My Work Environment

One of the questions I get asked a lot is "where do you work?" 

I work at home where I have an office designated for working that's separate from the rest of the house and only used by me. It's really comfortable, but I try not to relax in it and really treat it like I would if it were an office that I had to travel to every day to work. 

Here's a little tour. The pictures are a little fuzzy, because there was a problem with my camera when I took them, but they should give you an idea of what my work environment looks like. 

I'm very lucky in that my work area is huge, 32 feet by 24 feet in size. Above you can see most of it from the door that I enter to get here. 

Above is what looks like from that same wall, looking across towards my desk where I do all of my writing. 

Here's the view from the opposite corner. 

I keep the majority of the books I use as reference in my office. 

As well as some books that I don't use for work. 

This is the desk I write at. Usually it's covered with notebooks and other pieces of paper that have to do with various projects I'm working on. 

The two filing cabinets are full of ideas for things I want to write, some things I work on a little bit at a time, projects I've abandoned, and things I've finished. I have other filing cabinets that are just for finished projects. The bookcase next to the filing cabinets contains all of my notebooks which are full of ideas for various projects. 

I'm a big fan of classic horror movies, so I have some shelves filled with monsters. I have far more than could fit on these shelves, so I can only display part of my collection at any one time. 

My office has a second desk which overlooks the woods behind our house. This desk I use exclusively for creating the artwork that I make for gallery shows and other projects. 

On the other side of my art desk is another set of shelves full of monsters. The reason it looks so empty is that I had just packed up my collection of Batman toys which had filled it, and was still in the process of filling it with monsters. 

This sofa is a great place to do some reading, writing, watch a movie, or take a phone call or a nap. 

Opposite the sofa is a series of shelves housing some of the graphic novels I've accumulated over the years. there are also some robots, spaceships, and things from the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. 

There's a large papier-mache octopus and a globe covered in sea monsters on the table at the other end of the sofa. 

This table was meant to also display some toys and statues from my collection, but wound up being used for other things such as this life-size coelocanth in progress. 

I try to surround myself with interesting things that will ignite my imagination, whether it's books, toys, artwork, or oddities like you see on this shelf. The only thing I don't like about this office is that the walls are slanted so that I can't hang framed artwork on them, nor can I put shelves against them that are more than a couple feet high, other wise my office would be completely filled with books, toys and art. 

Instead, I've had to hang my artwork on walls throughout the rest of the house.

What I do like about it is that no matter how bad the weather is outside, I never have to go out into it to get to work. I can even work in my pajamas if I want to. 

Writing Without Words

I've been asked by students several times if a scene in a comic book, such as the one page story from Little Lulu shown above, counts as writing if there are no words in it?

In comics, the creation involves a number of disciplines such as writing and drawing which work together to do one thing called storytelling. We use both words and drawings, occasionally shown separate from each other, but usually combined, to tell a story.

In the above sequence the writer and artist are the same person, a cartoonist named John Stanley. For him, writing and drawing are the same thing, whether there are words or not. He came up with an idea for the one page story and composed it using drawings rather than words.

The two page sequence above  from Owly also uses mostly images, and only a couple of sound effects to show what's going on. All of the Owly stories are like that. Again, the writing and drawing is done by one person, cartoonist, Andy Runton. I suppose he probably writes brief outlines of what he wants to have happen in his stories before he starts drawing them. But he still has to work out the plot and all of the details even if he does it as he goes. This counts as writing.

I always work with an artist separate from myself. For every story I work on, I write a complete script which tells the artist everything that needs to happen in the story, whether anyone is speaking, or not. Sometimes when a scene is silent, or doesn't have any words to read, I have to give the artist more detail. Often, when there is dialogue, the artist can determine what the expressions of the characters should look like, or which character is more important in a panel just by reading the dialogue for the scene. When there isn't any dialogue, they'll need more clues to let them know what expressions a character should be showing.

Below are three pages of a script I wrote for a scene from a Dexter's Laboratory story that uses almost no words. The script pages are followed by the corresponding finished comic book pages so that you can compare the two.  You can see that there are written descriptions for all of the panels shown, and what information is contained in the descriptions. You can also see where the artist changed things a bit. Click on any image to view it larger.

    

   

   

Now that you know that a comic book without words in it still needs to be written, did you know that it's still called reading a comic book even if there are no words in it?  

Examples used in this post were taken from:

Little Lulu - volume 9 "Lucky Lulu"  by John Stanley. published by Dark Horse Books.

Owly - "Helping Hands" by Andy Runton. Published by Top Shelf Productions. 2007.

Dexter's Laboratory - "It Lurks in the Night" in Cartoon Network Block Party #24. October 2006. 

John Rozum - writer, Scott Roberts - penciller, Scott McRae - inker, Ryan Cline - letterer, Heroic Age - colorist, Rachel Gluckstern - assistant editor, Joan Hilty - editor. 

Robert Greenberger On His Return to Writing Comics

Robert Greenberger has been many things in his career. He's been an editor of magazines, newspapers and comic books. He's written for magazines, newspapers, comic books and websites. He's written non fiction books for kids and for adults. He's written novels, and he's been involved in local politics.

Today is a special day for Robert Greenberger. Today, at a comic book store near you, BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20 goes on sale. This exciting issue was written by Robert Greenberger, and what makes it so special is that this is the first comic book he's written in TWENTY YEARS!

Robert has generously agreed to tell us about what it was like for him to return to writing comics as well as how he approached writing his story and the challenges he faced making it happen.

Here's the cover art for BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20. You can learn more about this cover's art here. 

Here's Robert:

I have not written a comic book in nearly 20 years so was delighted when I was offered a chance to write an issue of Batman: The Brave and The Bold. All through my career in comics, I was either an editor or administrator, letting others do the writing. These days, I am a fulltime freelance writer so wanted to see what I could do with writing some comics.

Here's two of the last comics Robert wrote 20 years ago. 

While the comic initially replicated the television show’s format, a teaser with a different team-up then the main story, I arrived as the comic book’s format was being altered. Since DC Comics sells foreign language rights to their stories, they take feedback from their international clients and for many; a 22-page story aimed at younger readers was too long.

They wanted shorter stories so it had been decided to eliminate the teaser and reduce the main story into two 10-page chapters.  As a writer, this changes how you write the story since you now need to find a point where one chapter can end with an exciting cliffhanger and then open the second part with a quick recap and resolution to the cliffhanger before completing the story.

The term "cliffhanger" comes from old movie serials. Serials were episodic movies shown in chapters each week before the main movie at a movie theater.  The filmmakers would try to make people want to come back to the theater to see the next chapter by ending each episode with the hero in a dangerous situation that seemed like he could never escape from it such as hanging from a cliff.  The above panel from "The Amazing Spider-Man #26 by Stan Lee and Steve Dikto shows the comic book equivalent of a cliffhanger. The issue ends with Spider-Man being captured by the villains. The reader, just like the last man speaking in this panel, wants to know "What's gonna happen next?" and hopefully buy the next issue. Stay tuned for a future post devoted to entirely to cliffhangers. 

In my case, I had Batman and Big Barda on the hunt for the missing Mister Miracle and the altered story structure meant I needed more action than actual detecting, which meant introducing the real threat earlier than I planned, setting up the cliffhanger.

In order to accomplish my creative goal of Batman seeing a successfully happy married super-hero couple, I decided to tell the story from a first-person perspective. From beginning to ending, he comments on their situation and Barda’s near-panic over her husband’s fate.

Here's a panel with Batman commenting on Big Barda's marriage to Mister Miracle.  Because Batman is the main character in this story, and also serves as the narrator, the narration is refered to as "first-person narration." The main character is usually the first person that we meet in a story which is why narration from their point of view is called first-person narration.

Had I been able to include the teaser, I would have had Batman and Huntress stop minor criminals Punch & Jewelee, a happily married pair of villains so it set up a subtle theme that would carry into the main story.

If you watch BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD on television, the "teaser" is the sequence before the main titles at the beginning of the episode which shows a portion of one of Batman's adventures that leads into the main story, but maybe features different characters than the main story. You can see from this splash page from the beginning of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20 that Robert was able to take everything he wanted to tell in his teaser and condense it into three narrative captions. This entire issue is an excellent example of how narrative captions can be used to convey information to the reader about the characters and situations without intruding with the flow of the story. Robert tells you exactly what you need to know so that you can read the story with full enjoyment. This is the result of his long career as both a writer and an editor. 

In the end, I think we rushed some of the ending because of the space issues (you lose panels for storytelling by adding a second splash page to open part two). Robert Pope did a marvelous job with the packed adventure, from his imaginative cover to the final panel. It made for an excellent reintroduction to the world of comic book writing.

Thank you, Robert Greenberger for taking the time to talk about writing BATMAN: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20! If you have any questions for him, or want to let him know what you thought of BATMAN: BRAVE AND THE BOLD #20, please leave a comment below. 

Parents and teachers can learn more about Robert Greenberger by visiting his website.

Working with Artists

Some of the questions I asked most frequently by kids (and often adults) involve working with artists as a writer. "Do you get to choose the artist who illustrates you story?" is one and "Do you and the artist work separately, or together?" is another.

The answer to both is "it depends."

Generally, the person I work with most closely is the editor. For most projects the editor will decide who will draw the story I've written. For example, some of the questions that might run through the editor's mind when choosing an artist are: How they choose the artist depends on a number of things. has the editor and artist worked well together on previous stories? Has the artist worked well with the writer on previous stories? has the artist drawn these particular characters before? Does their style fit the mood of the story? can they draw fast enough to meet the deadline for the story? Is this artist currently available to draw this story?

Most of the time, the editor will assign an artist to illustrate a story without even telling me who will be drawing it. This is how it is most often done on the various Cartoon Network titles I've worked on. For each of these titles, the editor will choose from a small group of artists who have demonstrated an outstanding ability to draw the characters and situations to reflect the look and feel of the television show that inspired them. If you look at the credits in several issues of SCOOBY-DOO, CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK, CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY, or any of the other titles, you'll see the same names appear over and over again. On these titles, we've all been working together for so long that we know that our combined efforts will come together in a fun story.

For other comic book projects I've written, the artist is usually assigned at the same time I am, and if I'm familiar with their work, I can write my script to showcase their strengths as an artist. For projects that I generate myself, I work with the editor in choosing an artist who is best suited for that particular project. In this case the editor and I will each come up with a list of artists we think would be good for the project  and then decide on one we both like. If they are available, and like the project, they're hired. If we can't get them, we pick one of the other artists we liked.

One of the best part of writing comics is getting to work with so many different talented people, and seeing how they take my written scripts and translate them into illustrated stories. The finished result is always a surprise, even when you've worked with someone many times.

As to whether an artist and myself work together, or separately, it varies from project to project and from artist to artist. Most often, the artist and I will never meet, or even email each other until long after a project is finished. There are still so many people I've worked with, often for years, whom I've never met or even spoken too. We only know each other through our work together.

For some projects I will send the artist some reference material to help them. These can be photographs of locations featured in the story, or hand drawn maps I've made of how the characters should move through a location, or even sketches of new characters and creatures. All of this is done to make their job easier, and to help them get a better sense of what I imagined in my own mind when I wrote the story.

On a few occasions the artist and I worked very closely. We would talk on the phone several times a week. These conversations were often not about work at all, but simply us getting to know each other. This helped a lot. My scripts for these artists would get shorter over time, because so much of teh detail would get covered in conversation, and because I knew what movies or artists they liked, I could instruct them simply by comparing a scene in the script to a scene in a movie they'd seen, or a book they'd read, and say something like; "the house in this story should look something like the house in that movie," or "when the characters walk through these woods, the art should create the same feel as that part of that book where the characters were lost in a strange neighborhood." The artist will understand what I mean by this and it will help guide them when illustrating a scene in our project.

I've been really lucky. In all the years I've been writing comics, there have only been a couple of stories where I really didn't think the art fit the story well. Out of all the artists I've worked with, there have never been any whose work I haven't liked, and out of all of those that I've met, I'm friends with them all. I'm even friends with some I've only ever met through email.

I'm also happy to say that I've never had any real arguments with any artist I've worked with about how something should be done.

Below you can read a very tongue in cheek example of a comic book artist and writer working together. This was by writer, Stan Lee and artist, Steve Ditko about creating Spider-Man and comes from THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1 from 1964.

Making a Comic Book -- Step by Step

If you ever wondered how a comic book story was made from start to finish, now is you chance to find out. Using a page from "The Dragon's Eye - Part 2: Russian into Danger" from SCOOBY-DOO #60 I will take you through the steps from start to finish. You can click on any image below to make it larger.

Step 1:  Everything starts with a story, or at least the idea of a story. Every story begins with what's called a pitch. In the pitch, a story is broken down to its most basic elements in about three or four sentences. In the case of the story here, it was one chapter of a six part story, and was probably pitched as something like this:



The Dragon's Eye - part 2: As the mystery of the Dragon's Eye deepens, the Mystery Inc. gang travels to Russia where they encounter Baba Yaga, a witch from Russian folklore. Baba Yaga is after a jewel encrusted Faberge egg. Can they stop her?



As you can see this is very basic, but gives the editor enough information to decide whether they'd like to develop the story or not. Maybe they've already done a story about Baba Yaga, or one set in Russia and don't want another one. In this case the story was approved and then I got to move on to step 2.

Step 2: Now that the story is approved the writer (in this case me) writes a script for that story. The script tells the artist everything that he will need to draw for the comic book story. The script describes the locations where the action takes place, who the characters are and what they look like, what the characters are doing in each panel, what they are saying, and even how many panels are on a page.  Scripts vary in length depending on the story. I have written scripts for a 22-page comic book story that were over 50 pages long, and scripts for a six page comic book story that were only 2 pages long. Below is a page of the script for "The Dragon's Eye - Part 2: Russian Into Danger"

Step 3: The script now goes back to the editor. The editor will read it and decide if anything needs to be changed by the writer. If everything is okay then the editor sends it on to the artist who is going to draw the story.

Step 4: The person who draws the story is called the penciller. In this case the penciller is the talented Joe Staton. The penciller reads the script and then decides how they are going to draw everything based on the writer's script. The penciller also thinks about the best way to make the action flow smoothly from panel to panel, and to keep the dialogue easy to follow between one character and another. Below are Joe Staton's pencils for this page. Compare his drawings to the descriptions in the script page above.

Step 5:  In the old days, before computers, lettering was done directly on the page of art containing the pencils. After the lettering was done, the art would be passed on to the inker. Now both these steps are done more or less at the same time, but we'll start with the lettering for the sake of tradition. The lettering is the process in which all of the dialogue, including the balloons that contain them, the descriptive narrative captions, and the sound effects are added to the artwork. Oftentimes, to make things clearer for the letterer, the editor or writer will mark a copy of the script and the pencils like this:

and this:

If you look at the copy of the script page just above, you'll notice that numbers have been placed next to each line of dialogue. If you look at the copy of the pencils just above, you'll notice that rough balloons have been drawn over the art with numbers inside them. The numbers in the balloons go to the numbers on the script. This shows the letterer which lines of dialogue should go in which balloons, and where they go on each page so as to not block out important bits of artwork and so that the dialogue is easy to read across the page. It also makes it less likely for mistakes to be made where a character will be speaking the wrong dialogue.

Step 6: Now that the letterer (in this case Tom Orzechowski) has these marked versions of the script and pencils, he can use them as a guide to add the actual lettering to the story. This used to all be done by hand, so a letterer had to have excellent penmanship. Now it's mostly done on computers.

Step 7: It used to be that the inker wouldn't do their job until the letterer had done theirs, but that's no longer the case, since the lettering is no longer done directly onto the pencilled artwork. The inker is the person who goes over all of the pencils in ink so that the artwork reproduces better when it's being printed. Many people think that all an inker does is trace the pencils. This is not true at all. An inker adds areas of black, and varies the thickness of their line to help make certain parts of the artwork stand out, and to make other parts sort of fade into the background. They can add atmosphere and texture to the art as well. Below is the inked artwork by Horacio Ottolini over Joe Staton's pencils. Compare this with Joe's pencils back in Step 4.

Here is the inked page with Tom Orzechowski's lettering.

Step 8: The final step is adding the color. This work used to be done by hand using special dyes on copies of the inked and lettered artwork. Now most coloring is done on computers. The colorist can use their skills to create mood and to bring emphasis to a character or object in a panel. For example, in the page below, colored by Paul Becton, notice how in panel 4 only Scooby-Doo and the egg he's trying to catch are colored in detail. The other characters are all colored in one pale shade of purple. This is because even while the other characters are present, they aren't what's important in this panel, so they are colored to fade into the background while our attention is in Scooby-Doo.

There you have it, the entire process from beginning to end in creating a comic book story. In future posts I will go into even more detail for each of these steps and will even have various editors, writers and artists talk about their parts in bringing a comic book story to life.

Putting the Words in the Bubbles

The response I hear the most when people find out that I write comic books for a living is "Oh, you put the words in the bubbles."

The person who actually, physically writes all of the words into the bubbles (actually called word balloons) is the letterer. This job used to be done completely by hand, but is now more often done using a computer. I don't do this job, and I don't think this is what people mean when they respond about me putting the words in the bubbles.

Instead I think their assumption is that I just write the dialogue which appears in the balloons, and that the artist comes up with all of the visuals all on their own and somehow the two elements come together to form a complete story.

The truth of the matter (and this in no way is meant to suggest that the artists don't make valuable contributions of their own) is that I also have to describe everything that goes on in each panel on ever page of a comic book story, usually including how many panels are on each page, so that the artist knows what to draw. That means I have to describe the locations where the story takes place, whether it is night or day, raining, snowing, or hot and sunny, what the characters look like, what they are doing, what their expressions are like, if they are holding anything I need to describe what those things are and how important they'll be for the rest of the story and so on.

Since this is the part of creating comics that I know the most about, most of my posts here will concern different aspects of writing comic book stories. For right now, compare the panel above, (which was taken from "Man of a Thousand Monsters" written by me pencilled by Robert Pope, inked by Scott McRae, lettered by Swands, colored by Heroic Age, and edited by Harvey Richards) with the except from the script for the very same panel shown below. You can make the images larger by clicking on them.

Next week I will walk you through the entire process of how a comic book story is created from beginning to end.