Write Now! #15 by TwoMorrows Publishing

INSIDE: SCRIPT AND PENCIL ART FROM 52!

695

In the USA

M AG A ZI N E

DeMATTEIS & PLOOG ON ABADAZAD AND DISNEY Spring 2007

WAID • RUCKA MORRISON JOHNS • GIFFEN BENNETT DiDIO SIGLAIN

82658 27765

CREATING COMICS STEP-BYSTEP SPIDER-MAN: BACK IN BLACK

M AG A Z I N E Issue #15

Spring 2007

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 2 BEHIND THE SCENES OF 52 The Dan DiDio Interview DC’s top editorial honcho talks about 52 and Countdown . . . . . . .page 3 The Michael Siglain Interview The 52 story, from the editorial hot seat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 11 52 Nuts & Bolts: Scripts by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid. Layouts by Keith Giffen. Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: 52 #38 Pages from “Breathless,” featuring the death of the Question. Art by Joe Bennett and Jack Jadson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 7 Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: 52 #24 Pages from “Just Imagine.” Art by Phil Jimenez and Andy Lanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 15 THE WORLD OF ABADAZAD The J.M. DeMatteis Interview The writer/co-creator reveals the saga of the series . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21 The Mike Ploog Interview The artist/co-creator on creating the series’ look and feel . . . . . . . page 30 ABADAZAD Nuts & Bolts: Script to Pencils to Finished Comics Pages: ABADAZAD, book 2 Pages from THE DREAM THIEF, by DeMatteis and Ploog . . . . . .page 33 Yours, Mine and Ours: Writing the Company-Owned or Franchised Character by John Ostrander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 51 Creating Blockbuster Worlds by Jeff Gomez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 57 Writing Educational Graphic Novels by Eric Fein . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 65 Feedback: Letters from Write Now!’s Readers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 69

FREE Preview of Rough Stuff #4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 70 Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Pencils to Finished Comic: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539, Pages from “Back in Black,” by J.M. Straczynski & Ron Garney . . . .page 37 Creating Comics Step by Step (Part 1 of 3) by Steven Grant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 41

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief Managing Editor ERIC FEIN Cover art by MIKE PLOOG Colored by NICK BELL Designers RICH FOWLKS, DAVID GREENAWALT, and MICHAEL KRONENBERG Transcriber STEVEN TICE Circulation Director BOB BRODSKY, COOKIESOUP PERIODICAL DISTRIBUTION, LLC Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: AXEL ALONSO NICK BELL ALSION BLAIRE KIA CROSS DAN DiDIO J.M. DeMATTEIS RICH FOWLKS JEFF GOMEZ STEVEN GRANT DAVID GREENAWALT CHRIS IRVING DANIEL KETCHUM MICHAEL KRONENBERG JIM McCANN JOHN OSTRANDER MIKE PLOOG CHRIS POWELL BEN REILLY ALEX SEGURA MICHAEL SIGLAIN VARDA STEINHARDT STEVEN TICE JENNIFER ZATORSKI DAVID ZEICHNER

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: $8 Postpaid in the US ($10 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $20 US ($40 Canada, $44 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 ©2007 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. ISSN 1555-502X

WRITE NOW | 1

READ Now ! Message from Danny Fingeroth, Editor-in-Chief W

elcome to another jam-packed-with-writerlyadvice issue of Write Now! We’ve got so many cool things this issue, I don’t know where to start except at the beginning. First up we managed to wrangle interviews out of DC VP/Executive Editor Dan DiDio and editor Michael Siglain about the agony and ecstasy of putting together the weekly comic book 52! They even drop some hints about DC’s next weekly spectacular, Countdown. And wait till you see the cool layouts by Keith Giffen and pencil artwork by Phil Jimenez and Joe Bennett they gave us for two sensational Nuts & Bolts sections Next up we take you deep into the heart of one of the coolest new fantasy series of the 21st century—Abadazad! We speak in-depth with creator and writer J.M. DeMatteis about the origins of this series for smart kids of all ages and what it’s like writing books that feature prose and comic book sequences combined in a daring new manner. And of course no look at Abadazad would be complete without hearing from its artist, Mike Ploog. Mike speaks about his introduction to Abadazad and the joys of bringing it to life visually—and he’s brought along a gaggle of artwork for all of our readers to drool over in a Nuts & Bolts section of its own. Wait’ll you see his astonishing pencil work! And speaking of Nuts & Bolts, we’ve got an amazing one for you featuring pages from Amazing Spider-Man #539’s “Back In Black” storyline. In the wake of Civil War—not to mention Straczynski’s script and Ron Garney’s pencils are our—and their—special treat for WN’s readers! Next up is a quartet of how-to articles. • Steven Grant kicks off the first in a three-part series about “Creating Comics Step by Step.” • John Ostrander is back to share his thoughts about the pros and cons of writing company owned characters as opposed to writing your own. • Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, explains what Trans-Media Storytelling is, and why it’s so important for comic book writers to be good at it. • Write Now’s very own Managing Editor Eric Fein uses his experience as a writer of comics and educational books to explain the ins-and-outs of writing educational graphic novels for the school and library markets.

2 | WRITE NOW

(Maybe not as sexy as Spidey in black…but it might help pay your bills one day!) And what about next issue? Write Now! #16 is going to hit the stands amidst the furor that is Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer! To celebrate the movie hitting silver (get it?) screens across the country, we’ve got ourselves a Silver Surfer painted cover by Mike Zeck and Phil Zimelman! And there’s more more solid silver: a roundtable feature focusing on the Surfer and some of the greatest writers to ever script his star-spanning adventures, including Stan Lee, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, George Perez, and J.M. DeMatteis! Plus we’ve got an in-depth interview with the one and only Todd McFarlane that you won’t want to miss as he discusses writing comics (and drawing them—he does that, too), Spawn, Image Comics, McFarlane Toys, and much, much more. And for all of you Star Trek fans we’ll be running the second part of a Star Trek writers’ roundtable that kicks off in our sibling TwoMorrows publication, Back Issue #23. It features Peter David, Mike W. Barr, Michael Jan Friedman and many others and is not to be missed. Still want more? Next issue’s got it: • Nuts & Bolts sections featuring script and pencil art from Brian Bendis and Frank Cho’s Mighty Avengers and Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli’s Avengers: The Initiative. • An interview with media-guru-turned-comics-writer Douglas Rushkoff about his and Liam Sharp’s Testament graphic novels. • A sneak preview of Mike Manley’s Draw #14! It’s all coming at ya next issue! Don’t miss it. And now...enjoy the current one! Write away!

Danny Fingeroth

SUPER-SAGA ORIGINS:

DAN DiDIO TALKS 52…AND COUNTDOWN

Interview conducted by Danny Fingeroth via telephone 3-23-07 Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Eric Fein, Danny Fingeroth and Dan DiDio

s VP-Executive Editor, DC Universe, Dan DiDio has been responsible for implementing sweeping changes to DC’s heroes—reinvigorating old favorites and introducing new ones—and guiding such bestselling series as Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, 52, and the upcoming Countdown.

Before joining DC, DiDio was with the computer animation company Mainframe Entertainment where he served as freelance story editor and scriptwriter for the series Reboot and War Planets. Later he became its Senior Vice President, Creative Affairs, overseeing the development, distribution, marketing, and promotion as well as merchandising and licensing of all Mainframe’s television properties. Among the projects he developed there were Beast Machines and Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother. He began his television career in 1981 at CBS, where he worked at a variety of positions before moving to Capital Cities/ABC in 1985. At ABC, DiDio served as Public Relations Manager for the three New York-based Daytime Dramas, then moved to Los Angeles to become Executive Director of Children’s Programming. There, he was responsible for Saturday morning programs and After School Specials, serving as Program Executive on such series as Madeline, Dumb and Dumber, and Reboot. Dan was able to take some time from his astonishingly busy schedule and talk to us about DC’s hottest series, 52, and its sure-to-be as or more popular sequel, Countdown. [For those of you who’ve been out of touch, 52 is a formidable undertaking, a weekly DC comic series designed to come out for exactly a year. Its writers are Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid. J.G. Jones does the covers, Keith Giffen does the thumbnail layouts for every issue, and a host of pencilers and inkers including Chris Batista, Joe Bennett, Pat Olliffe, Drew Geraci, and Rodney Ramos bring the story to life.] —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: Where did the idea for doing something like 52 come from? DAN DiDIO: What happened was that, when we leapt

forward one year in continuity in the DC Universe coming out of Infinite Crisis, we were planning to do a series of annuals that filled in the missing year for a number of the books. And then we brought the proposal with the annuals to [DC President [Photo: Frances Roberts for The New York Times] [© 2007 The New York Times Company] and Publisher] Paul Levitz. Paul, rather than approving the annuals, made a suggestion: “Wouldn’t it be interesting if we did something like the TV show 24 and filled in the missing year over 52 weeks of comics?” So he put that challenge in front of me, and the guys in the room with me presenting the annuals plan—Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka. We promptly closed up our easel, and said, “We’ll get back to you.” And that’s pretty much how 52 was born. DF: That’s pretty wild. Were you one of the guys plotting the series? DD: I was initially in on plotting sessions, but I also was one of the people who helped establish the production methodology. I remembered how we built animated series on a weekly basis when I was at Mainframe. And I started to figure out ways that we would be able to produce a book on a regular weekly turnaround and bring some level of consistency and continuity from issue to issue. But what we always wanted to do, and we always intended to do, was to tell a 52-part story. That was the plan right from the outset. DF: That’s a highly ambitious goal. How much of the story is planned out in advance? Did you plan out in broad strikes the contents of all 52 issues, or were you sort of making it up as you went along? DAN DiDIO | 3

DD: We sat down and we broke out what was theoretically going to be happening in the 52 issues. Two things changed along the way, and this is pretty much where I handed things off to the creative team and the editor on the book. One of the original goals for 52 was, as I said, to fill in the missing year for the “One Year Later” story of the DCU characters. As we broke the series out into its parts, we decided to pick a number of characters as our leaders to take us through those stories, and we “assigned” them to different parts of the story. You know, we had Renee Montoya, a very street-level character, who took us through those types of stories. We created the space team to show the space side of the story. We had Ralph Dibny to use for the magic side of the DCU. What ultimately happened, though, and you could see the change was evident by the second issue, was that the writers got deeply engrossed in the stories of the characters who were going to be our guides.

Those characters wound up becoming the leads of the stories, and the stories became more about them than the world. Instead of the story being about the world with these guys taking us through it, the world became the backdrop to the stories and the changes were seen through their eyes. And I think, quite honestly, once we put the focus on character and story, I think it came alive much better and became much more cohesive, and then the stories started to evolve from there. DF: What surprised you the most about the whole process of doing 52? DD: The fact that we completed it. Seriously, though, what surprised me was also one of the things that changed along the way. The initial conceit, again, was that we brought in four writers with the idea that each one would be handling one week’s worth of script per month. But, ultimately, what happened is that the four guys really started to mesh together. Each one started to gravitate to particular characters, and rather than operate as individuals, the writers decided to operate as, as we called it, a band. All four guys worked on every single issue, something that we never believed was going to be able to work. But they were able to persevere, they stuck it through, and they did it from beginning to middle to end, they saw it the whole way through to the conclusion. It’s just an amazing feat for four writers to be able to work that closely together, working under such a pressure-filled deadline, and be able to turn in the quality product that we received. DF: That sounds similar to the way TV shows are written. DD: It is, but with TV, there’s usually a head writer who’s working with a group of writers, or handing off script assignments. These four guys literally wrote every issue. Every issue has pages written by each one of them.

4 | WRITE NOW

DF: Has anything in the storyline changed based on fan feedback as the issues have come out? Have you modified course at all based on that? DD: No, I think pretty much any modifications that occurred along the way were because, as the stories developed with the characters, they both really started to follow a natural course of progression. We always knew there was going to be a major event at the end of the story which was going to precipitate a lot of the “One Year Later” changes. We weren’t really sure what that event was, but that evolved as the story was done. We didn’t want to lock so much into the back half of the story primarily because we knew that, as in any creative process, the story needs to take shape in certain directions in order to really reach its full potential. The writers also had weekly conference calls with their editors where they talked through each individual issue. Plus, we also got together during the course of

the year for two or three summits to discuss where the story was going. DF: Is 52 layout artist Keith Giffen involved in the plotting? DD: Keith was always involved in it, and in the summit sessions, and also with the cover artist, J. G. Jones, because in the meetings he was coming up with suggestions in regards to the types of covers J.G. would draw. DF: But was Keith actually co-plotting, as well? DD: He was ombudsman—that’s the best way to put it. He was there, and he was our fly in the ointment to make sure that everything stayed on track, that the writers were clear about what we were doing. One of Keith’s key roles was to be the guy who always said, “Well, if something happens and one of you guys stumbles, I’m there to help pick things up.” So they always knew they had somebody there who understood the story who could step in if there was an emergency. Keith did such a great job on that, that we actually got him involved in the next weekly comic that we’re doing right now, Countdown.

of the characters throughout the series. DF: Do you have meetings with all the writers coming into town at one time, or is it all done by phone and e-mail? DD: It’s all done via phone and e-mail right now. We brought Paul in, and he had a chance to meet with all the writers on an individual basis, but we’ve never done the group room like we did for 52. DF: Is Paul Levitz involved with Countdown at all? DD: No. He basically signs off on the overall story, but he hasn’t been getting involved in the plotting sessions. DF: Who will be doing the art on Countdown? DD: We’ve got a lot of talented artists lined up including Al Barrionuevo, Jim

DF: Good segue. Any hints about Countdown that you can give us? DD: In Countdown we just changed the writing process a little bit, made it much more of a television model, and put Paul Dini in as the head writer. It’s a different beast, and it moves at a different pace, because it’d be very hard to duplicate what we did with 52, especially in regards to the talent and the ambition that these guys bought to that first weekly comic. DF: Who are the writers on Countdown going to be? DD: Well, as I said, Paul Dini’s our head writer. Onboard writing with him are Tony Bedard, Shawn McKeever, Adam Beechen, and the writing team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. DF: Very cool. So this is more the sort of situation where Paul is guiding the ship and everybody’s going along with his vision, as opposed to the collaborative process on 52? DD: Yeah. The way 52 worked was that the editor would get on the phone with all four writers, and all four writers would plot out an issue. The way Countdown works is that the editor speaks to Paul Dini, they agree on what an individual will contain, and then Paul breaks down the issue with the one writer of that book. Then Paul actually goes in at the end to do a dialogue polish to bring a level of consistency to the voices

DC’s new weekly series, Countdown, promises to feature all of the DC Universe’s heavy hitters in a year’s worth of weekly action. Cover art to Countdown #51, the first issue in the series—the numbering counts down to 0—is by Andy Kubert and Tim Townsend. [© 2007 DC Comics]

DAN DiDIO | 5

Calafiore, David Lopez, and Jesus Saiz. And as he did for 52, Keith Giffen will be doing layouts for each issue. DF: And any hints, any actual story points for Countdown that you can give? DD: Just, again, that we’re trying to broaden the scope of Countdown even more than we did with 52. It really is its own beast. It doesn’t take much from 52 except, probably, one of the final beats [story points] of 52. But we’re just expanding on it rather than making a continuing story from it. The lead characters in Countdown include Jimmy Olsen, taking us through a lot of the Jack Kirby “Fourth World” material. We also have a great storyline that involves Mary Marvel and her quest for power and need for redemption as she crosses paths with several characters in the DC Universe. There’s going to be a search for Ray Palmer, which ultimately is the core of everything that’s going on in the DCU for the next two years. And we also have a storyline where the Trickster and Pied Piper have been bound together, which takes us through the underbelly of the DC Universe, and through the world of the villains.

DF: By “bound together,” you mean combined into one person? DD: We call the storyline “Villains Defiant,” and there’s a reason why. DF: Is that title a reference to movie The Defiant Ones, where Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier play escaped convicts who hate each other but are handcuffed together? DD: I’m not allowed to say that. DF: Okay, say no more. Thanks for the interview, Dan. Great stuff. DD: Thank you, Danny. I enjoyed it. [NOTE: The 52nd issue of 52 goes on sale May 2nd (aka 5/2. Yikes!). Countdown #51—the first issue (the weekly series is numbered in descending order from #51 to #0)—will be in comics shops May 9th.]

THE END 6 | WRITE NOW

Here, the first of two 52 Nuts and Bolts sections. This one showcases issue #38, featuring the death of the Question. The script is by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid. Rucka typed this segment. Keith Giffen did the layouts, with pencils by Joe Bennett and inks by Jack Jadson.

Page 17 ONE: A little later. MONTOYA staggering as the LITTER slews behind her. Drawing the question mark, but we don’t know that, yet. 1 CAPTION/Montoya:

I don’t know where I am anymore.

TWO: MONTOYA dropping to her knees, trying to read her COMPASS in the blizzard. The LITTER sliding slightly behind her. 2 CAPTION/Montoya:

I don’t know which way to go.

THREE: Closer on MONTOYA, the SNOW slashing at her. She’s dropped the COMPASS and is now searching around, shielding her eyes. 3 CAPTION/Montoya:

I’m lost.

4 VIC/off:

hHHUUUUuuhhhh

FOUR: Past MONTOYA, turning, to see that the LITTER has flipped onto its side, VIC facing away from her.

SIX: his face. From where his MASK has begun to peel from forth. OTS MONTOYA, to VIC. The BLOOD is beginning to spill of IN STA a , mask the d mouth would be behin

There’s BLOOD in the SNOW. Vic has begun bleedin

10 CAPTION/Montoya:

g out.

5 CAPTION/Montoya:

You’re my sense of direction, Charlie.

6 VIC:

uhhhkkk-kkk-kkk

FIVE: MONTOYA righting VIC on the litter. Angle such that we can’t see VIC’S FACE – his head turned to the side, perhaps. Bloody snow marking a track. 7 CAPTION/Montoya:

I don’t know who I am without you.

8 VIC/wobble/fading:

kkkhhhsssss

9 MONTOYA:

Charlie!!

11 MONTOYA:

Don’t leave me… Oh God, Oh God, Charlie, hold

on…

SEVEN: litter. BLOOD is still back, leaving VIC lying on the MONTOYA reacting, pulling leaking out of him. 12 CAPTION/Montoya: 13 MONTOYA:

…please not again… here, I’ve got …hold on, please hold on, I’m

you…

(MORE)

In planning the series, the editors decided to use one artist—Giffen—to lay out all 52 issues. Keith is also a writer, and the 52 crew trusts his instincts as far as modifying the scripts. The script for page 17, shown here, calls for seven panels. Keith’s layouts—and hence, the drawn page—consist of nine.

52 NUTS & BOLTS | 7

Pages 18 and 19 blizzard Keith—All yours, baby. Please remember that the pages, ending on Page 13, Panel 1.

begins to abate on these

“effected” with a blur or somethi Mike—We’ll want Vic’s lines to be appropriately similar to make it seem “hoarse.”

ONE: her tears freezing on her face. Looking at MONTOYA, head bowed, eyes closed, 1 CAPTION/Montoya:

…I can’t do this again…

2 MONTOYA/small:

…please—

3 TAILLESS/hoarse:

You never answered my question.

TWO: skin. MONTOYA reacting, nearly jumping out of her 4 MONTOYA:

—ahh!!

THREE: MASK is peeling off his face, perhaps OTS MONTOYA, to VIC on the LITTER. The g on her/us, and they’re clear. half off, and we can see his eyes, and they’re focusin For a moment, he’s Vic Sage, whole, once again. 5 MONTOYA:

Ch-Charlie?

6 VIC/hoarse: 7 VIC/linked/hoarse:

Get this *kaff koff* thing off my face. Hard enough to breathe as it is.

FOUR: She’s crying – she doesn’t know if this MONTOYA peels the MASK from VIC’S FACE. else. ng is a miracle or somethi VIC is still focused on her. Managing a slight, vintage

grin, marred with his own blood.

8 VIC/hoarse:

What the hell *kaff* are you doing, Renee?

9 MONTOYA: 10 MONTOYA/linked:

Trying…trying to get us to Nanda Parbat. Trying to save you, Charlie.

(MORE)

For pages 18 and 19, the writers ask Giffen to decide which panels will go on each page, trusting he will bring out the best in the script.

The “Mike” addressed at the beginning of the page 18-19 script is, of course, editor Michael Siglain.

8 | WRITE NOW

FIVE: MONTOYA carefully taking VIC in her arms. VIC is weak – he’s on his last seconds, and maybe he knows it – but he is also lucid and he knows this is the last chance he has to connect with Renee, to make her see. 11 VIC/hoarse: 12 VIC/hoarse:

But you can’t. I told you…

SIX: On MONTOYA, really starting to cry. 13 VIC/hoarse/off:

…some things you have to accept—

14 MONTOYA:

I can’t! I can’t! I need you—

SEVEN: MONTOYA holding VIC against her, pleadin g with

him.

VIC is beginning to fade. VIC bringing a hand up to touch MONTOYA’S CHEEK as she sobs. 15 MONTOYA:

—I don’t know who I am without you!

16 VIC/hoarse/small: It’s a trick question, Renee… 17 VIC/hoarse/small/linked: …not who are you *kaff*… EIGHT: Begin pulling out, as VIC starts to fall back in MONT 18 VIC/hoarse/small:

OYA’S arms.

…but who are you going to become?

NINE: Continue the pull-back, so we’re looking down at an angle on MONTOYA, now sobbing inconsolably. Holding VIC. VIC is dropping back, on his last breath. 19 VIC/hoarse/smaller:

Time to change…

Although we were unable to obtain the pencils for page 19, you can see the power of Keith’s layouts come shining through in the final, printed comics page. Note that the called-for nine panels for the two pages have become twelve in Keith’s interpretation.

52 NUTS & BOLTS | 9

Page 20 ONE: in the MARK SHAPE that’s been dragged The big panel, revealing the QUESTION . snow, mixed and marred by Vic’s blood weepi MONTOYA holds VIC in her arms,

ng silently.

The last of the storm is ending. The storm has ended. 1 VIC/smallest:

…like a butterfly….

TWO: revealed by beyond them, in the background, now MONTOYA and VIC in the snow, and the SUNLIGHT and the AT, PARB A NAND of NERY the end of the storm, the GREE WARMTH. g his way towar RICHARD DRAGON in the EBG, makin

ds them.

On page 20, the final page of the issue, you can see that Bennett made panel one smaller than did Keith. This helps add power to the second panel reveal of Nanda Parbat, the mystical city in the mountains of Tibet, where Renee Montoya’s future awaits.

NO COPY.

Note how, in panel one of the script, the writers call for a question mark shaped trail in the snow—a subtle visual reference to the fact that this story focuses on the Question. Sometimes a touch like that is added by the artist, but in this case the writers specifically asked for it.

THE END 10 | WRITE NOW

Editing 52, 24/7:

THE MICHAEL SIGLAIN INTERVIEW

Conducted by Danny Fingeroth via telephone 3-23-07 Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Eric Fein, Danny Fingeroth and Michael Siglain

ichael Siglain started his DC Comics career in the company’s Multimedia Department as an Associate Producer. He oversaw the creation of online webisodes, videogames and even audio adaptations. He next moved into Editorial Administration and then finally DCU editorial, handling titles including Jonah Hex and Firestorm. When original 52 editor Stephen Wacker left DC, Michael was tapped to take the reigns of the sprawling weekly series and the rest is history. —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: Things are getting down to the wire for you with the last few issue of 52, Michael. When does the last issue come out? MICHAEL SIGLAIN: May 2nd. Oddly enough, that’s 5/2. DF: That’s weird. MS: And it wasn’t planned that way. It just worked out that way and everyone kind of took a step back and went, “Ooh.”

it’s such a roller coaster ride now that I think people are still going to dig it, and I think everyone’s going to be extremely satisfied with how it ends. DF: Now, if somebody just starts reading the book in the middle of the series, how would they get caught up on what’s gone before? MS: We try to do little recaps here and there through dialogue, though, to be honest, it’s a little bit difficult to just to walk in after 46 weeks. If you’re just going to come in with, say, Week 27, yeah, you’re going to be a little confused, because it’s like joining a serial TV show halfway through the season, and you catch the last 15 minutes of an episode and you’re saying, “Well, wait a minute. I don’t quite get it.” There’s going to be a little bit of that if you just come in midway, because this is such a unique project. But if you stick with it, after two or three weeks, you’re in the groove and you get it, and then it makes what you’re reading more enjoyable.

DF: You came into 52 in the middle. What was that like? DF: Is there an official website that MS: It was crazy. It was exciting recaps the storyline? and thrilling and unbelievable all at MS: The DC site recaps in a way, the same time. Steve Wacker had because they show all of Keith just left, and he did a phenomenal Giffen’s breakdowns, and there are job on the book, he was truly usually articles and little goodies amazing. He kept everything on the site that will let the readers together and it was running nice in on what happened the previous and smoothly, and everyone was week or weeks. happy and working and good to 52 focuses on how the DC Universe copes for a go. Then Steve left, and it was a bit year without Superman, Batman, and Wonder DF: But there’s no one thing that a shock to the system, but when Woman. Here’s the cover to issue #1, which says, “Here’s the story from the the smoke cleared I found myself kicked the series off a year ago. Cover art by beginning to the current issue”? with a battlefield promotion. It was J.G. Jones. MS: No, we’re not doing that, [© 2007 DC Comics] amazing. It’s such a monster of a because we want you to keep project, and also an incredible one. I think we’ve done a reading and keep buying, and not just say, “All right, here good job with it. Hopefully, none of the readers noticed is the whole story for you. ” any bumps along the way, and everyone kept reading it and saying, “Wow, you know what? This is still great. I’m DF: That’s a wise commercial point. Now, how much still digging it.” input do you have with the writers? I just spoke to Dan DiDio, and he was telling me that the whole storyline DF: The sales seem to indicate that. was more or less mapped out from the beginning in MS: The sales indicate that, which is very nice, and we’re broad strokes, but with room for improvisation. So do all thrilled that it’s doing the numbers that it’s continuing you personally have any input into the stories, or are the to do, which is excellent. I mean, we’re 46 weeks in, and writers mostly filling out what was the original plan? we’re still selling pretty nicely. And the story’s going in a MS: It’s a little bit of both, really. It all started from an great direction. Everything is building and building, and

MICHAEL SIGLAIN | 11

idea by Paul Levitz. Then writers Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid sat down with editor Steve Wacker, breakdown artist Keith Giffen, and cover artist J. G. Jones, and everyone contributed to the story, and they hammered out the basic plot points and what was going to happen. Obviously, some of it was a little looser than other parts. When I stepped in, Steve had set up a system of weekly conference calls to get everybody on the same page, making sure everyone’s reading the same pieces of script that have come in, and everyone’s cool with and likes where the story’s going. During those calls, yeah, I might throw out a couple of ideas here and there to say, “Oh, what if we did this? What if we did that?” Y’know, my job is mostly to make sure that the writers are happy with what they’re doing, not so much to throw out ideas. I usually throw out bad ideas that make them say, “Oh, we can’t do that. Let’s take it in this direction.” The writers all talk to each other, and they have an idea of where the story is going, and I’ll pose questions to them along the lines of, “Well, what about this, what about that?” And I do that because, over the year, the story has changed and evolved a little bit. You let the story lead you, and you say, “Oh, wow, look at this. We thought this character was going to die, but if we keep him alive, we can do this, this, this, and this.” Or, just to continue with the life and death examples, “We thought this character should live, but do you know what? If the character died, it would cause a domino effect, and affect this guy, and this guy, and this guy.” Some of that stuff is figured out as we go, figuring out the story and saying, “Oh, wow, this is cool! We didn’t think of this initially, but what if we do it?”

home, because I go home and do it. So I use basically everything, everywhere, to keep track, because it is such a monster of a project that if you don’t, and you misstep, then that’s it. Then the snowball starts rolling downhill and you’re going to get creamed. The other person who keeps track of everything is Keith Giffen, because he’s doing the breakdowns for every issue. He is our continuity police, our pacing police. He’s been a dream to work with, because he knows everything about the book, and will say, “You know what? We did this thing in Week 31, and if we tweak it, we can have it pay off in Week 43 and it’ll connect to this other thing, and this will connect with that thing…” Or, “If we put a panel with this guy in this issue, then it’ll answer a question that we posed back in Week 6.” He’s my safety net, plus an all-around great guy. DF: Does he contribute plot ideas? MS: He contributed plot ideas initially, when everyone would get together for meetings. Since then, though, he really contributes through the breakdowns. He’ll get the script and he’ll read it and say, “You know what? They’re calling for a four-panel page, or a six-panel page, but maybe some other kind of layout would work here.” He’ll make one or two minor corrections, and then we’ll get it back and say, “Oh, wow! We didn’t even think of it like that. That’s amazing. It was great to begin with, but now—holy mackerel!”

DF: And do the artists contribute story ideas? MS: A little bit. Keith does the breakdowns, so the artists don’t contribute too much in the way of plot points. They’ll suggest things to me, and if they work, we’ll put them in. We’re obviously open to suggestions, because everyone wants it to be the best book it can J.G. Jones’s stunning artwork, as seen on this DF: So there’s room for spontanebe, but it’s really the vision of the cover for 52 #44, has been a vital part of the ity and veering from the original four writers. And then the other series’ success. This issue features the death of Shazam! villain Black Adam’s love, Isis. plan? thing is that, aside from wanting it [© 2007 DC Comics] MS: Absolutely. The beauty of it is to be the best book it can be, we that the overall story is set, but we’re putting a little icing want to make sure it comes out on time. on the cake. DF: It’s amazing how you’ve done that. DF: How do you keep track, literally, of what is going on MS: That’s the big thing. We made a promise to make from issue to issue? Do you use charts, spreadsheets, sure that a new issue of 52 would be out every week, index cards, anything like that? and it will be. MS: Everything. The easiest way to keep track, for me, is DF: Now, over the years, the Superman, and the by looking at the walls of my office which are lined, literally, with 52 stuff. On the left side of my office are all the Spider-Man, and the Batman books have been interconcovers, and every one of them is up there in week order, nected and in effect told a weekly story. Is 52 very different from something like that? and I have sketches up, and notes, and the whole nine yards. And on the right side of my office are sheets of MS: Absolutely. You can’t think of this as four monthlies paper that are tacked to the wall tracking which writers or five monthlies. This is one giant story, one giant mega-project, and you can’t quite say, “Well, it’s like are doing what, and which artist is doing what, and Action and Superman and Adventures of Superman or which backup is going where, which pages they are in, whatever. This has a bigger scope than any one line of and so on. And then, aside from that, I keep records on character-based titles, and it affects so many other books my computer, and I keep a second set of everything at 12 | WRITE NOW

and so much in the DCU that you can’t think of it as, “Well, it’s like four monthlies.” It isn’t. It’s one giant project. DF: Got it. How do you coordinate with the other DC editors? MS: That was all initially handled by Steve. When the writers decided this is what our story was going to be, Steve went out to the other editors here and said, “All right, here’s what’s going on. These characters are off-limits, and these characters are going to end up here, and these characters are here, and these characters are here. And you can’t use these characters, and this guy has to end up with this guy, and this guy has to be over there.” DF: So 52 steered the ship? MS: In this case, yeah, because, with the whole “One Year Later” storyline, there were lots of questions about, “Wow, why is this character here now? And what’s going on with that guy?” DF: Was “One Year Later” generated from a central place? MS: Well, if memory serves, “One Year Later” was Dan DiDio’s idea. You know, “Here’s what we’re going to do. This is going to be cool. At the end of Infinite Crisis, we’re going to jump ahead a year, and it’ll be a great starting point for people to pick up the books, and it’ll be new and exciting.” And everybody was like, “Wow, you know what? That’s cool. Let’s do it.” And then Paul Levitz had the idea of, “Well, what if we told the story of the missing year, but what if we did that weekly, over the next 52 weeks?”

hold off on that a little bit, and return to it once 52 is over.” DF: Fans must be sending you zillions of e-mails and letters. Do you ever make any changes to the story based on fan input? MS: We listen to fan input, but we don’t necessarily change things for the fans. The writers have such a good story already locked in, and everyone here is very happy with it, and I think 99% of the fans are happy with it. I mean, there are certain storylines that will upset fans, for instance, the death of the Question, or that another character died, or that we treated certain characters the way we did. And then on the other side you have people saying, “You know what? They killed off Vic Sage—the original Question—but now Montoya’s the Question, and isn’t that cool?” The moral of the story is that you can’t satisfy everyone all the time. DF: Can you walk me briefly, through the process of how a decision like killing the Question is made? MS: That one was done pre-me. That was something that they had decided about early on. DF: Then how about something that’s happened since you came on board. MS: All right, here’s an example. At one point the writers thought, “All right, we’re going to kill off Atom Smasher,” the JSA character, because it was going to be really dramatic, and it was going to help lead to events that would affect Black Adam and what he was doing, and would lead into the whole big World War III thing.

DF: And the changes that happened to each of the characters, did each of the editorial offices then come up with changes to their own characters? MS: Yeah, everyone worked together in the beginning to say, “Well, Batman’s been away for a year, and Firestorm is now merged with Firehawk,” or whatever.

The writers went back and forth, saying, “Well, he’s a superhero. Should he die in battle? How should he die? What are the ramifications if he dies? It’s not During the course of 52, Black Adam has become a major player in the in the DCU. This going to just be, well, he dies off Adam-featuring cover to issue #45 is—as panel and you never see it. There always—by J. G. Jones. has to be a reason for it. There’s [© 2007 DC Comics] got to be a cause and effect—all right, if he dies, this happens. If they’re going to kill off a character, it’s not going to be done arbitrarily. DF: So that wasn’t dictated from the top? A lot of thought went into it, and they said, “You know MS: No, that was done by everyone, really…by the DC what? It’s really dramatic if he dies, because it will set editors and writers. Black Adam off, and things will happen to Adam that will then in turn affect the mad scientists on Oolong Island, DF: That must have required many meetings and and that will affect this character and that character, and e-mails. so on and so forth. There was a whole big domino effect, MS: Oh, yeah, but it was great. And now it’s at a point and as we were going over the stories, during a where an editor will come to me and say, “Hey, I want to conference call, the question arose, “Well, you know use this character. I know you’re showing him in 52. what? What if we didn’t kill him off? What if we used him What’s the deal?” And I’ll say, “Well, this guy survives, or and kept him alive because that way he can help Black this guy ends up here, or this guy’s still off limits. When is Adam.” We had a problem where we didn’t know how to your book coming out? What’s the story that you have to get Black Adam out of a situation, and there was only tell?” And then we figure it out, and if it works, then one character that could do it, and that was Atom great, they can use them. And if it contradicts what’s Smasher. And we said, “If we keep him alive and have going on in 52, then we say, “All right, you know, let’s MICHAEL SIGLAIN | 13

him help Black Adam, that changes things around a bit, and it actually makes Atom Smasher a more complex character, and it changes the relationship between Black Adam and Atom Smasher, because now here is Black Adam, who’s just murdered millions of people, being helped by a hero, and the hero just refuses to believe that Black Adam could do it, because Black Adam was his friend. It makes their relationship more interesting and complex. So it was a situation where we just stopped and took a step back and said, “You know what? It actually works better this way.” Even though his death would have made the dominos fall to the left, keeping him alive makes the dominos fall to the right, and it still allows us to achieve our goals and then some.

MS: Here’s a two-sentence pitch that came from the mind of Steve Wacker: “What happens to the DC Universe in a year without Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman? It’s a year without the three biggest heroes, but not a year without heroes.” To me, the story of 52 focuses on the lives of characters that aren’t the top tier that everyone and their grandmother knows. You know, you go into a supermarket and ask, “Who’s Superman,” everybody knows. But if you go into a supermarket and ask, “Who’s the Elongated Man,” you’re not going to get much of a reaction. This is the story of what happens to the entire DC Universe without its three biggest players.

DF: Are you involved with Countdown and, if not, who’s editing it? MS: I’m a little involved. Mike Marts is editing that, and doing an DF: So, again, within the structure excellent job. My contribution to there’s room to improvise. Now, in that is in the form of editing the the beginning, I know this is “pre- Countdown will see major villains run amok backups. The way 52 has the you,” did they ever bring all the in the DCU, and will feature the “big three” origins of the DC Universe as backwriters and Keith together for heroes. Here’s the cover to issue #50—the ups, Countdown is going to be meetings? second issue—by Andy Kubert and Tim having the history of the multiMS: Oh, yeah. Repeatedly, actually. Townsend. [© 2007 DC Comics] verse, written and drawn by Dan When it first started, they Jurgens. It’s a ten-part backup sequestered themselves in an series. So my weekly comic book office, and it was all the writers, work continues for a little while. and Dan DiDio, and Steve Wacker, and Keith Giffen, and J. G. Jones, and they would just go over stories and beats DF: You sound like you’re enjoying it. and so on. MS: I’m having a blast! This is the greatest thing in the world. I said it to the writers the other day. It’s a ton of DF: You say they met “repeatedly”—as in repeatedly in work, and literally all you do is work. I remember Steve the course of a week, or several times over a longer telling me that before we knew that I’d be taking over period? MS: I believe initially, all the writers were in for a week or from him. I was asking him one day, “How are you doing with 52?” And he said, “I go home and I work, and I’m three days, or whatever it was, and then they would go constantly working over the weekend and at night, and it off and write on their own, and then a little while later, seems that’s the only way to do it.” And he wasn’t one or two months, maybe, they would reconvene and kidding. go over everything again. In between those times, Steve had set up these weekly conference calls, which I kept DF: If you enjoy what you’re doing, then it’s not work. going, though that’s not the only time we would speak MS: I come home and I get right on the computer again, with the writers. I would talk to all of them numerous and I’m calling people from home, and doing balloon times during the week, and talk to all of them at once placements from home, and working around the clock— every Tuesday at 12:30. We’d talk for sometimes an hour, but I couldn’t ask for a better gig. Though I’m sure my sometimes two or three hours. And then I would talk fiancée will be happy when that last book hits the with them individually dozens of times throughout the stands! week. So we were in constant communication. DF: I guess 12:30 New York time works for people on the West Coast and in Europe. MS: It was the easiest. It worked for Grant, who’s overseas, and the rest of the writers were on the west coast, and we at DC were smack dab in the middle. DF: Here’s a totally unfair question. Can you tell me in 50 words or less—or 52 words or less—what 52 is about? If you were in an elevator pitching it to a producer, what’s the 52 series about? What’s your elevator pitch for 52? 14 | WRITE NOW

DF: A social life is highly overrated. MS: Exactly. Look, I’m working on the biggest book DC has right now with some of the best writers and artists around, and it’s a monster of a project, but at the same time it’s a truly amazing one. I’ve got the best job in the world. DF: Well, I’d better let you get back to work, Mike. This was a really informative peek into the 52 world. Thanks for taking the time. MS: My pleasure. Thanks, Danny.

THE END

Here’s our second spectacular Nuts & Bolts section dedicated to 52. In this one, we feature script, layouts, and pencil art from 52 #24. Enjoy!

Feast your eyes on J.G. Jones’ sketch for the cover to the issue, then his finished inks, and, finally, the fully rendered cover as it appeared in your pull-file!

52 NUTS & BOLTS | 15

PAGE FIVE THE OLD JLA MOUNTAIN PANEL ONE: LONG ESTABLISHING SHOT, WE CAN SEE J’ONN (TINY) HEADQUARTERS. FROM THIS ANGLE, VISION ONTO THE FAR SIDE HOVERING IN MID-AIR, FIRING HEAT SEVERAL YARDS AWAY, BUT FROM AIN MOUNT K N-ROC BARRE OF THE DOING UNTIL THE END OF HE’S WHAT SEE TO ABLE BE WON’T WE THE SEQUENCE. 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

rs. Original Justice League Headquarte

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF.

HEAT TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTING HIS

VISION

3 J’ONN:

lf My friend, I pray to H’ronmeer himse that you will UNDERSTAND...

4 J’ONN:

...and FORGIVE me.

SUPER-STRONG FIST INTO PANEL THREE: J’ONN THRUSTS HIS TERS OF ROCK FLYING. WE THE ROCKY CLIFFSIDE, SENDING SPLIN N-CARVED LINES IN VISIO HEATING, -SMOK STILL CAN SEE SOME TO STAY FAIRLY CLOSE NEED WE , AGAIN TOO. SIDE, THE CLIFF FOR THE END. TO HIM AND SAVE THE BIG PICTURE ps had I heard what happened to you. Perha 5 J’ONN: e it was I intervened...had we spoken befor too LATE... 6 J’ONN:

really. ...but we couldn’t, could we? Not in each It had come to where all we saw RE. other was the pain of mutual FAILU

E (TED) IN THE PANEL FOUR: FLASHBACK TO BLUE BEETL J’ONN WHILE J’ONN WATCHTOWER, BEING BRUSHED OFF BY WOMB. STUDIES DISPLAYS IN THE MONITOR ignoring TED. “We were BOTH guilty of 7 CAPTION: THE OLD JLA MOUNTAIN PANEL ONE: LONG ESTABLISHING SHOT, )S J’ONN SEEvario CANour CRISE , WE us(TINY ANGLE THIStoo with busy UARTE HEADQ “We were ON:RS. FROM 8 CAPTI FAR SIDE THEtance ONTO N ... VISIO HEAT G assis for FIRIN IR, pleas MID-A his HOVERING IN to PRIORITIZE AWAY, YARDS whatBUT FROMrSEVER of us AINbette ANY K MOUNT thanAL he knew OF THE BARREN-ROC but DOING UNTIL THE END OF HE’S WHAT SEE TO ABLE in.” BE were we WON’T R WE DANGE THE SEQUENCE. 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

rs. Original Justice League Headquarte

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF. 3 J’ONN

HEAT TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTING HIS M

f i

H’

The creative process for 52 is very much a collaborative one. In a nutshell, the team of writers (Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Geoff Johns) works out the stories with the editor—for this issue, it was Steve Wacker.

16 | WRITE NOW

VISION

Keith Giffen then breaks the scripts down into rough layouts (in which we see copy placement, where each number corresponds to a piece of copy in the script), which are then developed into pencil art, in this case by Phil Jimenez (which was then inked by Andy Lanning).

PAGE FIVE PANEL ONE: LONG ESTABLISHING SHOT, THE OLD JLA MOUNTAIN HEADQUARTERS. FROM THIS ANGLE, WE CAN SEE J’ONN (TINY) HOVERING IN MID-AIR, FIRING HEAT VISION ONTO THE FAR SIDE OF THE BARREN-ROCK MOUNTAIN FROM SEVERAL YARDS AWAY, BUT WE WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE WHAT HE’S DOING UNTIL THE END OF THE SEQUENCE. 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

Original Justice League Headquarte rs.

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF.

TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTING HIS HEAT

VISION

3 J’ONN:

My friend, I pray to H’ronmeer himse lf that you will UNDERSTAND...

4 J’ONN:

...and FORGIVE me.

PANEL THREE: J’ONN THRUSTS HIS SUPER-STRONG FIST INTO THE ROCKY CLIFFSIDE, SENDING SPLIN TERS OF ROCK FLYING. WE CAN SEE SOME STILL-SMOKING, HEATVISION-CARVED LINES IN THE CLIFFSIDE, TOO. AGAIN, WE NEED TO STAY FAIRLY CLOSE TO HIM AND SAVE THE BIG PICTURE FOR THE END. 5 J’ONN:

I heard what happened to you. Perha ps had I intervened...had we spoken befor e it was too LATE...

6 J’ONN:

...but we couldn’t, could we? Not really. It had come to where all we saw in each other was the pain of mutual FAILU RE.

PANEL FOUR: FLASHBACK TO BLUE BEETL E (TED) IN THE WATCHTOWER, BEING BRUSHED OFF BY J’ONN WHILE J’ONN STUDIES DISPLAYS IN THE MONITOR WOMB. 7 CAPTION:

“We were BOTH guilty of ignoring

8 C

“W

T O

i h

TED. C

S S

Current 52 editor Mike Siglain explains things from here on: “I talk to the writers numerous times within the week, and they certainly talk to each other, but we make sure that we all get on the phone at least once a week to revise and tweak the scripts, and to make sure that the story is still heading in the right direction.

52 NUTS & BOLTS | 17

PAGE FIVE

“We usually decide which writer gets what scene by committee. It depends upon which writer had the idea for the scene, which writer is most familiar with the characters, and which writer has the time in his schedule to do the writing.

“Once all of the various scenes are written, I’ll stitch the issue together, then send it out to the writers so that everyone can comment and tweak accordingly.

PANEL ONE: LONG ESTABLIS HING SHOT, THE OLD JLA MOUN TAIN HEADQUARTERS. FROM THIS ANGLE, WE CAN SEE J’ONN (TINY) HOVERING IN MID-AIR, FIRI NG HEAT VISION ONTO THE FAR SIDE OF THE BARREN-ROCK MOUNTAIN FROM SEVERAL YARDS AWAY, BUT WE WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE WHAT HE’S DOING UNTIL THE END OF THE SEQUENCE. 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

Original Justice League Headquarters.

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF.

TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTI NG

HIS HEAT VISION

3 J’ONN:

My friend, I pray to H’ro nmeer himself that you will UNDERSTAND.. .

4 J’ONN:

...and FORGIVE me.

PANEL THREE: J’ONN THRU STS HIS SUPER-STRONG FIST INTO THE ROCKY CLIFFSIDE, SEND ING SPLINTERS OF ROCK FLYI NG. WE CAN SEE SOME STILL-SMOKIN G, HEAT-VISION-CARVED LINE S IN THE CLIFFSIDE, TOO. AGAI N, WE NEED TO STAY FAIRLY CLOSE TO HIM AND SAVE THE BIG PICTURE FOR THE END. 5 J’ONN: I heard what happened to you. Perhaps had I intervened...had we spok en before it was too LATE... 6 J’ONN:

...but we couldn’t, coul d we? Not really. It had come to where all we saw in each other was the pain of mutu al FAILURE.

PANEL FOUR: FLASHBACK TO BLUE BEETLE (TED) IN THE WATCHTOWER, BEING BRUSHED OFF BY J’ONN WHILE J’ONN STUDIES DISPLAYS IN THE MONITOR WOMB. 7 CAPTION:

“We were BOTH guilty of

ignoring TED.

“Keith Giffen’s role has been monstrous. Aside from breaking down every single issue and keeping all of the pacing in check, Keith acts as the continuity police and as an extra set of eyes. He’s constantly coming up with tweaks and scene variations that enhance the story. [© 2007 DC Comics.]

18 | WRITE NOW

PAGE FIVE JLA MOUNTAIN BLISHING SHOT, THE OLD PANEL ONE: LONG ESTA CAN SEE J’ONN (TINY) WE E, ANGL THIS THE FAR SIDE HEADQUARTERS. FROM FIRING HEAT VISION ONTO S AWAY, BUT HOVERING IN MID-AIR, TAIN FROM SEVERAL YARD MOUN OCK EN-R BARR THE OF UNTIL THE END OF SEE WHAT HE’S DOING WE WON’T BE ABLE TO . THE SEQUENCE 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION 2B CAPTION PANEL TWO: OFF. 3 J’ONN: 4 J’ONN:

ue Original Justice Leag

Headquarters.

RHODE ISLAND. ON ECTING HIS HEAT VISI TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJ H’ronmeer himself My friend, I pray to ND... that you will UNDERSTA ...and FORGIVE me.

RONG FIST INTO THRUSTS HIS SUPER-ST PANEL THREE: J’ONN ROCK FLYING. WE SENDING SPLINTERS OF S IN THE ROCKY CLIFFSIDE, HEAT-VISION-CARVED LINE G, OKIN L-SM STIL FAIRLY CLOSE CAN SEE SOME AGAIN, WE NEED TO STAY TOO. E, FSID CLIF THE END. BIG PICTURE FOR THE TO HIM AND SAVE THE you. Perhaps had to ened I heard what happ 5 J’ONN: spoken before it was I intervened...had we too LATE... could we? Not really. ...but we couldn’t, 6 J’ONN: all we saw in each e wher to come had It mutual FAILURE. other was the pain of ) IN THE K TO BLUE BEETLE (TED PANEL FOUR: FLASHBAC J’ONN WHILE J’ONN BY OFF HED BRUS G WATCHTOWER, BEIN THE MONITOR WOMB. STUDIES DISPLAYS IN of ignoring TED. “We were BOTH guilty 7 CAPTION: our various CRISES “We were too busy with for assistance... 8 CAPTION: s plea his ZE RITI PRIO to ANY of us what but he knew better than

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

Original Justice League Headquarters .

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF.

TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTING HIS HEAT

VISION

3 J’ONN:

My friend, I pray to H’ronmeer himsel f that you will UNDERSTAND...

4 J’ONN:

...and FORGIVE me.

PANEL THREE: J’ONN THRUSTS HIS SUPER-STRONG FIST INTO THE ROCKY CLIFFSIDE, SENDING SPLINT ERS OF ROCK FLYING. WE CAN SEE SOME STILL-SMOKING, HEAT-V ISION-CARVED LINES IN THE CLIFFSIDE, TOO. AGAIN, WE NEED TO STAY FAIRLY CLOSE TO HIM AND SAVE THE BIG PICTURE FOR THE END. 5 J’ONN:

I heard what happened to you. Perhap s had I intervened...had we spoken before it was too LATE...

6 J’ONN:

...but we couldn’t, could we? Not really. It had come to where all we saw in each other was the pain of mutual FAILUR E.

PANEL FOUR: FLASHBACK TO BLUE BEETLE (TED) IN THE WATCHTOWER, BEING BRUSHED OFF BY J’ONN WHILE J’ONN STUDIES DISPLAYS IN THE MONITOR WOMB. 7 CAPTION:

“We were BOTH guilty of ignoring

8 CAPTION:

“We were too busy with our variou s CRISES to PRIORITIZE his pleas for assist ance... but he knew better than ANY of us what

TED.

“The script for the pages shown here was physically typed by Mark Waid. Once everyone decides which scene is going to be written by which writer, that writer goes off into his little corner of the world to pen his pages. Once the pages are done, they’re distributed by the editor to all of the other writers. After everyone has had a chance to read and digest them, they’re discussed, tweaked if need be, and finally approved. The locked pages are then sent off to Keith Giffen to lay out. [© 2007 DC Comics.]

52 NUTS & BOLTS | 19

PAGE FIVE TAIN HING SHOT, THE OLD JLA MOUN PANEL ONE: LONG ESTABLIS Y) E, WE CAN SEE J’ONN (TIN ANGL THIS FROM . TERS HEADQUAR FAR SIDE NG HEAT VISION ONTO THE FIRI AIR, MIDIN RING HOVE BUT FROM SEVERAL YARDS AWAY, OF THE BARREN-ROCK MOUNTAIN END OF WHAT HE’S DOING UNTIL THE WE WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE THE SEQUENCE. 1 CAPTION:

“Where IS J’Onn?”

2 DATESTAMP:

WEEK 24, Day 2

2A CAPTION

Headquarters. Original Justice League

2B CAPTION

RHODE ISLAND.

PANEL TWO: OFF.

NG TIGHTER ON J’ONN, PROJECTI

HIS HEAT VISION

3 J’ONN:

nmeer himself My friend, I pray to H’ro . that you will UNDERSTAND..

4 J’ONN:

...and FORGIVE me.

“My major role as editor is, first and foremost, to make sure that the writers’ vision comes through on a weekly basis. It’s my job to get their story into the hands of the readers, and that involves working with the writers, artists, colorists, and all of the various production people at DC, who are the real unsung heroes of this project. Creatively, I throw in my two cents when I talk to the writers, but only to enhance the story or help them in their writing.”

INTO STS HIS SUPER-STRONG FIST WE PANEL THREE: J’ONN THRU SPLINTERS OF ROCK FLYING. ING SEND E, FSID CLIF Y THE ROCK S IN G, HEAT-VISION-CARVED LINE OKIN L-SM STIL SOME SEE CAN CLOSE N, WE NEED TO STAY FAIRLY THE CLIFFSIDE, TOO. AGAI PICTURE FOR THE END. TO HIM AND SAVE THE BIG you. Perhaps had I heard what happened to 5 J’ONN: en before it was I intervened...had we spok too LATE... 6 J’ONN:

d we? Not really. ...but we couldn’t, coul we saw in each It had come to where all al FAILURE. other was the pain of mutu

BLUE BEETLE (TED) IN THE PANEL FOUR: FLASHBACK TO OFF BY J’ONN WHILE J’ONN HED BRUS G BEIN WATCHTOWER, TOR WOMB. MONI THE IN LAYS DISP STUDIES ignoring TED. “We were BOTH guilty of 7 CAPTION: 8 CAPTION:

various CRISES “We were too busy with our for assistance... s plea his ZE RITI PRIO to ANY of us what but he knew better than DANGER we were in.”

Thanks, Mike. See, folks? There’s nothing to it. All the 52 crew has to do is achieve the impossible—52 weeks in a row!

20 | WRITE NOW

THE END

Comics Aren’t Just Not for Kids Anymore!

THE J.M. D E MATTEIS INTERVIEW

Conducted via email by Danny Fingeroth March 19, 2007

M. DeMatteis is one of the most inventive and sought after writers in the comic book industry. During the course of his career he has written groundbreaking stories for Marvel (Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt), for Epic (Moonshadow), and for DC Comics/Paradox Press (Brooklyn Dreams). He also teamed with writer Keith Giffen and artist Kevin Maguire to relaunch the Justice League that skyrocketed DC’s heroes to new heights of greatness and humor. More recently, he is the co-writer, along with Keith Giffen, of Hero Squared and Planetary Brigade (both published by Boom! Studios). J.M. is also active in Hollywood. He has scripted episodes of Justice League Unlimited and the Legion of SuperHeroes among others and also has several live action scripts in development. Most of J.M.’s time these days is taken up with his wonderful creation Abadazad, first published in comic book form by CrossGen and now being released by Disney’s Hyperion Books For Children as a series of novels featuring comic book sequences. It is our great honor to speak with J.M. about the creation of Abadazad and his vision for its future. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: What the heck is Abadazad, anyway, J.M.? J.M. DeMATTEIS: The Abadazad saga is a long one, but I think it’s one that illustrates what it’s like out here in the freelance trenches—and this is a magazine about the writing life—so here goes: Back in the mid-1980’s I had an idea for a story called “Silver Shoes.” It was about a little girl, living with her abusive father, who’s befriended by an old woman named Dorothy. Not just any Dorothy: this old lady claims to be Dorothy Gale, from L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz. After Dorothy passes away, the girl finds a gift the old woman has left behind for her: a pair of silver shoes that the girl uses to escape her father and live happily ever after in Oz. I never did much with the idea. Just filed it away.

In the mid-’90s I started toying with a story about a mother who discovers that her abducted son has been taken to a magical world that—she’d assumed— only existed in books. I folded in the “Silver Shoes” concept, named the world Abadazad—and began developing it as a movie treatment; but the more I worked to flesh out Abadazad, the more I was con-

vinced it should be a comic book. As a parent, I found the lack of smart, literate kid-friendly comic books to be extremely frustrating. By this time I’d begun weaving Abadazad into my daughter’s bedtime stories—and I was becoming obsessed with the idea of creating a comic book that I could share with her. With the story’s protagonist changed to an emotionally-wounded fourteen year old girl named Kate Jameson, I went out into the marketplace, filled with hope and enthusiasm: Unfortunately, nobody wanted it. Well, there were a few people—Joey Cavalieri and Shelly Bond at DC, Philip Simon at Dark Horse—who “got” Abadazad, but they weren’t the ones who made the Big Decisions. Doors slammed in my face wherever I went. In 2003, I decided to give it a last shot with CrossGen. I didn’t know all that much about them, but J.M. DeMATTEIS | 21

they seemed interesting, forward-thinking. A few days after editor Ian Feller read the proposal, CG bought the series. Thanks to Ian and publisher Mark Alessi, Abadazad had finally made it out of my head and into print. And they even recruited Mike Ploog to draw it. Having been a huge fan of Mike’s work, I was delighted that he’d chosen to return to full-time comic book illustrating with Abadazad. CrossGen also recruited the unsung hero of Abadazad, our colorist, Nick Bell. Nick’s work brings such texture and depth and power to Mike’s pencils. There’s a fusion there, so deep that I can’t imagine Mike’s art without Nick’s color over it. Ploog and I hit it off pretty much from our first phone conversation and the more we worked together, the better it got: this was the kind of creative combustion I’d only seen happen a handful of times in my career. With each issue we produced, Mike and I were pushing ourselves into new, and more creatively exhilarating, places: We were flying high. 22 | WRITE NOW

Then, after only three issues of Abadazad had seen print, CrossGen went bankrupt. By the summer of ‘04, Ploog and I had hired a lawyer in a bid to get Abadazad back. We were hopeful—but we knew the process could take years. Which meant that, for the moment at least, Abadazad was dead in the water. We’d heard about various companies sniffing around the CrossGen corpse—the name Disney came up once or twice—but these were just rumors, so we moved ahead with other projects and hoped for the best. The best arrived in the form of Brenda Bowen, vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books For Children. Brenda told me how much she loved Abadazad and that she envisioned relaunching it as a series of children’s books. It was clear from our talks that Brenda understood Abadazad—what it was and what it could be. Disney Publishing did win the bidding—and we were stunned to discover that the reason they went after CrossGen in the first place was because of Abadazad. We were told, point blank, that Disney was going to walk away from the entire CrossGen deal if they couldn’t come to an agreement with us.

DeMatteis seamlessly blends prose with comic book art in this two-page sequence from the first book in the series, Abadazad: The Road to Inconceivable. Art by Mike. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

After some heated negotiating, an extremely satisfactory deal was struck and we were suddenly rocketed from Legal Limbo straight to the Magic Kingdom, re-launching Abadazad as a “hybrid” series of books that fused prose, illustration and comics. DF: How did this “hybrid” form come about? JMD: When Disney picked the series up, we assumed we’d just be going on with the comic...continuing the story in a longer, graphic novel format. It was Brenda Bowen who suggested the new form. I was surprised at first, then I realized that Brenda had been inspired by the comics themselves. Abadazad, the comic book, had many sequences that were, essentially, prose-with-illustration. That’s something I’ve been doing in my work for years—since Moonshadow, at least—seeing if I can blur the line between prose and comics. (In fact the sequel to Moonshadow—the

graphic novel Farewell, Moonshadow—had a format quite similar to the Abadazad books.) I’ve always felt that each story, each sequence in the story, deserves to be told in the way that best suits it. So if I want to have five or six pages where the narrative takes over with a single illustration on the page, and then another five or six pages where the visuals take over for a “purer” comics sequence, then so be it. I think that’s what inspired Brenda...and she challenged us to take it even farther. Push the boundaries of the novel and the comic book till they collapsed into each other. We’re still learning, occasionally stumbling, but I think it’s turned out well. DF: How do you collaborate with Mike Ploog? Do you write the whole book, text pages and all first, and then send it to him? Or do you do the comics pages separately, then work from what he’s drawn? JMD: I write the manuscripts—which includes all the text and all the comic book sections (which are done full-script), as well as suggestions for illustrations (Brenda Bowen also includes suggestions for illustrations after she’s combed through the manuscript)—and then that goes off to J.M. DeMATTEIS | 23

I listen. But I don’t think she’s ever said, “You must do this.” She guides us gently. And very respectfully. There are, of course, proofreaders who make small alterations along the way, but I always have a chance to do a final proofing on the book and, if there’s a change I don’t agree with, I’ve always been able to correct things so that the book is exactly the way I want it. DF: What’s the target age group for Abadazad? JMD: Ages nine and up. By “up” I mean everyone. As noted, my goal with Abadazad was to write something for kids and their parents. And anyone else who has a taste for this kind of fantasy. DF: What’s the real age group that you see reading it? JMD: It’s been pretty much as I expected: Kids are loving it, so are their parents, and fans of the comic book are buying it, as well. The books have also been published in something like a dozen countries, so we’re picking up readers all over the world. DF: Was there any focus group or other research done to come up with the format? JMD: Not that I know of.

The imaginations of DeMatteis and Ploog have birthed a fantastic array of characters for Abadazad. Here is an unlettered page, from the upcoming third Abadazad volume, featuring the Waterlogged Warlock. Art by Mike, of course. And Nick Bell’s awesome colors even look great here in black and white and gray!

DF: What changed from the comic to the book series? JMD: When we started, it all seemed so simple. “So I just take the comics, turn some of it into prose...and it’s done!” But it’s been much more challenging than that. We all wanted to make this series unique... different from the comics and different from anything out there in the book stores...and that required a rethinking, a reimagining, of the concept. Between the actual writing and the complex design work—keep in mind that Abadazad is a book within a book within a book—each installment in the series turned out to be far more work intensive than any of us expected. (I have to mention Disney’s design team which has done a brilliant job on the presentation.)

Ploog. Mike, of course, being one of the greatest illustrators/ storytellers in the business, is free to interpret our directions and make the pages his own...which he does, brilliantly. But putting the book together, creating the story and building the comic book sequences, is all on me.

Now that I’ve written four of the books, I’ve really started to get a handle on the form...enjoying the freedom to explore things, in prose, with far more detail than I ever could in comics; and yet having the option to jump into comics sequences when the story demands it. But it’s a fine balance...and one that it’s taken time to reach. Add in the other prose sequences—the excerpts from “Franklin Davies’” original Abadazad books—and you can imagine how difficult finding that balance was.

DF: Does your editor have input? Does anyone else at Disney? JMD: When it comes to the story and structure of the books, my feedback comes from Brenda. She’s incredibly smart, incredibly supportive, she knows Abadazad, and I really trust her. She’s not the kind of editor who’s going to ask for things just for the sake of putting her stamp on it. When Brenda has a question or a suggestion for a change in direction, I know it’s going to be something thoughtful and important. And

DF: Could you ever see doing it as a comic again? JMD: We’ve talked about that. There’s a loyal fan-base for this series and many of them were drawn in by the comic book. I think some of the fans of the original series would still prefer to have a pure comic book as opposed to this new hybrid form. We’ve discussed the possibility of launching a new Abadazad comic somewhere down the line, but, right now, it’s just vague talk. Of course, if the series is hugely successful I could easily see that happening.

24 | WRITE NOW

DF: What business lessons did you learn during the saga of getting Abadazad to see the light of day? JMD: It wasn’t a business lesson, it was a spiritual lesson. There were so many times during the CrossGen period, especially after the bankruptcy—piling up legal bills and sinking in depression—when Ploog and I thought Abadazad would never see the light of day again. But every wall we slammed into—and there were plenty of them—was forcing us to turn and walk in a different direction...until, ultimately, we ended up with Disney, which was absolutely the best place for the book. The whole process was a great reminder that you always have to hold on to faith: in yourself and in the universe. Because it’s just possible that every obstacle you encounter is really an opportunity in disguise. That every door slamming in your face, every (apparently) awful thing that happens along the way—is leading you to a place far better than you could have ever dreamed. DF: What’s up with media adaptations-movies, TV, games, etc.? JMD: Hyperion has expressed interest in developing Abadazad in all those worlds...and, if that happens, I’ll be delighted (I can’t wait for “Professor Headstrong’s Wild Ride” at Disneyworld)...but, really, our job is to work on the books and make them as good as they can possibly be. Everything after that is gravy. DF: How do you approach writing in this new format? JMD: Any time I shift formats it takes me a while to get my mind-set in place: “Okay, this is a TV script...this is a comic book...this is a screenplay.” Each one has a specific rhythm and language. These Abadazad books have the added twist of being something new. It’s not like I can refer back to other, similar projects to prepare me. So each time I start a new book, I go through a period of totally psyching myself out, wondering if I can actually write this thing. I wander around my office, circling the desk, for days (on occasion it’s been weeks), waiting for the inner radio to pick up the signals from Abadazad. I find, with all my work, that getting started is the hardest part. Once the story is cooking, there’s no problem. But, no matter how long I do this, each new piece I write seems like the first one. It’s as if I’ve never done it before. So in answer to your question: How do I approach writing in this new format? Carefully! DF: Do you see this format as becoming a popular new format, or is it dependent on the content? JMD: In the end, it’s always about the story, not the format. A good story will win out in the end, however it’s being told.

Here’s Mike’s cover to issue #3 of the CrossGen Abadazad series, as well as another stunning page of Mr. P’s art—in this case, page 11 of the upcoming third Hyperion/Disney Abadazad book: The Puppet, the Professor, and the Prophet. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

DF: What’s the next step for Abadazad? JMD: The next step is... Well, there’s actually a huge next step. But I’m not allowed to talk about it yet. Lips are sealed. Can’t...speak...! DF: Do you have an ending in mind for Abadazad? Is there an adult Kate you picture? JMD: I’ve always had an ending in mind. I love to make things up as I go along—give the story room to tell itself—but I find it’s important to have a clear beginning middle and end in place. Not that I feel bound to that structure...in fact, I expect it to change...but it provides me with a direction, a goal. The fun part, of course, is watching all my plans get upended by the characters. And with Abadazad that happens so often it’s spooky. This story really does have a life of its own: I feel like I’m just channeling material being beamed into my head from Zad. Here’s an example (I’ve told this story before, but I think it bears repeating):

J.M. DeMATTEIS | 25

These pages from the upcoming third Abadazad book showcase the series’ hero, Kate Jameson, as well as some of the more unusual supporting characters, including Professor Headstrong (in page on the right). Art by Mike. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

I was working on the third issue of the comic book. I had a wonderful group of new characters called The Knights of Abadazad that I couldn’t wait to use; but as soon as I sat down to write the opening something odd happened. In the very first line I typed, a new character, named Master Wix, appeared on the page—and I had never heard of him before. When I began the Abadazad series, I outlined all the major story beats and wrote detailed descriptions of the characters that would be joining Kate on her adventures...and here was a brand new character, one that I knew absolutely nothing about. “Okay,” I thought, “that’s interesting. Master Wix, huh? Well, I’ll come back to you another time...right now I’ve got to finish this issue.” And I tried to finish it. Unfortunately, the words were dying on the page: The story was awful. I started to get the feeling that Master Wix wasn’t content with a brief cameo: He wanted to jump into the main story. “Fair enough,” I told him, “just let me nail this opening 26 | WRITE NOW

sequence and then I’ll put you in.” Back I went to the Knights of Abadazad...and things got even worse. Finally, after several days of shameless self-pity and melodramatic despair, the Big Dumb Writer got the message: The Knights didn’t belong in the story. Master Wix did. I tucked the Knights away in a file (they may yet work their way into the books) and put Wix front and center in the first few pages. Suddenly, miraculously, everything flowed. And here’s the weirdest part: Wixy, as Kate calls him, has gone on to become one of the single most important characters in the series. And this kind of thing happens all the time with Abadazad. As for your question about Kate: She’s the heart and soul of the book. Her voice is what leads me, guides me deeper and deeper into ’Zad. And I totally believe in her. At one point when I was working on one of the books, I was talking to my wife about Kate and I said, “She’s really a good kid.” And I meant it. I wasn’t talking about a fictional character, I was talking about a real person who is an intimate part of my life. I can very much see her, five or ten years after the events of the books, all grown up and thriving. And I know exactly what she’d be doing, too: writing children’s books.

DF: You’ve said that if you could, you’d make Abadazad your main work for the rest of your career. Why? Or—if you’ve changed your mind—why not? JMD: A freelancer’s career is about juggling a variety or projects—right now I’m jumping between books, comics, TV and film—always racing to stay ahead of the deadlines. It’s very rare that I’m working on one thing exclusively. It’s usually, “spend a few days, or a week, on this one...then jump over to that one...then back to this...then on the next one.” The idea of working on one project for a few years (I don’t know about the rest of my career)...really immersing myself in it and building that world, brick by brick, without interruption, is very appealing. Still, I wonder if I’d get antsy. I’m so used to coming up with new ideas, leaping from project to project, that I don’t know if I could really handle it. At the same time, writing for children is so important to me that, if I were going to pick just one project, it probably would be Abadazad. As a writer, I can’t think of anything more important than creating quality material for children. Nurturing and inspiring young minds, the way I’ve been inspired by Baum and Lewis and Barrie and Seuss and all the rest. Get ‘em while they’re young, right, and the work will stay with them forever. So I guess if I had to pick one thing to work on for the rest of my career, Abadazad—or some children’s project— would probably win out over everything else. At least it would this week.

inspiration. The real problem comes with the material that’s stuck in between—and I think a lot of comic book material, especially super-hero material, falls into this limbo—material that isn’t clearly aimed at adults or children. So you’re straddling two worlds and, often, not really satisfying either audience. DF: You work on many things at one time. How do you juggle your assignments? JMD: After close to thirty years of doing this, I don’t really think about it. It just happens. Despite the fact that I love to write up schedules for myself (it beats working!), I’ve never been extremely disciplined. Meaning I’m not one of those “I’m starting work at 9 a.m. and clocking out at 4 p.m.” kind of writers. I can spend hours, sometimes days, goofing off in my office and then work like a maniac for hours, or days, more. It all depends on the story and where it’s taking me. In the end, the work always gets done and, in most cases, it even gets done on time! DF: You and Mike have another property—Stardust Kid. Tell us a little about it. JMD: Stardust Kid started life more than twenty years ago. I wrote it as a screenplay, played with it as a novel, even sold it as a series to DC (back in the late 80’s) and then bought it back when I realized that the market wouldn’t support an all-ages fantasy.

DF: Do you see any contradiction between the fact that you write very adult material and then stuff for kids? JMD: None whatsoever. A good story is a good story, no matter what the intended audience. And just because one is “writing for kids,” it doesn’t mean you’re writing down in any way. Any more than “writing for adults” means you leave your innocence and child-like enthusiasm behind. In the end it’s all about the best way to tell the story. And it’s all about the writer’s mindset when he’s writing the story. There’s a certain space I enter when I’m writing Abadazad...it’s unique, it’s magical, it’s nourishing... and part of that comes from the fact that I know I will be reaching children, touching their hearts and imaginations. That inspires me. When I’m writing something clearly aimed at an adult audience, it’s a different kind of

I noodled around with it over the years, but never quite nailed it. Then, when CrossGen went bankrupt and Ploog and I found ourselves in the middle of the court case, we decided to get up out of our swamp of self-pity and get back to work on something new. I showed Mike some of the Stardust Kid material, he had brilliant feedback that allowed me to see my story in a whole new way, and we were off. The story concerns a twelve-year-old boy named Cody DiMarco. Like Abadazad’s Kate, he’s a contemporary kid living in an urban environment. His best friend, Paul Brightfield, turns out not to be human at all: he’s one of the last survivors of a Golden Age when nature spirits ruled the earth. But there’s another survivor out there— and she manages to kidnap Paul and transform Cody’s neighborhood into a primal, enchanted forest. Cody and his friends have to restore their world...and the only way to do it is to find someone—or some thing—called the Stardust Kid. We did the first three issues of SDK for Desperado/Image, the final two for Boom! Studios...and Boom! will be releasing a Stardust Kid collected edition in July of ‘07. The good news is that Boom! is making sure the J.M. DeMATTEIS | 27

One other difference with the Stardust Kid is the fact that the story was born out of both my story and Mike’s designs. As noted, I had the SDK idea for years and years...it was a strong idea but something never quite clicked. I shared the idea with Mike and he had some insights that helped me see it more clearly. More important than that: He had a stash of character designs that he’d been stockpiling. He sent me those designs and, as I looked them over, I began to see who these characters were and how they could work in my story. So I folded Mike’s designs into the framework of the Stardust Kid and then built up the story from there. This incarnation of the Stardust Kid couldn’t have happened without Mike.

While waiting for Abadazad to be freed from its legal limbo, DeMatteis and Ploog forged ahead and created the kid-friendly comics series, The Stardust Kid. Pictured is the cover to, and an unlettered page from, the second issue. [© 2007 J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog.]

collection will be in the children’s section of the bookstores—which is where Abadazad is—not lumped in with all the other graphic novels. DF: Do you work the same way on Stardust Kid as you do on Abadazad? Or is it more like traditional comics— full script or Marvel style? JMD: Stardust Kid is written full-script...which means I’m creating the story from the ground up, then passing it on to Mike. But, again, Mike is such a brilliant storyteller that he can interpret the visuals any way he chooses and I know it will be better than whatever I laid out in the script. Which means I have complete freedom to write the story the way I see it and Mike has complete freedom to draw it the way he sees it. Once in a while Mike will see something in the script that he thinks doesn’t work...or I’ll ask him to redraw a sequence...but more often than not things just flow between us. It really is a magical collaboration. 28 | WRITE NOW

DF: What are you working on with other artists? JMD: My demented co-writer, Keith Giffen, and I are finishing up Hero Squared, illustrated by the amazing Joe Abraham. We’ve decided to wrap the series up with #9, which comes out in December (with three collected editions scheduled). I’ve got several projects that are in the early stages of development, too early to talk about; but I will mention a very cool idea I developed with my friend Derek Webster—to be drawn by (him again?) Keith Giffen. I’ve been waiting years to work with Keith The Artist again—and I’m hoping that this series gets off the ground soon. I’m not revealing any details but I will say that it’s one of the most intriguing and exciting ideas I’ve ever come across in all my years in the business. DF: What movie, TV, etc. things are you working on that you can talk about? JMD: I’ve got a couple of interesting movie projects in the pipeline—one is a supernatural thriller, a collaboration with a director friend, the other’s a big family fantasy film that I’m developing with a producer—but Hollywood is such a fickle beast that I’m afraid to say anything more about them! As for TV: I’ve been doing some work on the Legion of SuperHeroes animated show. Just finished my second episode and I’ve got two more lined up. I had great fun writing multiple episodes for Justice League Unlimited and I’ve been enjoying my Legion experience just as much. DF: Your son Cody now works at Boom! What does he do there, and how has nepotism benefited you? JMD: Benefits? Since Cody started working there, no one will answer my calls! But seriously, folks: Cody is Boom’s “production coordinator”—which means he pretty much does

Along with Keith Giffen, J.M. created the humortinged but deadly serious Hero Squared. Above are the covers to issue #s 1-3 of the ongoing series. Below is an unlettered page from issue #5. All art by Joe Abraham. [© 2007 Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis.]

everything that Boom! publisher Ross Richie can’t. He’s working on just about every aspect of the company’s business. I’m very proud of Cody... and delighted that my son is now a fellow comics professional. I was at WonderCon recently and there was a Boom! panel. You can imagine how thrilled I was to sit up there with my son next to me. DF: What’s coming up that you want to plug relating to Abadazad? JMD: As I said earlier, there are some very big—and extremely exciting—changes coming up for Abadazad...but, unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say what those changes are. Soon as Hyperion lets me talk about it, I’ll tell you! DF: And what’s on the horizon that you’d like to plug relating to anything else? JMD: One thing I forgot to mention is that I’m doing three issues of Wetworks for DC/Wildstorm...with talk of a Wetworks mini-series, with WW creator Whilce Portacio, to follow that. Scott Peterson is editing the book and he’s one of those guys who’s just a sheer delight to work with, on both the professional and personal levels. I didn’t think Wetworks was a book I’d be suited for but Scott started talking in this really...relaxed...voice and waving a watch back and forth in front of my eyes and the next thing I knew I was writing the stories and having a great time. Whilce has created a fascinating universe filled with fascinating characters: I’m happy to get a chance to play in it. DF: Finally, the question all America’s been asking: What’s Tom DeFalco really like? JMD: Aside from his constant need to wear a chicken suit (which I find a little disturbing, although I know you like it), Tom is one of the nicest, smartest, most creative guys I’ve ever worked with. And he pays me a small fortune every month just to say that! DF: Thanks, J.M. This was great. JMD: My pleasure, Danny. I’m always happy to talk about Abadazad.

THE END

J.M. DeMATTEIS | 29

Visualizing Abadazad:

THE MIKE PLOOG INTERVIEW

Conducted via email by Danny Fingeroth on March 19, 2007

ike Ploog shot to comic book stardom when, after a stint working for comics legend Will Eisner, he went to work at Marvel Comics in the 1970s. There he co-created—and drew the first adventures of—two of Marvel’s most popular horror characters—Ghost Rider and Werewolf by Night. He also drew the first several issues of Marvel’s Monster of Frankenstein series and stories for Kull the Destroyer, Planet of the Apes, and Man-Thing, among others. Mike has also done pre and post-production work for dozens of Hollywood movies including Ghostbusters, The Dark Crystal, Shrek, and the animated features Titan A. E., Wizards, and The Lord of the Rings. He also illustrated the children’s book L. Frank Baum’s the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Write Now! is pleased to have this opportunity to speak with Mr. P about Abadazad and more! —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: In 50 words or less, Mike, what’s the most important creative lesson you learned when you worked for Will Eisner? MIKE PLOOG: I don’t know if it was a creative lesson, but when I applied for my first passport I came to the question “occupation”. I thought a long time, am I an artist? An illustrator? Then I remembered what Will told me, “Stop trying to be Andrew Wyeth, damn it! Always do what you’re best at, and you are a cartoonist”. DF: You were in the Marines for ten years. What made you decide to not make a career of it? MP: When I was in my late teens and early twenties, the Marine Corps was a good education. It gave me confidence and I learned to respect myself. But I stayed too long. With my newfound confidence came the desire for my own identity. Weekly haircuts, shaving every morning and that uniform! I hated that uniform. Once you put on that uniform, you were one of thousands, and I felt lost in the crowd. But I must say, when I hear the Marine Corps hymn, I still get a feeling of pride. DF: Was it strange being a military guy at Marvel in the ’70s when most of the others were hippie-types? MP: Yeah, I had a hard time forgetting I was no longer a sergeant. In the ’70s I had a wonderful sense of freedom. DF: How did you get involved with Abadazad? MP: [CrossGen Comics publisher] Mark Alessi called me. He must have known Abadazad was a subject that I would be interested in. I had done several books aimed at the younger audience. 30 | WRITE NOW

DF: You and J.M. seem to have clicked immediately. What’s the connection/bond between the two of you? MP: The tie that bonds J.M. and me, I think, is the wonderful opportunity of being able to use our imaginations, and to continually return to our childhood. DF: Can you describe the working process you and J.M. have on Abadazad? Do you contribute story or character or dialogue ideas? What if you want to change something in a script? MP: J.M. is easy to work with. He lives in the stories he writes. When you live in a story as opposed to just writing about it, you see all the details and you feel all the emotions. J.M. is a word master. He knows how to take you to his imaginary land and make you believe in it. DF: What was the process for designing the characters? Did J.M. give you detailed descriptions, or did you talk them out? MP: From the very beginning, our imaginations blended together. I’ve always felt that J.M. saw the designs long before I ever put pencil to paper... [PLOOG interview continues on page 32.]

Meet some of the amazing beings of Abadazad as visualized by Mike: Lanky Man (top left), Mary Annette (top right), the Burping Dragon (lower left), and Phogg Wubbtales. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

MIKE PLOOG | 31

Kate’s love for her missing brother, as shown in this haunting 2-page spread, is at the heart of Abadazad. Art from Abadazad, book 1: The Road to Inconceivable is by Mike. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

[PLOOG interview continues from page 30.]

DF: What about the process of designing the Hyperion Abadazad books? Those are an amazing combination of comics, plus Kate’s diary, plus the “original” Abadazad books’ text, designed to flow from one to the other. How did you come up with that? MP: The blend of comics and text seemed to be a natural evolution. Hyperion felt it was a creative blend that would appeal to younger readers. DF: How is Stardust Kid like/different from Abadazad? MP: Stardust Kid and Abadazad are similar in the basic thread of the story. The difference is in the characters. Stardust Kid is more about young people finding what it is like to move from adolescence to adulthood and back again. DF: How does what you’re doing on Abadazad and Stardust Kid compare with the Baum Santa Claus story you did? Did you write that one? MP: The difference is that I have a good writer! I enjoyed writing the Santa Claus book, but it was hard work. DF: Any thoughts on the Ghost Rider movie, given that you co-created the character? MP: Ghost Rider…I haven’t seen it yet. And I may wait until it’s on DVD so that I can sit alone in a dark room. DF: What’s coming up for you in terms of projects that you want to plug? MP: Right now, I’m working with Simon Reed, a British publisher. It’s a very good horror story. That’s about all I can tell you right now. DF: Fair enough. Thanks for the interview, Mike. MP: Thank you, Danny. 32 | WRITE NOW

THE END

For this very amazing Nuts & Bolts section we have J.M. DeMatteis’ script and Mike Ploog’s pencil art from a four-page comic book sequence from The Dream Thief, book 2 in the Hyperion/Disney prose-comics hybrid Abadazad series. Ploog also did the inks. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

Leading up to this sequence have been several pages of prose. DeMatteis uses ellipses (…) as a way to connect the action in the prose section with the comic book section. (He will also use it to segue out of it at the sequence’s conclusion on page 61.) This page shows Ploog really cutting loose with his art, merging four separate panels into one flowing series of images, heightening the script’s intended effects. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

ABADAZAD NUTS & BOLTS | 33

Here, J.M. gives protagonist Kate (and the readers) what she wants—to find her brother—even if it is only in a dream. Of course, in Abadazad, the border between dreams and reality is, intentionally, not always clear. Notice how J.M. uses a floating balloon in the last panel to act as a transitional device to the next page. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

34 | WRITE NOW

Meet the main villain of the piece, the Lanky Man, and his boys. Ploog manages to make them look humorous, yet menacing, at the same time. And DeMatteis is clearly having fun inventing concepts like “the phantasulator.” [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

ABADAZAD NUTS & BOLTS | 35

DeMatteis calls for the action on this page to unfold over five panels. Ploog follows this suggestion but puts his own twist on it by not putting borders around panels 3-5, thus giving the transformation sequence extra power. [© 2007 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.]

While coloring is always important to (duh!) color comics, in the case of Abadazad, you’d really be doing yourself a favor by checking out the books to see how Nick Bell’s coloring adds significantly to the story. You can find some of his color work at www.abadazad.com (and on the cover to this issue of Write Now!).

36 | WRITE NOW

THE END

Behold: the last four pages of Amazing Spider-Man #539: “Back in Black,” written by J.M. Straczynski, penciled by Ron Garney. With Aunt May wounded by a sniper, Peter Parker goes over the edge. Inks are by Bill Reinhold. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN NUTS & BOLTS | 37

Note how JMS has adapted standard screenplay format—where dialogue is centered on the page—to write a full script for comic books. He describes what he wants drawn in a concise manner, knowing that a pro like Ron will interpret the directions in the most exciting way possible. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Straczynski here cuts away from Peter to remind the reader why he is so out of control, showing Aunt May on life support. Note the last caption, alerting longtime readers to the fact that the creative team is aware that May has been at death’s door many times in the past. The implied promise is that they’re going to handle it in a new and different way. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

38 | WRITE NOW

Notice that while the script makes no mention of the weather, Ron has included rain and lightning as a way to parallel the drama playing out inside Peter’s head, and in the story in general. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN NUTS & BOLTS | 39

The last page “reveal” serves two purposes: It’s a big, dramatic visual of Spider-Man in his black suit, which he had once sworn to never put on again! Plus, his narration caption tells us he’s ready to kill, which 99% of readers know is not his M.O. It leaves us eager to know not just what will happen to May, but what the distraught Peter might do. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

THE END 40 | WRITE NOW

CREATING COMICS STEP BY STEP

STEPS 1-3:

teven Grant has a long and successful career as a comic book writer. He, along with Mike Zeck, brought the Punisher to new heights of popularity with their groundbreaking limited series. Steven has also scripted stories featuring Spider-Man, Batman, and even Robocop. He is also the creator of the popular independent comic book series, Whisper. Steven has a weekly column, Permanent Damage, on ComicBookResources.com. In “Creating Comics Step By Step,” which first ran on Permanent Damage, he explores the process of how writers craft their stories. Steven has taken many agreed upon approaches of professional writers and presents them in an easy to understand and fun way. There are nine essays for this series. We’re proud to present the first three here, with the others scheduled to appear in the next two issues of Write Now! So Steven’s Whisper series ran for grab a highlighter for the important points 37 issues at First Comics, an Steven makes (guess you’ll have to buy a impressive run for an independent second copy of this mag!) and enjoy title. Cover art by Steve Epting. Mr. G’s Master Class in creating comics! [© 2007 Steven Grant.] —DF

Step 1: THE IDEA The idea is both the most under- and overrated part of the creative process. Ideas can be as elaborate as “a man works in an insurance office believing he exists in 20th century America only to discover he really lives in a future where machines have conquered the human race and control them through the use of virtual reality while a number of humans have escaped to become hi-tech freedom fighters and theorize the insurance salesman is a prophesied hero come to free mankind when he exhibits unexpected powers” (The Matrix) or “Thor fights the Hulk and we finally find out which is stronger” (what Erik Larsen originally wedged his way into Marvel with). Or even simpler: “a girl with big breasts who beats people up” has probably launched more comics, certainly in the last fifteen years, than any other. Though not a good idea, it’s still an idea. “Zombies destroy civilization” is a very simple idea, albeit not an original one, but that hasn’t stopped it from underlying two very good recent properties, Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and Danny Boyle’s horror film 28 Days Later.

There are all different sorts of ideas. There are the Grant Morrison/Warren Ellis “mad ideas” spat out machine gun fast. There are terribly simple, down to earth ideas, like the “adolescents trying to figure out how to be adolescents in a pressure cooker society” core of Miki Iahara’s Hot Gimmick, which is nonetheless one of the best mangas ever done. There are ideas no one else could ever have thought of and ideas someone else should have thought of but didn’t. It doesn’t really matter whether the idea is simple or elaborate, original or derivative. It doesn’t matter what the project is. All projects begin with an idea. That’s principle #1.

STEVEN GRANT | 41

The myth is usually held most dear by (and perpetrated on by writers who know better) people who don’t write, the ones who, in awed tones, ask “where do you get your ideas?” and in the next breath reveal the idea they’ve been quietly nursing for years, that would be worth a lot of money if only you’d write it up for them. Principle #3: Everyone has ideas.

Principle #2: Ideas come from anywhere. DC editors Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz used to have covers drawn with striking images, like the Earth being towed by a gigantic claw coming off a space trawler, or Superman encountering an alien dinosaur with a prophetic TV for a head, then hiring a writer to come up with a story incorporating the cover image, which, if nothing else, led to a flow of intriguing covers. Those covers did feature ideas (Weisinger, according to legend, polled children in his neighborhood to find out what they wanted to see in Superman comics, then developed covers and stories based on the answers) albeit not ideas originated by writers. Ideas can generate from pictures, random observations, conversations, anything, but in most cases they’re the result of the assimilation, juxtaposition and extrapolation of existing ideas the writer has been exposed to. (Sir Isaac Newton’s famous quote, “If I have been able to see this far, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”) None of us work in a void, though some are more conscious of the idea-generating process than others. The great myth of creativity is that ideas are rare and precious mystical objects, and that’s only partly right; good ideas are rare and precious things, while there are millions of bad ideas. Success doesn’t come from generating ideas. Success comes from being able to tell the good ideas from the bad ones, which is a much, much trickier thing. 42 | WRITE NOW

Mort Weisinger’s eye-catching cover ideas hooked a generation of Supermanfamily fans. Superboy #87 cover art is by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye. Action Comics #296 cover art is by Swan and George Klein. [© 2007 DC Comics.]

A classic (true) tale of Hollywood: a producer calls a young screenwriter into his office to involve him in a project that the producer will own in full but the screenwriter will develop, for scale. When the screenwriter asks the producer what the idea is, the producer, a bit nervous about unveiling his masterpiece without paperwork protecting him against theft but too proud of the idea to withhold it, beams ecstatically and, framing the words on a fantasy marquee with an upraised hand, says, with just the right amount of revelatory awe, “Rock Man!”

That’s it. The entire idea. Rock Man. No characters, no concept, no story. Just a name. Rock Man. Which the screenwriter is expected to convert into a movie franchise. (The lack of paperwork fortunately makes it simple for the screenwriter to walk away, which he does. Yes “Rock Man” is an idea. A bad idea, which only execution might save. Principle #4: Ideas, in and of themselves, mean nothing. It is possible to save a bad idea with great development and execution. It’s very possible to bury or kill a great idea in terrible development and execution. The idea is the first step in any project, but it’s only a baby step, with dozens of other steps to follow. Here’s where it gets tricky: what’s the difference between a good idea and a bad idea? That can only be answered in the specific, not the general. “Vampires attack a town” sounds like an adequate idea at best, and

wholly derivative of dozens of similar stories. Even the mention of vampires now sounds clichéd. But add a little twist — vampires attack a town isolated near the North Pole that’s beginning a month of total darkness under the midnight sun (Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith’s 30 Days of Night) — and it becomes one of those head- slappingly great ideas so obvious everyone else kicks themselves for not thinking of it first. Ten Little Indians-style murder mysteries were clichéd from the moment Agatha Christie wrote the novel decades ago, but until Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber’s Whiteout, no one thought to apply the concept to spies stranded at research stations in Antarctica. But neither project is made or broken by the underlying idea alone. How do you tell a good idea from bad? Experience, guesswork and luck. The real trick is to not get so attached to any idea, good or bad, that you’re unwilling to jettison it if necessary (I’ve mockingly said of a number of writers that you can tell they truly love ideas because when they finally get their hands on one they refuse to let go of it). The way to get ideas is to keep having ideas. Loving one idea too much makes you obsessive. Obsession as a creative technique is also highly overrated, and most often highly counterproductive.

One of the reasons why projects such as 30 Days of Night (above) and Whiteout (below) are so successful is that they take familiar concepts and put exciting new spins on them. Art for covers to 30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow #1 and 30 Days of Night: Return to Barrow collected edition is by Ben Templesmith. [© 2007 Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith.]

Cover art for the Whiteout trade paperback is by Frank Miller. Interior page from White: Melt is written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. [Whiteout: © 2007 Greg Rucka. White: Melt: Story © 2007 Greg Rucka. Art © 2007 Steve Lieber.]

STEVEN GRANT | 43

There’s only one true dividing line between good and bad ideas: success. But success, as I said, is the result of much more than simply the idea. The best test of any idea is a simple, difficult question: Where do you go from here? By way of illustration, I’ve decided to experiment by trying to take a concept step by step as I describe the steps here. No title yet, no story, just an idea so far: A horror comic. With irreplaceable natural energy resources like coal and oil dwindling as demand and prices rises, as is happening today in our own civilization, the stability of society and the economy are both threatened, and alternative energy sources become critical. But nuclear power has its own great dangers, while there’s a general lack of confidence in solar power, wind power, hydroelectric and geothermal power to meet energy needs. Until a company exploring for undersea oil deposits makes a discovery of another sort and becomes the provider of an apparently endless flow of very cheap, apparently pollution-free energy. Estimates are the energy source, a carefully-guarded company secret, can provide for all the project energy needs of the planet for the next 275,000 years. With only one secret downside: the energy source is one of H.P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones sleeping in the ocean’s depths, and the pollution isn’t physical but spiritual.

Step 2: WHAT’S THE STORY ABOUT? Okay, you’ve got your idea, but idea’s just the first tiny step. Before you start working up a framework for the story, though, you first have to ask yourself: What is the story about? Ask most people that and you’ll get something along the lines of, “okay, this guy, he’s mad about being passed up for a job, so he steals the secret technology his company was working on and –” Okay, but what’s the story about? “Wait, I was just getting to that, see, he’s tired of everyone ignoring him when he’s the one doing all the work so he’s going to make them notice him and realize he’s better than they –” Yeah, but what’s it ABOUT?!! The plot isn’t the story. The plot is what happens in the story, but it’s not the point of the story. It’s not what the story’s about. 44 | WRITE NOW

The theme is what the story’s about. It’s the point you want to get across, and, if you have a solid grasp of your theme, it’s the guiding light by which you can select and shape the events – the plot – of your story for best effect. There are a lot of different definitions and interpretation of theme, but skip those for now. (Independent reading on the subject is nonetheless encouraged.) For our purposes, let’s stick with a simplistic but practical question: What do you want to use the story to say? Right about now you’ll be thinking of the comics you’ve read, and you’ll be saying to yourself, “Most of them don’t have a theme.” Which isn’t quite true, but the vanilla theme, so common and bland it’s now a virtually invisible part of the background, can best be summed up by Wally Wood’s aphorism, “There are good guys and there are bad guys and the job of the good guys is to kill off all the bad guys.” That’s a theme. It’s a shallow and flip theme, but it’s a theme. “He saw his parents gunned down, so now he hunts down criminals for revenge” isn’t a theme. It’s a high concept. “Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot” is a theme. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a theme. “A teenage boy learns the value of personal

Second page from the two-page origin of Batman, from 1940’s Batman #1, which clearly establishes his motivations and the theme of the series. (Interestingly, the origin appeared months after the character’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27.) Script by Gardner Fox. Art by Bob Kane and Sheldon Moldoff. [© 2007 DC Comics.]

courage” isn’t a theme. What’s the value? “Life without personal courage isn’t worth living” is a theme. “Personal courage is overvalued and dangerous, and must be tempered with intelligence and mercy” is a theme. Greed, revenge, jealousy, etc. are often presented as themes, but they’re not, not really. They’re topics. It’s not greed as a concept that matters to your story but what you have to say about it. When I was writing Whisper, I used to say betrayal was the theme, and it was. But it wasn’t. The theme was what I wanted to say about betrayal: that life consists of betrayals, large and small, inadvertent and intentional, and those betrayals, committed by us and committed on us, become an inescapable web, and that’s just the nature of the world. You may like it, you may vehemently disagree with it, but it’s a theme. Theme provides spine and direction for your story. If you know the point you want to get across—love

Writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko helped to revolutionize comic books when they introduced the concept of an “everyman”-superhero—Spider-Man— in the pages of 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15. [© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

conquers all, great accomplishment requires great risk and great sacrifice, it doesn’t matter what you do the bad guys always win, live and the world lives with you but die and you die alone, whatever your chosen theme is - you know how your story needs to end, and if you know what your ending is, you can always figure out how to get there. (On the other hand, if you don’t know what your ending is, you don’t really know what your story’s about.) A couple caveats about theme: While it’s important to know your theme, it’s generally preferable not to wear it on your sleeve. Most people don’t read fiction to be preached to, they read it to have an experience they wouldn’t have otherwise. Like plot, theme isn’t story. Theme is an element of story, one of many, and a good story keeps its elements in balance. And you may start out with one theme and end up with another. Writing, particularly fiction writing, is a fluid, mercurial process that, like an iceberg, is often STEVEN GRANT | 45

to have a theme in mind and change it midstream than to not have any theme at all in mind and end up with a story full of sound and fury, as Shakespeare put it, and signifying nothing. Remember that story idea I came up with earlier? There are all kinds of ways that could go, and any dozen people would come up with a dozen different themes that fit it. Me, I’m strongly aware of the economic and cultural war between fossil fuels and alternative energies and how those who make their money on the former have traditionally used their influence to limit the spread of the latter. Any story springing off the idea above would, in my mind, have to take on economic and social significance, and deal with how we, as a society, cope with our energy demands and the consequences of the way we use energy and how we’re largely willing to overlook the ill effects of anything we perceive to be to our benefit. That would have to form the germ of the theme to my story: use of any power (however you want to interpret that; political and economic power can just as easily be represented metaphorically by “power” as in what comes from consuming petroleum or Chthulic energy) presents unforeseen risks and consequences, and willful ignorance or cover-up of those is dangerous and foolhardy. A cautionary tale, as most horror stories are. That’s a good enough starting point; I can hang a thruline on that. In the course of creating the story the theme will be refined and focused, and that’s part of the process too.

90% out of view. A lot of writing, and a lot of the preprocessing necessary for writing, is done in the unconscious mind (which is why ideas sometimes seem to explode out of nowhere; chances are you’ve actually been working on them for some time without being aware of it). It’s not usual to read your story as you’re creating it and realizing you’re actually trying to say something other than what you thought you were trying to say. Like maybe love doesn’t conquer all, but it’s because love is so fragile and fleeting that it’s so precious and important? In developing the story, at minimum you’re going to nuance, refine and, hopefully, strengthen your theme. Don’t be afraid to recognize when your theme has changed and adjust it accordingly. You have to say what you have to say; there’s no point in trying to say something else just because the other thing was the first thing you thought of. It’s okay to change direction in midstream, but the smart writer also revises what’s already written, if prudent, to align it with the rest of your story. Creating’s a process, not a steamroller. But it’s better 46 | WRITE NOW

Now we get to the fun part.

Step 3: CREATING CHARACTERS There are different ways of developing a story, and none of them are wrong. (As Mark Evanier likes to point out, whatever way the creators of the comic want to work is the right way to work.) How your story develops depends on where you started, but one principle remains the same, regardless: All stories are about people, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Grant Morrison’s WE3 centers around experimental military animals, Robbe-Grillet wrote a famous story about a pencil, there are numerous science fiction stories told from alien points of view and horror stories about monsters, but these are all stand-ins for people. To be successful your story at some point has to connect with the reader, and the way you connect with the reader is through character. Fiction is character. Without character, you’re writing an essay, not a story. Character is what the reader identifies with. “Identify with” is a frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted term. It doesn’t mean, as is popularly

thought in editorial audiences, the reader has to like the character. It means that there has to be something in the character’s plight or personality that resonates with readers, that they can see a piece of themselves in, and through that gain an emotional attachment to the story. Stories can be about completely despicable characters, but as long as those characters behave in ways that make emotional sense to readers, they can “identify” with the characters. Often comics stories, even new ones, start with a central character. Often the character is pre-developed, like Spider-Man, and the parameters of that character pre-set. A good story involving that character, then, must at minimum stay true to that character. But stories aren’t simply about a single character; they’re about interactions between characters, even if – we’ll get back to this in a moment – only one character is in the story. At the start of any story, the idea and the theme will dictate what characters are initially necessary. Characters are the means through which idea and theme are developed into story, which means all characters will have specific roles within the story to fulfill. There are three types of characters: • central characters • secondary characters • ancillary characters Central characters are the main focus of the conflict within the story. All stories have conflicts, all central characters are the vehicles of conflict. The shorthand says there are three kinds of conflict: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself. On a primal level, there are only two types of main characters, the hero and the adversary. There are Jack London stories where the hero is pitted not against some other person but against his environment, and no one else appears in the story; in all cases, whatever fills the role of the adversary becomes a character in your story. In our society, “hero” and “adversary” are loaded words; a better way to say it is “protagonist” and “antagonist.” Neither suggests any moral parameters (hero didn’t either, originally). The protagonist is simply the character through whose eyes the audience “witnesses” the story, and usually whose perceptions inform the story, and the antagonist the main proponent of whatever force gets in the

protagonist’s way. Any story can be restructured so the protagonist becomes the antagonist and vice versa. From a thematic point of view, both protagonist and antagonist are the vehicles for the ideas the stories are intended to get across, even in the most seemingly innocuous stories. Many of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories were straight adventure with no apparent higher ideal, but the underlying theme of most, embodied in Conan himself, was that barbarism, if not exactly noble, is still innately superior to civilization, and that civilization is just savagery in a pretty gown. Secondary characters are those directly interacting with and affecting or being affected by either protagonist or antagonist. They’re the whetstones on which the conflicts, ambitions and personalities of the main characters are sharpened, focused and nuanced. They often personify the central character’s goal (particularly in stories where the secondary character’s affection or well-being is the protagonist’s reward for achieving his goal, as when Superman saves Lois Lane, though stories like that tend to become logic loops). STEVEN GRANT | 47

In “team” stories, members of the team usually take turns as central and secondary characters, though there are team stories, like Doc Savage adventures, where central and secondary characters are permanently locked in their roles. Ancillary characters are, basically, props. This doesn’t mean they should be stick figures or not display unique personality traits (commonly they’re not on-screen long enough to show true personalities) but they’re often unnecessary to the specific action of a story and don’t much interact with central or secondary characters, existing to create a realistic sense of environment: hotel clerks, the girl in the next car over at the stoplight on whose hairdo the protagonist reflects, commuters on the subway, anyone with a bit part to play. The real difference between secondary and ancillary characters is you need to know who and why your secondary characters are just as much as you need to know that about central characters. You don’t need to know that (you can if you like) about ancillary characters. Ancillary characters are defined by their function. Secondary characters are defined by their effects. Some writers like to write out detailed biographies for all their characters before they start writing. (Personally, I find that a bit inorganic.) Others like to start with rough frameworks and fill in details as they go along. But the minimum – the absolute minimum – you need to work out about any central (and most secondary) characters before you begin is: • what do they want? • what are they willing to do to get it? • what are they afraid of? 48 | WRITE NOW

Superman’s supporting cast became so popular with fans that both Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen received their own ongoing series that lasted for several years. This panel is from Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #8. Art by Curt Swan and Ray Burnley. [© 2007 DC Comics]

Those are your outside parameters, which give you the general shape to start filling in. It’s strongly suggested you figure out more about your characters than that, but, if you’re starting a story completely from scratch and have only a character non-specific idea in mind and a rough theme, those three questions provide a glass through which you can start to define a character in the context of the story. When you’re starting from scratch, your idea and theme and some light development will help determine the basics of your character, and once you’ve got that, the character will help determine the story. (If it seems I’m handling these sections out of order, it’s because, past theme, there is no rigid order of development; though we separate them for purposes of discussion, character and plot are interwoven and develop simultaneously.) Why those three questions? They start your character in the context of a conflict. Let’s take the film Memento as an example. • What does Leonard want? To find and kill the man who killed his wife. • What is he willing to do to get it? A) try to overcome the limitations of the medical condition he suffers from, an inability to form and retain short term memory, and B) pretty much anything, including self-mutilation and deluding himself that he can outwit anyone trying to take advantage of his condition. • What is he afraid of? A) that his memory of what happened to his wife may not be accurate; B) that his condition leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by others; C) that he may not be able to remember if he does find the man who killed his wife.

Obviously, that’s worked from hindsight and I have no idea where in the development Christopher and Jonathan Nolan worked all that out, but answering those three questions, while they don’t give anywhere near a complete picture of Leonard’s character, gives enough of a framework to hang the rest of the character, and much of the plot, on. To summarize: Characters need conflict. (In most cases, central characters will experience more than one conflict, and in current fiction both an internal and external conflict is generally de rigueur: while a seemingly invincible force threatens to crush everything he holds dear, the mightiest man in the world is consumed with feelings of his own inadequacy. Etc.) Characters need context. It’s one thing to decide your central character is going to be a World Series champion baseball player, but a champion baseball player, say, sidelined by an injury or an unjust accusation and delivered back Director Christopher Nolan to the rundown shot to the top of neighborhood he grew Hollywood’s A-list of up in is going to be a far directors with his twisty different character from and thrilling film a champion baseball Memento. Guy Pearce player who falls through a warp in time and ends (pictured) played the film’s protagonist, Leonard. up in a post-apocalyptic [© 2007 by the respective copyright holders.] 23rd century where civilization has crumbled and the dead feed on the living. You can’t see what your characters are going to be or how they’ll behave outside the specific context of your story, whatever that story is. Characters are the story. It’s not Batman having a fist fight with the Joker that’s the story, it’s how those character behave during the fist fight, and how the fight and their behavior achieves or thwarts their goals. Their behavior, their hopes, their dreams, their effect on the course of events – that’s the story. As with theme, while some aspects of character need to remain stable throughout your development, others will shift and mutate as your story develops. You might realize that your character would behave differently than you earlier supposed, particularly when you sort out the character’s background, history, emotional state, family ties, experiences, etc. Never be afraid to make changes in your characters

that will make your story better, but if you do, never hesitate to retrofit your characters for consistency. Your characters will only be “real” if their behavior, responses and psychology are consistent throughout the story. Anything less would be cheating, and when an audience realizes you’re cheating— and they will— you lose them. There’s infinitely more to be said about character, and there are thousands of books on the subject. Don’t hesitate to read at least some of them. Earlier, I proposed the idea that fossil fuels are all but used up, and someone discovers and secretly taps into one of Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones sleeping at the bottom of the sea for an apparently pollutionfree, seemingly endless cheap fuel source. The theme would be that any use of power (in all of its many definitions) has unforeseeable, unpredictable consequences, and what is intended to make things better may only make things worse. So what kind of central character would work for that story? Personal inclination figures into all these things. The premise suggests a specific world: a post-fossil fuel society, bright and clean to the eye, and happy, STEVEN GRANT | 49

Let’s see... what does he want? The characteristics necessary for his job – secrecy, duplicity, manipulation – would run contrary to stable relationships, so he’d probably want two things: a paycheck and a life (though he’d likely tell himself that’s unimportant to him) and whichever he chooses makes the other more difficult to get. At least at first, those are probably the twin poles of his world, and he wouldn’t be concerned with higher issues; he’s venal but he’s venial. In the course of the story, he’ll come to learn how important the higher issues, not to mention the consequences of his actions, are. What’s he willing to do to get what he wants? In the short run, deceive and use others; in the long run, deceive himself. What’s he afraid of? That what he has is all he’ll ever have, and that the dark underbelly of life, not the shiny surface, will turn out to be the implacable reality, for him and for the world.

where power is a cheap resource. But it’s a tainted world, though those in it don’t know it yet. It’s a world where whoever controls the power supply – it would almost certainly be corporate in nature, though whether it’s “evil” per se is a question that doesn’t yet need to be answered – has enormous influence and possibly control. And jealousy. Given the nature of the power source, it would almost certainly be a closely-guarded corporate secret; the corporation’s power, again in many senses of the word, would depend on nobody else being able to tap and distribute that power. Which gives us a central character: an industrial spy. His line of work wouldn’t prep him to kill or other things political spies might do, but he’d need a flexible moral sense in order to do the job. Like his world, he’d be pretty on the outside but tainted. Old enough to be experienced but still young enough to face the physical challenges the work might pose, which would also require a decent fitness level: mid-30s. Personable, something of a chameleon, able to take on whatever characteristics allow him to blend in and avoid discovery. 50 | WRITE NOW

And what makes him the central character is this: he’ll be the one to reveal the corporation’s secret to the world, because he’s uniquely situated to discover it. Where exactly in the story he does this, that’s where further development comes in.

Next Issue: Steven explains the importance of plotting, characters and characterization, and setting, in Steps 4-6 of “Creating Comics Step by Step.” Don’t miss it!

Steven Grant has been a professional writer since the 1970s. He has written for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, First, Avatar, and a host of other publishers. At Marvel, he helped popularize the Punisher with his collaborations with Mike Zeck on The Punisher limited series and graphic novel. He co-created the popular independent comic series Whisper (Capital/First) and Badlands (Dark Horse). His weekly column about comics, pop culture, and politics, Permanent Damage, can be found at: cbr.cc.

THE END

Yours, mine, and Ours

WRITING THE COMPANY-OWNED OR FRANCHISED CHARACTER

(as opposed to writing your own) By John Ostrander

ohn Ostrander has been writing comics for twenty years. His many published works include: GrimJack, Legends, Firestorm, Suicide Squad (with his late wife, Kimberly Yale), Hawkworld, Wasteland, The Spectre, Martian Manhunter, The Kents, Star Wars, Batman: Gotham Nights, and many others. He’s currently working on Star Wars: Legacy and a Suicide Squad miniseries for DC, as well as part of DC’s World War 3 Event. Born and raised in Chicago, John was in professional theater for a number of years as an actor, playwright, director, and occasional producer before becoming a full-time writer in comics. He’s also been a teacher at both the Joe Kubert School and, co-teaching with Dennis O’Neil, at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. John is a regular contributor to Write Now! and we’re glad to have him back this issue to share his thoughts about this important topic for comics creators. —DF What sort of writer do you want to be?

I’m taking as a given that you want to be the good writer – the best that you can be. If you’re reading this magazine, I’m assuming that you want to be a professional writer and that you would like to be paid for your work or even make a living at this. What are your goals? Do you want to write Batman? The X-Men? Star Wars? (We’ll call these company-owned or franchise.) Or is your goal to create your own characters, your own universe? (Creator owned.) Maybe a little of both? I’ve done both—such as The Spectre for DC Comics and Star Wars for Dark Horse as well as my own creation, GrimJack—and there is a value to each. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and we’re going to explore them here. To start with, however, we should be clear that the rules of good writing apply to both. In terms of my basic approach to writing, that doesn’t change. I put the same amount of effort and craft into everything I do; to do otherwise would be to short-change the reader.

Intellectual Properties To understand some of the differences between creator-owned and franchise properties, you need to first understand the concept of intellectual properties. I must confess my own bias here; part of me hates that label. I see it as an attempt to make artistic expression into widgets for exploitation by the business community. From that point-of-view, our work is not relevant as a means of self-expression or exploration of the human condition; instead, it is a commodity to be traded like any other widget. That said, you need to know what is meant by the term before you sign away or give away any rights you might have in it. One other caveat – I’m a professional writer, not a lawyer—nor is the editor or publisher of this magazine. I’ll give you my best understanding of this issue, but it is solely from the perspective of a working author. There are several different definitions of the concept of intellectual property depending on which dictionary you consult. Most basically, it is a thought or an intangible idea or information that has been given a physical form. In an earlier article I said a writer writes. Until you put something down on paper, it’s simply an idea and everybody has ideas. What the creator does is incarnate it — give it a physical, tangible form. It may or may not be “art,” it may be good or bad, but it is now an intellectual property and, as such, has potential monetary value in the marketplace. Is it only the finished product that is an intellectual property? No. You may have notes, you may have initial sketches, you may have a few themes written down and someone can come along and develop them further or finish them for you and—voila!—we have intellectual property. That’s one of the reasons that you also don’t go telling your ideas all over the place — someone could take one and create their own work, which becomes their intellectual property. You cannot legally protect an idea but you can legally protect an intellectual property. It’s one of the reasons I never read fan fiction; if that is my known policy, JOHN OSTRANDER | 51

then I cannot be accused of stealing from Joe Fanboy. In fact, I’ve been told by Lucas Licensing not to read Star Wars fan fiction for that reason – to avoid lawsuits. Why are intellectual rights such a big deal? Because these days, if big bucks are going to be made, chances are it won’t be off the initial work. These days the bulk of money is made not off the monthly comic but the trade paperback (TPB) collection of it. A more staggering example (at least it was for me) was the realization that with the recent Star Wars films, the real money was made not from the films themselves but from the licensing and merchandising that surrounded them. Intellectual rights include all the possibilities of using and exploiting the work in any medium–Superman, for example, as a concept exists in everything from comics to novels to movies to Underoos.

If you take an existing character and put a new costume and a new name on them, you’re unlikely to receive additional compensation. The rationale is that the character already existed in the DC or Marvel Universe; giving them a different costume doesn’t change who they are. It’s not a “new” creation. Same thing with Lucasfilm and Star Wars, although they apply it to whole creation; the character would not exist except for the pre-existing concept of Star Wars itself. Everything grows out of the intellectual property that George Lucas created; thus, legally, I cannot be said really to “originate” anything in Star Wars and thus have no claim of ownership. I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with all of this; there are creators out there who emphatically do not agree. I’m only saying this is my understanding of the views of the companies.

This comprises one of the major differences between working on your own characters—on something you own— and working on a franchised series. When you create a work of your own, the copyright belongs to you (or you and your co-creators, if any) from the moment of creation. When you’re working on a company-owned or franchised series or character, the company is going to own that from the moment of its creation. You’re doing “work-for-hire” and the contracts will spell out explicitly that you don’t own what you’ve created. Some companies will give you “participation” which means they’ll give you a cut of the intellectual property. Usually that’s on a character rather than a series. For example, I created the character of Amanda Waller for DC’s Suicide Squad and I was granted a participation percentage in the character – a very small one but participation nonetheless. When Amanda was used in the animated series Justice League Unlimited, DC collected a fee for her use and I got a check for my percentage of that fee.

Much of the world also recognizes a creator’s “moral rights” such as the right of attribution and the right of integrity as defined by the Berne Convention. The former means the creator has a right to have their name attached to the creation and the latter says that, no matter who owns the intellectual rights, they do not have the right to change it in a way that distorts the creation or its intent (my interpretation). It was used several years ago by directors protesting Ted Turner’s colorization of old black-and-white movies. The United States, however, does not recognize moral rights.

However, I in no way control the character of Amanda Waller. DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz, several years ago, commented to me that it’s not so much who owns the property as who controls it that matters. You may sign a contract with a publisher for an original, work-for-hire property to be published and they control the rights; you may have a “reversion clause” in the contract which usually provides for all rights returning to the creator if the company ceases publication or does not generate x amount of dollars within x amount of time. That’s in theory. In practice, if a company wants to, they can probably find any number of ways to hold on to the property. Even if the publishing rights revert to you, the companies may retain control over some of the rights—such as movies and/or merchandising. The creator can own the copyright but not the trademark. It is control over those copyright and trademark that determines who controls the property. 52 | WRITE NOW

What are the advantages of working on a company-owned or franchised character? At the head of the list, I would put payment. Your page rate—the amount you are paid for doing the work–is usually better than on stuff you own, and on time. Royalties—a secondary payment based upon numbers of issues sold or other use of an intellectual property—are also more likely to occur.

There’s also visibility. In comics, a large part of what you are selling is your name and your track record. That’s used to determine your page rate. The mainstream publishers generally have the most readers. The more that readers are aware of you in a positive manner, the more your name is recognized, the more of a fan base you have, the more likely it is that readers will follow you to your next work – whether it is another company-owned or franchised character, or one of your own. Name recognition is very important if you expect to have a career in comics. Companies are also more likely, in my experience, to promote books that they own or in which they have a big financial stake. The PR department in each company has only so many dollars in its budget and so much space to use. They put it, again – in my experience, where they expect to get the biggest bang for the buck — and that usually means characters that the company owns outright.

The disadvantages of working on company owned or franchised characters include lack of control. You don’t control other uses the character may have, appearances in other books, and you yourself could be off the book next week and your vision of the character may go with you. You don’t have total artistic control while you’re working on the character, either. You can’t do anything you want, even if you think it’s in the best interests of the character or the property. This is even truer with a franchise owned property. For example, my work on Star Wars has to be approved not only by my editor at Dark Horse but reviewed and approved by Lucas Licensing. I have a lot of freedom within that, given my track record, but also because I know how a Star Wars story should work. My understanding of the franchise is an asset and my track record makes them inclined to trust me. If you create something that generates a lot of money for the company or the franchise, you may see nothing of it. You may not benefit from the revenue stream you’ve created other than your initial payment. In my experience, that’s true of most franchised properties. For example, Lucas Licensing does not have a participation program. Any new characters I create for Star Wars belong wholly to them and I do not receive additional compensation for these characters. I knew that going in, however, and made my decision anyway.

Which is better? From a career standpoint—a bit of both. Doing something that is company owned or franchised helps give you name recognition in the market and that’s a real value. Doing something that you have created and own can be more satisfying, both artistically and financially, and also helps define you as a creative force in the market. My career has GrimJack as a cornerstone; it’s what first got me recognized by both fans and people in the industry and led, ultimately, to other offers. The majority of writers in this industry who have had successful careers have blended a bit of both; they may be known primarily for one or the other but they have worked in both arenas. All that being said, I’d like to go through some nuts and bolts of characters that I’ve worked on in the industry, including work I’m doing at this time. When I’m working on a company owned or franchised character, I start by trying to define for myself, “What is its essence?” Why is a certain story a Star WARS story and not a Star TREK story? (No, they are not interchangeable.) What makes Superman different from, for example, the Martian Manhunter who has many similar powers and weaknesses? I like to know the character or concept’s history. I try to be reasonably consistent with what has already been printed without getting strangled by continuity. For example, Tom Mandrake and I had a clear idea of who the Spectre was before we even began working on the character. There were certain visuals that were associated with the character—certain things that the Spectre did that made him unique.

Conversely, the advantages of working on a character you created and own and control are almost the flip side of the disadvantages of the company or franchise owned property. As long as you don’t sign that control of your rights away, you retain that artistic control; it is your John and Tom Mandrake added vision that drives the property. new dimensions to The Spectre. If (and this is a mighty big if) your We went back to his origins and Cover to #22 by Alex Ross. property gets used in other forms simplified everything back to that—Jim [© 2007 DC Comics.] (movies, Underoos, what have you) Corrigan was a plainclothes cop in the then your financial benefit will be — potentially — late 1930s who was murdered by gangsters. He arrived at considerably larger. (This is known as the back end money; what seemed to be heaven and was addressed by a Voice the upfront money is what you get for doing the work in (it was always implied that the Voice was the Voice of God; the first place or the initial sum you receive when other we simply made it God). Corrigan can’t rest with his killers rights are contracted.) at large, so he goes back to Earth imbued with supernatural power (which we defined as the Wrath of God). He does The disadvantages also mirror the company owned/ his work as the Spectre and, as Jim Corrigan, he seems to franchised work’s advantages. Can you find a publisher? be alive — but he’s not. This was important to us—Jim How big is the publisher? How reliable are their payments? Corrigan was dead and had been dead since the late ‘30s. Do you get money upfront? If not, how do you plan to Other variations on the character had his body resurrected make a living while you’re doing the work? Will they do any and the Spectre as a separate entity living within it. We PR for you or do you have to handle that yourself? Do they stripped that away—the Spectre was Corrigan; Corrigan was want some participation in return for publishing you and, if a dead ‘30s plainclothes cop. so, how much do they want? You have to have a business side of you or someone who will handle the business end While we tried to blend in elements from every Spectre for you and that drains time and energy away from doing incarnation that we knew, there were elements we simply the creative work. This all gets magnified if you self-publish. ignored. The original Spectre story shows Corrigan using a

JOHN OSTRANDER | 53

needle and thread to sew together the Spectre’s cape and hood. We felt that as superfluous. We never said it didn’t happen; we simply never showed or referred to it. Our biggest change in the Spectre was the character of Jim Corrigan himself. We emphasized the hard-nosed quality that he might have had when he was alive. I took some of my cues from the early Dick Tracy strips and the gangster and noir films of he era. This made Corrigan himself a tougher character and more appealing. He also became the Spectre’s “kryptonite”—the Achilles’ heel that is needed to keep a character from being too powerful. The Spectre had almost the ability of God, but he had the perspective of Jim Corrigan; that limited how his power would be used, but in a natural fashion. It became an element of his character. To summarize—we stripped the character down to basics, identified those elements that most defined him, used his history without being overly constrained by continuity, and re-examined his mortal guise (Corrigan) and redefined him to reflect his era more realistically. When Tom and I then moved on to the Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’Onzz) we had a different problem. J’onn was perennially written, in my view, as a green version of Superman even in his earliest days. He had Martian vision, Martian breath, superstrength, and fire made him weak the way that Kryptonite did Superman. We wanted to find what was different.

regular team is going to explore. With the exception of Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler, and Commissioner Gordon, we would not be playing with the regular supporting cast. The story had to be self-contained and leave Batman/Bruce Wayne essentially as we found him. That’s one of the tricks of the fill-in story — you don’t re-invent the character or do anything radical. You just have to make sure you tell a damn good story to keep the readers interested and onboard. We decided that we wanted to make it a mystery story. We also wanted Bruce Wayne to be present a certain amount of the time. We decided that, instead of trying to do something with the established rogue’s gallery (any of whom might be earmarked for a different Batman story) we would create a new villain in the classic Batman vein. To our minds, the classic Batman villain had to be physically distinctive even to the point of abnormality—the Joker, the Penguin, Killer Croc, Clayface, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and so on. He or she should have something distinctive in his or her weapons or abilities. Something—some event in his or her past—should drive this character the way that Batman is driven. Being psychotic was a plus.

We came up with Grotesk—which is, of course, a phonetic rendering of the word grotesque. He kills people in a horrible fashion and then cuts away the face. He stitches together bits of different faces to form a mask, which hides his own deformity — terrible burns. It’s hard, unless someone We began with what made them the has been incredibly trained, for someone to During their run on the Martian same — both Superman and the Martian go up against Batman in a physical fight and Manhunter series, John and Tom Manhunter were aliens from another world explored some of J’onn J’onzz’s have any chance of winning. Thus, we gave and were the last of their race. The primary lesser-known abilities. Cover to Grotesk a weapon that would even up the difference, to us, was that Superman had score. It was dubbed I-GORE, a wink to Dr. Martian Manhunter #1 is by Tom. come to Earth as a baby and was raised Frankenstein’s assistant in the movies, Igor. [© 2007 DC Comics.] essentially as a human. His powers came Our Grotesk had also been a doctor, a plastic from Krypton but his values were pure American Midwest— surgeon named Dr. Wayne Franklin. He borrowed huge Kansas and the Kents. amounts of money from shady sources to create I-GORE, until he was caught in a fire that horribly disfigured him. J’onn, on the other hand, was an adult when he came to Earth. He’s had a wife and child whom he had lost The I-GORE was meant to help surgeons perform surgery along with the rest of his race. His values would have from afar; it would be strapped to a medico and guided by been formed by his upbringing so we set out to explore a real surgeon miles away. Problem is, it doesn’t work very and define Martian culture. That would help us define well. It has scalpel attachments, it can shoot hypodermic his character and his values. tranquilizers and, to help with Dr. Franklin’s vengeance, also had a flame-thrower. We also would explore the powers that he had that Superman didn’t—his telepathy, his intangibility, and his The story itself is a mystery, but the identity of Grotesk is ability to shape-change. We designed his opponents to just one part of it. Why all this is happening is a greater bring out those aspects. Our Martian Manhunter was far element but, ultimately, the big question becomes: why more alien than Superman. are certain key characters doing what they do? It’s a question—a mystery—that we all have: why do we do the Recently, Tom and I teamed up again to do a four-part things that we do? Hopefully, that gives the story greater Batman story. We knew it would be used as a “fill-in” story depth and resonance beyond the “whodunit” aspect. arc; something to give the regular team some breathing space from the constant crush of deadlines. Fill-in work has Recently, Jan Duursema and I launched a new Star Wars its own rules — it must be consistent with the current comic that was somewhat radical. The publisher, Dark continuity but not pick up narrative elements that the Horse, as part of its twentieth anniversary celebration was 54 | WRITE NOW

canceling all the old SW titles and launching new ones. Jan and I have been working on Star Wars for about six years and were given several different options. We opted to jump into Star Wars’ future. We wanted to go 100 years past anything that was currently done in the franchise and imagine what that future might be like. Out of this our new and somewhat controversial book, Legacy, was born. Here again, Jan and I were looking for what we felt was a primal Star Wars experience — something that would be similar to the first time you saw the very first Star Wars movie. You didn’t know who the characters were, you didn’t know where it was going, but it picked you up and pulled you along. At the same time, it had to feel like Star Wars. As with the Spectre, there are certain visuals that need to be there. If it’s totally new and completely different, how is it Star Wars? So we selected certain elements that we felt had to be there—we wanted a Skywalker, we wanted Jedi, we wanted an Empire and storm troopers, we wanted Sith, and we wanted to start in the middle of something.

as a Jedi or as a Skywalker. He’s rough, he has a nasty side, and lots of room to go somewhere as a character. We also added some new concepts such as the Imperial Knights—Force-trained Jedi-like warriors in support of the Empire and the Emperor. Designs for ships either evolved from known designs or we came up with new ones. The net effect, we hoped, would be something that read and felt like Star Wars but—different. Legacy spent a year in development both with concept and design and continues to evolve as we do it. We did receive a modest development fee but it didn’t really compensate for the time we put into the project. So why did we do it? One reason was to make certain we had regular work that we wanted to do. The larger reason probably was simply because we wanted to see if we could do it. It was the chance to create something new in the Star Wars sandbox, a place where we were less likely to trip over Star Wars continuity. It was a big risk for all concerned— Jan and I and our inker, Dan Parsons, and colorist, Brad Anderson, but for Dark Horse and Star Wars, as well. If Legacy crashed and burned and was rejected by the Star Wars fans, we’d be in a lot of trouble. As it turns out, as of this writing, the book is definitely a success. The first two issues have gone back into print after being sold out and fan reaction has been almost universally enthusiastic. I’ve heard from a number of fans who had either never read a comic or even drifted away from Star Wars who were enticed back in by Legacy. There is a small and vocal group who do not like it but, to be honest, a touch of controversy doesn’t hurt.

Within those known parameters, however, we tinkered. This Skywalker would be unlike any other Skywalker; he’d be as much or more like Han Solo —a rogue — as like Luke Skywalker. There were Jedi but they had been scattered and were being hunted. There was an Empire built from the remnants of the first Empire; however, it wasn’t evil per se. The Emperor on the throne, initially, was not a Sith but descended from a good and positive character in the Star Wars Extended Universe (the universe of the comics, books, etc.). There were Sith, but this time here were As Tom and I did with the Spectre lots and lots of Sith. The Rule of Two– and Martian Manhunter, Jan and I that there were only two Sith, no went back to the source material, John and Tom did Batman #’s 659more, no less; a master and an examined what we loved about it, 662, which introduced Grotesk. Cover tried to define for ourselves what apprentice—had been abandoned and now there was the Rule of One—the Sith art for #661 by Gregory Lauren. was essential, and then used that as [© 2007 DC Comics.] Order itself with a single powerful our jumping off point. We have and charismatic Sith in charge. respected continuity and tried to build logically from it, extrapolating a reasonable possible Jan and I wanted to re-introduce a note of uncertainty future from what had already happened. to the Star Wars Universe. For a long time, we knew how certain characters were going to end up or that certain characters were not really going to be at risk. We When bringing back my own character, GrimJack, some changed that. We wanted, again, to get back to basics— of the same rules applied. This time, I didn’t have to get the to a feeling reminiscent of back when you didn’t know approval of some other entity; I was working with my who Luke’s father was or what a Jedi was or if Han partners—such as co-creator Tim Truman and editor Mike was really going to survive. None of the big Star Wars Gold — and we were free to do what we wanted. characters would be in Legacy; so you couldn’t be sure what was going to happen. You especially couldn’t be There were, however, a number of factors to take into certain what our Skywalker—Cade—was going to do. He account. GrimJack, due to various legal considerations and was a bounty hunter and wanted no part of his legacy my own stubbornness, had not been published in 13 years.

JOHN OSTRANDER | 55

We still had a very strong, loyal, and vocal fan base but the medium itself had changed. The idea of doing an ongoing monthly as before wouldn’t work. Since comics are now written in arcs to be gathered into collected editions, the storyline had to be designed with that reality in mind.

elements; I assume my readers—old and new—are reasonably intelligent and will understand the story if all the elements necessary to understanding it are in it. However, not all the relationships are exactly the same as they would be later; even the old fan is in for some surprises.

We also had to make the story accessible to new readers without making it a letdown for the older fans. The new readers may not know anything about the character; they had to feel comfortable and welcomed. The success not only of this arc, but the possibility of doing future ones rested with bringing in new readers.

The details are what’s here for old-time fans. They’ll get something that the new fan won’t; the new reader may be totally unaware of a given reference. For example, GrimJack works out of a place called Munden’s Bar. In the telling of this new story, “Killer Instinct,” the reader learns how GrimJack came to own the bar. This is something that we had never shown before; the old reader is very interested because it’s a turning point in GrimJack’s life. The new reader just knows that this is an important moment in this story.

It also needed to be something that might, when gathered into a single TPB later, be interesting to potential Hollywood producers, something that our agent could leave with them that might entice them. (This was a situation where I was tied heavily into the back end of the property.) I had no doubts that Tim would do well as the artist. I’d seen his recent work and knew how he’d evolved and grown. But I hadn’t written the character in 13 years. I had to go back and not only find his voice, but a story that would satisfy old fans, new fans, and possibly Hollywood producers.

The process worked for “Killer Instinct” with the readers; Hollywood is still uncommitted as of this writing. The same rules once again applied — decide what the essence of the character/book/ concept is, know and respect the history/continuity without letting it bind you, and make sure it’s as accessible as possible for all the readers.

Beyond that, it’s a question of control and rights; if you’re making a deal for the publication of a character/concept that you created that is original with you, have someone versed with intellectual rights— an agent or a lawyer—look at the contract before you sign it so that you know what you’re getting into. Remember, the deal is not the deal someone tells you they’re In 2005, John and Tim agreeing to, it’s what is written in the Truman re-launched their contract. The person you’re dealing with classic co-creation in both a may be a wonderful, well-intentioned person, but if he or she is suddenly no series of collected editions and new adventures. Cover longer in a position of authority at the company you’re dealing with, all you have for The Legend of in terms of the deal is what is written on GrimJack v 2, is by Truman. Then I had to do the same thing with my [© and TM 2007 Nightsky GrimJack Rights And paper. Unless it’s a personal contract with own property that I did with the Spectre or Production Vehicle (Four Wheel Drive Model) LLC.] an individual (and sometimes even then), Star Wars—ask what was the essence of your contract will be with a legal entity–a it? What elements had to be in a good GrimJack story? company—and the deal is what it says in the contract. Hopefully. As much as I sometimes hate to say it, your As I said, GrimJack has a long and rich back-story. When creation is also an intellectual property and, as such, is a we started telling his stories, we started with him in his mid legal entity. Creative types are not always comfortable to late forties. While I knew essentially what had happened with the business and legal side of what they do. If you before that and had alluded to portions of it, there were can’t do it, you need to have someone you can trust do it places where we’d never told the full story and I decided to for you. I have no problems with working on companymake this new story one of those. I found a turning point owned or franchised properties but I’d hate to lose what I where GrimJack had turned from who and what he was independently create simply because I didn’t pay attention and started on the road to becoming who he is when we to the legalities. You can sell those rights; just be aware first met him. A prequel, if you will. that you’re doing it. First, I had to re-acquaint myself with the character and concepts. That meant going back and re-reading the original stories. It can be painful going back and re-visiting your old work. If you’ve grown and changed and improved as a writer, you may wind up seeing only the flaws. In my case, I had to look at the material with a dispassionate eye: see the flaws but also see what worked and why. Also, just because I invented the continuity didn’t mean I remembered it all. GrimJack, as a concept and a character, also grew and changed during the time when I originally wrote him.

I felt this would put new readers and old ones at about the same level. The plot, the basic story, would be accessible to all who pick it up. You shouldn’t need to have read past stories to understand the one you hold in your hands. I don’t feel the need to underline all of the story 56 | WRITE NOW

Now you know some of the differences between working on the two kinds of properties. The decision as to how you approach them is yours. May the facts be with you.

THE END

CREATING BLOCKBUSTER WORLDS:

Comics Writers Are Making the Leap to Trans-Media Storytelling

eff Gomez started working in comics as an assistant editor at Valiant Comics in 1994, but quickly hit his stride as a full editor there after becoming a liaison between Valiant and video game giant Acclaim Entertainment. Realizing that great stories could be translated from whatever their medium of origin to the whole gamut of entertainment media, he has become a specialist in developing what he calls “Trans-Media Storytelling.” He believes in the concept so passionately that his company, Starlight Runner Entertainment, is devoted to just that. Here, Jeff tells us a little bit about his own journey and how the media world is being transformed even as we watch—and play, and hear, and interact! Take it away, Jeff! —DF Man, did I love Godzilla when I was a kid. Unfortunately, there were no Godzilla toys, no books or magazines back then. Things are sure different now! Today, we’re living in the era of Trans-Media Storytelling (TMS). If that term sounds a bit strange to you, let me explain! Simply put, TMS is telling one story across different media platforms: comic books, novels, TV, movies, the Web, and so on.

Aspects of this type of storytelling have been around for years. In the early 1940s, Batman and Superman made the jump from comic books to radio and movie serials. And while there was no crossing over of stories between the comics and the movie serials or radio shows, there was a certain amount of give and take between the media. Two important aspects of Batman’s mythology—Alfred the butler and the Batcave—were introduced in the first Batman serial in 1943, then adopted by the comics. As for Superman, both Perry White and Jimmy Olsen first appeared in the radio show. Even Kryptonite first appeared on-air before it was introduced into the comic books. While these are not trans-media storytelling in the strictest sense, they are examples of how the stage was set for a more coherent and focused approach to media properties in the years that followed.

Origins Of Trans-Media Storytelling To understand trans-media storytelling, we actually need to go back a bit further than the 1940s. With the

By Jeff Gomez

advent of mass media in the late 19th century came a rise in demand for books and periodicals with broad appeal. Fictional characters came to prominence, and readers wanted to enjoy their further exploits in sequels or other iterations. So Sherlock Holmes would venture through issue after issue of Strand magazine, and then those short stories and novellas would be collected as books. Later, there would be stage plays and radio shows adapting his exploits or inventing new ones. He arrived on the silver screen in 1912 in France, and has never been gone for long. The same can be said for Dracula, Tarzan, and Little Orphan Annie. But the concept of formalizing storytelling across multiple media platforms didn’t really come into focus until the 1960s, and it emerged out of the Japanese comic book industry. Unlike American television, there was no Hollywood machine in Tokyo churning out libraries of animated shorts and simple Hanna-Barbera concepts with which they could jam the airwaves. Japan’s TV studios instead turned to the newly burgeoning manga market for cartoon ideas. JEFF GOMEZ | 57

Astro Boy, Speed Racer, The Eighth Man and Gigantor all started out as comic strip serials in weekly telephone book-sized anthologies put out by newspaper companies. Studios like Toei and Tatsunoko adapted the strips, and toy companies like Bandai quickly caught on to the notion of merchandising the characters to eager Asian ‘tweens. A business model was forged, and a close-knit industry was born.

Those ’70s Shows By the ’70s, while I was watching Jabberjaw and Hong Kong Phooey, the Japanese were producing elaborate kidvid serials where super heroes with dark secrets and complex pasts were engaged in life or death struggles with galactic empires and lurid underground criminal organizations. Storylines ran parallel or jumped back and forth between television, manga and eventually direct-to-video, and when situations got really dire, there would be a theatrical feature to mark the event! This resulted in a series of rich, fully realized worlds, and they started generating a lot of money!

to trans-media storytelling; they are not in themselves trans-media story worlds, because they were not originally designed to be so. Based on my experience, here are the distinguishing features of trans-media rollouts: • Content is originated by one or a very few creative visionaries. • Cross-media rollout is planned early in the life of the franchise. • Content is distributed to three or more media platforms. • Content is unique, adheres to the specific strengths of the platform and is not repurposed from one platform to the next. • Content is in-continuity, observing the chronology, laws and characterization of the core property.

For a single magical year I was exposed to this insanity after my free-spirited mom decided to whisk us away to live in Hawaii in 1975. It was an electrifying trip to Oz, and though I would eventually return to my concrete Kansas on New York’s pre-gentrified Lower East Side, I would never look at “story” the same way again. When I wrote my stories, or started refereeing Dungeons & Dragons games, every battle would be epic; every event would run along a timeline, every character would have an origin and a destiny… And then in 1977, Star Wars was released. Because no one expected it to be as successful as it was, the licensing and merchandising rights were left in the hands of the property’s creator, George Lucas. Lucas was savvy enough to marry storytelling and technology in a variety of ways, and this resulted in the first western endeavor to equivocate and even build upon the Japanese model. Marvel Comics’ Star Wars series filled in the blanks in the storylines between the episodes of the original trilogy. Today, the Dark Horse series continue to embellish upon the mythos, fleshing out secondary and even tertiary characters. These were no longer movies; they were at once a mythology and a lifestyle. Geek heaven! So George Lucas, a man who had been raised on pop culture, became one of the world’s first transmedia storytellers.

Distinguishing Trans-Media Story Worlds It’s important to distinguish our standard perception of fictional worlds and persistent universes from transmedia storytelling. The Marvel and DC universes, the Star Wars and Star Trek universes, and Harry Potter’s Hogwarts are some great source material for TMS. Such properties (or aspects of them) lend themselves 58 | WRITE NOW

• Rollout features audience participatory elements such as web portals, social networking and usergenerated content Comic book and video game publishers, movie studios and animation houses, even Fortune 500 companies not normally affiliated with content production are all coming to realize that brands are best exploited through entertainment. Multiple platforms mean multiple revenue streams — and multiple ways to expose a mass audience to your products. Rich worlds lend themselves to large and incredibly loyal fan bases. Fans in turn are demanding stronger, deeper storylines that “speak” to them through whatever medium they have at hand, be it the Web, television, their Sony PSP’s, or even their mobile phones. We’re seeing this with franchises as diverse as Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Bionicle, Hot Wheels, Magic: The Gathering, and Halo. In fact, all of these highly

successful projects are examples of trans-media storytelling from early stages in their development. Interestingly, comic book writers (or fans of contemporary comics) were involved in each of them.

Case Study—Magic: The Gathering After tooling around in the tabletop adventure game industry in the late-1980s and early ’90s, I came to work as an assistant editor at Valiant Comics. Simultaneously, some friends from my adventure gaming days had put together a company called Wizards of the Coast and invented a trading card game called Magic: The Gathering. Essentially an elaborate game of “war” gussied up with paintings of fantasy creatures, the game had a collectible quality due to the relative scarcity of certain cards that triggered a craze in high school and college campuses across the country. I convinced Valiant to let me go after the comic book and video game licenses for Valiant and Acclaim. The unifying factor would echo what I felt was the essence of the Magic: The Gathering brand: We are all interrelated and there is strength in our unity. I must have been convincing, because we got the deal. It fell to me to edit the comics, write the core titles, and coordinate marketing and video game development. I came up with a set of criteria for creating what I would come to call “trans-media story worlds,” and making them work. I’ve actually adhered to them ever since: • Even if the audience doesn’t immediately recognize it, the fictional world must be deep and rich, with a past, present and future. • Compelling storylines must be designed in arcs, where milestones convey a feeling of completion, but not necessarily an ending. • Presentation needs to be convincing, taking both the world and the audience seriously.

Since Magic: The Gathering’s introduction in 1993, more than 6,000 different Magic cards have been released, and there are several billion of the cards in worldwide circulation. And that was not a typo—we said billion. Shadow Mage cover art is by Val Mayerik. Character art is by Rags Morales. [© 2007 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.] JEFF GOMEZ | 59

• No matter how fantastic the world, there needs to be an internal logic and consistency. • Themes must be simple, timeless and presented artfully. • Fans should be respected, validated and celebrated. • All extensions in other media must live up to the level of quality and integrity of the brand. • Storylines across platforms and product lines exist within the same continuity and interweaving them must be handled with care. • There must be a central creative visionary and empowered stewards supervising all iterations of the intellectual property. • Everything must be done with exceptional quality and execution. Writers who engage in trans-media storytelling must also be diplomats. Large properties have many masters. Each of those masters can have wildly different interpretations of the property. For example, while Acclaim’s research indicated that fans of Magic: The Gathering were interested in conflict, action-adventure and spectacle, Wizards of the Coast wanted a darker, moodier, more Vertigo feel for the brand’s extensions. Striking a balance between them was a tricky negotiation not always executed successfully.

extending the brand across multiple platforms. My first instinct was to turn to comic book writers and production people. Fabian Nicieza, Walter McDaniel, Kevin VanHook and a number of others were called to battle. Here’s why I believe comic book writers are best suited to trans-media storytelling: • We play well in other peoples’ sandboxes. We understand that the toys we’re playing with belong to someone else and that we can’t break them. • It’s our job to understand the essence of characters and the nature of their worlds. Truth, power, justice, responsibility, we have a knack for picking up what our heroes and villains are really about and putting a spin on them that’s “the same, but different.” We dress the message in new clothes and bend it without breaking it, and that makes us both entertaining and trustworthy. • We understand that the environments we create are merely reflections of the desires, fears and psyches of our heroes. Comic book writers understand how to convey story and character simultaneously and efficiently. They can mold the outer

I was also charged with writing the game, which was fantastic, because the storyline I’d been threading through the core Shadow Mage comic book titles could now culminate in an epic game. I took a crash course in video game scripting, turning out over 500 pages of “nodes” and “branching dialog” to be programmed into the game’s encounters. At the same time, I was helping to produce one of Acclaim’s very first web sites, devoted to profiling my characters and expanding my chronology. Comics, games, the Internet, even a card or two, were all telling my story, all at once. I was in newspapers and magazines. I embraced the marketing aspect, rather than fleeing from it. I was writing non-stop, morning and night for nearly two years. For a short time, my dream had come true. Magic: The Gathering comics sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide during that time. The rushed and somewhat buggy video game didn’t score as well, though fans did appreciate the storyline.

Comic Book Writers Do It Better I left Acclaim in the late ’90s to form Starlight Runner Entertainment. Our motto was “We Create Worlds” and our ethos was “Never Surrender.” It took a while, but I used the good will generated by my experiences at Valiant and Acclaim to drum up some potential clients, and we finally landed a big one in Mattel. The 35th anniversary of Hot Wheels toys was coming up quickly, and the company wanted to celebrate by 60 | WRITE NOW

Jeff Gomez created the highly successful Hot Wheels Highway 35: World Race Special Edition trans-media storytelling event that utilized comic books and animation to tell a sprawling, epic adventure. Cover art is by Walter McDaniel. [© 2007 Mattel, Inc.]

• worlds of their characters to further express their inner worlds. This is more like good television and film, and that’s what is needed in trans-media storytelling. • We have trained ourselves from childhood to keep track of dozens if not hundreds of plot threads and storylines — simultaneously. Your trans-media storyline may have a prelude on the Web in the form of teasers distributed through YouTube (check out Hellgate: London), webisodics (Battlestar), mobisodes (Lost) or online comics (Heroes). Then your main storyline may launch through a cable channel or through videoon-demand. A parallel alternate reality experience (Kyle XY, I Love Bees) may run simultaneously with the series, and audience members who feel strongly enough to participate in the proceedings may get text messages on their cell phones from your characters asking them to help get them out of a hairy jam! Who else but comic book writers can handle this without having a nervous breakdown? • We’ve stayed in touch with the aspirations and insecurities of our characters — and our target audience. By nature, comics writers identify with their audience, because we really want to see and experience what they do. We haven’t lost that sense of yearning and wonder, so we are the heroes of our own adventures. That keeps us honest, and throws a direct line between our work and the hearts of our fans. • As pop culture sponges, we keep up with the vanguard of cool—even if we ourselves are geeks. Some of us may still write our plots and scripts on legal pads, but damned if most of us don’t know all about social networking, mash-ups and what’s happening next. These days, if our readers sense that we aren’t with it on nearly every front, they’ll stop buying our books.

vastly expand the world, setting up a series of four feature-length animated sequels. We even helped to conceive the THQ video game that focused on aspects not seen in the comics or animation, as well as with the marketing and packaging of the myriad spin-off products. This was trans-media storytelling at the blockbuster level, and we did it all in under 18 months!

So Where Do I Sign Up? Currently, Disney has a firm grip on how we as consumers use the Web as a colossal hub for pursuing our interests and connecting with one another over things we enjoy. By extending the worlds created by The Walt Disney Company (many of the above mentioned as well as everything from High School Musical to Fairies and Pirates of the Caribbean) onto the Internet, the company isn’t simply advertising them— they’re growing them at an exponential rate. It stands to reason that other companies, large and small, are following suit right now. These firms are going to need producers and especially writers who understand all of the above. And take it from me; there aren’t many of those in Hollywood. So how do we connect with those in need? Well, it’s still not that easy. Although the major studios, cable corporations, telephone companies and advertising agencies are now starting to get it, they haven’t laid things out as clearly to themselves as I’ve just done for you. So we have to do two things: 1. Educate them about the fact that we’re out here and we know how to tackle this wild and woolly space, and…

• As geeks, we know how to insert a thousand details that make crazy concepts feel real. By their nature, trans-media storylines need to prove their “veracity” over and over again. The more sprawling the world, the more we need to be convinced of its reality and integrity. If you’re a producer of one of these cross-platform juggernauts, you need only look at the writing in today’s big event comics to know who to call. • We’re fast as hell, and agile enough to change the story in midstream (based on fan feedback, production limitations or plain economics). At Starlight Runner, my small army of comic book vets tackled Hot Wheels by creating a franchise bible (we call them Mythologies) and 36 promotional comic books. The storyline of the comics wove into and out of the main plot of the five computer-animated Hot Wheels World Race episodes we co-wrote and produced. The web content and DVD extras we generated served to

Pirates of the Caribbean has become a worldwide multibillion-dollar franchise for Disney. Its success reaches into the worlds of video games, books, and the Internet. [© 2007 The Walt Disney Company.] JEFF GOMEZ | 61

Jeff helped craft the Starlight Runner Entertainment Cross-Media Concept Document (SRE’s proposal format) for a new series, published by Scholastic, called The Black Belt Club. The Document describes how the series can cross over into a variety of media. The first page has the “log line,” which gives the series’ concept. Page 2 goes into more detail about the series and its creators. The proposal runs 13 pages that present various aspects of the property and the people behind it. [The Black Belt Club Concept Document © 2007 by Starlight Runner Entertainment and Hand Picked Films. The Black Belt Club © 2007 Dawn Barnes.]

2. We have to find representation, truly nimble agents and attorneys, who can do deals that don’t get us shafted.

original material to support their product. You can create an immersive world around a Coca-Cola commercial as easily as you can around a superhero universe.”

Something of a trail is being blazed. Comics writers Jeph Loeb, Mark Verheiden, Brian Bendis, Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza are all currently writing projects that are merrily skipping across multiple media platforms. A solid tactic is to thoroughly investigate the alternate reality games and trans-media experiences that appeal to you. Find out which companies, ad agencies or studio marketing divisions are doing them, and make personal contact with someone on the inside. Chances are, they’re looking for talent, and the one thing everybody in Tinsel Town loves (these days, anyway) is a cool comic book.

My years of hard work at mastering TMS have finally paid off. I’ve gained the chops and the rep to have fans arguing over the minutia of my own creations, and next up I’m going to put them right into the middle of a story that utilizes all of their fancy gadgets in the very telling. The cool thing is, if you’ve gotten this far through my strange account, you probably actually “get” what I’m saying. For the moment, creating blockbuster worlds is still a rarified line of business, but mark my words: that’s going to change. So feel free to drop me an email some time. We might even work together one day!

Also, Hollywood firms like Creative Artists Agency, Endeavor and United Talent Agency (UTA) are representing people who develop this kind of content. In fact, UTA’s Chris Pappas and Brent Weinstein (who is both head of Digital Media and leads UTA Online) now represent Starlight Runner, innovating some pretty ambitious and otherworldly deals for us. And as Fabian says, “With the proliferation of original web-content, I think companies will continue to look to spend their marketing dollars more smartly by creating their own

Jeff Gomez is the CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment, Inc. With his partner Mark Pensavalle, he is currently developing Urbana, his first original trans-media story world to include a live-action/CGanimated feature, with Kidzhouse Entertainment. Visit his company’s web site at www.starlightrunner.com. You can email him at jeff@starlightrunner.com.

62 | WRITE NOW

THE END

NEXT ISSUE:

#16 M AG A Z I N E

In honor of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, reflections on writing the Surfer by the character’s greatest scripters of all time, including:

• STAN LEE • STEVE ENGLEHART • JIM STARLIN • GEORGE PEREZ • J.M. DeMATTEIS!

PLUS: • An in-depth interview with TODD McFARLANE about…everything!

Sensational Silver Surfer cover painting by MIKE ZECK

PLUS: • Incredible Nuts and Bolts script and pencils from:

• BENDIS and CHO’s Mighty Avengers! • SLOTT and CASELLI’s Avengers: The Initiative • An interview with Testament writer DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, with his script and LIAM SHARP art from the acclaimed graphic novel!

and PHIL ZIMELMAN! • The conclusion to the Star Trek comics writers’ roundtable (begun in BACK ISSUE #23), featuring PETER DAVID, MIKE W. BARR, MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN, and more! • More of STEVEN GRANT’s “Creating Comics Step by Step!” PLUS: • A FREE preview of Draw! #14! PLUS: • Much, much more!

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

& Scott Hanna. ley Cover art by Mark Bag

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! It’s... You!!

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

paperback

$19.95 available 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.

The most trusted name in comic collectibles auctions in the world! The #1 Auction Service dedicated exclusively to Comics, Original Art, Posters and more!

Call us now to participate either buying, selling or for an insurance or estate appraisal!

Let us help you realize the highest prices possible for all your prized possessions!

Office: (201) 652-1305 Fax: (501) 325-6504

The only member of the American Appraisers Association in comic art, comic books and animation art

e-mail: art@allstarauctions.net • www.allstarauctions.net

Comics in the Classroom:

WRITING EDUCATIONAL

GRAPHIC NOVELS

rite Now’s very own Managing Editor Eric Fein, takes you into the world of writing educational graphic novels. In Eric’s article you’ll learn the ins and outs of the school and library market and what goes into shaping comics for this new audience. —DF When I was in grade school, the surest way to lose your comic books was to sneak a peek at them during class. The teachers loved nothing more than to catch you reading the latest issue of X-Men or Batman sandwiched inside your textbook. Some teachers would give the comic books back at the end of the day, or worse, at the end of the school year. The truly unfortunate students were the ones whose comics were snatched up by teachers who saw comic books as the literary equivalent to weeds, and these teachers took great pleasure in ripping them to shreds in front of the whole class. Thankfully, that fate never befell my comic book collection. However, I did have friends who suffered that trauma.

These days teachers practically throw a parade if they catch a child reading anything. As graphic novels have become more visible and acceptable, the status of comic books has risen. (Now I know that, since the 1940s, there have been comic books such as Classics Illustrated and that these books helped generations of kids write their book reports on Moby Dick and The Three Musketeers. But they were frowned upon. In the 1970s, DC Comics put out motivational

By Eric Fein

reading kits featuring Superman and other heroes in stories written to be accessible to struggling readers. They had a certain amount of success but were eventually discontinued.) Today, educators, seeing that children read comic books and manga, have turned to comic books as a teaching tool—especially for challenged readers. Challenged readers, also known as reluctant readers, are students who read below their appropriate reading level. To get them to read, educational publishers, such as Rosen Publishing, Capstone Press, Osprey, and Lerner Publishing, have developed books called “high-lows” (high interest, low readability level). So there are all sorts of book series that appeal to both boys and girls (natural disasters, warriors, biographies, animals—the list goes on and on). The idea is to get students excited about reading by dealing with topics that they are already interested in, or at least likely to be curious about. Despite the fact that comics reading among kids is not as widespread as when I was a kid, in recent years, especially with the popularity of manga, kids have started to rediscover the joys of comics reading. Seeing this, many educational publishers began their own line of nonfiction graphic novels. A word about the term graphic novel in relation to educational nonfiction comic books: When you think of graphic novels, most people familiar with the medium think of the thick book-length narratives of a hundred or more pages. That’s not the case with educational graphic novels. Usually they are published as books of 32 pages or 48 pages— and not the whole book is dedicated to telling the story. In most 32-page graphic novels, only 24 pages (or 12 two-page spreads) are dedicated to story. The WRITING EDUCATIONAL GRAPHIC NOVELS | 65

rest of the pages are made up of front matter (title page, copyright page, and table of contents) and back matter (glossary, timeline, fun facts, suggested reading, bibliography, websites about the subject, and an index). What goes into writing an educational nonfiction graphic novel? A lot of work. Most publishers do not take unsolicited manuscripts. They have their own editorial staffs that develop a list of series for each of their publishing seasons—usually Spring and Fall. Then they turn to writers they have worked with or those that have been recommended to them. So how do you get your big break? Well just like trying to break into Marvel or DC Comics, it helps if you have had something published that you can send to an editor—even if it is just clippings from your college newspaper. Having a college degree in English, history, or science can help. It will give you an area of expertise that you can use as a selling point. If an editor needs to have a book written about the American Revolution and you have a degree in American history, you have a better chance of getting the assignment than a writer with a major in Chemistry. If you have any experience as an elementary or high school teacher, that would also make you an attractive option for an editor because you will come with a built-in knowledge of educational curriculums. Educational

publishers pick

Now before you contact exciting topics, a publisher you should go such as natural to your local library and disasters or moon familiarize yourself with the landings, to create types of books they publish. books that If your library does not have reluctant readers will, any, you can try ordering hopefully, want to read. from the publisher directly or Amazon.com. But realize [Earthquakes © 2007 The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. The First Moon Landing that you will have to pay © 2007 Capstone Press, Inc.] about $20 to $30 per book. This is because most educational graphic novels are published in a reinforced hardcover format so it can survive the rough and tumble-handling kids can give their books. Some educational publishers list the editors at the front of their books. You can write them a letter, stating your credentials and interest in writing for the company. Once you’ve contacted an editor, you will need to be patient. You might have to wait months for a response, as editors are usually swamped with work. Please remember to be respectful and courteous when dealing with editors. Unlike 66 | WRITE NOW

comic book editors, editors at educational publishers don’t just edit graphic novels, they edit prose books, too, so their workloads in some cases can be even heavier. Once an editor receives her list of books to edit, she will then choose a writer who she feels will write the best book on the subject. Again, the topics can be a biography (Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington) or a book about an historic event (The sinking of the Titanic, Custer’s Last Stand) or even about nature (hurricanes, tornados). The writer will also receive important guidelines: what the reading level needs to be (more on this later), what aspects of the subject matter should be avoided, etc. It is very important that you, as the writer of such a book, follow the publisher’s guidelines closely. Educational publishers have to follow curriculum guidelines set by school boards as well as other policies that are much stricter than anything found in the Comics Code. Should publishers violate those policies, they can find their books pulled from libraries and schools. Okay, so let’s take a look at the steps for writing an educational graphic novel. For our purposes we’ll need a subject. Let’s use a favorite of American history— George Washington. There are a plethora of books on our first president, as well as numerous websites about him, so research won’t be a problem. A word about research sources: You want to choose the most up-to-date books and magazine articles to base your script on. Encyclopedias such as World Book and Britannica are fine for getting the gist of a subject but are no substitute for books from reputable authors and publishers. Also, stay away from unofficial Web sites and Wikipedia because you cannot always guarantee that their articles have been written by and/or vetted by subject experts the way World Book and Britannica are. Most publishers want you to be able to back up your facts and dates with two sources. (Some publishers work with consultants— people who are acknowledged experts in a specific subject—to review manuscripts and suggest changes.) Once you have done your research you may have to turn in an outline of the book showing the events in your subject’s life that you will be covering. Once the editor approves the outline, you’re ready to go. Now you have to write the manuscript, boiling down complex events, usually into 6 to 12 panels a spread. Because many of these

books are aimed at either younger readers or challenged readers, publishers want fewer panels on a page—usually no more than 3 or 4—and the narration boxes and dialogue balloons are also limited because they use a larger typeface than is found in your average comic book, Again, this has to do with readability. With kids who are intimidated by reading, large, sparse text is easier to deal with then dense text and small type. And speaking of readability, most books for challenged readers are done at a fourth or fifth grade reading level. Others can go even lower. The key to making sure what you write is grade level appropriate is choosing the appropriate words and keeping your sentences short. The longer the sentence, the harder it is to read. You should try to keep sentences down to around ten words, although some publishers will not mind if you throw in longer sentences for variety. Again, you need to check with your editor to see what he or she wants. To help you determine what words are appropriate for a specific grade level, you can use the Children’s Writer’s Word Book by Alihandra Mogilner. It is published by Writer’s Digest

As seen in these pages from Fight to the Death: Battle of Guadalcanal, written by Larry Hama and drawn by Anthony Williams, some educational graphic novels rely on captions more than dialogue to deliver information to the reader. Cover art by Richard Elson. [© 2007 by Osprey Publishing LTD.]

Books. It lists words by grade level and has a thesaurus that also lists a word’s grade level as well as similar words at lower or higher levels. No writer of educational children’s books should be without it. Another helpful tool can be found in the Microsoft Word program itself. When you use the Spelling and Grammar feature it will give you a slew of information labeled Readability Statistics. What you want to pay attention to is the entry Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. If you are writing a book that has to be at a fifth grade reading level and the Flesch-Kincaid comes back 7.9 you know that you are about three reading levels too high. Now, just a note of caution: while the Flesch-Kincaid is very helpful, it is not foolproof. It will grade foreign words and names at a high level, so you need to evaluate your word usage carefully. WRITING EDUCATIONAL GRAPHIC NOVELS | 67

Myths and legends are popular topics for educational publishers to adapt into graphic novels because they’re filled with action and adventure. Cover art by Thomas Yeates. [© 2007 Lerner Publishing Group.]

When it comes to the actual writing of the manuscript, publishers want full scripts—that is, a panel by panel description along with the dialogue and captions for each panel. It allows them to evaluate the way the pictures will work with the text. Each publisher will have its own take on the formatting of a full script. So, again follow their guidelines and don’t be afraid to ask for samples of other scripts for books they have published as well as copies of finished books. That will give you a good idea of how they approach creating graphic novels and you can then tailor your approach to match theirs. Once you turn in your manuscript you will probably have to do revisions. These revisions will usually incorporate comments from not just the editor but also his or her fellow editors and supervisors as well as the subject consultant. You may agree with their comments or not. If you feel your editor is open to discussion, you can try to make your case for your original wording, but there may be factors beyond whether someone personally liked or didn’t like what you wrote. It is important to remember that educational publishers have guidelines that they must follow to get their books into schools and libraries, so what you think might be a silly change, such as not showing a soldier getting shot during a battle, is actually very important to the publisher. Once you agree on what needs to be changed, do the rewrites to the best of your ability, even if you don’t agree with them. Well, you wrote the manuscript, and now you think you’re done? Not so fast. You need to make sure you did the back matter properly. Each publisher will have its own variation on what will constitute the back matter of their series. Some use timelines, some don’t. 68 | WRITE NOW

Almost all have a Suggested Reading section as well as a glossary and a list of websites. You need to provide a list of books that are age appropriate. You can usually do this by searching on BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com. They both offer advanced search options that let you look for books in specific age ranges, such as 9-12. For websites stick to official ones. For our theoretical George Washington book, among the websites I would list would be the one for Mount Vernon—Washington’s home, and now a museum dedicated to his life and times (www.mountvernon.org). Writing educational graphic novels requires a love of history and science, the ability to do a lot of research in a limited amount of time, and then the skill to boil down complex information into easy to understand pieces of information. You’ll find that the more of them you write, the more you’ll learn. You get paid and get smarter at the same time! What’s not to like? So crack open those research books and get started, and one day, a book you have written might be the subject for a child’s book report. Eric Fein has worked for both Marvel and DC Comics. At Marvel he edited several Spider-Man comics series including Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, and Web of Spider-Man. He also co-edited the first team-up of Spider-Man and Batman. At DC Comics he edited storybooks, coloring and activity books, and how-to-draw books featuring superheroes such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. He has also worked in the world of educational publishing, including serving as a staff editor on high-low books for Rosen Publishing. Eric has written more than two-dozen books for Rosen, including Action Heroes: The Creation of the Fantastic Four and Action Heroes: The Creation of the Incredible Hulk. He has also written educational graphic novels for Capstone Press, and continues to freelance as a writer and editor, while developing his own creator-owned projects.

THE END

Feedback

Letters from our readers

Hello Danny, Once again thank you for the great job you do with each new issue of Write Now! The Spider-Man Writers Roundtable in Issue #14 was just amazing (pun intended). I have a couple of questions for you: (1) Is there going to be another crossover between Write Now! and Draw! ? (2) Is there going to be another “In Depth” issue like the “Powers In Depth” issue #6? I was thinking you could spotlight something recent such as Civil War or Infinite Crisis. In addition, how about spotlighting a classic run on a book (Claremont and Byrne’s run on X-Men or Wolfman and Perez’s run on Teen Titans, for examples)? I’m looking forward to Issue #15. Take care. Sincerely, Vincent DiGennaro via the Internet Glad you liked the Spidey roundtable, Vincent. We thought it was pretty eye-opening, too. To answer your questions: No plans for a crossover with Draw! But next issue, we’re doing a crossover with Back Issue, where we print the second half of BOB GREENBERGER’s STAR TREK WRITERS ROUNDTABLE, which begins in BI #23. The writers participating include PETER DAVID, MIKE W. BARR, MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN, LAURIE SUTTON, and more! We’ve been hankering to do another “In-Depth” ourselves, but the right opportunity hasn’t presented itself. Your enthusiasm is inspiring, so it may well be time to front-burner such a feature. Howdy: I just read your latest issue of Write Now! (#14) and can’t wait to read issue #15 with J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog. The Spider-Man Writers Roundtable was awesome! I loved hearing what everybody (especially

McFarlane and DeMatteis) had to say. Man, wouldn’t it be cool if you could have an all-McFarlane issue? Paul Brian DeBerry via the Internet Funny you should mention that, Paul. Next issue we’ll be featuring, among other way-cool things, an in-depth interview with none other than Todd, himself! Whatever he says, you know it’ll be unique and thought-provoking! What did you think of this issue you just finished reading, folks? Let me know 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. Next issue has a gaggle of great Silver Surfer writers including STAN LEE, STEVE ENGLEHART, JIM STARLIN, GEORGE PEREZ and J.M. DeMATTEIS. And wait’ll you see the issue’s color version of the MIKE ZECK/PHIL ZIMELMAN Surfer painted cover! And you’re not going to want to miss our no-holds-barred interview with the multitalented TODD McFARLANE! We’ve also got the conclusion to the STAR TREK WRITERS ROUNDTABLE that began in Back Issue #23, featuring the luminaries mentioned elsewhere on this page. DFWN #16 will also have amazing script and pencil art from BENDIS and CHO’s Mighty Avengers and SLOTT and CASELLI’s Avengers: The Initiative, as well as an interview with Testament’s DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF and Testament art from the amazing LIAM SHARP. For those of you who haven’t ever checked out MIKE MANLEY’s Draw! magazine, there’s also a tantalizing preview of issue #14! And if all that ain’t enough–you know WN #16 will have a surprise or three bound to amaze and inform you!

Also in WN #16 we’ll tell you about the cover-feature for issue #17: a big to-do about the writing and the writers of the HEROES TV AND COMICS SERIES! We’re planning the details of this extravaganza now, and it’s something you will not want to miss! See ya next time! —Danny Fingeroth FEEDBACK | 69

We hope you enjoy this FREE

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW! ROUGH STUFF magazine celebrates 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-andafter comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So enjoy these excerpts from issue #4, which presents galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art by: MICHAEL KALUTA • GENE COLAN ANDREW ROBINSON • HOWARD CHAYKIN JOHN TOTLEBEN • STEVEN BISSETTE Plus a JOHN TOTLEBEN interview, art from the Wonder Woman Day charity auction, and a new KALUTA COVER! (100-page magazine) SINGLE ISSUES: $9 US SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $24 Standard, $36 First Class (Canada: $44, Elsewhere: $48 Surface, $64 Airmail).

ROUGH STUFF #1 ALAN DAVIS • GEORGE PÉREZ BRUCE TIMM • KEVIN NOWLAN JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ ARTHUR ADAMS • JOHN BYRNE WALTER SIMONSON Plus a NOWLAN interview, and a new TIMM COVER!

ROUGH STUFF #2

ROUGH STUFF #3

ROUGH STUFF #5

PAUL GULACY JOHN ROMITA JR. • MIKE ALLRED BRIAN APTHORP • ALEX TOTH JOHN BUSCEMA • YANICK FRANK BRUNNER PAQUETTE • P. CRAIG RUSSELL JERRY ORDWAY • MATT WAGNER LEE WEEKS

STEVE RUDE PAUL SMITH • GIL KANE CULLY HAMNER ASHLEY WOOD • DALE KEOWN

Plus a PAUL GULACY interview, professional art critiques, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

Plus a STEVE RUDE interview, an examination of John Albano and Tony DeZuniga's work on Jonah Hex, and a new RUDE COVER!

Plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the earliest work of some of your favorite artists, and a new ROMITA JR. COVER!

MICHAEL KALUTA MICHAEL KALUTA Batman: Cat’s Cradle The Cat’s Cradle is that Kaluta design trip with what, 4 bat symbols... his chest, the batarang, his face/cowl and the Bat Signal behind all... the Cat’s Cradle will add a touch of the arcane... A year later I was asked by another editor if I’d paint the cover up for inclusion in an omnibus dedicated to the release of Batman Begins. When I asked if it were to be a cover, he said no, a pin-up. I mentioned that a pin-up wouldn’t need to be painted: did he mean he wanted the piece colored, like a comic book page (after all, both the painting of a piece and the printing of a painted piece are expensive propositions, much more than the coloring of a page and printing of same)? Well, he said “Oh, no, we really want it painted!” Cool! But they really didn’t... it was an editorial mix up. What was needed for the piece was normal comic book page coloring. Still, they got a painted Batman image. Through one thing and another, the piece ended up back in my hands with assurances it’d not be used, so here: Rough Stuff gets the benefit of their editorial kindness! Batman TM & ©2007 DC Comics

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

STEVEN BISSETTE Something that was lost for a time in the mid-tolate ‘90s in comics were pages that had no market value, that just told their stories well. In the rush to create ‘sellable’ and ‘hot’ pages for their original art market, it seemed that many of the most prominent comics artists suddenly went nuts, eschewing storytelling for a seemingly interminable procession of posed splash pages. If a page didn’t feature a flashy key heroic character or villain melodramatically engaged in action or posing like he/she were in a fashion fit (see John Water’s Female Trouble), the artists couldn’t be bothered: storytelling took a back seat to cranking out original art for the marketplace, with maximum pricing potential usurping caring about the story, the characters, the readers. (This became so prevalent by the time I retired in 1999 that I was not surprised to hear more than once from friends who were industry vets that new artists they were working with, who were assigned to draw from my friends’ scripts, seemed incapable of telling a story, so determined were they to convert every single page into a splash page of some sort, however disruptive to the narrative or superfluous it

Thus, I submit this little two-page sequence — still among my favorites of all those Alan, John and I did for our Swamp Thing run — from the opening of SOTST #23 (pp. 5 and 6), in which an ill-fated teen lad returns to the car he left his drinking buddies behind in while he (stupid fellow) went to take a piss (note: NEVER go take a piss if you’re a character in a horror movie or horror comic). Though this is a pretty understated sequence, Alan’s script, his suggested staging, the realization of every-

STEVEN BISSETTE

thing Alan called for (down to the “LUP LUP LUP LUP” of the beer can emptying out, crushed in the dead boy’s hand — indicating the violence has just this moment occurred, mere nanoseconds ago, despite the stillness of the tableau otherwise: a brilliant touch on Alan’s part!), and if I may say so my own execution of the particulars in translating his script to pencil (including the characterization of the teenager, based on actor Matt Dillon) right to the concluding pages’s action still works like a charm. Too many cartoonists eschew or misuse sound effects. The creation of the panel at the top of page 6 from the boy’s scream alone is an effective graphic device, and though I’ve since adopted less aggressive page and panel design aesthetics, at the time my determination to make page and panel composition integral to the emotional impact of each and every page still works for me: the splintered fragmentation of page 6 communicates volumes, culminating in the most disruptive shard of all dead center: the moment of the boy’s death. The symmetry of composition concludes with mirror ‘shard’ panels in which we finally see his killer as he sees him, with his dying vision: Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man. 72

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

end up being.)

GENE COLAN The composition does not always come to me immediately. In this particular case, the main problem is always to deal with the main character or characters first. The background is the last consideration.

BOB MCLEOD In looking at Gene's many commissions, several of which I've been fortunate enough to ink, I'm always amazed by his incredible imagination. It's difficult enough to draw this scene so well, but just to conceive it is even more impressive to me.

MICHAEL DUNNE Whenever you commission an artist, there is always the anticipation: Will it be as I envision it? I combed through ancient covers of Mystery in Space to find a classic image of Adam in flight, soaring to Alanna's rescue and mailed the reference off to Gene. The magic day arrived and I eagerly opened the over-sized

was huh??? Adam's not flying, but then I stopped and looked and savored and realized that Gene had ignored my suggestions

Courtesy of Michael Dunne

and created something

GENE COLAN

package. My first thought

much more magnificent. ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

ROUGH CRITIQUE By Bob McLeod f you’re serious about improving your penciling, send us a sample page and I’ll publish and critique one page per issue sent in by our readers. Many beginners struggle with the same problems, and I think it’s helpful to see a critique of another artist’s work. This action-packed sample page was submitted by Jeff Clemens. He says

the lead roles are played by the Kubert brothers, so I’m assuming Jeff is a student at the Joe Kubert School. Let’s see if we can bump him up to the head of the class! First, let’s begin with what I think Jeff’s doing right. Jeff obviously draws very well and with some study will soon be working as a comics pro. His composition is very good. He’s using the panel space well, focusing on what needs to be shown and nothing else. He’s using a lot of diagonals and variety in the size of the main shapes, and he’s moving the viewpoint around well. He’s also doing what Joe Kubert does so well, which is a good mix of really close close-ups and really long long shots. There’s a lot of drama, emotion, and action. The forms have weight and the panels have depth. His storytelling is very clear without needing words. As with most beginners, though, he still needs to study figure drawing a lot more. His anatomy is weak and awkward, and his foreshortening is off. He hasn’t put much thought into developing a rendering style yet, either, but that will come easily enough with a bit more study. The other thing that really jumps out at me is his lack of correct perspective in the backgrounds, which by the way, are pretty sparse. You can get by with that on an average action page, but a good sample page really needs more (and better) backgrounds. Panel 1: Jeff, I’m guessing you don’t wear glasses. All eyeglasses have nose pads, and your bridge has depth and is shown from below, yet your lens frames are flat and shown straight on. A little research and reference on stuff like this goes a long way. The eyebrows look like they’re on fire. Study your own in the mirror. But this is a great close-up otherwise. Panel 2: I generally dislike profile shots, which tend to look flat. Since the Adam figure on the right is closer to us, it would have been much better if we were looking over his shoulder. It’s unclear whether he’s just holding the sword or if he’s hitting Andy in the hand or clavicle with it. I’m guessing that you’re attempting to show him just threatening Andy with the sword, but you’re forcing me to guess by using this awkward angle. And is he losing his grip on the sword, or what? You’re also having some difficulties with anatomy here. Andy’s left thumb is dislocated (ouch!), and Adam’s left ring finger is broken (double ouch!). Adam’s right arm is

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

coming directly out of his pectoral (chest muscle) rather than his shoulder (that’s gotta hurt!). If you feel your own jawbone, you’ll notice it’s in front of your ear, not behind it like you drew Adam’s. Panel 3: This reminds me of my advice in the critique I did for issue #1, where I said think of Charlie Brown flipping upside down from a baseball hit right at him when you show someone getting hit by a punch. So you have the right idea in exaggerating the action with Adam, but the other part of my advice was about the guy throwing the punch. You need to show him putting

his whole body into it, not just his arm. If you were going to punch someone as hard as you could, you wouldn’t lean back and swing your arm up like that, you’d lean forward and throw your fist forward. Andy looks like he’s glued to a wall here and can only move his right arm. He also appears to be standing on the edge of the beam, knocking Adam way off of it, but in the next panel he’s shown walking forward and Adam’s still on the beam! Your foreshortening on Adam’s figure is also poorly done. His legs appear to be growing out of his rib cage, and his left hand doesn’t quite look attached to his arm. His right hand should enlarge as it comes toward us. I can’t figure out why you left a gap in his jaw line, which flattens his face into his neck instead of making it appear to come forward, as it should. And overlapping the glasses and sword would really add depth as well. This might be a good time to have the figure coming out of the panel..... a gimmick that should never be overdone, but it works here. Panel 4: Backgrounds at last, but not in proper perspective! If we’re closer to Adam and Andy than to the other figures in the distance, why aren’t the other figures smaller? Where might your vanishing points be? All the horizontal lines of the building should be receding to a single point way off to the left. The lines from the beam heading to the right need to meet at a point off to the right on the same horizon. And if you are up high and look down to the street below, the vertical lines don’t look vertical, they begin to converge toward a vanishing point far below. The light gray lines are yours, so you can see how far off yours are. This calls for 3-point perspective. Get a cheap book, and you can easily learn it in one day and take two giant steps toward the head of the class. It’s mind-blowing how many artists don’t understand basic perspective. Panel 5: Excellent panel. But he still doesn’t seem to be gripping that sword very tightly. Compare it to this remarkably similar panel by P. Craig Russell from Rough Stuff #3. See what I mean? Now, that’s gripping! You’ve also dislocated Andy’s right thumb. You have a perfectly good model on the end of your arm. Look at it and compare it to this. You need to get reference and draw 50 hands. Become the class expert on drawing hands! You can do it in one day. One day! Take one body part at a time and study it for a day and memorize it. Jeff, really work on your anatomy and your perspective and backgrounds, and work on making your action more dynamic by studying

John Buscema and Jack Kirby, and you’ll be far ahead of your fellow students in no time. You’re strong on camera movement, storytelling and composition. Study your favorite artists and develop your rendering. You’re almost there! Readers who want to submit a page of pencils or inks for a critique should email a full-size 300dpi scan to me at mcleod.bob@gmail.com, or mail a photocopy to: Rough Stuff Critique P.O. Box 63 Emmaus, PA 18049

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

ANDREW ROBINSON Top Left First attempt at a design for a Ghost Rider painting. Top Right This composition works better and we see more of the open road.

Bottom This is the final pencil version after drawing from reference shots with a model and plastic skull. And I also found reference for the bike which is a necessity for me. It’s very difficult to draw motorbikes out of my head.

ANDREW ROBINSON

ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW

For more from each of these artists, get Rough Stuff #4, on sale now from TwoMorrows Publishing!

HOW-TO BOOKS & DVDs

WORKING METHODS: COMIC CREATORS DETAIL THEIR STORYTELLING & CREATIVE PROCESSES Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the results are profoundly complex! (176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

HOW TO DRAW COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT DVD

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW!/ DRAW! crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY show step-bystep how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering—it even guides you through printing and distribution, and the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result! PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvelstyle” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more!

Documents two top professionals creating a comic book, from initial idea to finished art! In this feature-filled DVD, WRITE NOW! magazine editor DANNY (Spider-Man) FINGEROTH and DRAW! magazine editor MIKE (Batman) MANLEY show you how a new character evolves from scratch! Watch the creative process, as a story is created from concepts and roughs to pencils, inks, and coloring—even lettering! Packed with “how-to” tips and tricks, it’s the perfect companion to the HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT book, or stands alone as an invaluable tool for amateur and professional comics creators alike!

(108-page trade paperback with COLOR) $13.95 ISBN: 9781893905603 Diamond Order Code: APR063422

(120-minute DVD) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905399 Diamond Order Code: AUG043204

BUNDLE THE BOOK & DVD TOGETHER FOR JUST $35.95 (SAVE $8)

NEW FOR 2008

FREE! FREE!

COMICS 101: HOW-TO & HISTORY LESSONS TwoMorrows has tapped the combined knowledge of its editors to assemble How-To and History lessons including: “Figure Drawing” and “How To Break Down A Story” from DRAW!’s MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Writing Tips” from WRITE NOW!’s DANNY FINGEROTH, plus ROUGH STUFF’s BOB McLEOD provides “Art Critiques” of promising newcomers! There’s even a “Comics History Crash-Course”, assembled by ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS and BACK ISSUE’s MICHAEL EURY! (32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping charge applies) • Diamond Order Code: FEB070050

COMICS GO HOLLYWOOD TwoMorrows unveils secrets behind your FAVORITE ON-SCREEN HEROES, and what’s involved in taking a character from the comics page to the big screen! It includes: Storyboards from DC’s animated hit “THE NEW FRONTIER” (courtesy of DRAW! magazine)! JEPH LOEB on writing for both Marvel Comics and the Heroes TV show (courtesy of WRITE NOW! magazine)! Details on the unseen X-Men movie (courtesy of ALTER EGO magazine)! A history of the Joker from his 1940s origins to his upcoming appearance in the Dark Knight film (courtesy of BACK ISSUE! magazine)! And a look at Marvel Universe co-creator JACK KIRBY’s Hollywood career, with extensive Kirby art! So before you head to your local cineplex this summer, make sure you pick up your FREE copy of this must-have item from your local retailer on May 3, 2008! (32-page comic book) FREE! (shipping applies) or FREE at your local comics retailer on May 3, 2008

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 2

Compiles tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations from DRAW! #1-2, by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (figure drawing), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

Compiles tutorials and interviews from issues #3-4 of DRAW!, with ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), DICK GIORDANO (inking techniques), BRET BLEVINS (drawing the figure in action, and figure composition), KEVIN NOWLAN (penciling & inking), MIKE MANLEY (how-to demo on Web Comics), DAVE COOPER (digital coloring tutorial), and more! Each artist presents their work STEP-BY-STEP, so both beginning and experienced artists can learn valuable tips and tricks along the way! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

(200-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905412 Diamond Order Code: AUG078141

(156-page trade paperback with COLOR) $17.95 ISBN: 9781893905580 Diamond Order Code: APR063421

NEW FOR 2008

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

BEST OF WRITE NOW! Whether you’re looking to break into the world of comics writing, or missed key issues of DANNY FINGEROTH’S WRITE NOW—the premier magazine about writing for comics and related fields—this is the book for you! THE BEST OF WRITE NOW features highlights from the acclaimed magazine, including in-depth interviews about writing from top talents, like: BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS, WILL EISNER, JEPH LOEB, STAN LEE, J. M. STRACZYNSKI, MARK WAID, GEOFF JOHNS, TODD McFARLANE, PAUL LEVITZ, AXEL ALONSO, and others! There’s also “NUTS & BOLTS” tutorials, featuring scripts from landmark comics and the pencil art that was drawn from them, including: CIVIL WAR #1 (MILLAR & McNIVEN), BATMAN: HUSH #1 (LOEB & LEE), ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #47 (BENDIS & BAGLEY), AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539 (STRACZYNSKI & GARNEY), SPAWN #52 (McFARLANE & CAPULO), GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH #1 (JOHNS & VAN SCRIVER), and more! Also: How-to articles by the best comics writers and editors around, like JOHN OSTRANDER, DENNIS O’NEIL, KURT BUSIEK, STEVEN GRANT, and JOEY CAVALIERI. Professional secrets of top comics pros including NEIL GAIMAN, MARK WAID, TRINA ROBBINS, PETER DAVID, and STAN LEE! Top editors telling exactly what it takes to get hired by them! Plus more great tips to help you prepare for your big break, or simply appreciate comics on a new level, and an introduction by STAN LEE! Edited by Spider-Man writer DANNY FINGEROTH.

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies and more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • ADAM HUGHES • JEPH LOEB

• LOUISE SIMONSON • DAVE DORMAN • GREG RUCKA AND OTHERS!

(168-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905313 Diamond Order Code: FEB042700

(160-page trade paperback with COLOR) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905926 Diamond Order Code: FEB084082

NEW FOR 2008

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 3

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 4

Compiles more of the best tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #5-7, including: Penciling by MIKE WIERINGO! Illustration by DAN BRERETON! Design by PAUL RIVOCHE! Drawing Hands, Lighting the Figure, and Sketching by BRET BLEVINS! Cartooning by BILL WRAY! Inking by MIKE MANLEY! Comics & Animation by STEPHEN DeSTEFANO! Digital Illustration by CELIA CALLE and ALBERTO RUIZ! Caricature by ZACH TRENHOLM, and much more! Cover by DAN BRERETON!

More tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #8-10, spotlighting: From comics to video games with artist MATT HALEY! Character design with TOM BANCROFT and ROB CORLEY! Adobe Illustrator tips with ALBERTO RUIZ! Draping the human figure by BRET BLEVINS! Penciling with RON GARNEY! Breaking into comic strips by GRAHAM NOLAN! Lettering by TODD KLEIN! International cartoonist JOSÉ LUIS AGREDA! Interviews with PvP’s SCOTT KURTZ and Banana Tail’s MARK McKENNA, and more! Cover by MATT HALEY!

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905917 Diamond Order Code: JAN083936

(216-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781605490007 Ships May 2008

Art professor DURWIN TALON gets top creators to discuss all aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from panel and page layout, to use of color and lettering: • WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON • MIKE WIERINGO • WALT SIMONSON • MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading! (208-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905146 Diamond Order Code: MAY073781

WRITE NOW! (edited by Spider-Man writer DANNY FINGEROTH), the magazine for writers of comics, animation, and sci-fi, puts you in the minds of today’s top writers and editors. Each issue features WRITING TIPS from pros on both sides of the desk, INTERVIEWS, SAMPLE SCRIPTS, REVIEWS, exclusive NUTS & BOLTS tutorials, and more!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE! 4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

WRITE NOW! #1

WRITE NOW! #2

WRITE NOW! #3

Get practical advice and tips on writing from top pros on BOTH SIDES of the desk! MARK BAGLEY cover and interview, BRIAN BENDIS & STAN LEE interviews, JOE QUESADA on what editors really want, TOM DeFALCO, J.M. DeMATTEIS, and more!

ERIK LARSEN cover and interview, writers STAN BERKOWITZ (JLA cartoon), TODD ALCOTT (“ANTZ”), LEE NORDLING (Platinum Studios), ANNE D. BERNSTEIN (MTV’s “Daria”), step-by-step on scripting Spider-Girl, 10 rules for writers, and more!

BRUCE JONES on writing The Hulk, AXEL ALONSO on state-of-the-art editing, DENNY O’NEIL offers tips for comics writers, KURT BUSIEK shows how he scripts, plus JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JOEY CAVALIERI, and more! New MIKE DEODATO cover!

(88-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY022406

(96-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG022441

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV022869

WRITE NOW! #4

WRITE NOW! #5

WRITE NOW! #6

WRITE NOW! #7

WRITE NOW! #8

HOWARD CHAYKIN on writing for comics and TV, PAUL DINI on animated writing, DENNY O’NEIL offers more tips for comics writers, KURT BUSIEK shows how he scripts, plus FABIAN NICIEZA, DeFALCO & FRENZ, and more! New CHAYKIN cover!

WILL EISNER discusses his comics writing, J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI on Hollywood writing, BOB SCHRECK details his work on Batman, DENNY O’NEIL’s notes from his writing classes, FABIAN NICIEZA, PAUL DINI, and more! CASTILLO/RAMOS cover!

BRIAN BENDIS and MICHAEL AVON OEMING in-depth on making an issue of Powers, MARK WAID on writing Fantastic Four, BOB SCHRECK’s interview continues from last issue, DIANA SCHUTZ, SCOTT M. ROSENBERG, & more! OEMING cover!

JEPH LOEB and CHUCK DIXON give indepth interviews (with plenty of rare and unseen art), JOHN JACKSON MILLER discusses writing, MARK WHEATLEY on his new Image series, & more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing! TIM SALE cover!

Part One of “how-to”crossover with DRAW! #9, as DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY create an all-new character and ideas are proposed and modified to get a character’s look & origins! Plus interviews with DON McGREGOR & STUART MOORE!

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB032284

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY032566

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG032628

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN042904

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY043069

DIEGDITITIOANL ONLY!

DIEGDITITIOANL

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

ONLY!

WRITE NOW! #9

WRITE NOW! #10

WRITE NOW! #11

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!

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: SEP043062

(88-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAR053355

(80-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG053354

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (80-page Digital Edition) $2.95

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY063519

WRITE NOW! #17

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

DIEGDITITIOANL

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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!

BL AVAILA

(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

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073903

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG063716

WRITE NOW! #19 WRITE NOW! #18

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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

DIEGDITITIOANL BLE AVAILA

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!

DIEGDITITIOANL

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

BL AVAILA

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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!

BL AVAILA

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!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG063714

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV064024

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB073911

(116-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: APR063497

ROUGH STUFF #5

DIGITITIOANL

DIEGDITITIOANL

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!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073902

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074137

ED BLE AVAILA

ROUGH STUFF #7

DIEGDITITIOANL E

BL AVAILA

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

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

ROUGH STUFF #9

DIEGDITITIOANL BLE AVAILA

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).

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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!

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN022757

(88-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: APR022633

(96-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB032281

DIEGDITITIOANL

DIEGDITITIOANL BLE AVAILA

ONLY!

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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

(104-page magazine with COLOR) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: DEC043007

(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

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074131

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!

DIEGDITITIOANL BL AVAILA

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.

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: FEB084191

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 Now Shipping Diamond Order Code: AUG074131

(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

For the latest news from TwoMorrows Publishing, log on to www.twomorrows.com/tnt