Last week's Old School Saturday showed early Invisible, Inc. sketches from when it was a Marvel pitch called Control. At the time I was taking a comics writing class at Rockland Community College under living legend Denny O'Neil. It was so ridiculously awesome, having access to a veteran like him. I think the class had about a dozen people, most taking it as a lark.
These are his notes on "Control" #1, which unfolded a little differently from Invisible, Inc. #1, by trading on things people thought they knew about Marvel continuity.
In fact, that was the nugget that made me pitch originally to DC. The catch-22 of one-shots is they have to validate their existence. They have to be big, important, worth doing outside of the regular titles...and yet they have to be self-contained. Their position in continuity is dubious, so they can't change anything. The idea of doing a conspiracy theory book was it could either radically realign everything you took as gospel about a company's 60 years of continuity, or you could choose not to believe it. You could write it all off as deranged ramblings.
Denny O'Neil critiqued my script and liked it. I'm still geeking out six years later.
According to what I have written down here, my transcribed class notes are incomplete (and probably unintelligible). But hey, if you want to suss out what I put down, congratulations, here are the equivalent of How to Write Comics cliff notes:
DENNY
We were dealing with social topics, and superheroes didn't do that. Part of it was we were the new kids on the block, the flavor of the week.
The one I'm deeply ashamed of is the feminist problem. It was mercifully omitted.
We ended at the right time. It was going to become Cause of the Month comics. We did everything we felt passionate about.
We created Malthus to discuss overpopulation.
Sex stops a story dead. Becomes about sex and nothing else.
BATMAN
Chuck Dixon (?) coming from a Libertarian POV. And I'm a pinko. Left and right go far enough, they meet at anarchy.
THE SHADOW
Steranko: "Shadow doesn't believe in the death penalty. He IS the death penalty."
For it to be acceptable to me, I set it in the '30s = NeverNeverLand.
No thought ballooons. Force of nature
Robin died by 65 votes.
When Robin died, there was a news story and Denny stopped at a hot dog vendor, wearing a DC or Batman pin. Vendor inquired, and he explained he was the editor: 'HEY! This is the guy that killed Robin!' That's when I realized I'm not a guy doing fiction, I'm the custodian of folklore.
Characters have to evolve, stay relevant, yet true to roots.
Mike Carlin bought Denny three months to recover after his heart attack.
DON'T BE LATE: It's a crummy thing to do. On top of holding up everyone else, it's unprofessional.
ON CREATIVE FREEDOM: If I made the money they would give me freedom.
Warner Bros. looks at DC as R&D (alphabet soup!)
Don't ever think a corporation is your friend. It's about $.
Discipline: sit down and write everyday.
MANTRA #2: Check ego at the door. Respect it as an art form, but look on it as a job.
Tendency to equate incomprehensibility with hipness. Terse is somehow harder than prolix.
Elements that appeal to most people most of the time lost popularity since Ezra Pound, and trying to make itself difficult. Kinda showing off.
OLD COMICS: COnventional wisdom was readership turned over every 4 years.
STORY: Ask 200 people if they know what a story is. A story is not "random slice of reality" and not "random facts about people's lives." STORY = Structured narrative designed to achieve emotional (resonance?) and demonstrate proposition as reveal character.
Poe said 'every word in a short story must be aimed at the final effect'
Comics are a weird hybrid of drama and initiative. Don't waste words or images.
Harrison Ford said "Figure out important info in a scene, find an interesting way to impart it."
Practical comic writing.
COMICS AS LANGUAGE
-Word and image must work together the way parts of a sentence do to impart info to create a scene.
-Images are static. World lit by strobe lights.
-Constraints of space/time.
-You can manipulate panels and # of panels to slow down, speed up reader.
-Used to be keep it about 40 words per panel in a 7 panel page.
Umberto Eco = semioticist.
IMPROVISATIONS: Speed lines, radiation lines, heat lines, light bulb, translucent figures to show fast movements. Thought balloons, psychic balloons, dialogue boxes.
STRUCTURE: In 19th/20th century climax was 1/2 way through story. Now we use more of 3-act structure for almost everything.
Pacing is the last thing a storyteller learns. You'll get a sense of it. "Patience, young grasshopper, we will learn that." (easy to see Denny as a wudan monk)
Structure presents events coherently so the audience can understand. Maintain suspense and interest, maximize impact. Don't waste words or images. Trim all fat. Unity - focus on essentials.But don't over economize.
On mapping Gotham: I didn't want to give a gamer's mentality to the Gotham of comics. Defining it would take it from the imagination.
VALUE OF FUZZY THINKING: Let the audience fill certain non-essential gaps.
STORY SPINE (credit Wm. Goldman): What the story is about. (well that was simple)
Denny sez: "The inevitable sequence of events leading to the end."
Every movement in the story is bringing those characters to the end (and if I may add, that was what was so great about Shakespeare).
profluence - move smoothly and easily
conventional: causal sequence of events but you can use other elements
Denny's structure for a 22-page story:
1 - Hook. Anything to make people ask what's happening next. Turn to page 2.
2 - Inciting incident: what's gonna make things happen. Upset the norm. But with superheroes you might want to establish the norm first. Quick but not necessarily by page three. (Unless you're working for Shooter, he laughs as an aside) Got to understand norm before turning it over.
3 - Major visual action.
ACT II - "put protagonist on a limb, then saw the limb off." That would be the major visual action. Don't want 5/6 parts of the story to be talk. Don't want crucial plot turns to be talk. Show, don't tell, but ya know, showing visually could be an expression.
DON'T THWART audience expectations.
Write what you can get into. You will be miserable and you will probably fail if you don't.
DC says "hook" = one line summary of what's good and interesting about a book.
Indie books should NOT be serial. One damn thing after another.
Casablanca has two inciting incidents: 1 - murder of Nazi courier/theft of papers, 2 - arrival of Ilsa.
FUZZY: Eisner's master of putting in only the details you need to get the scene.
"One damn thing after another structure: inspired by serials. Stan Lee pioneered ongoing to bring you back each month.
Maguffin = thing of vital importance to characters but not to narrator/reader. Moves story along, sets it up, whatever. (not sure I 100% agree with the narrator/readers bit). Maguffin can change, but central conflict doesn't. Private eyes are great because inciting incident is built into concept. Don't skip on maguffin. It's got to be credible for the movie to work.
Don't let structure trap you.
Superheroes = modern day tribal gods = job to protect.
CONFLICT: Come into opposition, contradictory states. Shooter says conflict should be on page two (but what's he done lately? --me). Drama comes from conflict. Three types:
1 - Inner: to be or not to be?
2 - Personal: one on one
3 - External: ideological, physical, bigger than personal.
Don't make your hero a big, sloppy whiner. Stan Lee put enough into it that it worked.
Galleys = copy you have to check over.
Scenes = building blocks. Vertebrae.
CLASSICIST - looks for underlying structure
ROMANTICIST - looks for surface
Types of comic script.
1 - Full. This is standard. Everything in place.
2 - Marvel-style. Old school Stan Lee. Nobody really uses this now.
3 - Dough Moench style. 25 page plot for a 22pg story.
"Such was the genius of Julie Schwartz. I never left his office without something to write."
Is this a Julie quote? "Late '30s, ad agencies weren't hiring Jews. This was where we could get work." Explaining so many Jewish comic creators.
Comic books, when they work well, are a perfect blend of copy and image.
Scene = "action through conflict in more or less consisten time and space. Action event." --Robert McKee
No superfluous scenes. Contribute to final effect. Interaction between characters that advances plot or gives information or both. Every scene should be as brief and pointed as possible.
Beware talking heads! Don't let dialogue go on more than 2 pages. Wally Wood did a thumbnail page of many tricks you can do when writers are typing endless dialogue.
JOHN TRUBY'S STRUCTURE
1) Need - generalized problem
2) Desire - particular problem that in achieving will help solve need
3) Plan of action
4) Battle
5) Final confrontation
6) Self-realization
7) New equilibrium - key point is self-realization/revelation
Major change in storytelling in the last 50 years: serialization. Dominant in our age.
From plot comes character.
CAMPBELL
Plot pt. 1) Call to action
2) Return home with elixir, sword maguffin
3) Become ye a man!
Don't cheat the readers, no matter what.
Eddie Berganza = old fashioned editor. Made Denny rewrite. "I was really impressed. I don't think I'd have the nerve to ask somebody higher than me to rewrite" when Denny was editing/writing at the same time.
Highly directive editing is a danger. "Err on the side of laissez-faire. You want first-rate Grayson, not third-rate O'Neil." Editor's job is to be invisible, make your peopolpe look good. Doesn't mean just copyedit and let it ride, but elicit, rather than command, the best from them.
Denouement -wrapup, restoration of normalcy. DOn't have to have it. Do w/o if you can, in fact. Keep it short.
Flashbacks are overused. Try to avoid 'em. But if you do, don't insert them arbitrarily. Make them ridiculously clear. Some techniques:
-Past tense captions. Don't see these much currently, but Silver Agers used them all the time "Green Lantern recharged his ring, then turned to see the Guardians of the Galaxy..."
-Special coloring: change palate, or most often, monochrome w/varying values, monochrome w/varying saturation
-Scalloped panel borders or some other type of special border.
-Headshot in the caption, another one of those Silver Age things nobody does a lot of anymore.
Transitions are very important and necessary. Spatial. Captions, etc. Sense of place most neglected thing in comics. Eisner one of the best at it.
Lady offended by LSH costumes.
Craft - set of procedures, practices, attitudes and methods that...um...where'd the rest of the def. go?
Nobody has codified the structure for longer stories. Continuing characters have only existed for 150 years or so. Serials only since mid-19th century. Dickens. Not true serials. Movie serials since 1911. Last in 1956. "Blazing over land trail.' Comics are going to change in next 10 years enormously.
Newspaper strip - saturday doesn't advance plot because no commuters. Sunday recaps whole week or a little plot advance or a tangent. Throwaway panels
Caniff - economic, drew to service of bad printing but attentive to detail. Integrity.
One-issue stories were encouraged as one-off until '60s when distribution became more reliable.
Sarah Bright - Jeopardy researcher and comic fan.
Stan Lee 1st guy to make continued comics the rule. Told Denny he liked longer stories and didn't like thinking up new plots every month.
Sloppy writing/plotting going on a lot now. Writers don't introduce and establish. Burning time (can you say "too much decompression"?)
ARCHIE GOODWIN: "During the 80s we all got lazy and sloppy/"
SERIAL RULES: (remembering that there ARE no rules)
1) Have enough story to fill the book. Figure out spine, ribs, vertebrae
2) Must be a major development, reversal or change in each issue. Don't just visit your characters.
3) Know the ending before you begin (Alan Moore says different and I tend to agree. Obviously you can make some missteps if you don't get a sense of it, but it's a great way to achieve that every step necessary to reach the end and keep the end fresh and fitting instead of cliche and forced)
4) End each issue w/a cliffhanger.
5) Hero must do something to effect change.
6) Turning points must be a surprise.
7) Beginning of each issue must have exposition.
"One of the first things I did when I went to NY was look for Nero Wolf's house"
Spine = plot
Vertebrae = scenes
Ribs = themes
Guts = color, character
OGNs
Starhunters maybe the first one?
Eisner is King.
Maus II got comics respect
Short story - "story in which one thing happens."
Novel - prose narrative, usually long, complex, intense
Achieve catharsis. Build tension in order to relieve it. But meaningful. Sensation for its own sake = pornography. Shakespeare usually ends witha big fight. Gotta up the stakes with each new challenge, or at least different.
anti-climax - used to mean excessive emotional enxiety. But today = expositon/developments after resolution of central conflict.
Talking during fights - a convention, similar to singing in musicals.
Plot and character are completly, inextricably intertwined. "Action is character." Personality traits direct resolution of story. What makes them unique, the thoughts, feelings, reactions, direct response to crises
Building character: sometimes inside out.
USEFUL QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT MAIN CHARACTERS
What do they want?
What are they afraid of?
Why are they involved in extreme situations? Why involve themselves?
Life and death = the good stuff.
"magic realism" - realism with an element of fantasy.
HEROES
Superman upholds the Kents' values. Bond advances good causes, serves country.
John Sheldon Lawrence and Robert Jewett - "Myth of American Superhero"
monomyth - no def. Like Jung?
American: Community in "paradise." Normal institutions fail, hero of uncommon abilities appears, corrects problem. Vanishes once it's over.
Old Europe: GO out on a quest, obtain something of value, return to community with it. Changed by experience.
AMERICAN = ride in, kick ass, ride out. EUROPEAN = retrieve benefit, aid community.
And that is why we have superheroes.
Hero must be agent of story's resolution. Deconstruction of superheroes. Updating outmoded values with current ones. Speaks with distaste about Chaykin having Blackhawk get a BJ. But Frank Miller does it in service of story.
Do hero's actions add or detract from the story, you must ask yourself. Story comes first.
Batman's official age is 33. Denny devised Elseworlds. Would have disapproved of Killing Joke if he'd been on it. Doesn't name names.
VILLAINS
Should be colorful. "Joker is the best villain ever" completely unpredictable.
Should have an edge on the hero.
CHARACTER
Sometimes created by needs of the plot. Archetypes: hero, mentor, threshold guardian (e.g. Starscream, Dethstro), herald (bringer of news), shapeshifter (traitor, sorta. Personality shift, deception), shadow (hero's opposite), Trickster (sneaky devil who will fool you), sidekick (hero who is less perfect. Adds texture to story. Solves exposition). Sidekick is not a classic Jungian archetype.
This might be McKee: "Character and plot are really the same thing," and this def. is him: "True character revealed by choices the character makes under pressure."
Chandler: a man of honor in one thing, a man of honor in all things."
Arthur Miller wrote thousands of words of backstory to know characters.
Be prepared to rewrite.
EVERYTHING TRUE ABOUT THE HERO SHOULD BE TRUE ABOUT THE VILLAIN.
Why do they do what they do? Hero can have a personal life.
Funny hat characterizations (?)
Gods and priests have special garments.
ENERGIA = actualization of potential in character and situation. Aristotle.
Chip away character until you reveal what the char. is really about.
Suspense = mental excitement awaiting outcome or decision, usually accomplished by a degree of uncertainty.
Tension = stretched, strained state, a combination of pacing, drama and plot.
e.g. Hitchcock, master: a child with a bomb. We know it, he doesn't. If we didn't know it, we'd be surprised, but it wouldn't be tense.
Martinson: Let the hero win the war, but lose the battle.
Generally the hero has to win, but you know, he can stll lose. Lear dies, but there's justice.
FINAL ADVICE
Mostly entertain. BUT, try to do some good. Educate. Most proud of landmine story. "Stupid weapon, mostly victimize children. If you're forced to retreat, your own guys get blown up."