By
Emily Gomez
Many comic historians would say
that in 1938, when Action Comics #1 (the first appearance of Superman) was
published, it marked the birth of superhero comic books. Before full-length
comic books, there were short newspaper comic strips. Those short strips did
not require the same amount of time, energy, and effort as a full-length comic
book published by a major publisher like Marvel or DC. Comic books are now
stories using years of established history and continuity that writers must
take into account every time they decide to write for an existing character.
Let’s go through the process that comic book writers must undertake in order to
produce the perfect script.
Like all writers, comic book
authors must start with an outline. They do this to organize all their ideas
before starting the actual script. Writers place all of their thoughts into
bullet points. After jotting down all their ideas, they can determine how many
panels are needed for each point in the story. The average comic book has about
22 pages, 132 panels per issue, and 22 words, so it is very important to plan
ahead before jumping into a script.
The next step is to write out all
of the action, dialogue, and key elements that will be needed for each panel.
It is important to be as detailed as possible so that when the artist receives
the script, they know exactly how to illustrate the writer’s vision.
Communication between the writer and the artist is important because without it
a story can be taken into a completely different direction.
A famous example of this is from Avengers #213, where the character Hank
Pym (also known as Yellow Jacket at the time) is seen hitting his wife Janet
Van Dyne. This was, of course seen as very controversial and tainted the way
readers looked at Hank. The writer of the comic, Jim Shooter, addressed this
issue in 2011 on his blog by stating, “In that story (issue 213, I think), there is a scene
in which Hank is supposed to have accidentally struck Jan while throwing his
hands up in despair and frustration—making a sort of ‘get away from me’ gesture
while not looking at her. Bob Hall, who
had been taught by John Buscema to always go for the most extreme action,
turned that into a right cross! There
was no time to have it redrawn, which, to this day has caused the tragic story
of Hank Pym to be known as the ‘wife-beater’ story.”
If you are writing for an already established character
like Spider-Man or Batman, it’s important that you have a decent knowledge of
the character’s mythos. You don’t have to know everything, but it’s important
to know the basics to do the character justice. Every writer can bring
something new to a character while still keeping its essence. Some of these new
takes on characters can have long lasting impacts on the way the general public
views him or her. Frank Miller’s graphic novel “The Dark Knight Returns” is one
of the most important Batman stories ever written. In the 60s, Batman was campy
and goofy and the 70s brought him back to his dark roots, but Miller did this
better than anyone else had with his graphic novel in 1986. In 1988, Alan Moore
wrote the graphic novel “Batman: The Killing Joke,” which is considered to be the most iconic Joker story ever told. The story had a large effect on Batman’s continuity,
one of the major points being the shooting and paralysis of Barbara Gordon
(a.k.a. Batgirl). She
went from Batgirl to Oracle, a wheelchair bound hero who is a computer expert
and source of information for Batman. She used her preexisting knowledge and
photographic memory to continue to assist Batman and many others in the
superhero community. She would remain in a wheelchair for 22 years before she
was rewritten as Batgirl once again.
Comic book writers are privileged with the task of
continuing the adventures of these beloved characters. Because of this, they
should be greatly respected for their fantastic contributions to comics and to
literature as a whole.
_____
Emily Gomez is a junior at Calumet College of Saint
Joseph. She is studying communications and when she graduates, she hopes to
become an entertainment journalist. She would like to one day write for a blog,
work for a TV news network, or start her own podcast.
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