. With 20-plus years in the publishing business, Bill McCay is the author of more than seventy books, both fiction and nonfiction, and has edited many, many more. He continued the saga beginning in the movie Stargate with a five-novel adventure series and worked with the grandmaster of comics storytelling in the three novels of Stan Lee’s Riftworld. His Star Trek novel Chains of Command, written with Eloise Flood, enjoyed several weeks on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller List. The Raven League, a hardcover mystery series for young readers in collaboration with Alex Simmons, debuted in April 2006.

THE END

P R O P O SA L CODENAME: STRYKEFORCE a proposal by Jay Faerber 05-06-03 THE ULTIMATES meets THE A-TEAM The revamped Codename: Strykeforce is a sophisticated, 21st century update on the classic “outlaw super-team” theme. Here we have a group of superhumans, living outside the law (each for their own reasons), taking high-risk jobs from various desperate people (with large bank accounts, of course). And as an added element of danger, there’s a traitor in their midst... Codename Strykeforce will feature just as much of an emphasis on suspense, intrigue, and character drama as it will on action scenes. This book isn’t going to just be super-hero slugfests strung together by a series of dull interludes. It’ll move at a fast pace, with clipped, kinetic scenes (like the TV series, “The Shield,” for one example – that’s a show that manages to cram an awful lot of story into one hour).

Codename: Strykeforce should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other cutting edge super-hero books of the day; books like The Ultimates and Wildcats.

THE CHARACTERS STRYKER (a.k.a. Morgan Stryker) - A former major in the Special Forces, Stryker is a cyborg who possesses three metallic arms and a cybernetic eye, as well as vast weapons training and a keen strategic mind. He’s the leader of our team, and the rest of the Strykeforce follows his lead without question ... usually. We’ll acknowledge that this isn’t the first Strykeforce that Stryker has led, but we’re not going to dwell on the book’s previous incarnation. Instead, we’ll just mention that things ended badly for the previous team, and Stryker doesn’t like to talk about it. Stryker is able to move around in civilian life by taking off his three cybernetic arms and wearing a patch over his robotic eye. This way, he looks like a veteran of one war too many – which, frankly, he is. CUTLASS (a.k.a. Amy Pearson) - The survivor of an alien abduction, Amy was returned to Earth with a souvenir of her experience – an alien sword, able to slice through any Earthly substance. Amy tried to do the sensible thing, and turn the

On these pages is Jay Faerber’s proposal for Top Cow’s 1994 Strykeforce miniseries (originally called Codename: Strykeforce, also the name of the series to which it was a sequel). Top Cow’s then-editor-in-chief Jim McLaughlin referred to it as an example of a perfect pitch for him. Clearly, the pitch was not just submitted “cold,” but was the result of some previous discussion between writer and editor.

CODENAME: STRYKEFORC E a proposal by Jay Faerbe r 05-06-03 THE ULTIMATES

meets THE A-

TEAM

The revampe d Codename: Strykeforce is the classic “ou a sophisticated tlaw super-team , 21 st century living outside ” theme. Here update on the law (each we have a gro for their own up of superhu various despera rea mans, sons), taking te people (with high-r large bank ac counts, of cours isk jobs from And as an ad e). ded element of danger, the re’s a traitor in their midst... Codename Str ykeforce will feature just as intrigue, and much of an em character dra ma phas just be super-h as it will on ac tion scenes. Th is on suspense, ero slugfests str move at a fas is book isn’t go t pace, with clip ung together by a series of ing to dull ped, kinetic sce for one exam ple – that’s a nes (like the TV interludes. It’ll sh ow that mana one hour). series, “The Sh ges to cram an ield,” awful lot of sto ry into Codename: Str ykeforce shou ld stand shou edge super-h ero books of lder-to-shoulde the day; book r with the oth s like The Ult er cutting imates and Wi ldcats.

THE CHARAC

TERS

STRYKER (a. k.a Stryker is a cy . Morgan Stryker) - A forme bo r major in the Special Force well as vast we rg who possesses three me s, tal apons training team, and the and a keen str lic arms and a cybernetic ey ategic mind. He rest of the Str e, yk We’ll acknow ’s the leader of as ledge that this eforce follows his lead wit our hout question isn’t the first Str we’re not going ... usually. ykeforce that to dwell on the Stryker has led mention that book’s previo , but things ended us incarnation ba . dly for the pre talk about it. Str vious team, an Instead, we’ll just yk d Stryker does cybernetic arm er is able to move around n’t in civilian life s and wearing by taking off his like to a patch over a veteran of on his robotic ey e war too ma e. This way, he three ny – which, fra looks like nkly, he is. CUTLASS (a. k.a returned to Ea . Amy Pearson) - The survi rth with a souv vo of an alien enPearson) Amy - The rsurvivor of an alien abduction, Amy was throughCUTLASS ir of her ex any Earthly(a.k.a. perience – an abduction, Amy was substan alien cea. Am returned to Earth with souvenir experience – an alien sword, able to slice y triedoftoher do the sensible sword, able to slice t thing, and tur n the

CODENAME: STRYKEFORCE a proposal by Jay Faerber 05-06-03 THE ULTIMATES meets THE A-TEAM The revamped Codename: Strykeforce is a sophisticated, 21st century update on the classic “outlaw super-team” theme. Here we have a group of superhumans, living outside the law (each for their own reasons), taking high-risk jobs from various desperate people (with large bank accounts, of course). And as an added element of danger, there’s a traitor in their midst... Codename Strykeforce will feature just as much of an emphasis on suspense, intrigue, and character drama as it will on action scenes. This book isn’t going to just be super-hero slugfests strung together by a series of dull interludes. It’ll move at a fast pace, with clipped, kinetic scenes (like the TV series, “The Shield,” for one example – that’s a show that manages to cram an awful lot of story into one hour). Codename: Strykeforce should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other cutting edge super-hero books of the day; books like The Ultimates and Wildcats.

62 | WRITE NOW

Art on these pages is from the Faerber-written miniseries. Pencils are by Tyler Kirkham, inks are by Marlo Alquiza, over Tyler’s pencils.

THE ULTIMATES meets THE A-TEAM The revamped Codename: Strykeforce is a sophisticated, 21st century update on the classic “outlaw super-team” theme. Here we have a group of superhumans, living outside the law (each for their own reasons), taking high-risk jobs from various desperate people (with large bank accounts, of course). And as an added element of danger, there’s a traitor in their midst... Codename Strykeforce will feature just as much of an emphasis on suspense, intrigue, and character drama as it will on action scenes. This book isn’t going to just be super-hero slugfests strung together by a series of dull interludes. It’ll move at a fast pace, with clipped, kinetic scenes (like the TV series, “The Shield,” for one example – that’s a show that manages to cram an awful lot of story into one hour). Codename: Strykeforce should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other cutting edge super-hero books of the day; books like The Ultimates and Wildcats.

JAY FAEBER | 63

Codename: Strykeforce should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other cutting edge super-hero books of the day; books like The Ultimates and Wildcats.

THE END

SECRET: AGENT MAN Mike Friedrich I

’m sometimes asked by aspiring comics writers how they can get an agent. When I tell them there are no comics writer’s agents, they are, understandably, surprised. Now, some comics and graphic novel writers who come in from other fields have agents, and some “literary” graphic novelists who are published by traditional book publishers have them. But for the in-thetrenches comics writer, the current method of obtaining and negotiating assignments is done directly writer-toeditor. About ten years ago, this was less often the case. There were a handful of writers’ agents. Mike Friedrich (having been a comics writer, pioneering publisher and retailing guru) was one of the most prominent. To find out why neither he—nor anyone else—is still doing it, and what that means for writers, read what Mike has to say in the article below…

—DF

was intrigued by the responses that 27 pros gave to the question in Write Now! #11 [the Professional Secrets issue] regarding the most important business advice they would give to an aspiring writer. A mere two of the pros used the word “agent” in their answers, which I found noteworthy inasmuch as I primarily made my living for over two decades as a business manager (aka “agent”) for comics professionals. Of the 27 quoted professionals, I did business in one way or another with over two-thirds of them. One was a client for a while, a few more were writers collaborating with artists I represented, many were editors who hired or chose not to hire my clients, and Stan Lee was my editor for a time when I was a writer for Marvel. And yet despite those years of personal interaction in talking about the business of writing comics, only two of 27 successful writers, editors, and executives used the word “agent.” I think that’s indicative right there that business representatives have always had a difficult role in comics writing. Of course I can only speak to my personal experiences and speculate as to reasons why this is so. What I can say, flat out, is that I was never successful representing writers, even though as a superhero writer myself for DC and Marvel, I made a special effort to do so. Whatever success I had was representing artists.

Let’s look at possible reasons why a business rep might make sense for a comics writer: sales and marketing; contract negotiating; contract enforcement. As everyone who reads this magazine knows, marketing and selling one’s writing is an excruciating job, especially so when one is starting out, or later on when one is typecast as old hat and all the editors are seemingly half one’s age. In-between, if you’ve become established, there is the opposite problem, of having far more opportunities than even the most prolific scripter can handle. In the first two instances, I found that, while I could market a new artist’s work literally at a glance, it took a tremendous amount of time, effort and expense to get writers the editorial eyeball time they needed to gain assignments and get ahead. In a high percentage of cases, the effort would not pan out, and the few successes did not pay me enough to make up for all the MIKE FRIEDRICH | 65

failures. This had to do with the third circumstance; once a new writer was established, the agent’s marketing and sales function disappeared and writers would understandably ask themselves why they should pay someone a percentage of their earnings just to say “no” to people. It saved a lot of money to say “no” oneself.

work-for-hire superhero field, I was able to provide more value when there was a lot of competition. When one could be published by five superhero publishers instead of two, my experience helped my clients choose the best fit for their future. That value disappeared when superheroes were once again just published by DC and Marvel.

I’m not even touching on the overt resistance some editors had with dealing with me in my sales rep function. They perceived me at best as a needless extra layer of static. Additionally, some editors, otherwise interested in my clients, were at times discouraged by their executive supervisors from dealing with me, and either dealt directly with my clients, or didn’t use them at all.

Lastly in the area of contract enforcement, I steered clients away from fly-by-night publishers because it wasn’t worth my time to chase checks that might bounce anyway. With the more financially viable publishers I was able to provide value when I had a large enough client base that I could afford to hire auditors. I uncovered accounting judgment calls that invariably were made in the publisher’s favor, not in the creators’. With that information I was able to negotiate reversal of those decisions and put more royalties in my clients’ pockets.

In the arena of contract negotiating, the value of an experienced negotiator varies widely depending on the market conditions. I was most able to provide value when there was heavy publisher competition; as the comics publishing field consolidated in the mid-’90s, that value diminished significantly. For example, in 1986 my client Paul Chadwick (who usually writes and draws his own material) had eight serious publishing firms bidding for his Concrete proposal, each of which provided detailed written bids and conducted oral negotiations as well. The result was a contract from which Paul was able to offset most of the commissions he paid me for his comics work with the added percentage of revenue I was able to negotiate for him in the film-rights area when those rights later came into play. 15 years later, the field had so consolidated that no publisher was willing to bid for a new property that they didn’t own unless the creator was willing to work with no financial guarantees. If anything, my expertise had significantly increased in the interim, but my value was down to virtually nothing. Even in the more limited deals of the

But as my client base and royalty streams diminished I was financially unable to continue to make that kind of investment in auditor time. So today, what’s a writer to do about improving his or her business? First look behind the illusion of the characters one loves to write to look at the business realities of their publishers. Marvel, DC and Dark Horse make money as publishers, but they make their real money in Hollywood and in licensing merchandise. This reality creates a wellestablished dynamic in their relations with writers. They look for writers who will maintain high-profile characters or invigorate low-profile characters so that they will be simultaneously profitable as publications and more licensable as Hollywood and merchandise properties. Not-so-secretly, they also count on a certain amount of naiveté or disinterest in their writers such that those writers will create new licensable characters that the publishers will own. At its most extreme, this dynamic leads to a “flavor of the month” mentality. More subtlety, it’s a “flavor of the year-or-two” environment. Despite the strong presence of middle-aged long-term consumers, the superhero comics audience consists largely of teens and young adults who stay with the hobby for a few years. When they turn over, so do the writers they like. It’s little consolation that the same dynamic is occurring for comic artists, as well as for creative talent in all other forms of entertainment. So recognize that for most writers, writing preexisting characters is either a stepping-stone or way-station to another career or a sideline IN an already existing career.

Sadly the economics of the field do not encourage writers to create new types of stories or new characters. Writers have to be prepared to write for no money in order to do so.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. A writer can only connect to an audience with a new idea if the writer cares about the story and the characters. If one writes what one’s passionate about, one has a greater chance of succeeding in the long run anyway. One should write because one wants to. Just don’t expect to make a living at it until later. This is hard gravel to swallow. But once swallowed, what about marketing, negotiating, and enforcement? In today’s climate, the best marketing agent a comics writer can have is an artist. If a writer can find a superhero artist who wants to draw the writer’s stories, superhero editors are much more willing to give that writer a chance, because they want to keep that artist happy. If a writer can find an artist to draw a personal project for no money, that artist is a friend for life and should be valued as such. If a writer has a buyer and wants negotiating help, one might be able to find an experienced rep willing to fill that function for a small percentage of the money earned. Alternately, if one has the money to pay an intellectual property attorney an hourly rate, that’s worth consideration. I’ll leave aside the intrinsic differences between attorneys and reps, but they do exist and should be considered in making that choice.

1974’s Star*Reach #1, published by Mike’s company of the same name. Cover art by Howard

Chaykin. [Art copyright 1974 Howard Chaykin. Cody Starbuck is a trademark of Howard As far as contract enforcement is Chaykin. Star*Reach is a trademark of Mike Friedrich.] concerned, I’m afraid most writers are sh*t out of luck. Established publishers co-founded WonderCon, now operated by Comic-Con are not crooks, but they use their market clout to operate International. He was the lead legislative lobbyist in in their own interest and not that of writers. It takes a lot Washington, DC and Sacramento, CA for the Graphic of business, legal, and accounting skill to enforce one’s Artist Guild, and currently works as a staff representative contracts; if a writer finds oneself in the top 1% where for UPTE-CWA 9119, a union of research scientists and this kind of skill can be purchased, purchase it. Otherwise technical research support staff (including staff research look at how much cash one is being offered. writers and editors) at the University of California, Berkeley. Talk about an alternate universe! Mike Friedrich was a comics writer of Batman, Justice League, Iron Man, and Ka-Zar. He founded Star*Reach, the first independent publishing company marketing to the comic store sales channel. Mike created the Marvel Comics “direct sales” department. He revived the Star*Reach name for the first successful business management agency for comics professionals. Mike also

THE END

MIKE FRIEDRICH | 67

NEXT ISSUE:

#14

With issue #14, Write Now! once again shows why it’s THE magazine for anybody interested in comics writing!

M AG AZ I N E

Here’s what’s lined-up: • An in-depth interview with BRIAN BENDIS, writer of Ultimate Spider-Man, Powers, and New Avengers! • MARK MILLAR script and STEVE McNIVEN pencil art from MARVEL CIVIL WAR #1!

PLUS:

• An amazing Spider-Man writers’ roundtable, featuring:

• STAN LEE • TODD McFARLANE • J.M. STRACZYNSKI • TOM DeFALCO • PETER DAVID • ROGER STERN • and 10 more great Spider-writers! PLUS:

Featuring an all-new cover by ALEX MALEEV!

• JIM STARLIN on the creation of his new “Captain Comet” feature for Mystery in Space— including Nuts and Bolts of Starlin's script and art! • LEE NORDLING on adapting your comic for Hollywood! • JOHN OSTRANDER with another important writing lesson! • FRED VAN LENTE on how to write NON-FICTION comics!

PLUS: • More great Nuts and Bolts how-to’s by top creators. • And much, much more!

AND DON T FORGET TO BUY MYMarcNOVEL Bilgrey N I

ot much for me to say by way of introduction since Marc gives you all the background you need. Read and learn…

—DF

’m writing this article in the hope that maybe it’ll help or inspire someone. I know that when I was starting out as a writer I loved to hear other writer’s experiences and I still do. What I’m going to tell you about is how I wrote my new novel, a humorous fantasy called, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess: why I wrote it, and how I sold it. I’ll also discuss the differences between writing prose and other forms. In order to give you some context, first I need to mention a little about my background. I began my writing career by performing stand-up comedy I’d written for myself. I did this until I started writing for other comedians, then magazines, nationally syndicated comic strips and eventually, for TV as well. How did all this writing come about? I had gotten to know people through performing, which led to assignments. During this period I didn’t have an agent. Looking back now, I realize what I was doing was right, though I didn’t know it then. I was doing the two things that I believe are crucial for success, not just in writing, but in any career. I was developing my craft, meaning writing a lot, and I was being social. I was putting myself in environments where I met people, and making real friends. Now they call it “networking.” I thought I was just hanging around. These two things—developing your craft and being social—can’t be stressed enough. One without the other is like trying to create water using just the H without the 2 O. If you’re the greatest writer in the world and you isolate in a small cabin on a tiny island, chances are that you’ll have piles of unsold work. I know because I did just that for a while. I had a romantic notion that I needed complete solitude. I moved out of New York City for some years to a remote little cabin in the middle of nowhere. I wrote a lot, since there was nothing else to do, but I vanished from the civilized world. Some people even thought I’d died. Needless to say, being dead may not be the best thing you can do for your career. It was during this time that I went from writing monologues, jokes, movie scripts, plays, comic strips and panel cartoons, all of which are essentially dialogue driven (or spoken) to writing short stories and then novels. It’s been said that movies are about action, TV is about plot, plays are about dialogue, but novels (and short stories) are about thoughts and feelings. And to a certain

extent that’s true. Obviously, a novel or a short story must have action and a plot and all the other elements that make it readable and entertaining, but in a novel you can go so much deeper than in the other forms. Novels allow for more detail, description, and nuance. You can create a character’s moods, emotions, psychology, philosophy and history, in ways that no other medium will allow. At a certain point I realized that everything I’d been writing was a blueprint for something else that required other people. Jokes required a comedian to tell them, scripts (either plays or movies) required actors and directors. Only novels and short stories required no one but me. When I finish writing a novel or short story it’s in its final form. It doesn’t have to be turned into anything, and it doesn’t need collaborators. And novels and short stories aren’t subject to changes by other people (except one’s editor). Scripts I’ve written were changed by actors; some cartoonists I’ve worked for rewrote my material to the point where I didn’t even recognize it when it was published. But with a novel, you write the dialogue, you build the sets, design the clothing, light it, direct it, even do the make-up. Don’t get the wrong idea, I think my novel And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess, would make a wonderful film, but it doesn’t need or have to be a film. It already exists as a complete work. The good part is, if you like it, I MARC BILGREY | 69

wrote it. The bad part is, if you don’t like it, I can’t say that the director ruined it. My transition from script writer to prose writer began with short stories. I began by writing serious fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories. I’ve always loved those genres and thought it would be a good place to start. (I also wrote some non-genre stories as well). I sent them to magazines appropriate for the genre (or lack thereof) they were written in, and got personal letters from editors encouraging me to send more. This is a very good thing, even though at that point they weren’t buying yet. One night, I happened to be in a computer chat room (back in that isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere) when I got into a “conversation” with a woman. She seemed to know a lot about writing, SF and fantasy writing in particular. I would talk with her quite regularly. It turned out that she was a literary agent and eventually she asked to see some of my work. I sent her a bunch of my SF and fantasy short stories. She loved them and sold one immediately to an anthology. After that I began selling fairly regularly to anthologies, mostly in fantasy and SF, but also in mystery and horror. I eventually sent her my novel, which she sent to some editors who passed on it. The editors all said that they thought that I was a good writer, but felt that my humorous fantasy novel was not for them because it was “too funny.” One editor told me that, “We don’t like humorous fantasy because we and our readers take this stuff very seriously.” My thought was, if you can’t make fun of trolls, elves, and dragons, who can you make fun of? And, anyway, there is a long tradition of humorous fantasy fiction by such wonderful writers as John Collier, Thorne Smith, Robert Sheckley, Frederic Brown, not to mention Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), and the first novel ever written (in the second century A.D.), by Apuleius, The Golden Ass—a story about a man who angers a witch and is then turned into a donkey by her. But back to my life. It turned out that this agent who liked my serious short stories was not a big fan of humor. Because of that, she felt that she couldn’t adequately represent me, so we parted amicably. Then I sent out my novel to more editors. They rejected it. By the way, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess is the most fun I’ve ever had while writing. I would laugh out loud while I was working on it. I’ve written for well known comedians and major comic strips without doing that. Enjoying what you do is always a good idea if you can. Let me tell you a little bit about And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess. It’s about an unemployed actor who played a Viking in a TV commercial for a pizza restaurant. A wizard in another world (a parallel dimension?) sees this commercial on his crystal ball, thinks this actor is a real Viking, and zaps him into a medieval world. The actor is brought before a king who tells him that he (the actor) must go on a quest to rescue a kidnapped princess. If he refuses he will be executed. If he succeeds he will be sent back to his own world. The king teams him up with a cowardly knight, and then mayhem ensues. 70 | WRITE NOW

Since I’ve always loved fantasy, I tried to put in as many clichés of the genre as I could think of, but make them all funny. And I didn’t just want to make it funny; I wanted it to have a real story as well. I didn’t want it to be a parody of any particular fantasy novel, but a send up of the entire genre. I also wanted the humor to come out of the personalities of the characters, not just be jokey (though the novel has no shortage of jokey moments). I thought about what it would be like if I were thrown into a fantasy world. How would I deal with things? Would I be scared? Absolutely. Would I be heroic? I don’t think so. And what if I were stuck with a guy who was even more scared than I was? And what if I needed him in order to survive? These are the sort of questions I asked myself as I was writing my novel. How do I keep the emotions real, even though most of the situations are unreal, and also still make it funny? A lot of questions to answer. That’s a big part of writing—asking yourself questions and then trying to answer them. And keep in mind, one question may have many answers, and a number of them may be the right one, but it’s your job to choose which is your right answer. But back to selling my novel, or not selling it. I sent the novel out to more editors. In the meantime, I wrote and sold more short stories to anthologies and magazines and did other freelance writing jobs. All the while my novel continued to get rejected. I even sent the novel to other agents, but to no avail. Then one day I was in a local bookstore and saw a trade paperback that had the same title as a mass market

paperback where one of my short stories had appeared a few years earlier. The cover was different, so my first thought was that it was another book with the same title. Then I opened the book, and sure enough, my story was in it. It had been reprinted and nobody had told me. But wait a minute, I thought, I’d moved a few times, so maybe they’d lost track of me. The next day I called the editor and told him I’d seen the book with my story in it and gave him my new Cartoon Book. address, which he didn’t Marc’s Science Fiction y.] [© 2006 by Marc Bilgre have. Everything would be taken care of. He was very nice. Then I thought, while I have him on the phone why not ask him if there are any new anthologies coming up that I could send him a story for? I asked him. He replied that there weren’t any. I was about to thank him and hang up when he mentioned that he was editing a new line of fantasy and SF novels, and did I have anything? “Well,” I said, “I have this humorous fantasy.” I was sure he’d say, “What else do you have?” But what he said was, “Let me take a look at it.” So I sent off, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess, figuring that would be the end of that. Meanwhile, I mailed the novel to yet another agent expecting yet another rejection. Well, the agent didn’t disappoint me. She held onto it for three months and then sent it back. After her rejection I felt really bad. That’s when I thought about the editor I’d sent the novel to. So the next day I decided to call him. I remember thinking I may as well get this rejection over with, too. That way I’ll get both out of the way one after the other and be done with them—like having to swallow two really bad-tasting pills. At least you know that when it’s over, it’s over. I called the editor, got him on the phone, and was about to ask him if he’d gotten to my novel yet, when he said, “You don’t read your e-mail very often, do you?” My heart sank. I figured that he was going to tell me he’d rejected it by e-mail. And not only that but I was annoying him by calling. Now I felt guilty that I was bothering him and wasting his time. “You’re right,” I said, “ I don’t look at my e-mail very often.” “Well,” he said, “you ought to. We sent you a contract two months ago.” I remember looking at the phone receiver like an actor in a bad 1930’s screwball comedy. I was sure that I’d misheard him. “Uh,” I finally replied, “could you repeat what you just said?” “We’re buying your novel,” he said. “We love it.” I stammered a bit, then had him repeat it again just to make sure it wasn’t some sort of auditory illusion. It

wasn’t. I’d found a publisher for my novel. The months that followed were surreal. My editor was wonderful to work with, suggesting only minor changes and even giving me the option of whether or not to make them. How do you argue with someone who tells you that a character in your novel is great and wonders if you could give him just a few additional funny lines? Naturally, every writer wants their work to bring them great financial rewards. Writing is, after all, a business as well as an art. But as far as I’m concerned, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess is already a success before I even get my first royalty statement. It’s been published in a beautiful hardcover edition and received some wonderful reviews, including one from Publishers Weekly. The book is available on Amazon and on many other online booksellers, in bookstores and is also in libraries. The fact that people are reading it is the fulfillment of a dream. And if I could get a novel published, maybe you can, too. Here are a few things I did along the way and some of what I learned. A lot of them may sound like clichés about writing—but it turns out that they’re true. 1. Persistence pays off. If I’d put my novel in a drawer after a few rejections and stopped sending it out I never would have sold it. But it can take years of rejection. 2. I wrote in genres and styles that I knew and liked, specifically, fantasy and humor. 3. You never know who will like your work and help you. (And who won’t). 4. I wrote a lot. 5. I read in and out of my fields of interest in both fiction and non-fiction. 6. I tried writing in different forms. 7. I recognized that learning to write (or writing in a new area) can take time and requires belief and patience. 8. I appreciated all successes, large and small. 9. My measure of success is not solely financial. I realized that the work itself can be very gratifying. 10. I found out that I needed a community of people and that nothing thrives in a vacuum. Marc Bilgrey is the author of the new novel, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess (Five Star/Thomson Gale). His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies including Merlin, Far Frontiers, The Ultimate Halloween, and Crafty Little Cat Crimes. He has written for magazines, comedians, and TV. He has also written for nationally syndicated comic strips, including The Rugrats. Some of his strips are included in the new collection, A Baby’s Work is Never Done. Marc is also a writer-cartoonist. His panel cartoons have been featured in such publications as The Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Funny Times. He has had three collections of his cartoons published. Marc’s most recent short stories can be seen in the anthology Slipstreams (DAW Books), H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and the premier issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. His website is MarcBilgrey.com.

THE END

MARC BILGREY | 71

Feedback

Letters from our readers

Re Write Now! #12:

Webcomics are becoming so popular and there are some very good stories out there. Thank you for letting me know about Sluggy Freelance and Rip & Teri. At one time, my one-and-only comic book, The Legendary Dark Silhouette, was published as a hard copy and became a webcomic at my website Jazma Online! The good news is The Legendary Dark Silhouette comic book one-shot will become a movie. Production starts this fall by Howard Nash, a New York movie producer who has created movies such as Children of the Night, Sleepless Nights and The Perfect Heist. He mostly has done horror movies; this will be his first comic-book movie and it will simply be called The Silhouette. As things progress, I will let you know how the movie goes! Paul Dale Roberts, Jazma Operative Jazma Online! www.jazmaonline.com Thanks, Paul. And congratulations on the great news about The Silhouette. There’s a whole world of webcomics out there that out readers want and need to know about, and it’s a beat that Write Now! will be covering regularly.

Hello Danny, I would like to begin by saying that Write Now! just gets better with each new issue. Keep up the great work. I have an idea for the magazine: Like the letter to the editor pages in the newspapers, how about a feature where readers could write in and express their opinions on things that are going on in comics, movies, animation or books? This would be a great feature because it can give more of an insight into what people are looking for from their storytellers. Looking forward to issue #13. Sincerely, Vincent DiGennaro via the Internet

Thanks, Vincent. That’s a cool idea. I don’t know if it needs to be a separate feature, as opposed to a letter or series of letters. I’m assuming you have opinions you want to share. Send them along and, if appropriate, I’ll run some of them. That goes for the rest of you reading this, too. And how did you like issue #13 now that you’ve read it? Before I go, I just want to take a minute to remind you that the EXPANDED trade paperback version of the Write Now!-Draw Crossover that Draw! EIC Mike Manley and I collaborated on (in DFWN #8 and Draw! #9) is now on sale! It’s called HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT! It’s got all the material that was in the crossover—plus 30 ALL-NEW PAGES filled with lots more essential information about writing and art! You’ll be able to find it in your local comics shop and many hipper bookstores, as well as at websites like barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, borders.com, and, of course, at the TwoMorrows online store: www.twomorrows.com. (And don’t forget there’s a DVD version, too—HOW TO DRAW COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT—which we’re still getting compliments and thanks over.)

Now head over to the keyboard or writing pad and let me know what you thought about this issue of WN! You can contact me via e-mail at WriteNowDF@aol.com or via regular mail, at: Danny Fingeroth, Write Now!, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Road, Raleigh, NC 27614. And you have got to be here next issue, when we do an in-depth interview with BRIAN BENDIS, and sit in on a Spider-Man Writers’ Roundtable featuring STAN LEE, TODD McFARLANE, J.M. STRACZYNSKI, TOM DeFALCO, PETER DAVID, ROGER STERN, and ten more great Spider-Writers! Plus, we’ll see MARK MILLAR’s script and STEVE McNIVEN’s pencil art from Marvel Civil War #1! JIM STARLIN will be here to show and tell you about his Mystery in Space characters Captain Comet and (more of) The Weird! And there will, of course, be lots, lots more. Seeya then! —Danny Fingeroth

72 | WRITE NOW

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WRITE NOW! #12

WRITE NOW! #13

NEAL ADAMS discusses his own writing (with rare art and a NEW ADAMS COVER), GEOFF JOHNS discusses writing for comics, a feature on the secrets of PITCHING COMICS IDEAS, MICHAEL OEMING and BATTON LASH on writing, plus more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing and sample scripts!

Interviews and lessons by Justice League Unlimited’s DWAYNE McDUFFIE, interview with Hate’s PETER BAGGE conducted by JOEY CAVALIERI, comics scripter/editor GERRY CONWAY, writer/editor PAUL BENJAMIN, plus more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing and sample scripts, and a JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED cover!

STAN LEE, NEIL GAIMAN, MARK WAID, PETER DAVID, J.M. DeMATTEIS, TOM DeFALCO, DENNY O’NEIL, and 18 others reveal PROFESSIONAL WRITING SECRETS, plus DeFALCO and RON FRENZ on working together, JOHN OSTRANDER on creating characters, and an all-new SPIDER-GIRL cover by FRENZ and SAL BUSCEMA!

DC Comics president PAUL LEVITZ on the art, craft and business of comics writing, STEVE ENGLEHART’s thoughts on writing for today’s market, survey of TOP COMICS EDITORS on how to submit work to them, Marvel Editor ANDY SCHMIDT on how to break in, T. CAMPBELL on writing for webcomics, plus a new GEORGE PÉREZ cover!

X-MEN 3 screenwriter SIMON KINBERG interviewed, DENNIS O’NEIL on translating BATMAN BEGINS into a novel, Central Park Media’s STEPHEN PAKULA discusses manga writing, KURT BUSIEK on breaking into comics, MIKE FRIEDRICH on writers’ agents, script samples, new RON LIM /AL MILGROM cover, and more!

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WRITE NOW! #17

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HEROES ISSUE featuring series creator/ writer TIM KRING, writer JEPH LOEB, and others, interviews with DC Comics’ DAN DiDIO and Marvel’s DAN BUCKLEY, PETER DAVID on writing STEPHEN KING’S DARK TOWER COMIC, MICHAEL TEITELBAUM, C.B. CEBULSKI, DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, Nuts & Bolts script and art examples, and more!

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(80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074138

WRITE NOW! #14

WRITE NOW! #15

WRITE NOW! #16

BRIAN BENDIS interview, STAN LEE, TODD McFARLANE, PETER DAVID and others on writing Spider-Man, pencil art and script from MARVEL CIVIL WAR #1 by MILLAR and McNIVEN, JIM STARLIN on Captain Comet and The Weird, LEE NORDLING on Comics in Hollywood, and a new ALEX MALEEV cover!

J.M. DeMATTEIS interview on Abadazad with MIKE PLOOG, DC’s 52 series scripting how-to by RUCKA/JOHNS/MORRISON/ WAID, KEITH GIFFEN breakdowns, pencil art by JOE BENNETT, JOHN OSTRANDER on writing, STAR TREK novelist BILL McCAY on dealing with editors, samples of scripts and art, and more, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW!

Interview with Spawn’s TODD McFARLANE, Silver Surfer writers roundtable, script and pencil art from BRIAN BENDIS and FRANK CHO’s MIGHTY AVENGERS and from DAN SLOTT’s AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, an interview, script and art by DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF on his acclaimed graphic novel TESTAMENT, cover by MIKE ZECK, plus a FREE DRAW #14 PREVIEW!

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN074011

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WRITE NOW! #19 WRITE NOW! #18

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Celebration of STAN LEE’s 85th birthday, including rare examples of comics, TV, and movie scripts from the Stan Lee Archives, tributes by JOHN ROMITA, SR., JOE QUESADA, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, TODD McFARLANE, LOUISE SIMONSON, MARK EVANIER, and others, plus art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, and more! (80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084191

DARK KNIGHT and SPIRIT executive producer MICHAEL USLAN on the writing process for films, Dennis O’Neil on adapting THE DARK KNIGHT movie to novel form, BRIAN BENDIS script and LEINIL YU pencils from Marvel’s SECRET INVASION #1, mystery and comics writer MAX ALAN COLLINS discusses his career and upcoming projects, MARK MILLAR script and BRYAN HITCH pencils from their upcoming run on FF, DAN SLOTT script and STEVE McNIVEN pencils from Spider-Man’s BRAND NEW DAY, inside info on DC’s online ZUDA COMICS imprint from RON PERAZZA, ALEX GRECIAN talks about the making of his Image series PROOF!, and more! (80-page magazine) $6.95 Ships July 2008

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Annual Membership with one of $ these posters: 40 In The US

Captain America 23” x 29”

1941 Captain America 14” x 23”

Strange Tales 23” x 29”

Super Powers 17” x 22” color

Annual Membership with one of $ these posters: 50 In The US The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: • illustrating the scope of Kirby's multi-faceted career • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby • celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations • building understanding of comic books and comic book creators To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

Marvel 14” x 23”

Galactic Head 18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation 24” x 18” color

JOIN THE JACK KIRBY MUSEUM: www.kirbymuseum.org Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center • PO Box 5236 • Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA • Telephone: (201) 963-4383

MODERN MASTERS SERIES Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks and DVDs are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more! And don’t miss our companion DVDs, showing the artists at work in their studios!

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH GEORGE PÉREZ DVD

MODERN MASTERS: IN THE STUDIO WITH MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD

Get a PERSONAL TOUR of George’s studio, and watch STEP-BY-STEP as the fan-favorite artist illustrates a special issue of TOP COW’s WITCHBLADE! Also, see George as he sketches for fans at conventions, and hear his peers and colleagues—including MARV WOLFMAN and RON MARZ—share their anecdotes and personal insights along the way!

Go behind the scenes and into Michael Golden’s studio for a LOOK INTO THE CREATIVE MIND of one of comics' greats. Witness a modern master in action as this 90-minute DVD provides an exclusive look at the ARTIST AT WORK, as he DISCUSSES THE PROCESSES he undertakes to create a new comics series.

(120-minute Standard Format DVD) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905511 Diamond Order Code: JUN053276

(90-minute Standard Format DVD) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905771 Diamond Order Code: MAY073780

Volume 1: ALAN DAVIS

Volume 2: GEORGE PÉREZ

Volume 3: BRUCE TIMM

Volume 4: KEVIN NOWLAN

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905191 Diamond Order Code: JAN073903

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905252 Diamond Order Code: JAN073904

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905306 Diamond Order Code: APR042954

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905382 Diamond Order Code: SEP042971

Volume 5: GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

Volume 6: ARTHUR ADAMS

Volume 7: JOHN BYRNE

Volume 8: WALTER SIMONSON

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905443 Diamond Order Code: APR053191

by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905542 Diamond Order Code: DEC053309

by Jon B. Cooke & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905566 Diamond Order Code: FEB063354

by Roger Ash & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905641 Diamond Order Code: MAY063444

Volume 9: MIKE WIERINGO

Volume 10: KEVIN MAGUIRE

Volume 11: CHARLES VESS

Volume 12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

by Todd DeZago & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905658 Diamond Order Code: AUG063626

by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905665 Diamond Order Code: OCT063722

by Christopher Irving & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905696 Diamond Order Code: DEC063948

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

NEW FOR 2008

Volume 13: JERRY ORDWAY

Volume 14: FRANK CHO

Volume 15: MARK SCHULTZ

Volume 16: MIKE ALLRED

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905795 Diamond Order Code: JUN073926

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905849 Diamond Order Code: AUG074034

by Fred Perry & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905856 Diamond Order Code: OCT073846

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905863 Diamond Order Code: JAN083937

MODERN MASTERS BUNDLES

NEW FOR 2008

Volume 17: LEE WEEKS

Volume 18: JOHN ROMITA JR.

by Tom Field & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905948 Ships May 2008

by George Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905955 Ships July 2008

BUNDLE THE GEORGE PÉREZ VOLUME & DVD TOGETHER, OR THE MICHAEL GOLDEN VOLUME & DVD TOGETHER

ONLY $37.95 EACH (SAVE $7 PER BUNDLE)

MODERN MASTERS VOLUMES ON MIKE PLOOG AND CHRIS SPROUSE ARE COMING IN FALL 2008 SEE OUR SUMMER CATALOG UPDATE!

THE ULTIMATE MAGAZINE FOR LEGOTM ENTHUSIASTS OF ALL AGES!

NEXT ISSUE IN JUNE:

COMING IN MAY:

BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM 1

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BRICKJOURNAL #2 (VOL. 2) Our second FULL-COLOR print issue celebrates the summer by spotlighting blockbuster summer movies, LEGO style! The LEGO Group will be releasing new sets for BATMAN and INDIANA JONES, and BrickJournal looks behind the scenes at their creation! There’s also articles on events in the US and Europe, and spotlights on new models, including an SR-71 SPYPLANE and a LEGO CONSTRUCTED CITY. For builders, there are INSTRUCTIONS & MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATIONS. Plus, there’s a feature on the ONLINE LEGO FACTORY, showing how an online model becomes a custom set, and a look at how the LEGO Group monitors its quality! (80-page magazine) $11 US POSTPAID ($14 Canada, $20 Elsewhere) (80-page Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to print subscribers) • Ships June 2008

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $32 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($42 First Class, $50 Canada • Elsewhere: $66 Surface, $78 Airmail)

PRINT SUBSCRIBERS GET THE DIGITAL EDITION FREE, BEFORE THE PRINT ISSUE HITS STORES!

VOLUME 1 features interviews with LEGO car builder ZACHARY SWEIGART (showing his version of the timetraveling Delorean from the movie Back to the Future), JØRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO of LEGO Systems, Inc.), Mecha builders BRYCE McLONE and JEFF RANJO, paraplegic LEGO builder SCOTT WARFIELD, BOB CARNEY (LEGO castle builder extraordinaire) and RALPH SAVELSBURG (LEGO plane builder), REVEREND BRENDAN POWELL SMITH (author of the LEGO version of the Bible), NASA Astronaut Trainer KIETH JOHNSON, JAKE McKEE (Global Community Director for The LEGO Group), builder JASON ALLEMANN on recreating the spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact, features on the BIONICLE universe, how to make your own custom bricks, plus instructions and techniques, and more! Reprints Digital Editions #1-3 (below). (256-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $44 US POSTPAID ($51 Canada, $61 Elsewhere) ISBN: 978-1-893905-97-9 • Ships May 2008

GET DIGITAL EDITIONS OF VOLUME 1, #1-9: The first nine issues shown below comprise Volume One, and were released from 2005-2007 as Digital Editions only, averaging more than 100,000 downloads each. They’re available for downloading now for $3.95 EACH, and issue #9 is FREE!

DOWNLOAD A FREE DIGITAL EDITION OF VOL. 1, #9 NOW AT www.twomorrows.com

“HOW-TO” MAGAZINES Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing magazine, featuring galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

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ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including: ALAN DAVIS, GEORGE PÉREZ, BRUCE TIMM, KEVIN NOWLAN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, ARTHUR ADAMS, JOHN BYRNE, and WALTER SIMONSON, plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, art critiques, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER!

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ROUGH STUFF #2

ROUGH STUFF #3

ROUGH STUFF #4

The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including: BRIAN APTHORP, FRANK BRUNNER, PAUL GULACY, JERRY ORDWAY, ALEX TOTH, and MATT WAGNER, plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at art of the pros BEFORE they were pros, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

Still more galleries of UNPUBLISHED ART by MIKE ALLRED, JOHN BUSCEMA, YANICK PAQUETTE, JOHN ROMITA JR., P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and LEE WEEKS, plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the process of creating a cover (with BILL SIENKIEWICZ and JOHN ROMITA JR.), and a new ROMITA JR. COVER, plus a FREE DRAW #13 PREVIEW!

More NEVER-PUBLISHED galleries (with detailed artist commentaries) by MICHAEL KALUTA, ANDREW “Starman” ROBINSON, GENE COLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, and STEVE BISSETTE, plus interview and art by JOHN TOTLEBEN, a look at the Wonder Woman Day charity auction (with rare art), art critiques, before-&-after art comparisons, and a FREE WRITE NOW #15 PREVIEW!

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ROUGH STUFF #5

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ROUGH STUFF #6

NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on Jonah Hex, new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features a new interview and cover by BRIAN STELFREEZE, interview with BUTCH GUICE, extensive art galleries/commentary by IAN CHURCHILL, DAVE COCKRUM, and COLLEEN DORAN, MIKE GAGNON looks at independent comics, with art and comments by ANDREW BARR, BRANDON GRAHAM, and ASAF HANUKA! Includes a FREE ALTER EGO #73 PREVIEW!

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Features an in-depth interview and cover by TIM TOWNSEND, CRAIG HAMILTON, DAN JURGENS, and HOWARD PORTER offer preliminary art and commentaries, MARIE SEVERIN career retrospective, graphic novels feature with art and comments by DAWN BROWN, TOMER HANUKA, BEN TEMPLESMITH, and LANCE TOOKS, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073966

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ROUGH STUFF #9

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ROUGH STUFF #8 Features an in-depth interview and cover painting by the extraordinary MIKE MAYHEW, preliminary and unpublished art by ALEX HORLEY, TONY DeZUNIGA, NICK CARDY, and RAFAEL KAYANAN (including commentary by each artist), a look at the great Belgian comic book artists, a “Rough Critique” of MIKE MURDOCK’s work, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084188

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships Summer 2008

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

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DRAW! (edited by top comics artist MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and STEP-BY-STEP DEMOS from top comics pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling. NOTE: Contains nudity for purposes of figure drawing. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS. TWO-TIME EISNER AWARD NOMINEE for Best Comics-Related Periodical.

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

DRAW! #4

DRAW! #5

DRAW! #6

Features an interview and step-by-step demonstration from Savage Dragon’s ERIK LARSEN, KEVIN NOWLAN on drawing and inking techniques, DAVE COOPER demonstrates coloring techniques in Photoshop, BRET BLEVINS tutorial on Figure Composition, PAUL RIVOCHE on the Design Process, reviews of comics drawing papers, and more!

Interview and sketchbook by MIKE WIERINGO, BRIAN BENDIS and MIKE OEMING show how they create the series “Powers”, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw great hands”, “The illusion of depth in design” by PAUL RIVOCHE, must-have art books reviewed by TERRY BEATTY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, links, a color section and more! OEMING cover!

Interview, cover, and demo with BILL WRAY, STEPHEN DeSTEFANO interview and demo on cartooning and animation, BRET BLEVINS shows “How to draw the human figure in light and shadow,” a step-by-step Photo-shop tutorial by CELIA CALLE, expert inking tips by MIKE MANLEY, plus reviews of the best art supplies, links, a color section and more!

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DRAW! #8

DRAW! #10

DRAW! #11

DRAW! #12

DRAW! #13

From comics to video games: an interview, cover, and demo with MATT HALEY, TOM BANCROFT & ROB CORLEY on character design, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator” step-by-step demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “Draping The Human Figure” by BRET BLEVINS, a new COMICS SECTION, International Spotlight on JOSÉ LOUIS AGREDA, a color section and more!

RON GARNEY interview, step-by-step demo, and cover, GRAHAM NOLAN on creating newspaper strips, TODD KLEIN and other pros discuss lettering, “Draping The Human Figure, Part Two” by BRET BLEVINS, ALBERTO RUIZ with more Adobe Illustrator tips, interview with Banana Tail creator MARK McKENNA, links, a color section and more!

STEVE RUDE demonstrates his approach to comics & drawing, ROQUE BALLESTEROS on Flash animation, political cartoonist JIM BORGMAN on his daily comic strip Zits, plus DRAW!’s regular instructors BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY on “Drawing On LIfe”, more Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ, links, a color section and more! New RUDE cover!

KYLE BAKER reveals his working methods and step-by-step processes on merging his traditional and digital art, Machine Teen’s MIKE HAWTHORNE on his work, “Making Perspective Work For You” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, Photoshop techniques with ALBERTO RUIZ, Adult Swim’s THE VENTURE BROTHERS, links, a color section and more! New BAKER cover!

Step-by-step demo of painting methods by cover artist ALEX HORLEY (Heavy Metal, Vertigo, DC, Wizards of the Coast), plus interviews and demos by Banana Sundays’ COLLEEN COOVER, behind-the-scenes on Adult Swim’s MINORITEAM, regular features on drawing by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, links, color section and more, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #3 PREVIEW!

(96-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC032848

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(112-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY053188

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (96-page Digital Edition) $2.95

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: OCT063824

DRAW! #16

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DRAW! #14

DRAW! #15

Features in-depth interviews and demos with DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), plus Part 3 of editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, a new MAHNKE cover, and a FREE ALTER EGO #70 PREVIEW!

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE, covering major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, featuring faculty, student, and graduate interviews in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/ interview with B.P.R.D.’S GUY DAVIS, MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, a FREE WRITE NOW #17 PREVIEW, and more!

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073896

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Features an in-depth interview and coverage of the creative process of HOWARD CHAYKIN. From the early ’70s at DC, STAR WARS, and HEAVY METAL, to AMERICAN FLAGG and now WOLVERINE, we catch up with one of comics most innovative artist/storytellers! Also, we go behind the drawing board and animation desk with JAY STEPHENS, from JET CAT and TUTENSTEIN to his new Cartoon Network show, SECRET SATURDAYS! Then there's more COMIC ART BOOTCAMP, this time focusing on HOW TO USE REFERENCE, and WORKING FROM PHOTOS by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY. Plus, reviews, resources and more! (80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Ships Summer 2008

Don’t miss our BEST OF DRAW volumes, reprinting the SOLD OUT ISSUES!

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NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!

ALTER EGO #77

BACK ISSUE #28

WRITE NOW! #18

DRAW! #15

BRICKJOURNAL #1 (V2)

ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more!

“Heroes Behaving Badly!” Hulk vs. Thing tirades with RON WILSON, HERB TRIMPE, and JIM SHOOTER; CARY BATES and CARMINE INFANTINO on “Trial of the Flash”; JOHN BYRNE’s heroes who cross the line; Teen Titan Terra, Kid Miracleman, Mark Shaw Manhunter, and others who went bad, featuring LAYTON, MICHELINIE, WOLFMAN, and PÉREZ, and more! New cover by DARWYN COOKE!

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE, covering major schools offering comic art as part of their curriculum, featuring faculty, student, and graduate interviews in an ultimate overview of collegiate-level comic art classes! Plus, a “how-to” demo/ interview with artist BILL REINHOLD, MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP series, a FREE WRITE NOW #17 PREVIEW, and more!

The ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages, showcasing events, people, and models! #1 features an interview with set designer and LEGO Certified Professional NATHAN SAWAYA, plus step-by-step building instructions and techniques for all skill levels, new set reviews, on-the-scene reports from LEGO community events, and other surprises! Edited by JOE MENO.

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(80-page FULL COLOR magazine) $8.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: FEB088010

ALL- STAR COMPANION V. 3

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 15: MARK SCHULTZ

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Ships May 2008 Diamond Order Code: MAR084108

KIRBY FIVE-OH! (JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #50) The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine celebrate the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career, spotlighting: The BEST KIRBY STORIES & COVERS from 19381987! Jack’s 50 BEST UNUSED PIECES OF ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! Interviews with the 50 PEOPLE MOST INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! A 50PAGE KIRBY PENCIL ART GALLERY and DELUXE COLOR SECTION! Kirby cover inked by DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER, making this the ultimate retrospective on the career of the “King” of comics! Edited by JOHN MORROW. (168-page tabloid-size trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905894 Diamond Order Code: JUL078147 Now Shipping

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR084109

SILVER AGE ALTER EGO: BEST SCI-FI COMPANION OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE In the Silver Age of Comics, space was the place, and this book summarizes, critiques and lovingly recalls the classic science-fiction series edited by JULIUS SCHWARTZ and written by GARDNER FOX and JOHN BROOME! The pages of DC’s science-fiction magazines of the 1960s, STRANGE ADVENTURES and MYSTERY IN SPACE, are opened for you, including story-bystory reviews of complete series such as ADAM STRANGE, ATOMIC KNIGHTS, SPACE MUSEUM, STAR ROVERS, STAR HAWKINS and others! Writer/editor MIKE W. BARR tells you which series crossed over with each other, behind-the-scenes secrets, and more, including writer and artist credits for every story! Features rare art by CARMINE INFANTINO, MURPHY ANDERSON, GIL KANE, SID GREENE, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and many others, plus a glorious new cover by ALAN DAVIS and PAUL NEARY!

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95! Subscribers to the print edition get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

(144-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905818 Diamond Order Code: JUL073885

In 1961, JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS launched ALTER EGO, the first fanzine devoted to comic book history. This book, first published in low distribution in 1997, collects the original 11 issues of A/E from 1961-78, with creative and artistic contributions by JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, & others—and important, illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! See where a generation first learned about the Golden Age of Comics—while the Silver Age was in full flower—with major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS & BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by the late JULIUS SCHWARTZ.

More amazing secrets behind the 194051 ALL-STAR COMICS—and illustrated speculation about how other Golden Age super-teams might have been assembled! Also, an issue-by-issue survey of the JLAJSA TEAM-UPS of 1963-85, the 1970s JSA REVIVAL, and the 1980s series THE YOUNG ALL-STARS and SECRET ORIGINS, with commentary by the artists and writers! Plus rare, often unseen art by KUBERT, INFANTINO, ADAMS, ORDWAY, ANDERSON, TOTH, CARDY, GIL KANE, COLAN, SEKOWSKY, DILLIN, STATON, REINMAN, McLEOD, GRINDBERG, PAUL SMITH, RON HARRIS, MARSHALL ROGERS, WAYNE BORING, GEORGE FREEMAN, DON HECK, GEORGE TUSKA, TONY DeZUNIGA, H.G. PETER, DON SIMPSON, and many others! Compiled and edited by ROY THOMAS, with a new cover by GEORGE PÉREZ!

(192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95 ISBN: 9781893905801 Diamond Order Code: MAY078045

(10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Surface

Airmail

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$44

1st Class Canada $56

$64

$76

$120

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$40

$54

$66

$90

$108

DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF (4 issues)

$26

$36

$44

$60

$72

ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!

$78

$108

$132

$180

$216

BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$32

$42

$50

$66

$78

Features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from Mark’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art! By ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON. (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 ISBN: 9781893905856 Diamond Order Code: OCT073846

MODERN MASTERS: MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD Shows the artist at work, discussing his art and career! (120-minute Std. Format DVD) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905771 Diamond Order Code: MAY073780

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com